500 years ago ...

[MoreCoffee]

Desiring that the full story be told and that people today be informed of the meaning of the year 1517 and the events that followed this thread is being created. It is a different perspective. Not exactly like the celebratory tone one finds in a number of web pages and blogs.

The History of the Protestant Revolt in England and Ireland , William Cobbett, 1824

Let us clearly understand the meaning of these words — Catholic, Protestant, and Reformation. Catholic means universal, and the religion which takes this epithet was called universal because all Christian people of every nation acknowledged it to be the only true religion, and because they all acknowledged one and the same head of the Church, and this was the Pope, who …was the head of the Church… in every part of the world where the Christian religion was professed. But there came a time, when some nations, or rather, parts of some nations, cast off the authority of the Pope, and of course no longer acknowledged him as head of the Christian Church. These nations…declared, or protested against the authority of their former head, and also against the doctrines of that Church… They therefore called themselves Protestors or Protestants… As to the word Reformation, it means an alteration for the better…

Now, my friends, a fair and honest inquiry will teach us that this was an alteration greatly for the worse; that the ‘Reformation’, as it was called, was engendered in lust, brought forth in hypocrisy and perfidy, and cherished and fed by plunder, devastation, and by rivers of innocent…blood.​

Unam Sanctam by Pope Boniface VIII (Nov. 18, 1302)

We are compelled, our Faith urging us, to believe and to hold — and we do firmly believe and simply confess — that there is one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, outside of which there is neither salvation nor remission of sins ; her Spouse proclaiming it in the Canticles, ‘My dove, my undefiled is but one, she is the Choice one of her that bore her’; which represents one mystical body, of which body the head is Christ, but of Christ, God. In this Church there is one Lord, one Faith, and one Baptism. There was one ark of Noah, indeed, at the time of the flood, symbolizing one Church; and this being finished in one cubit had, namely, one Noah as helmsman and commander. And, with the exception of this ark, all things existing upon the earth were, as we read, destroyed. This Church, moreover, we venerate as the only one, the Lord saying through His prophet, “Deliver my soul from the sword, my darling from the power of the dog.” He prayed at the same time for His Soul — that is, for Himself the Head, and for His Body — which Body, namely, He called the one and only Church on account of the unity of the Faith promised, of the sacraments, and of the love of the Church. She is that seamless garment of the Lord which was not cut but which fell by lot. Therefore of this one and only Church there is one body and one head— not two heads as if it were a monster: namely Christ and Peter, the Vicar of Christ and the successor of Peter , the Lord Himself saying to Peter: “Feed my sheep.” My sheep, He said, using a general term, and not designating these or those particular sheep; from which it is plain that He committed to him all His sheep. If then the Greeks or others say that they were not committed to the care of Peter and his successors, they necessarily confess that they are not of the sheep of Christ; for the Lord says in John, that there “is one fold, and one Shepherd.” And we are told by the word of the Gospel that in this His fold there are two swords — a spiritual, namely, and a temporal. For when the Apostles said, “Behold here are two swords” — the Lord did not reply that this was too much, but enough. Surely he who denies that the temporal sword is in the power of Peter wrongly interprets the word of the Lord when He says, “Put up thy sword in its scabbard.” Both swords, the spiritual and the material, therefore, are in the power of the Church ; the one, indeed, to be wielded for the Church, the other by the Church; the one by the hand of the priest, the other by the hand of kings and knights, but at the will and sufferance of the priest. One sword, moreover, ought to be under the other, and the temporal authority to be subjected to the spiritual . For when the Apostle says, “There is no power but of God, and the powers that are of God are ordained,” they would not be ordained unless sword were under sword and the lesser one, as it were, were led by the other to great deeds.

…the spiritual exceeds any earthly power in dignity and nobility we ought the more openly to confess, the more spiritual things excel temporal ones…

For the truth bearing witness, the spiritual power has to establish the earthly power, and to judge if it be not good . Thus, concerning the Church and the ecclesiastical power, is verified the prophecy of Jeremias: “See, I have this day set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms,” and the other things which follow. Therefore if the earthly power err, it shall be judged by the spiritual power; but if the lesser spiritual power err, by the greater. But if the greatest, it can be judged by God alone, not by man, the Apostle bearing witness. A spiritual man judges all things but he himself is judged by no one. This authority, moreover, even though it is given to man and exercised through man, is not human but rather divine, being given by divine lips to Peter and founded on a rock for him and his successors through Christ Himself whom He has confessed; the Lord Himself saying to Peter: “Whatsoever thou shalt bind,” etc. Whoever, therefore, resists this power thus ordained by God, resists the ordination of God, … Indeed we declare, say, pronounce, and define that it is altogether necessary to salvation for every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff.​

From The Mystical Body of Christ and the Re-Organization of Society by Fr. Denis Fahey, pp. 46-47. St. Robert Bellarmine’s analogy is translated from De Romano Pontifice , lib. V, Cap. 6.

St. Robert Bellarmine uses the comparison of the body and the soul or the flesh and the spirit to explain this subordination of the temporal to the spiritual authority. St. Robert explains that the body and the soul have distinct functions and are even found separate from one another in the angels and the animals without reason. In the animals we find flesh without spirit; in the angels we find spirit without flesh. Nevertheless, they are found united and joined together in the unity of the human person in such wise that the soul commands and the body obeys. The soul has the right of chastising the body and keeping it in subjection, by fasts and other means, lest it may hamper the activity of the spirit. The soul may even compel the body to sacrifice itself and sacrifice everything that it holds dear, up to and including life itself, as the martyrs have done, if this is indispensable in order that the soul may attain its end. In the same way, and for similar reasons, there must exist between the ecclesiastical and the civil power a union and ordered relation such that, when the eternal salvation of souls is concerned, the ecclesiastical authority may direct the political authority and command it to take a certain course of action. If necessary, the ecclesiastical authority can and ought to compel and force it to do so, lest the political authority may become an obstacle to the attainment of the supernatural final end of man. So the terrestrial kingdom must be at the service of the heavenly kingdom.​

 

[psalms 91]

Yes the Catholic church had its head and in the middle ages ruled with an iron hand. The reformation was not only theologicly right but also necessary for people to throw off the yoke of oppression. And of course Catholic is being shown exactly how Catholics view the church and the ones who split from it. In that sense your post was very informative

 

[MoreCoffee]

St. Thomas Aquinas writes,

Both the spiritual and the temporal power derive from the divine power; consequently the temporal power is subject to the spiritual to the extent that this is so ordained by God; namely, in those matters which affect the salvation of the soul. And in these matters the spiritual power is to be obeyed before the temporal.​

Pope St. Pius X. In the Consistory Allocution of Nov. 9, 1903 he stated:

We do not conceal the fact that We shall shock some people by saying that We must necessarily concern ourselves with politics. But anyone forming an equitable judgement clearly sees that the Supreme Pontiff can in no wise violently withdraw the category of politics from subjection to the supreme control of faith and morals confided to him.​

Don Luis Tosti, author of The History of Pope Boniface VIII , comments on this teaching:

Subjection to the Roman Pontiff, as Vicar of Jesus Christ, not only in all that affects faith and morals, but also in that which affects civil society, is for Catholics a dogma like those of the Trinity and the Eucharist. And as this dogma is proposed to our belief by an absolute revealing principle, not liable to a human contingency, so the belief ought to be also absolute, invariable and one. Now to say that some believe in a greater, and others in a lesser supremacy in the Roman Pontiff, is absurd, just as it would be absurd to speak of greater or less affirmation of the dogma of the Trinity. Dogma is one like God; it is so rigorously concentrated in unity, that it allows no room for a diversity of opinions.​

