History and Theology: jesus

Showing posts with label jesus. Show all posts

Catholics

The Wisdom Of The Popes

Pope Stephen V (885-891): The popes, like Jesus, are conceived by their mothers through the overshadowing of the Holy Ghost. All popes are a certain species of man-god? All powers in heaven, as well as on earth, are given them.

Pope Paul V (1605-1621): The doctrine of the double motion of the earth about its axis and about the sun is false, and contrary to holy scripture.

Pope Gregory XVI (1831-1846): From the polluted fountain of indifferentism flows that absurd and erroneous doctrine, or rather, raving, which claims and defends liberty of conscience for everyone. From this comes, in a word, the worst plague of all, namely, unrestrained liberty of opinion and freedom of speech? It is in no way lawful to demand, to defend, or to grant unconditional freedom of thought, or speech, of writing, or of religion, as if they were so many rights that nature has given man.

Pope Pius XI (1922-1939): Benito Mussolini is a gift of Providence, a man free from the prejudices of the politicians of the liberal school.
- John Dollison, Pope-Pourri

The Catholics have a Pope. The Protestants laugh at them, and yet the Pope is capable of intellectual advancement. In addition to this, the Pope is mortal, and the church cannot be afflicted with the same idiot forever. The Protestants have a book for their Pope. The book cannot advance. Year after year, and century after century, the book remains as ignorant as ever.
- Robert Ingersoll

If the Pope is infallible, how do you explain his choice of hats?
- Tim OʼBrien

The Popeʼs pointy white hat is nothing more than a designer dunce cap.
- Skip Church

Excerpts From “The Lost Encyclical Against Penicillin” (A Parody)

Beloved children, I [the Pope] write to you today to offer you loving guidance against the unnatural use of antibiotics. God created bacteria and viruses for the purpose of infecting organisms sometimes seriously, sometimes less seriously - and we must never presume to interfere with the right order of Godʼs creation. Just as all forms of birth control go against the natural purpose of conjugal relations - namely, procreation - so the use of all forms of man-made antibiotics interfere with the God-given design of bacteria and viruses and how He intends them to interact with the human body. Each and every bacteria-body interaction must remain open to the transmission of bacteria. It is immoral to impede development of a natural process. That is why we have so exhaustively spoken out against artificial birth control and now antibiotics. We cannot impede a process that God has created. No impeding, no impeding! God created syphilis to infect sexually immoral people, and cause them suffering and eventual death. In no way should a man-made antibiotic interfere with this God-given process. Also, the fear of syphilis is a natural encouragement toward marital fidelity, which could not otherwise hold its own in a free market.
- Christopher Durang, Free Inquiry, Spring 1996

My Mom and Dad were Catholics and used the rhythm method of birth control. At the end of eight years they had their own rhythm section.
- Steve Wolski

If God is Catholic how come he only had one child?
- Source unknown

Mother Teresa used to say, “God always provides. He provides for the flowers and the birds, for everything in the world that he has created. And those little children are his life. There can never be enough.” On the other hand, scientists who study birds have found that one-third of adult birds and four-fifths of their offspring die of starvation every year. (David Lack, “Of Birds and Men,” New Scientist, Jan., 1996).
- Frank Miele, “Mother Not So Superior?” The Skeptic, Vol. 4, No. 2, 1996

The Wisdom Of Mother Teresa (And Skip Church)

Mother Teresa On Aids: It is the retribution for “improper sexual misconduct.”

(Then what were the Black death, smallpox, influenza, measles, mumps, polio, and TB “retribution for?” - Skip)

Mother Teresa On Poverty: It is very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot. The world is much helped by the suffering of poor people.

(And the more poor people who “accept” their suffering, the more rich people there will be who manipulate them to their own greedy ends. The rich complain that the poor want something for nothing. But the rich often stop at nothing to get everything. - Skip)

Mother Teresa On the Intense Pains of a Man with Cancer: You are suffering like Christ. Therefore Jesus must be kissing you.

(Mother Teresa, who happens to be against the use of anesthetics, told this story herself, during a taped interview, and even told the interviewer the suffering manʼs reply to her. After she said, “Jesus must be kissing you,” the man replied, “Then I wish heʼd stop.” - Skip)

Mother Teresa On Overpopulation: There is no problem of overpopulation, only of Godʼs will.

(So if you live in a developing country whose population growth is outpacing its food production and economic growth, then you ought to throw away those rubbers and birth control pills, and get down on your knees and embrace starvation and poverty, because according to Mother T. thatʼs “Godʼs will.” - Skip)

- Mother Teresaʼs statements are drawn from The Missionary Position by Christopher Hitchens

Now thereʼs the Vatican Bank, and all that money-laundering, and the Mafia. Jesus overturned all the tables in the temple, and now they have the Vatican Bank.
- Eddie Izzard, Dress to Kill (the book)

Millions of dollars are spent on each Vatican road show, money that could help the poor, who are rapidly inheriting the earth.
- Kate Clinton, Donʼt Get Me Started

Some 400 U.S. Catholic priests have been charged with child molestation in the past decade, and the church has paid an estimated $400 million in damages and costs. One priest, James Porter, is accused of abusing perhaps 100 victims in three states - including a boy with a full body cast who couldnʼt move to resist.
- James A. Haught, “The Moralizers: Crooks, Quacks, Kook, Creeps, and Cruds in the Clergy,” The Humanist

Pope Finally Apologizes After Two Thousand Years Of Catholic Atrocities

The Catholic Church is the single largest Christian denomination in the world today, larger even than the membership of all Protestant denominations combined. Not surprising considering the Catholic Churchʼs two millennia of political power brokering, heresy snuffing, book banning, Jew hating, witch burning, female subjugating, gay-bashing, war mongering, slavery-promoting (well, 1800 years of slavery-promoting), wealth stealing, genocidal vigor.

But the real topper came in March of the year 2000 when Pope John Paul II asked for the descendants of the multitudes who were hurt, enslaved, stolen from, and killed by Catholics to please forgive the one true church of Christ, the Catholic Church. How "big" of the Pope to repent for every Catholic atrocity in history, especially after two thousand years of stepping on peopleʼs toes has helped produce the biggest church the world has ever seen.

If only one of the earlier Popes had repented and tried to set things right sooner. Like in the fourth century when the first Christian to become a Roman Emperor was persuaded by Catholic bishops to issue a decree outlawing all rival Christian sects (“the Novatians, Valentinians, Marcionites, Paulians, Montanists,” etc.), and decree that they were “in league with the devil,” and “commanded all their houses of prayer be made over to the Catholic Church; that no facility whatever be left for any future gathering,” and had over 3000 Christians executed because their interpretation of the Bible did not agree with the Catholic one. Yup, that might have been a good time to begin apologizing.

Comedian Emo Philips provides the most apt analogy to the Popeʼs “forgive us,” speech. Emo once said, “When I was a kid, I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realized that the Lord, in his wisdom, didnʼt work that way. So I just stole one and asked him to forgive me.”
- Skip Church

Popeʼs Mea Culpa - A PR Stunt

Exactly two years have passed today since Pope John Paul II launched his great apology drive for the past “errors” of the Roman Catholic church. One more reconfirmation of the new course took place last Sunday, when he celebrated public penitence in St. Peterʼs Basilica. Meeting with harsh criticism since the beginning, the papal apology has meantime developed somewhat more precise outlines. “We ask forgiveness for divisions between Christians,” the Pope said, “for the use of violence in the name of truth, and for the diffidence and hostility against followers of other religions.” According to a document by the Vaticanʼs international theological commission, the historical sins are classified into seven categories, including divisions within Christianity, proselytizing by force, the inquisition, anti-Jewish prejudices, sins against minorities, women and human rights.

The Popeʼs Mea Culpa successfully avoids too close contact with the historical truth and has to be taken as a mere PR stunt. Nothing was for example heard again of the conference, scheduled for last October and proudly announced by the historical-theological commission of the Vatican, for which allegedly 50 renowned historians had been invited to scrutinize the bloody work of the Inquisition in Spain. But the Popeʼs project to square accounts with history before the new millennium dawns is not just superficial, it is pure hypocrisy. While crocodile tears are shed about the victims of the Holocaust, John Paul does not hesitate to beatify his predecessor Pius XII who collaborated with German, Italian and Croatian fascists during the second world war and rescued them after their defeat.

But the Vaticanʼs soft spot for mass murderers does not end there. The recent case of Father Athanase Seroma, shows how little the papal Mea Culpa is worth. Father Athanase Seroma played a leading role in the 1994 genocide that devastated Rwanda and is currently hiding under the name Don Anastasio Sumba Bura in northern Italy. According to many eyewitnesses, he organized the Nyange genocide in which between 2000 and 2500 Tutsi refugees were killed from April to July 1994. The African Human Rights group which produced a 22-page report about the events in Nyange in which Father Seromba, among other priests, had been involved, found that several of them are now living in Italy. The African Human Rights group asked the Pope more than half a year ago to launch an inquiry into the matter, but never received a reply. Maybe, decades later, a new pope may appear with a new apology!
- Sanal Edamaruku, ed., Rationalist International, Bulletin #33, March 16, 2000

Aztec Extremists Cut Out Visiting Popeʼs Heart (Satire)

Mexico City - Exacting retribution for Catholic explorer Hernando Cortezʼs destruction of their civilization, Aztec extremists cut out visiting Pope John Paul IIʼs heart in a ritual ceremony Monday. “For nearly 500 years, we have been brutally oppressed by the Catholics, enduring slavery, inquisition, rape, disease, forced conversions and random terror,” said Aztec high priest Xalpatlahuac, holding aloft the still-beating heart of the pope, who was making his fourth trip to Mexico since ascending to the papacy in 1979. “In the name of all those who have died, I sacrifice this heart to the sun god Huitzilopochtli.” The 78-year-old Polish pontiff was riding through the streets of downtown Mexico City in his popemobile when the extremists seized him and carried him off to a nearby Aztec pyramid. He was then pinned down by four priests, and, after a brief struggle, his chest was carved open with a sacrificial obsidian knife. The Catholic Church has not responded to the extremistsʼ demand that $14 billion in plundered Aztec gold be returned.
- The Onion, Vol. 33, No. 3 (Jan. 27, 1999)

Catholicism

People who do not live in Rome
but pretend to
are called Roman Catholics.

And they have a great many fathers
who dress like ladies
and do not have children.

This is so that ladies who have children
without a father
can call them God.
- Edwin Brock, Paroxisms: A Guide to the Isms

The trinitarian believes a virgin to be the mother of a son who is her maker.
- Francis Bacon

The Vatican came out with a new rule. No surrogate mothers. Good thing they didnʼt make this rule before Jesus was born.
- Elayne Boosler

The Vatican recently admitted that Catholic churches in Third world countries are failing to inspire their parishioners to practice only Vatican approved methods of birth control. Isnʼt it about time the Vatican threw in the towel, or “the sponge” on this one? In fact, I think itʼs time for the Catholic Church to start selling condoms in the shape of the Popeʼs mitered hat with cross-shaped ribs running down the sides (for her pleasure, and an added “heavenly” dispensation).
- Skip Church

I would welcome from the Pope some appreciation for the goodness of sexual pleasure - any bodily pleasure, come to think of it. - Luke Timothy Johnson, “A Disembodied ‘Theology of the Body’: John Paul II on Love, Sex & Pleasure,” Commonweal, Jan. 26, 2001

The fact that women who endured twelve to sixteen years of Catholic schools are not all virgins or prostitutes is a miracle.
- Martha Manning, Chasing Grace: Reflections of a Catholic Girl, Grown Up

Catholics used to have this place called Limbo, for little babies who died before they were baptized. The nuns assured us that no one was mean to them in Limbo, that they were well taken care of. But you had the idea that they were taken care of in the hospital-nursery kind of way rather than the at-home-snuggling-with-people-who-love-you kind of way?

[Though Limbo no longer officially exists, Catholics still believe in a celestial waiting room called Purgatory where you have to spend centuries doing penance before being allowed into heaven.] You got time off from Purgatory by making the sign of the cross, which earned you three years - seven years if you used holy water. Repeating holy phrases (ejaculations) qualified for all kinds of reprieves, although it was hard for me to imagine that when my mother yelled, “JE-sus, Ma-RY, and JO-seph! Didnʼt I tell you kids not to swing from the railing!” she was actually accumulating grace.
- Martha Manning (see above)

Following the Vatican declaration that women cannot become priests because they do not resemble Christ, sources reported that Colonel Sanders declared he would not employ anyone who didnʼt resemble a chicken.
- Jane Curtin

What do a Catholic priest and a Christmas tree have in common?
Both have balls just for decoration.
- Source unknown

The Catholic Church is against birth control so the number of Catholics keeps growing. But fewer are becoming priests. Pretty soon theyʼll have one priest for every fifty-thousand Catholics, and only a priest can consecrate hosts (those unsalted Ritz crackers they serve at Mass). So Catholics will have to rent football stadiums to attend Mass with the ONE priest in their vicinity. The priest will be on the fifty-yard line with buckets of hosts to be consecrated. Then hot-dog vendors will haul the buckets around, shouting, “Get your hosts here! Hot Hosts! Get ʻem while theyʼre consecrated!” Maybe theyʼll fling ʻem across seats right into peopleʼs mouths. “One body of Christ on angelʼs wings, Over here!”
- Skip Church

Roman Catholics believe they drink blood and eat human flesh during Holy Communion. Protestants say the ritual is “symbolic.” But to the Roman Catholic, the bread miraculously becomes the flesh and blood of a dead Jew, i.e., the late Redeemer of Biblical fame. Why they wanna eat a dead Jew is another question…
- Robert Anton Wilson

A Catholic is a person who eats small pieces of bread on Sunday mornings and pretends to be a cannibal.
- Edwin Brock, “Catholicism,” Paroxisms: A Guide to the Isms

I was raised Catholic and received the Body and Blood of Christ every Sunday at Communion until the age of 30, when I became a vegetarian.
- Joe Queenan

I might have joined the Catholic Church if it was just a little different. If at Communion the Host was fudge, Iʼd be there for that. “Body of Christ, with or without nuts?”
- Rick Reynolds, Only the Truth is Funny

Calvin, the Reformers and their Animosities

“The Reformers” [not simply Luther and Calvin, but other Reformation leaders as well] sometimes employed degrees of theological and personal recriminations toward each other that might shock not a few readers who have never studied that particular phase of “Christian” history. (Which also makes me suspect that at least one attraction of “Christianity” or “Islam” or other such faiths is the fact that people can call each other neat sounding theological names like “heretic,” and also threaten each other with “Godʼs wrath” without such speech ever going to court. But then “Communism” also had itʼs own ideological code words of reprobation, like “decadent.”)

