help please!

[Lady_Kikyo]

I’m currently debating with a semi-extreme…oh heck, an extreme anti-Catholic. He started quoting the “Roman Canon Law 1685.” Is anyone familiar with that? According to him there’s a reference to “our Lord God the Pope”…I’ve never heard this being cited by anyone, and was wondering if I could have some info w/ citations (if possilbe) on it.
Thanks.

 

[CatholicLife]

Here is a good link explaining this
seanhyland.wordpress.com/2009/01/04/the-truth-about-the-anti-catholic-charge-of-lord-god-the-pope/
Another link much more simple
sacrificium-laudis.blogspot.com/2008/09/our-lord-god-popenot-part-1.html

 

[yellowbird]

Here is a good link explaining this
seanhyland.wordpress.com/2009/01/04/the-truth-about-the-anti-catholic-charge-of-lord-god-the-pope/
Another link much more simple
sacrificium-laudis.blogspot.com/2008/09/our-lord-god-popenot-part-1.html

That second link was very interesting… very clear too. The longer I’m Catholic the more I’ve come to appreciate that if it sounds shocking & impossible to believe (some official document stating the Pope is God) it’s probably a pack of lies made up to discredit His Church.

 

[NPC]

Like yellowbird said, if something seems so hard to believe in discussion such as the one you’re engaged in, then it’s probably rubbish…It’s amazing how things get lost in translation - that has been a very useful tool for anti-Catholics.

The first thing I would say, is that your friend - in true anti-Catholic fashion - has his dates wrong. There was no new Code of Canon Law published in 1685, which was during the pontificate of Blessed Pope Innocent XI. In fact, your friend is out by more than one hundred years. Between 1580 and 1917 there was only one Code of Canon Law in force - called the Corpus Juris Canonici - the 1580 code was promulgated by Pope Gregory XII. Putting in a search for “Corpus Juris Canonici” with “Lord God the Pope”, I got mainly anti-Catholic websites - no references to where one might find a copy of the code (I can’t find an English translation online), dates for publication of the CJC ranging from 1500’s to 1890’s, and most websites have word for word the same “explanation”. This leads me to believe that this is something which was spewed from the mouth of Jack Chick or Loraine Boettner - they can just throw a juicy statement out there and next thing you know, every anti-Catholic in the world is quoting them.

As I say, I can’t find an English translation of the CJC online - I doubt that there was ever an official English translation issued (in which case you should be very wary. So I would be willing to bet that something very conveniently got lost in translation - either thanks to a Reformer around the time the Code was promulgated in 1580, or simply by someone who will say whatever it takes to attack the Catholic Church. Whatever happened - either the statement was never made & is an invention, or else someone needs serious lessons in translation & Truth.

I would press - I presume it’s “Mr. H.” from your previous post - for exact details. Ask him if he could tell you where to get an English translation of the full code; what section of the code the quotation comes from; ask him to quote the surrounding paragraph(s) rather that picking just one line. Also, perhaps ask him which pope promulgated the 1685 code - of course there was no code promulgated then as I have already said (at least no faithful copy of the original) - there was no other until the CJC was revised in 1917.

 

[Digitonomy]

Some interesting historical background…
Here is part of a recent blog post by Edward Peters

Sometime in the year 1230, (St.) Raymond Penyafort began compiling the texts that would eventually comprise Pope Gregory IX’s famous Quinque Libri Decretalium. Upon its promulgation in September of 1234 as the Church’s first authentic collection of canon law (not yet a Code, but a binding collection nonetheless), the Liber Extra (as the QLD was also known) was the mechanism by which the canon law of the Catholic Church functioned for nearly 685 years, that is, until the Pio-Benedictine Code went into full effect in 1918…Over the next four years or so, I plan to read the Decretals of Gregory IX, straight through, wrapping up by September 5th, 2014.

The QLD consists of roughly 1,870 “chapters” (some of which are only a few lines long), grouped under 185 “titles”, themselves arranged into 5 “books”. These texts, as it happens, fill some 930 columns in the second volume of Freidberg’s edition of the Corpus Iuris Canonici.
Source

And from Wikipedia

The first truly systematic collection [of canons] was assembled by the Camaldolese monk Gratian in the 11th century, commonly known as the Decretum Gratiani (“Gratian’s Decree”). Pope Gregory IX is credited with promulgating the first official collection of canons called the Decretalia Gregorii Noni or Liber Extra (1234). This was followed by the Liber Sextus (1298) of Boniface VIII, the Clementines (1317) of Clement V, the Extravagantes Joannis XXII and the Extravagantes Communes, all of which followed the same structure as the Liber Extra. All these collections, with the Decretum Gratiani, are together referred to as the Corpus Juris Canonici.

After the completion of the Corpus Juris Canonici, subsequent papal legislation was published in periodic volumes called Bullaria.

Considering there was no English translation of the 1917 Code until Peters did it a few years ago, I think we can say with confidence that there is no full English translation of earlier canon law.

 

[Lady_Kikyo]

Here is a good link explaining this
seanhyland.wordpress.com/2009/01/04/the-truth-about-the-anti-catholic-charge-of-lord-god-the-pope/
Another link much more simple
sacrificium-laudis.blogspot.com/2008/09/our-lord-god-popenot-part-1.html

Thank you for that second link…I’ll have to go back to Mr.H’s second e-mail (he couldn’t provide sources for his orginal accusations) but I believe that site addressed each *new *quote he threw at me. Thanks again, and thanks to all of you for the backgroud there…very helpful, I appreciate it:thumbsup: