How do protestants explain history

[benhur]

No, but if I thought Orthodox was the “original” I would be. Instead you are taking a position of observational rather than active.

Actually you are right that actively my position is that Protestantism is the most catholic or closer to original. Orthodoxy is closer to original relative to Catholicism but both have “developments” that some P’s leave behind.

 

[benhur]

Hi Isaiah 45-9" I understand what you are asking and I concur with you that specific sources are needed if one is to believe that somehow the Church actually taught that heretic’s were to be killed.

I have read that the council of Trent was the first to declare anathemas, or that civil penalties could follow any theological variances. Thus began the church’s political correctness that did culminate in death for some. It became so deeply engrained that it still took several centuries after the reformation to finally shed it. Whether it was thru civil power might be immaterial for it was sanctioned by the church. It would be like the Jews saying, " we did not crucify the Lord for it was the Romans, our hand s are clean."

 

[Contarini]

Hi: I just got off several internet sites concerning the 4th Lateran council canon 3, I did not realize that there were so many site about this canon3. That being said I have not seen anything that says that the CC taught that Heretic’s were to be burned, hung, drowned, killed etc… So far what I have been able to gather is that the CC itself never actually inflected punishments on heretic’s as they were turned over to the civil or secular authorities. Canon 3 so far as it can be seen is a disciplinary action not dogma nor doctrine that says that heretic’s were to be killed. Actually they were to be driven off, by secular authorities, and exterminated by the spiritual sword.

So I am thinking that you somehow misread this canon 3 or have some different interpretation contrary to what it actually said. Apparently in the middle ages they had a far different meaning of the word exterminated then we as modern man does in our day and age.

It’s true that the root meaning of “extermino” is “to drive out.” But it can also mean to “kill,” as the modern English “exterminate” does. St. Thomas Aquinas says that heretics are to be “exterminated from the world by death.” We know that this was being done at the time of IV Lateran, and that the Church set up courts (“Inquisitions”) which tried people and in extreme cases handed them over to the secular authorities with the full knowledge and expectation that they would be burned at the stake.

We have no record (from this period) of the Church saying, “You cruel, ruthless civil authorities–we thought you were just going to exile the impenitent heretic and you burned him instead! No more heretics for you until we shape up.”

In fact, we find St. Thomas Aquinas and other major theologians saying that the civil authorities were supposed to burn impenitent heretics, and we even find some church officials criticizing civil authorities for not doing it.

In the sixteenth century, Luther was condemned, among other things, for saying that the Holy Spirit was opposed to this standard practice of burning heretics. Some folks on this forum have suggested that this was really talking about eternal fire or some other direct action by God, but that’s not believable. In context, Luther and the Pope who condemned him were clearly talking about the accepted practice of handing heretics over to the civil authorities to be burned at the stake.

IV Lateran took place within that context. The collaboration of the Church with civil authorities to burn heretics had begun in the twelfth century. There is no evidence that the Fathers of IV Lateran were opposed to this practice or that “exterminare” is intended to exclude the death penalty. There is every reason, historically, to believe that it means what it sounds like–to kill them until no heretics are left–even though the Latin word does not have to mean kill.

When we’re talking about permanently binding, infallible doctrinal teaching, it makes sense to look at what constructions the words will bear. But we’re not talking about that. We’re talking about the historical record of what happened. One could be faithful to the letter of Lateran IV without killing anyone. But historically, we know that people were killed, and there is no reason to think that the Fathers of the Council did not know this, expect it, and indeed desire it (although no doubt with sorrow as an unpleasant job that had to be done in order to preserve the Christian people from contamination by the deadly contagion of heresy.)

Edwin

 

[Contarini]

I have read that the council of Trent was the first to declare anathemas, or that civil penalties could follow any theological variances.

No, that isn’t true. Civil penalties go back to the time of Constantine–they started as soon as the Empire started favoring the Church, and the Church appreciated this support. The Church did not, however, sanction the death penalty for heresy until the twelfth century. Priscillian was executed in the late fourth century for heresy, but in that case it was]Thus began the church’s political correctness that did culminate in death for some. It became so deeply engrained that it still took several centuries after the reformation to finally shed it.

You’re implying that the Reformation was a force that worked against religious intolerance. Quite the reverse, as your citation of the Council of Trent shows. (Actually Trent did not mark the beginning of the persecution of heresy, and I can’t think off the top of my head of any decree that addresses the subject, though there may be one that does–but Trent coincided with the formation of a policy of internal reform combined with strict measures against heresy, which was both in response to and in turn elicited hatred and intolerance from Protestants).

Whether it was thru civil power might be immaterial for it was sanctioned by the church. It would be like the Jews saying, " we did not crucify the Lord for it was the Romans, our hand s are clean."

Right. This is a subterfuge. It does show that the Church never quite lost its earlier sense that it wasn’t supposed to be pushing for the death of anyone. Hypocrisy is disgusting, but it’s still revealing of genuine moral tensions.

Edwin

 

[Contarini]

Hi Isaiah 45-9" I understand what you are asking and I concur with you that specific sources are needed if one is to believe that somehow the Church actually taught that heretic’s were to be killed.

I have given these sources over and over again. St. Thomas Aquinas says this very clearly in his question on heresy in the Summa. And Pope Leo condemned Luther for saying otherwise.

The claims that Luther and Leo weren’t talking about civil punishment of heretics, or that Lo was just condemning Luther for presuming to read the mind of the Holy Spirit, are patent and ridiculous attempts to whitewash the clear historical record.

Don’t believe me. Believe the Catholic Encyclopedia:

This legislation remained in force and with even greater severity in the kingdom formed by the victorious barbarian invaders on the ruins of the Roman Empire in the West. **The burning of heretics was first decreed in the eleventh century. **The Synod of Verona (1184) imposed on bishops the duty to search out the heretics in their dioceses and to hand them over to the secular power. Other synods, and the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) under Pope Innocent III, repeated and enforced this decree, especially the Synod of Toulouse (1229), which established inquisitors in every parish (one priest and two laymen). Everyone was bound to denounce heretics, the names of the witnesses were kept secret; after 1243, when Innocent IV sanctioned the laws of Emperor Frederick II and of Louis IX against heretics, torture was applied in trials; the guilty persons were delivered up to the civil authorities and actually burnt at the stake. Paul III (1542) established, and Sixtus V organized, the Roman Congregation of the Inquisition, or Holy Office, a regular court of justice for dealing with heresy and heretics (see ROMAN CONGREGATIONS). The Congregation of the Index, instituted by St. Pius V, has for its province the care of faith and morals in literature; it proceeds against printed matter very much as the Holy Office proceeds against persons (see INDEX OF PROHIBITED BOOKS). The present pope [1909], Pius X, has decreed the establishment in every diocese of a board of censors and of a vigilance committee whose functions are to find out and report on writings and persons tainted with the heresy of Modernism (Encyclical “Pascendi”, 8 Sept., 1907). The present-day legislation against heresy has lost nothing of its ancient severity; but the penalties on heretics are now only of the spiritual order; all the punishments which require the intervention of the secular arm have fallen into abeyance. Even in countries where the cleavage between the spiritual and secular powers does not amount to hostility or complete severance, the death penalty, confiscation of goods, imprisonment, etc., are no longer inflicted on heretics.

The evidence is clear, and has been cited many times. You understandably don’t want to believe it. But you will get nowhere–nowhere good, that is–by denying reality.

It looks as if, on this forum at least, Catholics have at least as much trouble “explaining history” as Protestants.

Edwin

 

[spina1953]

I have given these sources over and over again. St. Thomas Aquinas says this very clearly in his question on heresy in the Summa. And Pope Leo condemned Luther for saying otherwise.

The claims that Luther and Leo weren’t talking about civil punishment of heretics, or that Lo was just condemning Luther for presuming to read the mind of the Holy Spirit, are patent and ridiculous attempts to whitewash the clear historical record.

Don’t believe me. Believe the Catholic Encyclopedia:

The evidence is clear, and has been cited many times. You understandably don’t want to believe it. But you will get nowhere–nowhere good, that is–by denying reality.