The passages below are drawn from “History of the Life, Works, and Doctrines of John Calvin” by J. M. V. Audin, translated by Rev. John McGill (Louisville: B. J. Webb & Brother, 1850). Citations for each quotation can be found at the bottom of each page in Audinʼs work.

[Audin, p. 158-159]
[On Jan. 12, 1538] Calvin [wrote] in a confidential letter to his friend, Bucer. “If Luther can, in the same embrace, bind us and our confusion, my heart will be overwhelmed with joy; but there is no one but himself in the church of God…What are we to think of Luther? In truth, I know not: I believe that he is a pious man; I would wish only that they are mistaken in representing him as they do (and the testimony is that of his friends,) as foolishly obstinate; and his conduct is well calculated to accredit these suspicions. They inform me that he boasts of having compelled all the churches of Wittenberg to recognize his lying doctrine; strange vanity! If he be tormented by so great a desire of glory, all serious hope of peace in the truth of the Lord must be renounced; with him there are not only pride and wickedness, but ignorance and hallucination the most gross. How absurd was he at first with his bread, which is the true body!

If now he believes that the body of Christ is enveloped in the material substance, it is a monstrous error. Ah! If they wish to inculcate such absurd doctrines to our Swiss, what a beautiful path to concord do they prepare! If, therefore, thou hast over Martin any influence, labor to chain to Christ, rather than to the doctor, all those souls with whom he has so unfortunately contended: let Martin at length give a hand to the truth which he has manifestly betrayed. As to myself, I can well render testimony, that, from the day on which I first tasted the word of truth, I have not been abandoned by God, to the point of not comprehending the nature of the sacraments and the sense of the Eucharistic institution.”

[Audin, p. 403-408]
At the death of Zwingli, the church of Zurich was divided into various sects: the Significatives, theTropists, the Energicals, the Arhabonarians, the Adessenarians, the Metaphorists, the Iscariotists, and the Nothingarians. The dispute for the moment tranquilized, was revived again on the slightest historical accident. Melanchthon vainly endeavored to appease his master [Luther]. Luther declared, that, as long as there remained a drop of blood in his veins, or sufficient ink in his inkstand to fill his pen, he would wage war against the Sacramentarians. In 1543, he wrote to Foschauer, that the Saxon church could not live in peace with the heretical church of Zurich. And in his annotations on Genesis, published the year following, he acted the part of the Eternal Judge, and condemned [his fellow Protestant Reformers] Zwingli, Oecolampadius, and their adherents, to eternal flames…

The Zurichers commenced the contest with a pamphlet, the whole venom of which is in the title: “A summary of the teaching of the evangelists of Zurich, chiefly regarding the Lordʼs Supper, against the calumnies, the outrages, and the insolence of doctor Martin.”…

Luther did not take up the gauntlet; but…some days prior to his death, he wrote: “Happy the man who has not walked in the counsel of the Sacramentarians, who has not been found in the ways of the Zwinglians, who has not seated himself in the chair of the Zurichers.”

Calvin for a moment flattered himself with the hope of reconciling divided minds by means of his hermaphrodite system. Farel advised his friend [Calvin] to go to Zurich, where his word, sustained by the Holy Ghost, would operate a reconciliation…

Calvin is tormented in contemplating this “son of Peleus,” as he calls Luther, who listens to no advice, and marches upon his path, without fear of thickets and mountains. He would have Luther approximate to Zwingli, and to effect this approximation, he believed in the omnipotence of his treatise on the Lordʼs Supper, which is welcomed no where.

“But of what terrible malady is your Pericles ill?” Calvin wrote to Melanchthon [i.e., “Pericles” being a reference to Luther]. “Whom has he [Luther] induced to think with him, by all his tumults of words? Let him play his real game of a furious fool. Certes [i.e., Melanchthon], I revere him, but he does me wrong. And what is most unfortunate is, that no person is found to repress, or even to calm an impetuosity so insolent.” [Calvin to Melanchthon, Jan. 28, 1545]

The Genovese reformer [Calvin] was still more confidential with Bullinger, because he was acquainted with the dispositions of his correspondent. He has no fear now that his revelations will be abused; he [Calvin] writes:

“I learn that Luther, with his insolent petulance, attacks us all together: I cannot decently hope that you will observe silence; for, after all, it is not just to be treated so badly, and not dare defend oneself. I acknowledge that Luther is a man of fine genius, that he has received extraordinary gifts from heaven, that he has an admirable fortitude of soul, a constancy above all trial, and that to this day he has combated the Antichrist. I have frequently said, that, were he to treat me as an incarnate demon, I would still not the less rank him as a great servant of Christ, but also great for his faults. Would to God he had employed against the enemies of the truth that bile, which he does not cease to pour out against the servants of Christ.” [Calvin to Bullinger, Nov. 25, 1544]

During ten years the private opinion of Calvin regarding Luther had undergone no variation. Already, in 1538, he [Luther] was a man of vanity and falsehood, laboring under gross hallucination, an absurd doctor, who maintained that material bread is the body of Christ; an insolent opponent of the truth. [Calvin to Bucer, Geneva, Jan. 12, 1538]

But language changes with circumstances. It happens that Calvin needs Lutherʼs patronage for his book against the Nicodemites; now, the writerʼs words [Calvinʼs words] are sweet as honey…

This morose monk [Luther] died, bequeathing to Leo Judae, Calvin, and the Sacramentarians the following testament, written in his [Lutherʼs] own hand:

“Seeing the heresies heaped upon heresies on every side, and that the devil puts neither limit nor term to his rage and fury, in order that after my death they may not be able to make use of my writings to defend the errors of the Sacramentarians, as has already been done by some brainless fellows, corrupters of the supper of the Lord and of baptism; I have desired, before God, and before men, to make my confession, in which, with the Lordʼs aid, I wish to persevere and present myself before the tribunal of Jesus Christ…- I say likewise, of the Lordʼs Supper; that in it, the true body and the true blood of Jesus Christ in the bread and wine, is eaten and drunk, even though those who give and those who receive it have lost faith, or abuse the sacraments…and if, in the struggle of my death, temptation should force from my mouth anything contrary to this, I disavow it, and by the confession which I make, I protest that such thing can only come from satan: So help me God. Amen.” [Luther in 3 parte de caena — Tran. De FL. De Remond]

Protestants would have us believe that, before his death, Luther denied some of his dogmas, and especially his formulary respecting the real presence; they stand in need of this apostacy in order to exalt Calvin. In default of official testimony, they have culled from an obscure writer an anecdote, which they quote in order to prove that Luther did not regard Calvin as a heretic. We ask nothing better than to recount this little story. [The “little story” is a bit too long to repeat here along with Audinʼs comments. — Ed. Babinski]…

But the spectacle of those intestine divisions [amongst Protestant Reformers], doctrinal transformations, antilogies, of those prodigies of variations, retractations, and contradictions, does not in the least alarm Protestant historians, who, with great coolness, propound the statement:

That there is unity between the two churches, the reformed and the protestant church, if not of teaching, at least of faith in Jesus Christ. But then we will ask Calvinʼs last biographer, to explain to us the anger of John of Noyan against Westphalius, Pighius, and Gentilis, all Protestants, who apparently believed in Jesus Christ and in the merits of his blood?