Archbishop Martin J. Spalding writing in 1860 remarks,

No other power than that of the Catholic Church, wielded by its chief executive — the Roman Pontiffs — could ever have checked lawless and overwhelming tyranny, could ever have effectually shielded popular rights from oppression, could ever have successfully defended female chastity from imperial and royal licentiousness, by fully guaranteeing to all the sacred rights, and by defending the duties of Christian marriage; could ever, in one word, have arrested the torrent of mere brute force, which was sweeping over Europe and threatening it with destruction. If the Middle Ages were pre-eminently ages of faith, they were none the less ages of violence and of brute force. But woe to European civilization, if there had not existed at the time a great moral and religious power, which was alone respected by the masses of the population… If right finally triumphed over might, and the passions had to yield at length in the struggle against reason and religion, we owe the result mainly to the beneficial influence of the Papacy. This is as certain as anything else in all history.​

 

[Pedrito]

Psalms 91, Post #2, Page 1:

Yes the Catholic church had its head and in the middle ages ruled with an iron hand. The reformation was not only theologicly right but also necessary for people to throw off the yoke of oppression. And of course Catholic is being shown exactly how Catholics view the church and the ones who split from it. In that sense your post was very informative

Pedrito also found informative, the way in which the Roman Catholic Church (RCC) has revealed itself to be devoid of any vestige of Divinely-inspired Apostolic teaching and practice.

==============================================================================================

But has anyone stopped to think: Could the differences between the Daughters of that Roman Catholic Church (i.e. the breakaway denominations), be in fact easily attributed – could they be attributed to the greater or lesser extent to which each of those denominations has rejected post-apostolic deviations – the deviations that define the RCC?

 

[MoreCoffee]

...

But has anyone stopped to think: Could the differences between the Daughters of that Roman Catholic Church (i.e. the breakaway denominations), be in fact easily attributed – could they be attributed to the greater or lesser extent to which each of those denominations has rejected post-apostolic deviations – the deviations that define the RCC?

I wonder what the grandchildren are like too. Jehovah's witnesses, Latter Day Saints, Christadelphians, and all the splinters from The Worldwide Church of God after it's leaders accepted many of evangelicalism's doctrines. These groups all took a 66 book bible with them as their heritage from Protestantism.

But the story is only partly told in the posts I've written in this thread so far. There is more yet to tell.

The Eastern Schism

Professor Ernst Gerland (expert in Byzantine history) alludes to this when he describes the relation of the Church at Constantinople with the other Eastern churches:

The Constitution of the Eastern Church was rather imperial than universal. Its administration was seriously influenced by the politics of the empire; the boundaries of the empire bounded the Church’s aspirations and activities…

For the people of the Orient, the adoption of Christianity went hand in hand with nationalism. Opposed to this nationalism in many important aspects was the Greek imperial church. Precisely because it was only an imperial church, it had not yet grasped the concept of a universal Church. As the imperial church, and constituting a department of the state-administration, its opposition to the national churches among the Oriental peoples was always very emphatic. Thus it is that the dogmatic disputes of these [Eastern] churches are, above all, expressions of politico-national struggles. In the course of these contests Egypt, and Syria, and finally Armenia also were lost to the Greek Church…

The schism between the Eastern and Western Churches thus reveals a fundamental opposition of viewpoints: the mutually antagonistic ideas of the universal Church and of independent national churches…​

 

[MoreCoffee]

Pope Boniface VIII

From History of Pope Boniface VIII page 405

For when a man comes to be identified with a theory in such a manner that war against the theory means war against him who defends it, it must be that the soul of this man is capable of comprehending it, and able to defend it alone. Hence hatreds have survived against Boniface, because the truth he defended has survived. And whenever the hand of the powerful attacks the Church in her rights, it digs up from the tomb the ashes of that magnanimous soul in order to execrate them.​