It looks as if, on this forum at least, Catholics have at least as much trouble “explaining history” as Protestants.

Edwin

Hi: I think that somehow you have misunderstood between what the Church teaches in matters of faith and morals and discipline. The CC itself did not kill anyone but sent them to secular or civil authorities. Now there was the Spainish Inquisition that was started by the king and queen of Spain in 1492 and continued on for several centuries. They were after all converts Jews and Muslems and anyone who someone did not like for what ever reason. So what I am saying is that it was discipline not doctrine which is different.
protestants were just as bad from all of the history I have read and during that time period there was much in the way of religious intolerance between Protestants and Catholic’s as well as those who were non-Christian. So one can’t put it on all of the CC. there is enough to go around.

 

[Contarini]

Hi: I think that somehow you have misunderstood between what the Church teaches in matters of faith and morals and discipline.

I didn’t stop to think that you meant “taught” in the technical sense, sure. In context, I thought the question was whether, for instance, a good Catholic in 1500 would have had the impression that they ought to support the practice of heretics being executed. The answer to that is definitely yes. I entirely agree that in hindsight it clearly wasn’t an infallible teaching.

A strict view of infallibility might hold that it covers Leo’s condemnations in Exsurge Domine, which is why some folks on this forum proceed to desperate lengths to justify the condemnation.

But that’s not really the issue here. The point is that historically, the Catholic Church as an institution had the habit of handing people over to be burned at the stake, and this was explicitly defended by great theologians like Thomas Aquinas. People who questioned it were regarded as, at best, dubiously orthodox. (So while you and I agree that it wasn’t a doctrinal position, it’s not clear that everyone at the time shared this understanding.)

The CC itself did not kill anyone but sent them to secular or civil authorities.

With the full awareness and expectation that they would be killed. IV Lateran clearly says that they are to be handed over to civil authorities for punishment. Civil authorities burned them at the stake, and the Fathers of IV Lateran obviously knew this.

You aren’t actually answering the points I made.

Now there was the Spainish Inquisition that was started by the king and queen of Spain in 1492 and continued on for several centuries.

Right. With papal approval, though somewhat grudgingly. The Pope didn’t like the monarchs controlling it, and rightly criticized Spain for its overly harsh proceedings. The Church isn’t simply blameless with regard to the SI, but neither does it bear full responsibility. The medieval Inquisitions I was talking about, however, as provided for by IV Lateran, are a different story. They were relatively less bloody than the SI (which itself was much less bloody than Protestant/secular propaganda has made it out to be), and the Roman Inquisition established in the sixteenth century directly under papal authority (and still existing today in altered form a the CDF) was the most reluctant of all to hand people over for execution. But all three forms of the Inquisition did hand people over for execution, and did use torture.

So what I am saying is that it was discipline not doctrine which is different.

But both proceed from the institutional Church. When the Church today requires Catholics to do something as a matter of discipline, then you say “the Church is doing it.” But when it did something in the past from which you want to distance yourself, then you start talking as if discipline doesn’t really matter.

Today Catholics are required not to receive communion in Protestant churches. In the thirteenth century they were required to denounce heretics to the authorities, knowing full well that if the heretic was stubborn they would be causing his death. The fact that this was discipline and not doctrine does not mean that it doesn’t pose a serious problem for Catholics. It does.

 

[Contarini]

protestants were just as bad from all of the history I have read

Honestly, I don’t think they were. They were certainly plenty intolerant, and Anglicans were arguably just as bad as Catholics. But other Protestants generally weren’t, in several ways:

1. Protestants couldn’t, in all good conscience, claim that Catholics were heretics in the traditional sense. Catholics weren’t running around as individuals making up new doctrine. They were believing and doing what everyone had believed and done for centuries. So in this sense, the fact that Protestants were more tolerant of Catholics than the other way round is actually a point against Protestants
2. Protestants were often quite harsh to radicals, like the Anabaptists. Still, Protestant governments were relatively less likely to execute Anabaptists than Catholic governments were, it seems to me. People who denied the Trinity were generally likely to wind up executed no matter what kind of government they lived under. But on the whole I think even with regard to radicals Protestants were a bit more reluctant to kill. Again, this was not necessarily because they were nicer but because they recognized, at least in the more moderate cases, that the radicals were to some degree fellow travelers.
3. Protestants were, on the whole, more passive with regard to civil government than Catholics. The major exception here is Calvin’s Geneva and those Protestant groups that took Geneva as their inspiration (like the Puritans in England or the Huguenots in France). So the excuse Catholics often use, which you use above, that the civil government was really responsible, works much better for Protestants than for Catholics.
4. Natalie Zemon Davis, based on close studies of religious violence in the French city of Lyons, concluded that while both sides were violent, they were differently violent because they had different ideas about how the other side “polluted” the city. Protestants saw Catholic rituals, sacred objects, and clergy/religious as polluting. They rioted and attacked churches and convents, desecrated sacred objects including the Eucharistic Host, and sometimes beat or killed clergy and religious. But they were unlikely to attack Catholic laypeople unless the laypeople were defending the “sacred objects.” Catholics, on the other hand, saw the mere existence of heretics as polluting. I think this sums up best the fundamental way in which Catholics were in fact much more intolerant than Protestants on the whole, although both sides were extremely intolerant by our standards and there were plenty of Catholics who were more tolerant than plenty of Protestants.

Bottom line: the only Catholics I know of who were executed by Protestants for religious reasons were in Britain and the Netherlands, in both of which there were particular political issues involved. German Protestants never, as far as I know, executed a Catholic. (To be fair, German Catholics also executed Protestants quite rarely–German rulers in general were more likely to exile dissenters than to execute them). Calvin’s Geneva, which was one of the most intolerant Protestant regimes in many ways, never executed a Catholic for religious reasons that I know of (though they fined and reprimanded parents for giving their children saints’ names, etc.).

So yes, there was plenty of intolerance on both sides, but it wasn’t equal. Some countries were worse than others, and some Protestant regimes were worse than some Catholic regimes by far, but on the whole Catholics were more intolerant, like it or not. Protestant intolerance manifested itself in nasty language, in mob violence, and in governmental suppression of public Catholic worship. In two places, Britain and the Netherlands, Catholics were judicially executed for their faithfulness to Catholicism, though in part for political reasons (and in the Netherlands this was the act of a particularly radical rebel group, I believe, and wasn’t a longstanding policy as it was in England–I have read in one source that a couple of Catholics were executed in Scotland but don’t know the details, which is why I’m inconsistent between “Britain” and “England”). Catholic countries, on the other hand, had a general policy of executing impenitent heretics, although this wasn’t always carried out with full rigor.

Edwin

 

[spina1953]

Hi Contarini: You have made some very good points. I realize that there were during those times many overly zealous religious as well as secular people who were overstepped their authority. There I think always be those who somehow think they are doing God’s work or think that they speak for God and what they are doing its ok and what God wants. Its a sad thing but fallen human nature is the root cause I think. Those with authority whether in the CC or a Protestant denomination, there has been abuses that really were uncalled for but that was the way people thought in those times.

Also since few people, the masses, could read or write, and were rather poor, there was much in the way of superstitions and were superstitious of everyone they did not know. In the USA when many Protestant denominations came due to intolerance, they were intolerant of others not of their faith and beliefs. Often from what I understand from history that wars because of differing religious beliefs were very often brutal in nature. People often took it upon themselves to have anyone not believing as they did arrested, Catholic’s as well as Protestants. It did not take much to rile up people to whatever way someone thought needed to be done in order to rid those not of their kind or thought in the same they did. I understand that the CC as any religion would have some need to define their beliefs and also to rid themselves of those opposed to or having differing beliefs contrary to what is accepted beliefs.
This goes not today in the Middle East with Muslems They fight and kill those not believing in the exact way and manor as they . sad really but till some tolerance is effected it will continue.

 

[benhur]

No, that isn’t true. Civil penalties go back to the time of Constantine-

OOps, i mix my councils up. I meant the Council of Nicaea, not Trent, in 325 A.D called by Constantine

You’re implying that the Reformation was a force that worked against religious intolerance.

