Waldensians

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Actually, I have a hard time understanding the prohibition of preaching. Everyone should be able and willing to do so.

Preach the gospel always, If necessary use words. ~ St. Francis of Assisi
You have a hard time with the prohibition of preaching heresy? That seems rather disingenuous. The Orthodox Churches are no stranger to the use of excommunication and anathema as regards heretics.

It is not any preaching that was prohibited, rather the preaching of doctrinal error.

Their lifestyle and aim had clear merit, which the Church recognizes down to this day in its medicant orders.

Some Waldenses were reconciled with the Church and Innocent III recognized them as their own preachign order.
 
Actually, I have a hard time understanding the prohibition of preaching. Everyone should be able and willing to do so.

Preach the gospel always, If necessary use words. ~ St. Francis of Assisi
Everyone should preach the Gospel, but when private interpretation comes in, you have problems. I think it’s clear that was the case with the Waldensians.
 
You have a hard time with the prohibition of preaching heresy?
Actually that was so long ago we do not know what the were preaching.

Just because some people claimed they were heretics does not make it so.

Someone earlier posted that they were literalists and preached poverty, perhaps. That in itself is not heretical, but the (badly in need of reform) church would have felt threatened by it. The poverty movements were always a well-documented threat in the middle centuries, there was even a segment of the Franciscan order that was persecuted for that. It is no secret that the bishops and many priests were very materialistic and worldly by that time and I suspect that this had much to do with how the Waldensians were treated.
Everyone should preach the Gospel, but when private interpretation comes in, you have problems. I think it’s clear that was the case with the Waldensians.
I am not writing this as a defense of the Waldensians, as such. I do not know them. But I have not seen any evidence yet that the original Waldensians were actually heretics, we do not even know if they were given to individual interpretation, so my statement stands. They might have been no more heretical than Saint Francis! The record of those individuals and groups wrongly condemned is long enough to keep me from making snap judgments in this case.

Michael
 
Perhaps you should broaden your horizons and dig a little deeper into historical facts.
None of the points in your post are facts. It is you my friend that need to dig deeper. If you had even read just the Wikipedia article you would have seen that there is dispute even to how they got their name, there is dispute that Peter Waldo was the founder and their is definite dispute as to their beliefs.
 
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