History and Theology: pope

Showing posts with label pope. 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.”]

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.