Not really. Used it as historical reference point and actually to show they continued the “culture” (civil enforcement) that they came out of…Thanks for your info and correction.

 

[Darryl_B]

Actually you are right that actively my position is that Protestantism is the most catholic or closer to original. Orthodoxy is closer to original relative to Catholicism but both have “developments” that some P’s leave behind.

Yes. I see what you mean 3 phase power shift. Catholics are really protestants, protestants are really orthodox, and orthodox are really Catholics.

Musical chairs is something I played as a child.

 

[Contarini]

Actually you are right that actively my position is that Protestantism is the most catholic or closer to original.

I don’t think this is historically credible. You can’t step in the same river twice. Protestants who claim to have recovered original Christianity are just deluding themselves. Without going back and becoming an ancient person, you can’t recover original Christianity. It’s gone beyond recall.

Attempts to recover the more remote past by breaking with the more recent past always result in radical change, because you don’t have the context to interpret the texts you are using as your basis for the reconstruction. So you will inevitably fill in the gaps from your own culture. How else to you explain that when sixteenth-century people try to recover first-century Christianity, the result reflects the preoccupations of the sixteenth century, and when nineteenth-century people do it, it reflects their preoccupations, and so on. Ancient Christianity, as Schweitzer said (for the same excellent reasons) about the historical Jesus, is a mirror in which we see ourselves reflected.

Edwin

 

[spina1953]

I don’t think this is historically credible. You can’t step in the same river twice. Protestants who claim to have recovered original Christianity are just deluding themselves. Without going back and becoming an ancient person, you can’t recover original Christianity. It’s gone beyond recall.

Attempts to recover the more remote past by breaking with the more recent past always result in radical change, because you don’t have the context to interpret the texts you are using as your basis for the reconstruction. So you will inevitably fill in the gaps from your own culture. How else to you explain that when sixteenth-century people try to recover first-century Christianity, the result reflects the preoccupations of the sixteenth century, and when nineteenth-century people do it, it reflects their preoccupations, and so on. Ancient Christianity, as Schweitzer said (for the same excellent reasons) about the historical Jesus, is a mirror in which we see ourselves reflected.

Edwin

Hi Contarini: I have to agree with you in that we have to interpret with the eyes of the present since we can not see it in the same way as those of that time saw it. Thinking was much different then. we sometimes have the benefit of hindsight and see what they did not. But as you say one can not recover the past and live it as they did of their times. The world was very much different then just as it is now when one looks to yesterday. Since there is no time machine to go back to the past, we also cannot see what the future will ultimately bring since it is always moving second to second as the future becomes the present and the present becomes the past. In the end all one can do is try to understand what was in the past and bring that understanding into the present in a way or manor that brings understanding and not try to make the past the present.

 

[dronald]

Hi Contarini: I have to agree with you in that we have to interpret with the eyes of the present since we can not see it in the same way as those of that time saw it. Thinking was much different then. we sometimes have the benefit of hindsight and see what they did not. But as you say one can not recover the past and live it as they did of their times. The world was very much different then just as it is now when one looks to yesterday. Since there is no time machine to go back to the past, we also cannot see what the future will ultimately bring since it is always moving second to second as the future becomes the present and the present becomes the past. In the end all one can do is try to understand what was in the past and bring that understanding into the present in a way or manor that brings understanding and not try to make the past the present.

The issue I personally have with this sort of moral relativist thinking is that Jesus was born in a time that you’re describing. Except Jesus came with a new way of thinking that was abandoned for a while by the CC. I can’t imagine Jesus or the Apostles encouraging others to exterminate anyone; and yet they lived during an old time.

 

[Darryl_B]

The issue I personally have with this sort of moral relativist thinking is that Jesus was born in a time that you’re describing. Except Jesus came with a new way of thinking that was abandoned for a while by the CC. I can’t imagine Jesus or the Apostles encouraging others to exterminate anyone; and yet they lived during an old time.

Lateran 4 Canon 3 again? Could you quote unquote it please.

How do you explain Ananais and Sapphira in the new way of thinking? Acts 5:1-11.

 

[dronald]

Lateran 4 Canon 3 again? Could you quote unquote it please.