[Audin, p. 84-85]
We have beheld Luther at Marbourg, at the colloquy imagined by Philip of Hesse, refuse to give the kiss of peace to the Sacramentarians, whom Calvin represents, and in leaving for Wittenberg, devote them to the wrath of God and men…

Has not Luther just torn out the page in Calvinʼs Institutes of the Christian Religion — where Calvin speaks of the bread and wine of the Eucharist as mere emblems — as a page inspired by the evil spirit?…

If King Francis I embraces the symbol of Calvin, Luther threatens the King with reprobation. If the King listens to Luther, Calvin damns him irremediably, for allowing himself to be seduced by “the detestable error of the Real Presence.” Apostles of the Lord agree then among yourselves. You both tell me, take and read, here is the book of life, the bread of truth, the manna of the desert. I listen to you, and your word throws my soul into an abyss of doubts. — Who then will cause to shine “that first star of day,” as Calvin calls his gospel.

“I will” says Osiander, “but accept my essential justice.”
“I will,” says Calvin, “but reject the justice of the heretic Osiander,and accept my gratuitous justice.”
“I will,” says Melanchthon, “but remain in the papacy, for the church must have a visible head.”
“I will,” says Calvin, “but reject the pope, the prince of darkness, the anti-christ of flesh and bone.”
“I will,” says Luther, “but believe that with your lips you receive the body and blood of Christ.”
“I will,” says Calvin, “but believe that your mouth only touches the symbols of the flesh and blood, and that faith alone has the power to transform them into reality.”

Where then did the first star of day stop in its course?

“At Zurich,” says Zwingli.
“At Bale,” says Oecolampadius.
“At Strasbourg,” says Bucer.
“At Wittenberg,” says Luther.
“At Neuchatel,” says Farel.

But in what Bible shall I read the word of God?

“In Lutherʼs Bible,” says Hans Lufft, his printer.
“In the Geneva Bible,” say Calvin and Beza.
“In the Bible of Zurich,” exclaims Leo Judae.
“In the Bible of Bale,” answers Oecolampadius.
“In truth,” says Beza, “the translation of Bale is pitiful, and in many passages offensive to the Holy Spirit.”
“Cursed be the Geneva translation,” says the colloquy of Hamptoncourt, “it is the worst that exists.”
“Be on your guard,” says Calvin, “against the Bible of Zwingli, it is poison; for Zwingli has written “that Paul did not recognize his epistles as holy, infallible scripture, and that immediately after they had been written, they had no authority among the Apostles.”

[Audin, p. 486-487]
All who have known him withdraw from him [Calvin], because they are unable to endure his arrogant speech, his bilious egotism, his bursts of vanity, and his immeasurable pride. Melanchthon reproaches him with a moroseness that nothing can bend. Bucer, with the disease of evil speaking which has passed into the very blood, like the virus of a mad-dog. Papire Masson, with an insatiable pride and thirst for blood, under the mask of modesty and simplicity; Balduinus, with an intolerable self sufficiency of which every one complains.

If he be such as his [Calvinʼs] admiring biographers represent him to us, how did it happen, that one by one he lost all his friends, even the most devoted? Caroli, at the disputation of Lausanne, had tendered him [Calvin] the noblest pledges of devotedness. And Caroli, whom at first he had lauded, at length was nothing better than “a mad dog.” The reason, is that Caroli was unwilling to sell his liberty to the reformer. Castalion was one of his beloved disciples, whom he had placed at the head of the college of Geneva; but Castalion falls into disgrace with Calvin, because he understands the descendit ad infers of the Athanasian creed differently from him…Pighius, whose learning he [Calvin] has admired, is transformed into a beardless scholar, as soon as he questions the reformerʼs authority. Bucer is compelled one day to explain: “thou [Calvin] lovest and thou hatest without any other motive than that insupportable self-love, which annoys all that are acquainted with thee.” Luther, whom at first he regarded as an angel [after first reading Lutherʼs works], soon becomes a wicked woman, who would do much better to employ the fist she has received from God in correcting her own faults, than to be sustaining her shameless blasphemies of the “real presence.” Search all the pages of Protestant or Reformation biography, and you will not encounter a single reputation that he [Calvin] has not attacked, torn to pieces, vilified. He calls, “Luther, in ridicule, the Pericles of Germany;

Melanchthon, an inconstant person and a coward; Osiander, an enchanter, a seducer, a savage beast; Augiland, minister at Montebeliard, proud, strife making, wrathful; Capmulus, a nobody; Heshus, a stinking babbler; Staincer, an Arian; Memnon, a miserable Manichean.” Hence they were wont to say at Geneva: “better be in hell with Beza, than in paradise with Calvin.” [Beza thought ill of the same people and ideas that Calvin did. After Calvin died, Beza became Calvinʼs biographer. But the saying went in Geneva that even “being in hell with Beza was better than being in heaven with Calvin.” — Ed Babinski]

[Audin, p. 550]
When at a later period, thanks to the efforts of the synod of Dort, thought was allowed to scrutinize the Genevese Confession [i.e., The Confession of Faith that Calvin authored for the people of Geneva when Calvin was the chief preacher and spiritual authority there], see how, each day, some one or other of the articles of the Confession has been given up, till of all Protestant cities Geneva has become the least Calvinistic…However the Reformation may seek to hide itself beneath the mantle of Zwingli, of Luther, of Calvin, of Oecolampadius, or of Knox, it cannot enjoy a dogmatic existence except by the favor of princes: its kingdom is of this world.

[Audin, p. 548-549]
Calvinʼs word, having been brought to the low countries [Holland, et al] and subjected to examination, had been found insufficient…Each city of Holland had an “apostle sent by God”…[and] of all of Calvinʼs books the only one that they considered the work of the Lord was Calvinʼs Treatise Concerning the Duty of Public Magistrates to Punish Heretics, which each Protestant sect translated in order to put it in practice against those who dissented.* Bogermann, professor of Fancker, wrote comments on the pamphlet, and added some new texts to prove that the civil power has the right to put to death the blasphemer of Godʼs name. He called every one a blasphemer who did not think with him on the subject of grace. [Two Protestants] Jacob Arminius and Franz Gonar, revived the subjects of dispute that had occupied Luther [a Protestant] and Erasmus [a Catholic]. Franz Gomar damned Arminius, who maintained the liberty of the will; Arminius doomed to the flames Fanz Gomar, who preached the doctrine of serf-will. There were intolerants and tolerants, rigid Calvinists and moderate Calvinists, lapsarians and supralapsarians.

