Re: Purgatory?

In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, "bam"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> "€ 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.

€  The Roman church adopted the vow of celibacy in 1123AD.  In the
Albigensian faith, "Perfects" took a vow of celibacy well before that.  
> 
>
http://www.tfp.org/TFPForum/catholic_perspective/tracing_the_glorious_origins_of_celibacy.htm

€  this is like listening to the Republican explanation of why Gee Dubya
made a decision 
> 
> 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 

€  Semi-correct.  The turn-around was in AD1123 and the Church's
motivation was mammon.

>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. 

€  ³Take it as a rule, the nearer a nation dwells to the Roman Curia, the
less religion it has.²
 - Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527)

>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.
> 
> 
€  Reminds me of Rumsfeld.

-- 
€ R.L. Measures, 805-386-3734, www.somis.org. + in adr = spam trap