Some Pontiffs have been persecuted and tortured for the faith, the fury of the people or the tyranny of Christian kings have made others suffer the tribulation and sorrows of exile; not one had been judged and condemned. The first one to be put to this sad ordeal was Boniface. The first and the second in persecution and in blood obtained the palm of martyrdom, and were raised up to heaven from the throne on which they sat. Boniface did not find even compassion in his ignominy; he descended from his throne and with him the Pontificate, or rather he was dragged from it and led into the Sanhedrin of lawyers and sophists, to force him like Jesus Christ to tell what truth is. All classes of believers in the Gospel once reverently stopped at the doors of the Church, and they did not dare to ask how far their limits extended, what was the book of their rights, nor of what temper was the sceptre he carried in hand. But Boniface dead, they did not merely enter into the sanctuary of God, they rather invaded it, and they pounced upon the Church to show her that the limits of her inheritance were no longer the limits of the earth, but precisely those that men marked out accordingly to their will around her; that her code of laws were obsolete, powerless, and had no light or value except from the will of men; in fine this sceptre by whose touch human societies had been constituted and the throne of a hundred kings had been raised and cast down, was only spiritual, purely spiritual.​

 

[Josiah]

Thread on Luther and the Reformation:

http://www.christianityhaven.com/sh...ther-The-500th-Anniversary-of-the-Reformation



.

 

[MoreCoffee]

Thread on Luther and the Reformation

That thread has its own place but this is not it.

The Babylonian Captivity

For 70 years, the papacy existed for the good of but one nation — France, during which time 7 popes took up residence in the southeast part of that country at a place called Avignon. Here, they fell under the complete domination of the French kings. As a result, the various nations of Christendom became increasingly nationalistic in their outlook towards the Church, and the allegiances of the Christian Princes of Europe towards the Holy Father became more nominal.​

The Great Western Schism

In 1377, the papal sojourn to Avignon ended when St. Catherine of Siena was able to convince Pope Gregory XI to return himself and the Papal Court to Rome. The Pope died the following year and what followed for the next 40 years further eroded papal prestige and prominence in the hearts and minds of Christians.

Not happy with their election of Urban VI as the next pope, several of the Cardinals left Rome to elect another pope, Clement VII, who proceeded to take up residence in Avignon. Europe became divided as to who was the legitimate pope. France, Spain, and Scotland sided with the Avignon successor; Germany, Italy, England, and Flanders claimed for Rome. If this wasn’t bad enough, in 1409, a third claimant to the papacy was crowned at Pisa, Italy— Alexander V! It was no longer possible to know what pastors to obey; and the confusion became such that even the instincts of the Saints were faulty (Saint Colette and Saint Vincent Ferrer, to name two).​

 

[TurtleHare]

How on earth does this thread prove that the reformation wasn't needed?

 

[hedrick]

Remember that Luther was far from the first to disagree. The main thing that changed in the 16th Cent was that secular authorities were no longer prepared to kills dissidents. That's why you have JW's. You would have them without Luther, as soon as nations were no longer willing to mandate agreement.

I actually blame the Catholic tradition for the fragmentation of Protestantism. Starting fairly early in Church history, the groups that became the Catholic Church decided that it was essential to agree on matters where it probably would have been better to suspend judgement. I disagree with the Arians, but I think over time as improvements occurred in Christology that would have been taken care of. Instead, the Church agreed with Constantine's desire to have unity of doctrine as a basis for unifying the Empire. The Church would have been better to assure him that Christians believe in treating each other as brethren, and the Church could tolerate disagreements of that kind. As time went on, the matters that resulted in heresy and prosecution become more detailed.

The result was that when princes were no longer willing to prosecute heresy, the Church had not developed a way to deal with disagreement. While Protestants changed some theology, they inherited this problem, insisting on the same type of agreement with their new ideas that the Catholics had.

It's only in the 20th Cent that we've begun to deal with this. Evangelicalism has slowly developed to a force that can at least to some extent unify conservatives. Mainline Christianity has slowly converged as well.