[*Footnote by Audin at the bottom of page 549, “We refer those of our readers, desirous to become acquainted with the variations of the Reformation, to the German book of Hoeninghaus, My Excursion Through Protestantism, or the Necessity of a Return to the Catholic Church, Demonstrated Exclusively by the Avowals of Protestant Theologians and Philosophers. It is one of the finest books of the epoch, unfortunately almost unknown in France.”]

Threatening Others In the Name of God

The history of “Christianity” appears to be, among other things, the history of conflicts too numerous to mention:

Even during the persecutions of the Romans against the Christians, churches were cleft by rivalry and schism.

- Samuel Laeuchli, The Serpent and the Dove: Five Essays on Early Christianity

[Christians and their churches were cleft by rivalries and schisms even before the persecutions if you read Acts and the Letters in the New Testament. - E.T.B.]

Constantine [the first Roman Emperor to embrace Christianity] united the whole Roman Empire under his rule and reigned for twenty-five years. He brought up his sons to be pious Christians, and the last of them reigned for another twenty-five years, having ultimately reunited the empire under his rule. During that half-century the Church had enjoyed imperial protection and paganism had been viewed with disfavor. Christians had been promoted and pagans frowned upon. With only two short-lived exceptions no pagan was to reign as Emperor after Constantine.
- A. H. M. Jones, Constantine and the Conversion of Europe

A spirit of scornful tolerance breathes through not a few of his [Constantineʼs] edicts. As the years passed, toleration of paganism gave place to active repression; the emperor felt that he was strong enough to advance to a frontal attack upon paganism. The important fact to realize, however, is that this alteration in policy entailed no change of spirit, only a change of method. What Constantine would have recommended in 323 he later felt free to proclaim as the imperial will.
- Norman H. Baynes, Constantine the Great and the Christian Church

Constantine…banned the construction of new pagan temples, the consulting of oracles, and animal sacrifices. That these decrees were enforced sporadically did not detract from their symbolic value. With the old faith in decline, new converts poured into the Christian churches.
- Richard E. Rubenstein, When Jesus Became God: The Epic Fight over Christʼs Divinity in the Last Days of Rome

Constantineʼs allegiance to his God was backed by massive patronage. Emperors had always honored their favored gods with benefactions and buildings. Constantineʼs patronage was so lavish that he had to strip resources from pagan temples to fund it. One of his early foundations in Rome was the church of St. John Lateran, whose apse was to be coated in gold. Around 500 pounds of it was needed...Another 3,700 lbs was required for light fittings and another 400 pounds of gold for fifty gold vessels.
- Charles Freeman, “The Emperorʼs State of Grace,” History Today, January 2001

Edward Gibbon On Constantine And The Church

The grateful applause of the clergy has consecrated the memory of a prince, who indulged their passions and promoted their interest. Constantine gave them security, wealth, honors, and revenge; and the support of the orthodox faith was considered as the most sacred and important duty of the civil magistrate. The edict of Milan, the great charter of toleration, had confirmed to each individual of the Roman world the privilege of choosing and professing his own religion.
But this inestimable privilege was soon violated: with the knowledge of truth the emperor imbibed the maxims of persecution; and the sects which dissented from the catholic church were afflicted and oppressed by the triumph of Christianity. Constantine easily believed that the heretics, who presumed to dispute his opinions or to oppose his commands, were guilty of the most absurd and criminal obstinacy; and that a seasonable application of moderate severities might save those unhappy men from the danger of an everlasting condemnation.
- Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Chapter 21

The privileges that have been granted in consideration of religion must benefit only the adherents of the Catholic faith. It is Our will moreover, that heretics and schismatics shall not only be alien from these privileges but shall also be bound and subjected to various compulsory public services.
- Letter of Constantine to his Vicar of the Praetorian Prefect, 326 A.D.; as cited in A New Eusebius: Documents Illustrating the History of the Church to AD 337, Ed., J. Stevenson, newly revised by W. H. C. Frend

The First Ecumenical Church Council At Nicea And The Arian Controversy

From the very first the Church was faced with the task of establishing dogmas. For Christianity abounds in problems more hinted at than answered in the New Testament...The first ecumenical church council, the Council of Nicea, assembled in the year 325 in the imperial palace of the first Christian emperor, Constantine. Once the discussions started the participants threw their Episcopal dignity to the wind and shouted wildly at each other. They were concerned primarily with improving their positions of power. Diplomacy was wielded as a weapon, and intrigues often replaced intelligence. There were so many ignorant bishops that one participant bluntly called the council “a synod of nothing but blockheads.” Constantine, who treated religious questions from a political point of view, assured unanimity by banishing all the bishops who would not sign the new profession of faith hammered out at the council. In this way unity was achieved.

[The Christians at Nicea displayed their shrewd theological insight by condemning and forbidding kneeling at prayer on Sundays and also between Easter and Whitsunday. - E.T.B.] The council also pronounced a Christian theologian named “Arius” to be a heretic. People who owned his writings were ordered to deliver them up on pain of punishment. Arius was banished.
- Walter Nigg, The Heretics

If any treatise composed by Arius should be discovered, let it be consigned to the flames, in order that no memorial of him may be by any means left. This therefore I [Constantine] decree, that if any one shall be detected in concealing a book compiled by Arius, and shall not instantly bring it forward and burn it, the penalty for this offence shall be death; for immediately after conviction the criminal shall suffer capital punishment.
- Letter of Constantine To the Bishops and People, c. 333 A.D. in which he proscribed the works of Arius [a Christian] and in which he also proscribed the works of the pagan scholar Porphyry [who had written numerous works that questioned Christianity, all of which were destroyed]; as cited in A New Eusebius: Documents Illustrating the History of the Church to AD 337, Ed., J. Stevenson, newly revised by W. H. C. Frend

Probably more Christians were slaughtered by Christians in two years [A.D. 342-343, during the Arian controversy] than by all the persecutions of Christians under the Romans during the previous three hundred years.
- Will Durant, The Story of Civilization, Vol. 4, The Age of Faith

In the century opened by the Peace of the Church [after the first Christian Roman Emperor began his rule], more Christians died for their faith at the hands of fellow Christians than had died before in all the persecutions.
- Ramsay MacMullen, Christianity and Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries

Arianism, which orthodox Christians now consider the archetypal heresy, was once at least as popular as the doctrine that Jesus is God…Ordinary tradespeople and workers felt perfectly competent - perhaps even driven - to debate abstract theological issues and to arrive at their own conclusions…Disputes among Christians, specifically arguments about the relationship of Jesus Christ the Son to God the Father, had become…intense. [p.7]

The anti-Arians…demanded that Christianity be “updated” by blurring or even obliterating the long-accepted distinction between the Father and the Son. From the perspective of our time it may seem strange to think of Arian “heretics” as conservatives, but emphasizing Jesusʼs humanity and Godʼs transcendent otherness had never seemed heretical in the [Eastern half of the Roman Empire]. [p.74]

The Great Council of Nicaea…was the largest gathering of Christian leaders, up to that time with 250 bishops in attendance, almost all of them from the Eastern Empire…To some extent, this Eastern predominance can be attributed to the westernerʼs lack of interest in the Arian controversy, which still seemed to them an obscure “Greek” matter.

