Who are the Albies

[Montie_Claunch]

I don’t know how to spell it so I will try phononetically. Who are the Albygensiansans? A Gentleman told me that they were one of the underground churches that preserved the Gospels from the Catholic Church. What should I tell him? Thanks and God Bless.

 

[RobNY]

Montie Claunch:

I don’t know how to spell it so I will try phononetically. Who are the Albygensiansans? A Gentleman told me that they were one of the underground churches that preserved the Gospels from the Catholic Church. What should I tell him? Thanks and God Bless.

Weren’t they also known as the Cathars? From the Great Heresies tract:

Catharism was a complicated mix of non-Christian religions reworked with Christian terminology. The Cathars had many different sects; they had in common a teaching that the world was created by an evil deity (so matter was evil) and we must worship the good deity instead.

The Albigensians formed one of the largest Cathar sects. They taught that the spirit was created by God, and was good, while the body was created by an evil god, and the spirit must be freed from the body. Having children was one of the greatest evils, since it entailed imprisoning another “spirit” in flesh. Logically, marriage was forbidden, though fornication was permitted. Tremendous fasts and severe mortifications of all kinds were practiced, and their leaders went about in voluntary poverty.

“Underground,” as in “heretical,” yes.

If he can prove that the positions of the Albigensians were ever considered to be orthodox, I’ll be quite suprised.

 

[edward_george]

From Catholic Answers:

[Fundamentalists] identify themselves with the Catharists (also known as the Albigensians), or perhaps it is better to say they identify the Catharists with themselves. They think the Catharists were twelfth-century Fundamentalists and that Catholics did to them what they would do to Fundamentalists today if they had the political strength they once had.

This is a fantasy. Fundamentalist writers take one point—that Catharists used a vernacular version of the Bible—and conclude from it that these people were “Bible Christians.” In fact, theirs was a curious religion that apparently (no one knows for certain) came to France from what is now Bulgaria. Catharism was a blend of Gnosticism, which claimed to have access to a secret source of religious knowledge, and of Manichaeism, which said matter is evil. The Catharists believed in two gods: the “good” God of the New Testament, who sent Jesus to save our souls from being trapped in matter; and the “evil” God of the Old Testament, who created the material world in the first place. The Catharists’ beliefs entailed serious—truly civilization-destroying—social consequences.

Marriage was scorned because it legitimized sexual relations, which Catharists identified as the Original Sin. But fornication was permitted because it was temporary, secret, and was not generally approved of; while marriage was permanent, open, and publicly sanctioned.

The ramifications of such theories are not hard to imagine. In addition, ritualistic suicide was encouraged (those who would not take their own lives were frequently “helped” along), and Catharists refused to take oaths, which, in a feudal society, meant they opposed all governmental authority. Thus, Catharism was both a moral and a political danger.

Even Lea, so strongly opposed to the Catholic Church, admitted: “The cause of orthodoxy was the cause of progress and civilization. Had Catharism become dominant, or even had it been allowed to exist on equal terms, its influence could not have failed to become disastrous.” Whatever else might be said about Catharism, it was certainly not the same as modern Fundamentalism, and Fundamentalist sympathy for this destructive belief system is sadly misplaced.

catholic.com/library/Inquisition.asp
catholic.com/library/great_heresies.asp

-ACEGC

 

[Todd_Easton]

There is an article on the Albigenses in the online Catholic Encyclopedia.

 

[Fidelis]

It is a common practice of some fundamentalists to point to some heretical group in the past that may have practiced one or two doctrines similar to fundamentalism (like OSAS or Sola Scriptura) and say, “See? Those were the *real * Christians [like us] who were suppressed by the horrid Catholics.”

Problem with this, these same people, if they knew ALL the aberations these heretics practiced (like those mentioned in the previous post) would quickly distance themselves from these “underground Christians.”

Here’s a good article from Envoy Magazine about “Ancient Baptists and Other Myths”:
envoymagazine.com/backissues/2.4/coverstory.html

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[cheddarsox]

Fidelis:

Problem with this, these same people, if they knew ALL the aberations these heretics practiced (like those mentioned in the previous post) would quickly distance themselves from these “underground Christians.”

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If we knew all the aberations anyone practiced we would quickly distance ourselves! If we admitted all the aberations we ourselves practice we would cringe and wish to distance ourselves from ourselves. The rub is, the faithful so often practice the SAME aberations as the heretic!

May the divine save us from ourselves!

cheddar

 

[Mickey]

cheddarsox:

If we admitted all the aberations we ourselves practice we would cringe and wish to distance ourselves from ourselves.

I am surely a sinner. But I would not equate that with practicing abberations! :nope:

 

[Sherlock]

Fidelis:

It is a common practice of some fundamentalists to point to some heretical group in the past that may have practiced one or two doctrines similar to fundamentalism (like OSAS or Sola Scriptura) and say, “See? Those were the *real * Christians [like us] who were suppressed by the horrid Catholics.”

Problem with this, these same people, if they knew ALL the aberations these heretics practiced (like those mentioned in the previous post) would quickly distance themselves from these “underground Christians.”

Here’s a good article from Envoy Magazine about “Ancient Baptists and Other Myths”:
envoymagazine.com/backissues/2.4/coverstory.html

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I had an exchange with someone (not on a religious forum, though the discussion had gone that route) that illustrates what you say: the person claimed that the Baptists went all the way back—the usual story—and were, of course, brutally supressed by the Big Bad Catholic Church ™. When I asked for eveidence of this suppression, he pointed to the Paulicians. I then wrote and described the various beliefs of Paulicians (which would not be in accord with Baptist teaching), and his response was, “Well, sure, they may have had some odd beliefs, but does that make it right to kill them?” In other words, he wasn’t going to aknowledge the point I was making, and changed the topic back to the evil actions of the Big Bad Catholic Church ™. When pressed further, he simply left the discussion.