We excommunicate and anathematize every heresy that raises against the holy, orthodox and Catholic faith which we have above explained; condemning all heretics under whatever names they may be known, for while they have different faces they are nevertheless bound to each other by their tails, since in all of them vanity is a common element. Those condemned, being handed over to the secular rulers of their bailiffs, let them be abandoned, to be punished with due justice, clerics being first degraded from their orders. As to the property of the condemned, if they are laymen, let it be confiscated; if clerics, let it be applied to the churches from which they received revenues. But those who are only suspected, due consideration being given to the nature of the suspicion and the character of the person, unless they prove their innocence by a proper defense, let them be anathematized and avoided by all 1-intil they have made suitable satisfaction; but if they have been under excommunication for one year, then let them be condemned as heretics. Secular authorities, whatever office they may hold, shall be admonished and induced and if necessary compelled by ecclesiastical censure, that as they wish to be esteemed and numbered among the faithful, so for the defense of the faith they ought publicly to take an oath that they will strive in good faith and to the best of their ability to exterminate in the territories subject to their jurisdiction all heretics pointed out by the Church; so that whenever anyone shall have assumed authority, whether spiritual or temporal, let him be bound to confirm this decree by oath. But if a temporal ruler, after having been requested and admonished by the Church, should neglect to cleanse his territory of this heretical foulness, let him be excommunicated by the metropolitan and the other bishops of the province. If he refuses to make satisfaction within a year, let the matter be made known to the supreme pontiff, that he may declare the ruler’s vassals absolved from their allegiance and may offer the territory to be ruled lay Catholics, who on the extermination of the heretics may possess it without hindrance and preserve it in the purity of faith; the right, however, of the chief ruler is to be respected as long as he offers no obstacle in this matter and permits freedom of action. The same law is to be observed in regard to those who have no chief rulers (that is, are independent). Catholics who have girded themselves with the cross for the extermination of the heretics, shall enjoy the indulgences and privileges granted to those who go in defense of the Holy Land.

.

 

[dronald]

We decree that those who give credence to the teachings of the heretics, as well as those who receive, defend, and patronize them, are excommunicated; and we firmly declare that after any one of them has been branded with excommunication, if he has deliberately failed to make satisfaction within a year, let him incur ipso jure the stigma of infamy and let him not be admitted to public offices or deliberations, and let him not take part in the election of others to such offices or use his right to give testimony in a court of law. Let him also be intestable, that he may not have the free exercise of making a will, and let him be deprived of the right of inheritance. Let no one be urged to give an account to him in any matter, but let him be urged to give an account to others. If perchance he be a judge, let his decisions have no force, nor let any cause be brought to his attention. If he be an advocate, let his assistance by no means be sought. If a notary, let the instruments drawn up by him be considered worthless, for, the author being condemned, let them enjoy a similar fate. In all similar cases we command that the same be observed. If, however, he be a cleric, let him be deposed from every office and benefice, that the greater the fault the graver may be the punishment inflicted.

If any refuse to avoid such after they have been ostracized by the Church, let them be excommunicated till they have made suitable satisfaction. Clerics shall not give the sacraments of the Church to such pestilential people, nor shall they presume to give them Christian burial, or to receive their alms or offerings; otherwise they shall be deprived of their office, to which they may not be restored without a special indult of the Apostolic See. Similarly, all regulars, on whom also this punishment may be imposed, let their privileges be nullified in that diocese in which they have presumed to perpetrate such excesses.

But since some, under “the appearance of godliness, but denying the power thereof,” as the Apostle says (II Tim. 3: 5), arrogate to themselves the authority to preach, as the same Apostle says: “How shall they preach unless they be sent?” (Rom. 10:15), all those prohibited or not sent, who, without the authority of the Apostolic See or of the Catholic bishop of the locality, shall presume to usurp the office of preaching either publicly or privately, shall be excommunicated and unless they amend, and the sooner the better, they shall be visited with a further suitable penalty. We add, moreover, that every archbishop or bishop should himself or through his archdeacon or some other suitable persons, twice or at least once a year make the rounds of his diocese in which report has it that heretics dwell, and there compel three or more men of good character or, if it should be deemed advisable, the entire neighborhood, to swear that if anyone know of the presence there of heretics or others holding secret assemblies, or differing from the common way of the faithful in faith and morals, they will make them known to the bishop. The latter shall then call together before him those accused, who, if they do not purge themselves of the matter of which they are accused, or if after the rejection of their error they lapse into their former wickedness, shall be canonically punished. But if any of them by damnable obstinacy should disapprove of the oath and should perchance be unwilling to swear, from this very fact let them be regarded as heretics.