The Council of Nicaea, then, was not universal…Several later gatherings would be more representative of the entire Church; one of them, the joint council of Rumini-Seluicie (359), was attended by more than five hundred bishops from both the East and West. If any meeting deserves the title “ecumenical,” that one seems to qualify, but its results - the adoption of an Arian creed - was later repudiated by the Church. Councils whose products were later deemed unorthodox not only lost the “ecumenical” label but virtually disappeared from official Church history. [p.74]

[After the Council of Nicaea, Constantine exiled Arian theologians.] But within three years, Arius, Eusebius, and their fellow exiles would be forgiven by Constantine and welcomed back to the Church. Eusebius would become Constantineʼs closest advisor, and would insist that Athanasius, now bishop of Alexandria, readmit Arius to communion in that city as well. A decade after that, Bishop Athanasius himself was exiled, and Arianism was well on its way to becoming the dominant theology of the Eastern Empire. [p.84]

The Council of Nicaea was the last point at which Christians with strongly opposed theological views acted civilly toward each other. When the controversy began, Arius and his opponents were inclined to treat each other as fellow Christians with mistaken ideas. Constantine hoped that his Great and Holy Council would bring the opposing sides together on the basis of a mutual recognition and correction of erroneous ideas. When these hopes were shattered and the conflict continued to spread, the adversaries were drawn to attack each other not as colleagues in error but as unrepentant sinners: corrupt, malicious, even satanic individuals. [p. 84-85]

Athanasiusʼs ambition was endless; and he was very much at home in the “real” world of power relations and political skullduggery…Athanasius would soon be recognized as the anti-Ariansʼ champion. But first, he had to become bishop of Alexandria. [p. 104-105]

Athanasius sent gangs of thuggish supporters into the Melitian Christian district, where they beat and wounded supporters of the Melitian leader, John Arcaph, and, according to Arcaph, burned churches, destroyed church property, imprisoned and even murdered dissident priests. [p. 106]

Constantine ordered a council of bishops to meet in Tyre [concerning charges leveled against Athanasius]…Athanasius reacted with desperation…He had his agents terrorize those who might have provided evidence against him and prevented them from leaving the country…The pro-Athanasius bishops who attended the council at Tyre behaved so disruptively that the council later cited their activities as proof of Athanasiusʼs unfitness for office…The debate at the council was stormy, with many witnesses contradicting each otherʼs stories, and much name calling…After weeks of squabbling the bishops decided to send a commission to the region to interview witnesses there and the decide the truth of various accusations…The investigative commission left for Egypt…accompanied by a company of imperial troops…For the next two months Egypt was in an uproar. The Athanasians charged that the commission was obtaining evidence by means of threats and torture. The commissioners charged that Athanasiusʼs supporters were intimidating and kidnapping witnesses. By the end of the investigation it was clear that the commissionʼs report would indict Athanasius, who fled the city by night…The Bishops in Tyre condemned Athanasius for specific acts of violence and disobedience. [p.123-125]

When Constantine convened the Great Council of Nicaea, he could not have imagined that the bishops would be meeting almost every year to rule on charges of criminal activity and heresy. Partisan control of these gatherings virtually guaranteed that condemned churchmen would attempt to rehabilitate themselves and punish their enemies by denying the authority of “illegitimate” councils and convening new ones. The emperor probably considered this a temporary problem.
Surely, after blatant troublemakers and fanatics like Bishops Athanasius and Marcellus were removed from office, reasonable churchmen could learn to live together despite occasional differences of opinion! But this was to repeat the original mistake made at Nicaea. It was to assume that doctrinal differences among Christians were not that important, that they did not reflect serious divisions of class, culture, and moral values within the community, and that they could be resolved by discovering the correct form of words. [p.133]

[The former exile, Arius, on the eve of being readmitted to membership in the church at Alexandria, was found dead on the floor beside a toilet. Poisoning is one possibility to account for the timing and manner of his passing. However, Athanasius used Ariusʼs death as a public relations opportunity.] He announced that Alexandriaʼs prayers had been answered and “condemned the Arian heresy, showing it to be unworthy of communion with the Church.” Most telling is the language Athanasius uses in describing the manner of Ariusʼs death: “Arius…urged by the necessities of nature withdrew, and suddenly in the language of Scripture, ‘falling headlong, he burst asunder in the midst,’ and immediately expired as he lay, and was deprived of both communion and of his life together.’” [The biblical reference is to Acts 1:18 - the manner of death of Judas, the apostle who betrayed Jesus.] [p. 137]

[But even after Ariusʼs death, Arianism remained, for there remained other more influential Christian leaders who dominated the movement.] Moreover, another death was of greater consequence than Ariusʼs. The death in question was Emperor Constantineʼs…Eusebius [an Arian Bishop] heard the Emperorʼs confession, and administered the last rites…Following Constantineʼs death a decree was made that permitted all exiled bishops to return to their sees…

Athanasius [who was in exile at that time] returned to Alexandria after making a political tour of several provinces. Everywhere he rallied the anti-Arian forces and helped return exiles to power, organized opposition to “heretical” bishops, and intervened actively in local disputes. Violence dogged his steps, since both sides had organized popular support and were quite ready to use angry mobs to expel churchmen they despised or defend friendly incumbents. The result in a number of key cities was something close to civil war…Finally, Athanasius returned to Alexandria where, according to his enemies, ‘he seized the churches…by force, by murder, by war.’” [p.141-142]

Soon afterwards a large council of bishops met in Antioch [in 338] to declare that Athanasius had committed new atrocities…The leaders of the church met again in Antioch in the winter of 338-339. With the new Emperor, Constantineʼs son, Constantius in attendance, they convicted Athanasius of violence and mayhem, and ordered him deposed…Warned by his agents, Athanasius fled, and rioting and arson (which had also accompanied his return) erupted across the city…The Church of Dionysius was burned, a number of people on both sides were injured and killed, and fighting even broke out on Easter Sunday in the Church of Quirinius. Several weeks later, the mobs supporting Athanasius had been suppressed, at least for the time being.

What really happened in Alexandria during this stormy month? Athanasius in a letter charged that “Arian madmen” incited pagans, Jews, and “disorderly persons” to attack the faithful, set churches on fire, strip and rape holy virgins, murder monks, desecrate holy places, and plunder the churchesʼ treasures. He presents pictures designed to horrify and madden his readers: Jews, for example, are presented as cavorting naked in the churchesʼ baptismal waters. And, of course, he says nothing about any violence that his own supporters may have offered in his defense or in opposition to the installation of the new bishop.