The Catholic tradition has also become more willing to deal with disagreement, officially in matters of Biblical interpretation and parts of theology, and unofficially and with great difficulty in matters of sex and gender. I'm not convinced that this would have happened without the Reformation. My sense is that without the Reformation, the Catholic Church would have maintained its corruption, and gone more broadly the way it went in the French Revolution.

 

[atpollard]

Technically, the Church has not been truly Catholic (Universal) since before AD 451 ... the date of the first split in the Christian Church.

EDIT: Hey, 5th C, 11th C, 16th C ... looks like we are due for another.

 

[MoreCoffee]

Technically, the Church has not been truly Catholic (Universal) since before AD 451 ... the date of the first split in the Christian Church.

EDIT: Hey, 5th C, 11th C, 16th C ... looks like we are due for another.

I think that depends on how one is defining "church" and "universal". Certainly the Catholic Church has never been universal in the sense of embracing every group that calls itself Christian. Even from the beginning there were people who called themselves Christians and were regarded by the Church as heretical. So 451 AD marks only one of many breaches in the history of the Catholic Church. The Arians would be another and they broke away in 325 AD and earlier. The Marcionites were another breakaway and they were earlier still. Then there were Gnostic groups of varying theology. The council of Jerusalem marked another early division that appears to have developed into a separate movement - the Ebionites appear to be one such group.

 

[MoreCoffee]

How on earth does this thread prove that the reformation wasn't needed?

It takes time to go through the history. I have only reached the great schism period ... the protestant revolt is yet to come

 

[atpollard]

I think that depends on how one is defining "church" and "universal". Certainly the Catholic Church has never been universal in the sense of embracing every group that calls itself Christian. Even from the beginning there were people who called themselves Christians and were regarded by the Church as heretical. So 451 AD marks only one of many breaches in the history of the Catholic Church. The Arians would be another and they broke away in 325 AD and earlier. The Marcionites were another breakaway and they were earlier still. Then there were Gnostic groups of varying theology. The council of Jerusalem marked another early division that appears to have developed into a separate movement - the Ebionites appear to be one such group.

[from Wikipedia]
The schism between Oriental Orthodoxy and the adherents of Chalcedonian Christianity was based on differences in Christology. The First Council of Nicaea, in 325, declared that Jesus Christ is God, that is to say, "consubstantial" with the Father. Later, the third ecumenical council, the Council of Ephesus, declared that Jesus Christ, though divine as well as human, is only one being, or person (hypostasis). Thus, the Council of Ephesus explicitly rejected Nestorianism, the Christological doctrine that Christ was two distinct beings, one divine (the Logos) and one human (Jesus), who happened to inhabit the same body. The Churches that later became Oriental Orthodoxy were firmly anti-Nestorian, and therefore strongly supported the decisions made at Ephesus.

Twenty years after Ephesus, the Council of Chalcedon reaffirmed the view that Jesus Christ was a single person, but at the same time declared that this one person existed "in two complete natures", one human and one divine. Those who opposed Chalcedon saw this as a concession to Nestorianism, or even as a conspiracy to convert the Church to Nestorianism by stealth. As a result, over the following decades, they gradually separated from communion with those who accepted the Council of Chalcedon, and formed the body that is today called Oriental Orthodoxy.

**********

Not really the same as the Arians, or other heretic groups are they?

 

[MoreCoffee]

...
Not really the same as the Arians, or other heretic groups are they?

But they were regarded as heretical. And they did sever relations with the Catholic Church (and vice versa).

 

[user1234]

I try to read things like the OP, to try to understand why some ppl believe the things they do, but I get to statements like the following quoted from Post#1 and it just turns my stomach and I just cant read much more, or anything I DO read just can't be taken seriously. Even though I have many Roman Catholic family members and friends, there's still that same little air of superiority that seems to say 'We Roman Catholics are the real Church, and all you others play a good game, but everybody knows your not the REAL christians, at best you just split from US, the TRUE Church, at worst, you're not even christians, because you dont follow our traditions, which everybody knows were handed down to us directly from Peter, who everybody knows was the first pope.'