We wish, therefore, and in virtue of obedience strictly command, that to carry out these instructions effectively the bishops exercise throughout their dioceses a scrupulous vigilance if they wish to escape canonical punishment. If from sufficient evidence it is apparent that a bishop is negligent or remiss in cleansing his diocese of the ferment of heretical wickedness, let him be deposed from the episcopal office and let another, who will and can confound heretical depravity, be substituted.

 

[dronald]

How do you explain Ananais and Sapphira in the new way of thinking? Acts 5:1-11.

You might have an argument if Peter took out a sword and stabbed them both in the stomach; but their lives were God’s taking. An example would be Jesus’s rebuke when Peter cut off a mans ear.

 

[Darryl_B]

We excommunicate and anathematize every heresy that raises against the holy, orthodox and Catholic faith which we have above explained; condemning all heretics under whatever names they may be known, for while they have different faces they are nevertheless bound to each other by their tails, since in all of them vanity is a common element. Those condemned, being handed over to the secular rulers of their bailiffs, let them be abandoned, to be punished with due justice, clerics being first degraded from their orders. As to the property of the condemned, if they are laymen, let it be confiscated; if clerics, let it be applied to the churches from which they received revenues. But those who are only suspected, due consideration being given to the nature of the suspicion and the character of the person, unless they prove their innocence by a proper defense, let them be anathematized and avoided by all 1-intil they have made suitable satisfaction; but if they have been under excommunication for one year, then let them be condemned as heretics. Secular authorities, whatever office they may hold, shall be admonished and induced and if necessary compelled by ecclesiastical censure, that as they wish to be esteemed and numbered among the faithful, so for the defense of the faith they ought publicly to take an oath that they will strive in good faith and to the best of their ability to exterminate in the territories subject to their jurisdiction all heretics pointed out by the Church; so that whenever anyone shall have assumed authority, whether spiritual or temporal, let him be bound to confirm this decree by oath. But if a temporal ruler, after having been requested and admonished by the Church, should neglect to cleanse his territory of this heretical foulness, let him be excommunicated by the metropolitan and the other bishops of the province. If he refuses to make satisfaction within a year, let the matter be made known to the supreme pontiff, that he may declare the ruler’s vassals absolved from their allegiance and may offer the territory to be ruled lay Catholics, who on the extermination of the heretics may possess it without hindrance and preserve it in the purity of faith; the right, however, of the chief ruler is to be respected as long as he offers no obstacle in this matter and permits freedom of action. The same law is to be observed in regard to those who have no chief rulers (that is, are independent). Catholics who have girded themselves with the cross for the extermination of the heretics, shall enjoy the indulgences and privileges granted to those who go in defense of the Holy Land.

.

This is a translation I suspect slightly weighted. Image obtained? The Catholic Church is the Dalek civilization.

Can you supply the original text?

 

[Adamski]

You might have an argument if Peter took out a sword and stabbed them both in the stomach; but their lives were God’s taking. An example would be Jesus’s rebuke when Peter cut off a mans ear.

So arguing bible versus won’t explain history that’s why protestants have 38,000 schisms

Logical questions would be ones like

Since revalations wasn’t writen until 95a Christ dies in 33ad how did sola scriptoria work for those 62 years (logically it didn’t exist)

Since there is no history of sola sciptora until 1517 and the bible refutes it 1 Tim 3:15 we must take the catholic position of church authority guiding us.

Another example would be birth control since tradition shows us and the bible (gen 38) that until 1930 all Christians believed it was a form of adultery it must be adultery since Gods message is timeless

I could go on for hours