Athanasius had always had a following in Alexandria, but Arius was also an Alexandrian with his share of supporters…The truth seems to be that in Alexandria and many other cities large groups of militant fighters could be mobilized by both sides, and that both sides made frequent use of them in the confused period following Constantineʼs death…What is most striking is the closeness and bitterness of the conflict in important cities like Constantinople, Antioch, Ancyra, Caesarea, Tyre, and Gaza. [p. 143-144]

But what caused this deep division?…The split between Nicene and Arian Christians seems to reflect a rough division between those more in need of a powerful, just ruler and those more in need of a loving advocate and friend. Neither side in the controversy could afford to turn its back entirely on either image: the Athanasians therefore called Jesus “God from God.” And the Arians called him “a paradigm and an example.” Each side put its primary emphasis on one image while paying lip service to the other, and each side was prey to fears that the other side was aiming to obliterate “its” Jesus. While Athanasians denounced the Arians for lowering Christ to the point that his majesty and saving power would be lost, the Arians accused Athanasius and Marcellus of raising him to the point that his love (and Godʼs majesty) would be lost…

The violence in the Eastern cities ended for the time being with the forcible eviction of major anti-Arian bishops and their exile to the Western half of the Roman Empire. Many were arriving in Rome, where Athanasius had already fled. But the uncalculated efforts of these deportations would be to make the Roman pontiff [the pope] a major participant in the controversy, to embroil the Western bishops, and, finally, to dive a wedge between the Christian churches of the Greek East and the Latin West. [p. 146-147]

[It was at this time that the Emperor Julian “the Apostate,” though raised a Christian, came to power and declared himself a pagan.] He reflected the common peopleʼs distaste for the scandalous disunity of the Church. Christianity had conspicuously failed to bring the empire together or to secure it from enemy attack. As the contemporary historian Ammianus said, “no wild beasts are such enemies to mankind as are most Christians in their deadly hatred of one another.” He deprived the Christian clergy of the special privileges [and tax exemptions] bestowed on them by his predecessors, and also took steps to re-inflame the Arian controversy by permitting Athanasius and other anti-Arians to return from exile. Violence between competing Christian groups broke out almost immediately…Bishop George of the city of Alexandria [and several of his fellows]…were killed by a mixed mob of pagans and anti-Arian Christians, his body paraded through the streets on the back of a camel and burned. [p. 195]

In the second century, Christians in the city of Alexandria, inspired by anti-Semitic preaching, had launched one of the earliest riots against the cityʼs Jewish community. Two hundred years later those who called Jesus “Lord” were battling each other in the streets…and lynching bishops. By the time bishop George of Alexandria met his grisly death, religious riots had become commonplace throughout the region. [p.6]

[Julian “the Apostate” was killed in battle which led to a string of more Christian Roman Emperors, one of the most intolerant of whom was Theodosius] Theodosius banned Arianism and officially declared Christianity the religion of the Roman Empire…[p.226]

- Richard E. Rubenstein, When Jesus Became God: The Epic Fight over Christʼs Divinity in the Last Days of Rome

Theodosius passed a decree in 380 A.D. that read: “We shall believe in the Holy Trinity. We command that those persons who follow this rule shall embrace the name of Catholic Christians. The rest, however, whom We adjudge demented and insane, shall sustain the infamy of heretical dogmas, their meeting places shall not receive the name of churches, and they shall be smitten first by divine vengeance and secondly by the retribution of Our own initiative, which We shall assume in accordance with the divine judgment.”
- J. N. Hillgarth, The Conversion of Western Europe

[During the reign of Theodosius] bands of wandering monks attacked synagogues, pagan temples, hereticsʼ meeting places, and the homes of wealthy unbelievers in Mesopotamia, Syria, Egypt, Palestine, and North Africa. [Also during his reign] the bishop of Alexandria incited local vigilantes to destroy the Temple of Serapis [also known as the Serapeum], one of the largest and most beautiful builds in the ancient world that also housed a library donated by Cleopatra. Alexandrian Christians whipped up by Bishop Cyril rioted against the Jews in 415, and then murdered Hypatia, a wise and beloved Platonic philosopher. Since Arianism was now identified with the “barbarians” who were its main advocates, the remaining Arians within the empire, now split into small, powerless sects, were also fair game for Christian avengers. And the struggle to uproot paganism, conducted sporadically ever since the days of Constantine the Great, now resumed in earnest.

Was the Arian controversy resolved?…Unresolved issues, appearing in changed form, continued to produce serious religious conflicts…which ended in the Great Schism separating the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches. [p.226-227]

In the Greek-speaking lands, the end of the Arian controversy triggered more than two centuries of intense conflict [over the question of the relationship between Jesusʼs human and divine natures]. Once again, bishops met in councils to proclaim the orthodoxy of their views and to excommunicate their opponents. Once more the East knew depositions and exiles, riots and assassinations. Each side accused the other of Arianism. The Second Council of Ephesus (449) condemned the school of Antioch; the Great Council of Chalcedon (541) condemned the Alexandrians; numerous emperors intervened on one side or the other; and the controversy did not end until the one-nature “Monophysites” were driven from their own churches, many of which exist to this day.

- Richard E. Rubenstein, When Jesus Became God: The Epic Fight over Christʼs Divinity in the Last Days of Rome

The Donatist Controversy

[After the persecution of Christians by pagan Emperors ended, Christians in North Africa debated whether or not priests that had recanted their faith under threat of persecution should still be recognized as valid members of the priesthood.] This issue [among others] led to a schism between Donatist Christians and mainstream Christians of North Africa. Saint Augustine advocated violent suppression of the Donatists, justifying massacres in the name of Christian unity. Armed groups, called the Circumcellions, formed to defend the “pure” [Donatist] churches, and perpetrated acts of terrorism in their name, and some committed mass suicide rather than yield to the forces they identified as Antichrist. The virtual civil war among North African Christians would not end until the fifth century, when invading Vandals suppressed all the churches, Donatist and orthodox alike. [p.39]
- Richard E. Rubenstein, When Jesus Became God: The Epic Fight over Christʼs Divinity in the Last Days of Rome

At the church council held at Ephesus in 449 the discussion became so inflamed that the delegates went at one another with clubs, until one party held the field and could enforce the decree it desired. Fanatical bands of monks terrorized the assembly of Church notables. Envoys from the church at Rome were set upon and soundly thumped. Leo the Great called it “The Robber Council,” nor was this the only one of its kind. There were other councils at which the Church Fathers became so incensed that they hurled the Bible at each otherʼs heads.
- Walter Nigg, The Heretics

After one “election meeting” in a church, in October 366, the “ushers” picked up from the floor one hundred and sixty Christian corpses! It is sheer affectation of modern Roman Catholic writers to question this, as we learn it from a report to the emperor of two priests of the time. The riots of the Christians that filled the streets of Rome with blood for a week, are, in fact, ironically recorded by the contemporary Roman writer, Ammianus Marcellinus.

In one day the Christians murdered more of their brethren than the pagans can be positively proved to have martyred in three centuries, and the total number of the slain during the fight for the papal chair (in which the supporters of Pope Damasus literally cut his way, with swords and axes, to the papal chair through the supporters of the rival candidate Ursicinus) is probably as great as the total number of actual martyrs. If we add to these the number of the slain in the fights of the Arians and Trinitarians in the east and the fights of Catholics and Donatists in Africa, we get a sum of “martyrs” many times as large as the genuine victims of Roman law; and we should still have to add the massacre by Theodosius at Thessalonica, the massacre of a regiment of Arian soldiers, the lives sacrificed under Constantius, Valentinian, etc.