Oy vay, it fluctuates between sad and maddening.
The evidence ?............
.........>>>and because they all acknowledged one and the same head of the Church, and this was the Pope, who …was the head of the Church… in every part of the world where the Christian religion was professed. But there came a time, when some nations, or rather, parts of some nations, cast off the authority of the Pope, and of course no longer acknowledged him as head of the Christian Church. <<<

Nope. No way. Sorry. I can't agree.
The head of the Church is the Lord Jesus Christ, always was and will be.
The true church was established long before any Roman Catholic pope came along.
The pope was not head over all those ppl who are born again, saved believers in Jesus, and he's not the head over millions now.
I'm a christian, so are millions of my brothers and sisters in Christ and we're members of the one true Church, and no pope ever had authority over me or us.

I can accept that there may be practicing Roman Catholics that are saved, just like there are christians in all kinds of denominations, or in none at all, but theyre saved because Jesus saved them, not because of any denominational affiliation. In many cases it's even in spite of it.

I just wish we could get to the unity of THE Faith that Jesus prayed and payed for and finally get past all the religionism and legalistic bondage stuff.

 

[MoreCoffee]

I sometimes have a similar reaction to posts, snerfle. I read and then come across statements that are so objectionable that I need to break off reading and do something else before I return to the post and finish reading it. But I do finish reading if there is something to learn or if I intend to reply.

 

[atpollard]

But they were regarded as heretical. And they did sever relations with the Catholic Church (and vice versa).

What exactly is their heresy?

(They reject that Christ was two seperate beings, one divine residing in a seperate human being named Jesus and refused to accept the Chalcedonian Creed as a step backwards towards the recently rejected heresy of Nestorianism.)

 

[MoreCoffee]

What exactly is their heresy?

(They reject that Christ was two seperate beings, one divine residing in a seperate human being named Jesus and refused to accept the Chalcedonian Creed as a step backwards towards the recently rejected heresy of Nestorianism.)

I'd be happier if we kept it top what "was" since the judgement was passed 1,600 years ago. Things have moved on both in the East and in the West since then. Nowadays people say the differences were chiefly linguistic and that the theology was not heretical even if the language used made it seem so in Greek speaking lands.

Wikipedia says:

The schism between Oriental Orthodoxy and the adherents of Chalcedonian Christianity was based on differences in Christology. The First Council of Nicaea, in 325, declared that Jesus Christ is God, that is to say, "consubstantial" with the Father. Later, the third ecumenical council, the Council of Ephesus, declared that Jesus Christ, though divine as well as human, is only one being, or person (hypostasis). Thus, the Council of Ephesus explicitly rejected Nestorianism, the Christological doctrine that Christ was two distinct beings, one divine (the Logos) and one human (Jesus), who happened to inhabit the same body. The Churches that later became Oriental Orthodoxy were firmly anti-Nestorian, and therefore strongly supported the decisions made at Ephesus.

Twenty years after Ephesus, the Council of Chalcedon reaffirmed the view that Jesus Christ was a single person, but at the same time declared that this one person existed "in two complete natures", one human and one divine. Those who opposed Chalcedon saw this as a concession to Nestorianism, or even as a conspiracy to convert the Church to Nestorianism by stealth. As a result, over the following decades, they gradually separated from communion with those who accepted the Council of Chalcedon, and formed the body that is today called Oriental Orthodoxy.

At times, Chalcedonian Christians have referred to the Oriental Orthodox as being Monophysites – that is to say, accusing them of following the teachings of Eutyches (c. 380 – c. 456), who argued that Jesus Christ was not human at all, but only divine. Monophysitism was condemned as heretical alongside Nestorianism, and to accuse a church of being Monophysite is to accuse it of falling into the opposite extreme from Nestorianism. However, the Oriental Orthodox themselves reject this description as inaccurate, having officially condemned the teachings of both Nestorius and Eutyches. They define themselves as Miaphysite instead, holding that Christ has one nature, but this nature is both human and divine.​