Are all Popes saints?
Pope Gregory VII believed that, as a successor of St Peter's, he had
absolute power and he drew up a list of 27 Declarations of papal powers
and privileges.
Among them:
- No one on earth can judge the Pope
- The Church has never erred and never will, until the end of time
- The Pope can depose bishops, emperors and kings
- All princes must kiss his feet
- a rightly elected Pope is a saint.
Forgers at work
Most of the Declarations were based on forged documents in the Roman
archives. Gregory is said to have engaged a whole school of forgers to
touch up ancient texts,
distorting or reversing their meaning as the occasion demanded. The best
known forgeries were the 9th century of 115 documents, supposedly
written by early Bishops.
Armed with this authority, Pope Gregory set about destabilising
Kingdoms. The Greek emperor and Polish King were deposed. The Holy Roman
Emperor Henry IV was ordered to stop interfering with Church
appointments. Henry was furious and nullified Gregory's election.
Gregory countered by excommunicating the emperor.
Oddly, Henry' mother backed the Pope. Princes began withdrawing their
allegiance and Henry realised he had to make peace with the Pope. Making
his way through snowdrifts, Henry's party reached Countess Mathilda's
fortress. Henry was ordered to hand over his crown and royal regalia and
publicly confess his unworthiness as emperor. He was left knee deep in
snow, teeth chattering, begging for mercy. Only when Mathilda pleaded
for Henry's life did the Pope relent. Henry had to swear to abide by the
people's will and do penance.
On his return home, Henry appointed aother pope, Clement III. In 1085,
Henry marched into Rome, forcing Pope Gregory to flee to Naples.
The next Pope, Victor III, was kept out of Rome by anti-Pope Clement
III. So was his successor for the first six years of his reign. In 638
Muslims had taken over the region but allowed pilgrims' visits. Then in
1071, the Turks took control and reversed the policy. Pope Urban II
called upon Christian Europe to wage a Holy War and recapture the Holy
Land. He asked in a famous sermon in 1095: "We do not even share the
inhabited earth equally with the Muslims. They have made Asia their
homeland..."
500 years before, Mohamed had promised paradise to those slain in
battle. Urban now promised forgiveness of sins to all those who joined
to free the Holy Land. In 1099, a band of knights stormed into Asia
Minor, massacring Muslims and Jews. They captured Jerusalem and set up a
Latin kingdom there. More crusades were to follow.
-----------------------------------
Eddie Ray
------ Original Message ------
From: "The Catholic Thing" <thecatholicth...@frinstitute.org>
To: gdig...@btinternet.com
Sent: Saturday, 5 Nov, 22 At 10:00
Subject: The Problem with “Recreational” Sex
Anthony Esolen: Two young people passionately in love
yield to their desires, though they are not married. What they are
doing is wrong by...
<https://thecatholicthing.us9.list-manage.com/track/click?u=86ba873afbb58919227050b08&id=4cec09d1fe&e=efe0633c61>
The Problem with
“Recreational” Sex
Anthony Esolen: Two young people passionately in love yield to their
desires, though they are not married. What they are doing is wrong by
attendant circumstances, not wrong per se: were they married, it would
be a good and glorious thing.
I am grateful to the Catholic faith that has led me, often despite my
hesitation, deeper into reality, when so much about us is aimed at our
abstraction, our losing what slender grip we have on real things and not
ideas about things, or worse, words passing for ideas about things.
Recently, I was lectured by a woman defending the right to
have an abortion, because, she said, “some people like to have
recreational sex,” and they should not have to worry about pregnancy and
childbirth in case the synthetic hormones fail, as they often do.
I thought about that phrase, “recreational sex,” and how
weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable it is, this pretense that a man and
woman can unite in that unique act, and have it mean no more than if
they were strips of Velcro stuck together for an afternoon.
Their bodies are more honest. They prepare themselves in
countless ways we are still discovering, to beget and to bear the child
that may be the fruit of that union. But in the abstracted minds of the
players, there is no child, there shall be no child, there is nothing
but “recreation.”
And that is an attempt to strain the act so thin, there is
hardly any blood left in it, any real humanity. It’s nonsense. In fact,
many a thing ceases to be what it is as soon as you say it is merely
recreational.
Click here to read the rest of Professor Esolen’s column . . .
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Image: La Surprise by Jean-Antoine Watteau, about 1718-1719 [The
Getty, Los Angeles]
Week in Review
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