This frightful and sordid temper of the new Christendom is luridly exhibited in the murder of Hypatia of Alexandria in 415. Under the “great” Father of the Church, Cyril of Alexandria, a Christian mob, led by a minor cleric of the church, stripped Hypatia naked and gashed her with oyster shells until she died [though I have read that she was clubbed to death before her flesh was stripped off her bones - E.T.B.]. She was a teacher of mathematics and philosophy, a person of the highest ideals and character. This barbaric fury raged from Rome to Alexandria and Antioch, and degraded the cities with spectacles that paganism had never witnessed.

Salvianus, a priest of Marseilles of the fifth century, deplores the vanished virtue of the pagan world and declares that “The whole body of Christians is a sink of iniquity.” “Very few,” he says, “avoid evil.” He challenges his readers: “How many in the Church will you find that are not drunkards or adulterers, or fornicators, or gamblers, or robbers, or murderers - or all together?” (De Gubernatione Dei, III, 9) Gregory of Tours, in the next century, gives, incredible as it may seem, an even darker picture of the Christian world, over part of which he presides. You cannot read these truths, unless you can read bad Latin, because they are never translated. It is the flowers, the rare examples of virtue, the untruths of Eusebius and the Martyrologies, that are translated. It is the legends of St. Agnes and St. Catherine, the heroic fictions of St. Lawrence and St. Sebastian that you read. But there were ten vices for every virtue, ten lies for every truth, a hundred murders for every genuine martyrdom.
- Joseph McCabe, How Christianity Triumphed

Art, philosophy, literature, the very psychology of Western man, all suffered by the victory of the bishops.
- John Holland Smith, The Death of Classical Paganism

The Christian zealots for conversion took to the streets or criss-crossed the countryside, destroying no doubt more of the architectural and artistic treasure of their world than any passing barbarians thereafter.
- Ramsay MacMullen, Christianizing the Roman Empire

Institutions of higher learning had been largely destroyed. The [Christian] emperorsʼ attacks had centered on the chief of them, Athens and Alexandria, in the late fourth century and were turned against them again toward the end of the fifth and in 529 [the year that the School of Athens was closed by the decree of the Christian Roman Emperor Justinian. - E.T.B.].

As to the initiators of the persecution, the [Christian] emperors themselves, a steady decline in their level of cultivation has been noticed. Thus books and philosophy were bound to fade from sight.

After Constantine there existed an empire-wide instrument of education: the church. What bishops, even emperors, made plain, and what could be heard in broader terms from every pulpit, was an agreed upon teaching. Every witness, every listener should know the great danger to his soul in Platoʼs books, in Aristotleʼs, in any of the philosophical corpus handed down from the past. The same danger threatened anyone using his mind according to their manner, with analytical intent, ranging widely for the materials of understanding, and independent of divine imparted teachings.

Another factor that arose specifically out of the ongoing conversion of the empire was the doctrine of demonic causation. The belief in the operation of maleficent forces on a large scale had to await Christianity; and it was of course Christianity that was to form the medieval and Byzantine world.

Satanic agents were to be seen as the cause not only of wars and rebellions, persecution and heresy, storms at sea and earthquakes on land, but of a host of minor or major personal afflictions. So, in consequence, Christians were forever crossing themselves, whatever new action they set about, and painted crosses on their foreheads too, responding to their leadersʼ urging them to do so. It would protect them against all evil.
- Ramsay MacMullen, Christianity and Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries

Thirty Years War and Protestants Killing Catholics

Ralph: I heard about the Crusades of Christians killing but when I looked it up it was the Catholics who were the crusades. The Protestants were defending themselves. But has there been a time when Protestants have started an attack against the Catholics?

Edward: Yes. Iʼm afraid that when you learn history in America itʼs mainly American history, and whitewashed at that. The main events in which Protestants killed Catholics is mainly European history. A lot of killing, back and forth, went on for CENTURIES in England and all of Europe. The Protestants for their part, were convinced that the Pope was the Antichrist, which Luther taught, and as such, the Pope was caricatured as a Devil in Protestant picture-tracts. In fact, Luther also taught and believed that with the “Peasant Revolt” and the increase in lawlessness it brought, that the end of the world was nigh. Both Catholics and Protestants played up each other as “the devil.” And of course it was Luther, to whom the church had granted a vocation as Monk and scholar, who first threw down the theological gauntlet, and would not compromise, and whose inflamed speeches to “kill the revolting peasants,” and to “burn down the Jewʼs homes and synagogues and books and as they flee, grant them no safe passage,” and, who taught that “the Papacy is the Antichrist and must be defeated at all costs!”

The underlying causes of this devastating, general European war were conflicts of religion: Protestant verses Roman Catholic reform, pluralistic tolerance versus arbitrary imposition of faith, Lutheranism and Calvinism and the Protestant Union versus the Catholic League.
- George Childs Kohn, “Thirty Yearsʼ War” (1618-48), Dictionary of Wars, rev. ed.

Herbert Langer in The Thirty Yearsʼ War, says that more than one quarter of Europeʼs population died as a result of those thirty years of slaughter, famine and disease. Ironically, the majority of Europeans who killed each other shared such orthodox Christian beliefs as Jesusʼ deity, the Trinity, and even “creationism.” So you canʼt blame the horrific spectacle of the Thirty Yearsʼ War on modern day scapegoats like atheism, humanism or the theory of evolution. Such a war demonstrates that getting nations to agree on major articles of faith does not ensure peace. Far from it. Some of the most intense rivalries exist between groups whose beliefs broadly resemble one another but differ in subtle respects.
- Skip Church

In 1844 in Philadelphia, the “city of brotherly love,” Protestants besieged Catholic neighborhoods with cannon fire and pistols, and also set houses aflame, because the Catholics had protested the use of the Protestantʼs King James Bible in public schools. Martial law was declared, and it took two thousand federal troops to quell the rioting; eighteen people were killed and scores more were injured.
- Michael Feldberg, The Philadelphia Riots of 1844: A Study of Ethnic Conflicts

A holy war was set off in Brazil when a Pentecostal pastor, opposed to the “image-worship” of the nations 110,000 Catholics, displayed a statue of a black version of the Virgin Mary called Our Lady of Aparecida, and referred to it as “a horrible, disgraceful doll” while kicking and slapping it. Screaming, rock-throwing crowds surrounded the church of the Pentecostal pastor while thousands of Catholics protested by carrying images of the Virgin through the streets.
- J. D. Bell, “Nuts in the News,” The American Rationalist, May/June 1997

A 32-year-old Catholic woman was beaten to death after she refused to enter an evangelical church in northeastern Brazil. She was passing by the Church of the Kingdom of God when two pastors ordered their followers to bring her inside to attend a ceremony. When she refused, the group held her ten-year-old daughter while the pastors dragged her by the hair and beat her in order to “exorcise the devil from her.”
- J. D. Bell, “Nuts in the News,” The American Rationalist, Nov./Dec. 1994

As for the genocide of native Americans perpetrated by PROTESTANTS, along with the enslavement of Africans defended by PROTESTANT denominations in the South (and the Northern denominations did NOT complain except for the Quakers and a few evangelists), Iʼll leave that for another time.

Three Religious Truths

Jews do not recognize Jesus as the Messiah.
Protestants do not recognize the pope as the leader of the Christian faith.
Baptists do not recognize each other in the liquor store.