Re: Purgatory?

"€ R.L. Measures" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote
> ***  During the 4th Crusade assault on Beziers, France, thousands of good
> Catholics were slaughtered along with the damned "heretics"/Albigensians.

Good

> A couple of centuries later, God's Holy Church herself adopted the
> Albigensian vow of priestly celibacy.

Baloney.

http://www.tfp.org/TFPForum/catholic_perspective/tracing_the_glorious_origins_of_celibacy.htm

Pope Siricius answering a specific consultation about clerical celibacy in
385 affirmed that bishops and priests who continue marital relations after
ordination violate an irrevocable law from the very inception of the Church
that binds them to continence.

Some mistakenly conclude that St. Gregory VII introduced the law of celibacy
into the Church. Quite the contrary. What St. Gregory VII, and later the
Second Lateran Council (1139) did was not to “introduce” the law of celibacy
but simply confirm that it was in force and issue regulations for its
observance. Since most recruiting for the priesthood was already among the
unmarried, the Second Lateran Council forbade priestly marriage, declaring
it null and void in the case of priests, deacons or anyone with a solemn vow
of religion.



Raynaldus was a Cistercian monk who accompanied the army of Simon de
Montfort, one of the leaders of the crusade against the Albigensians.


>From Raynaldus. Annales

First it is to be known that the heretics held that there are two Creators;
viz. one of invisible things, whom they called the benevolent God, and
another of visible things, whom they named the malevolent God. The New
Testament they attributed to the benevolent God; but the Old Testament to
the malevolent God, and rejected it altogether . . . . They charged the
author of the Old Testament with falsehood, because the Creator said, "In
the day that ye eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil ye shall
die;" nor (as they say) after eating did they die; when, in fact, after the
eating of the forbidden fruit they were subjected to the misery of death.
They also call him [i.e. the god of the Old Testament] a homicide, as well
because he burned up Sodom and Gomorrah, and destroyed the world by the
waters of the deluge, as because he overwhelmed Pharaoh, and the Egyptians,
in the sea. They affirmed also, that all the fathers of the Old Testament
were damned; that John the Baptist was one of the greater demons. They said
also, in their secret doctrine (in secreto suo), that that Christ who was
born in the visible, and terrestrial Bethlehem, and crucified in Jerusalem,
was a bad man, and that Mary Magdalene was his concubine; and that she was
the woman taken in adultery, of whom we read in the gospel. For the good
Christ, as they said, never ate, nor drank, nor took upon him true flesh,
nor ever was in this world, except spiritually in the body of Paul ....

They said that almost all the Church of Rome was a den of thieves; and that
it was the harlot of which we read in the Apocalypse. They so far annulled
the sacraments of the Church, as publicly to teach that the water of holy
Baptism was just the same as river water, and that the Host of the most holy
body of Christ did not differ from common bread; instilling into the ears of
the simple this blasphemy, that the body of Christ, even though it had been
as great as the Alps, would have been long ago consumed, and annihilated by
those who had eaten of it. Confirmation and Confession, they considered as
altogether vain and frivolous. They preached that Holy Matrimony was
meretricious, and that none could be saved in it, if they should beget
children. Denying also the Resurrection of the flesh, they invented some
unheard of notions, saying, that our souls are those of angelic spirits who,
being cast down from heaven by the apostasy of pride, left their glorified
bodies in the air; and that these souls themselves, after successively
inhabiting seven terrene bodies, of one sort or another, having at length
fulfilled their penance, return to those deserted [glorified] bodies.

It is also to be known that some among the heretics were called "perfect" or
"good men;" others "believers" of the heretics. Those who were called
perfect, wore a black dress, falsely pretended to chastity, abhorred the
eating of flesh, eggs and cheese, wished to appear not liars, when they were
continually telling lies, chiefly respecting God. They said also that they
ought not on any account to swear.

Those were called believers of the heretics, who lived after the manner of
the world, and who though they did not attain so far as to imitate the life
of the perfect, nevertheless hoped to be saved in their faith; and though
they differed as to their mode of life, they were one with them in belief
and unbelief. Those who were called believers of the heretics were given to
usury, rapine, homicide, lust, perjury and every vice; and they, in fact,
sinned with more security, and less restraint, because they believed that
without restitution, without confession and penance, they should be saved,
if only, when on the point of death, they could say a Paternoster, and
receive imposition of hands from the teachers.

>From Raynaldus, "Annales," in S. R. Maitland, trans., History of the
Albigenses and Waldenses (London: C. J. G. and F. Rivington, 1832), pp.
392-394.



BAM