Posted on 09/02/2013 9:07:37 AM PDT by bkaycee
It's rather telling, isn't it?
Do you have any idea how many of us non-Catholics agree with you?
You might be surprised.
As far as the charge of *anti-Catholic* that is lobbed at non-Catholic believers over the slightest hint of criticism of the Catholic religion.
They simply cannot tolerate dissent or critiquing, or holding their beliefs up to the light of Scripture for comparison to see if they align with Scripture or not.
When the church is shown to have operated in deceit, the reactions on this thread are the result. It pushes the Catholics right over the edge. They just can't handle it.
By whose definition of the terms "pope" and "papacy"? Yours? Rome certainly had a sitting bishop; at the time of Nicaea I, Pope Sylvester. It had a sitting bishop at the time of Constantine's accession, too: Pope Melchiades. In fact, it was Constantine who gave the church (through Melchiades) the estate of Plautius Lateranus, which is why the Pope's basilica, built on the site, is today called St. John Lateran.
It's certainly true that Sylvester wasn't present at Nicaea I. He sent legates. It wasn't as though he could take a taxi to the airport and hop a jet to Constantinople, you know.
Constantine, who is not listed as a pope in Rome’s papal lineage
Because he wasn't a pope.
himself assumed the leadership of the churches
In what sense?
and took the title Pontifex Maximus – highest priest.
Wrong. Completely wrong. He already had the title "Pontifex Maximus" as the titular head of the Roman state religion. (Which was still pagan at that time.) All the Roman Emperors prior to Constantine had that title.
When the Roman state religion became Christianity under Theodosius the Great (ca AD 380), the title naturally passed to the Bishop of Rome.
26 posts and all we have is “slam the messenger” and even now you have no responses! Telling.
You nailed it on that one!
When the church is shown to have operated in deceit, the reactions on this thread are the result. It pushes the Catholics right over the edge. They just can’t handle it.
It appears that Rome was forced to admit they were forgeries, only after they could no longer prop them up.
The chief affair was the maintenance of the authority of the False decretals, Gratian, and the forgeries accepted by St. Thomas Aquinas. For a long while no one in the Catholic Church dared to expose the latter. French scholars were the first, about 1660 to tell the truth about them. Gratian's Decretum had gained new authority through the revision and correction ordered by the Popes, in the course of which many forgeries must doubtles have been detected. The pseudo-Isidore was still for a long time protected by the Index. When the famous canonist, Contius, brought forward the evidence of its spuriousness, the Preface in which this contained was suppressed by the censorship.
On the appearance of the famous work of Blondel, which completely dissected the pseudo-Isidore, the last doubts about the true nature of the fraud were exploded. But it too was placed on the Index. About the time of the Declaration of 1682, the Spanish Benedictine, Aguirre, made the last attempt worth mentioning to rehabilitate the pseudo-Isidore. It could now no longer be denied that with this forgery disappeared the whole historical foundation of the papal system for any one acquainted with history. Aguirre was rewarded with a cardinal's hat. But in the course of the eighteenth century it came to be perceived at Rome that it was impossible to maintain any longer the genuiness of this compilation, and thus at last the fraud, was admitted in the answer given by Pius VI., in 1789, to the demands of the German archbishops.
Ok! So here we are near 50 posts and all we have is that those documents are indeed forgeries and the RCC still used them. Are any of us surprised?
Don’t look at me.
I read your posts on this thread, you appear to have made an honest attempt to answer the assertion of this thread, rather than attacking the ex-nun. You may be an honest lady yourself, but your post, however, amounts to a cover-up for a liar, the Pope during the decretals. He lied according to what one Bible handbook I have says:
Whether Nicolas [Nicolas !, 858-867, Pope during the Pseudo-Ididorian Decretals, first Pope to wear a crown] knew them to be forgeries, at least HE LIED (my caps) in stating that they had been kept in the archives of the Roman Church from ancient times. They served their purpose in stamping the claims of the Medieval Priesthood with the authority of antiquity.
The Papacy which was the growth of several centuries, was made to appear as something complete and unchangeable from the very beginning. The object was to ante-date by five centuries the Pope’s temporal power. It strengthened the Papacy more than any other agency, and formed to a large extent the basis of the canon law of the Roman Church.
The book “The Pope and the Council by Catholic Historian, Johann Joseph Ignaz von Doellinger” is free,online at play.google.com
No, the title “Pope” is not derived from “Pontifex Maximus” — the title is also borne by the Patriarchs of Alexandria, both the Coptic Pope of Alexandria and the Greek Orthodox Pope of Alexandria — whose sees never claimed the authority of the Roman office of Pontifex Maximus.
“Pontiff” is derived from “Pontifex Maximus” and is peculiar to the Roman see.
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=69590
She’s been under the radar since she appeared on the web in Catholic circles and there has never been a critique about her until now. But, she’s well-known within Fundamentalist circles.
At the same time, though, her issues are the same distortions of Catholic teachings so essentially, they’ve all been covered before.
But no one until now has examined Mary Ann Collins, the source of this material. For example, when I first mentioned her in this forum, I was pointed to her biography that she wrote as proof that she was real.
Well Rome must be lying...LOLOL...
Well, after all, they are not always infallible. They are only infallible when the say they are infallible. At other times they are not infallible. Or something like that.
Forgery is a sin which damages the immediate victims of the fraud, and which ripples outward to destroy trust, justice, credibility and fraternal unity for even centuries thereafter, in ways that often burgeon out beyond remedy.
It was Catholic scholarship (Cardinal Cusa) which began the sorting-out of this very complex fraud (remember that legitimate and forged documents were interspersed, and in many cases merged). When the scholarship was all wrapped up, by the diligence of both Catholic and Protestant scholars, it was apparent that many ancient land-claims and political claims were based on false documentation.
Does this mean that the papacy per se was based on fraud? By no means. The papacy is not a matter of land and political claims. Does this mean that the Catholic doctrines on faith and morals were, for centuries, in error because of these forgeries? Not at all. There is not one dogma of the Catholic Church which is based on forged documents.
What about Gratian's scholarship, which makes regular reference to these false documents, and which became the basis of Canon Law? Again, neither land, titles, and political position, nor even Canon Law per se, form any part of the doctrinal deposit of the Church.
The main principles Gratian labored to set forth ---the necessary independence of the Christian Church and its mission from domination by secular politics; the Church's right, as its own society, to appoint clergy, set standards of discipline, convene its own councils and synods, and conduct itself according to its own constitutions; the whole principle of due process within the Church --- are not, or should not be, controversial to any Protestant, nor to any religious group whatsoever.
You could read all this in any number of Catholic sources, many of them online. The most detailed one (but not in the most readable typeface or writing style!) is probably the one referenced by "Mary Ann Collins" herself, the New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia 1918 (Link) article on the False Decretals.
There were mental mediocrities as well as geniuses, and scoundrels as well as saints, in the history of the Catholic Church, as any properly-educated high school student should know. I don't think you'll find a FReeper Catholic who would dispute this. What is disputable is that human sin and error --- examples of which are plentiful in the very pages of the New Testament, among the Apostles themselves --- negate the spiritual mission of the Church and indict its very foundation.
That's the point "Mary Ann Collins" wants to make, and that's where she's wrong.
Never heard of her.
It is also shown that Peter is the Vicar of Christ and the Roman Pontiff is Peter’s successor enjoying the same power conferred on Peter by Christ. For the canon of the Council of Chalcedon says: “If any bishop is sentenced as guilty of infamy, he is free to appeal the sentence to the blessed bishop of old Rome, whom we have as Peter the rock of refuge, and to him alone, in the place of God, with unlimited power, is granted the authority to hear the appeal of a bishop accused of infamy in virtue of the keys given him by the Lord.” And further on: “And whatever has been decreed by him is to be held as from the vicar of the apostolic throne.”
Likewise, Cyril, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, says, speaking in the person of Christ: “You for a while, but I without end will be fully and perfectly in sacrament and authority with all those whom I shall put in your place, just as I am also with you.” And Cyril of Alexandria in his Thesaurus says that the Apostles “in the Gospels and Epistles have affirmed in all their teaching that Peter and his Church are in the place of the Lord, granting him participation in every chapter and assembly, in every election and proclamation of doctrine.” And further on: “To him, that is, to Peter, all by divine ordinancebow the head, and the rulers of the world obey him as the Lord Jesus himself.” And Chrysostom, speaking in the person of Christ, says: “Feed my sheep (John 21:17), that is, in my place be in charge of your brethren" (St. Thomas Aquinas, Against the Errors of the Greeks. Found in James Likoudis, Ending the Byzantine Greek Schism (New Rochelle: Catholics United for the Faith, 1992), pp. 182-184).
With the exception of the last reference to Chrysostom all of Thomas’ references cited to Cyril of Jerusalem, Cyril of Alexandria, Chrysostom and the Council of Chalcedon are forgeries. The remainder of Aquinas’ treatise in defense of the papacy is similar in nature. Edward Denny gives the following historical summary of these forgeries and their use by Thomas Aquinas
In the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals alone 313 of the 324 claims attributed to your religion are false; lies...The question is, how many of these 313 lies does the modern Catholic church still teach as truth, even knowing they are lies???
Nope, that is correct. They didn't address them.
The first thing they did, in typical knee jerk reaction, is attack the author.
You know what is clear, though, is that Catholics are exceedingly sensitive to critique or criticism of their church (present company excluded).
It seems that the vast majority of them can hardly bring themselves to admit when the church is in error or has made an error in the past.
They deflect, excuse, rationalize, attack the messenger, accuse people who make any negative comments about Catholicism as *haters*, *anti's*, stupid, evil, liars, whatever, but just cannot bring themselves to admit that the church has not always been right and that some person, some former Catholic or non-Catholic, might actually have a valid point, supported by historical documentation.
This inability to admit that the church isn't perfect just shuts down any chance for correcting situations that need it, as has happened in the cases of priests who have been found to be molesting children.
So did the RCC retain possession of those lands?,P. >> nor even Canon Law per se<<
Per se?
>> Does this mean that the papacy per se was based on fraud?<<
Per se?
So not Canon Law or the Papacy but only things that affect them! Wow! Now there’s a non denial denial!
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