A charge worthy of conviction

"RCC purposely kept the common person in the dark"

It is this part of your post to which I am referring and is a false accusation.

BTW, as Billwald pointed out and as Wikipedia notes regarding 'The Dark Ages" :

" . . . .most modern scholars who study the era tend to avoid the term altogether for its negative connotations, finding it misleading and inaccurate for any part of the Middle Ages."

 

Yes I read quotes like that.
Isn't it nice to have politically correct people today who don't want to call Dark Ages, dark, because they might offend someone.
Adultery is an affair.
Burning Tyndale at the stake was not murder, it was a civic duty.
Homosexuality isn't a choice, one is born with it; they can't help it.
Abortion is a woman's right. It is not murder.
How can you murder a fetus after all?

You can swallow all the politically correct jargon you want Lori, but I don't buy it. You can be the liberal that accepts homosexuality, abortion, and all the rest. You can change the language and make acceptable. But I call things like they are. The Dark Ages were called dark because the RCC kept the people in the dark--illiterate--keeping the truth of the Word of God, and information in general from them. The start of the Dark Ages began with the Fall of the Roman Empire.

Maybe it will start again with pagan immorality:

http://start.shaw.ca/start/enCA/News/WorldNewsArticle.htm?src=a29227.xml

 

Don't throw me in with the Episcopalians. One of the reason I'm no longer an Episcopalian (Anglican) is because of their shenanigans (Heresies).

It is your assertion that the Roman Church kept people ignorant so they wouldn't know God's word that I am saying is a false accusation. Supposedly, the Roman Church knew it was wrong but wanted world domination so it desperately tried to keep people from learning the 'truth' of the bible. Nonsense!

 

Is it? Let's look through the ages of history.

The Vulgate is an early 5th-century Latin version of the Bible and largely the result of the labors of Jerome, who was commissioned by Pope Damasus I in 382 to make a revision of the old Latin translations.
--Jerome's Vulgate became the standard translation of the Bible right up until the time of Tyndale. The English speaking people did not speak Latin, neither did the rest of the world. Latin was learned by scholars in order to study the Bible and other scholarly works. If you didn't study Latin you wouldn't be able to study the Bible. And so it was from the 4th century until approximately the time of the Reformation. The Dark Ages was a long period of time. The common person was kept in the dark, particularly by the RCC.



Concerning Aldheim

http://isv.org/musings/history.htm


Aldheim wrote in the same Cryllic alphabet and style that Beowulf was written in, Old English. It is unreadable now. It was unreadable then--then because it was the Dark Ages--people could not read. The RCC made sure of that. The Vulgate was far more popular and available to the public than anything that Aldheim had. But the public could read neither one? The existence of either one is moot. Both languages are as different to the common person as Greek and Hebrew are--both then and now. Then--because they were illiterate; now--because the Old English is completely unreadable just as Arabic is.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_Vulgate


Again, let me emphasize, it is the RCC that was keeping the common person from the Bible, by keeping the Bible in a foreign language. How on earth can a common person in England read Latin.




Now we come to the history of John Wycliffe, the first one to translate the Bible into the common English tongue, the vernacular of the English people, so that they might understand it. Is it any wonder, that some years after he died, the RCC dug up his bones, burned them and then scattered his ashes in the River. The reason? They thought that by doing so they would make sure that he would never rise in the resurrection. The RCC cannot thwart the plans of God.

http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~cpercy/courses/6361russell.htm



Notice the bolded statement. The Catholic Church did not want the Scriptures in the hands of the common person. The common people were "swine." They should not cast the pearls of Scripture before the swine of the common folk, Palmer says. Many things (Scripture) are to be hidden and not shown to the people, lest being known and familiar they should be cheapened.
This is still the attitude of the RCC today. Keep the Scriptures from the people at all costs--if not one way, then another.

At this time it was illiteracy.
Then it was to keep the Bible in a language that they could not read.
Then it was to burn the Bibles (such as Tyndale's).
Then it was to tell the people that Catholics were not permitted to read the Bible (my parents era).
Then it was to tell the people that they could read the Bible but not interpret it; only a priest could interpret it for them (no sola scriptura, no priesthood of the believer).
It has always been the goal of the RCC to keep the Scriptures from the people in one way or another.



Wycliffe thwarted the RCC in that he was able to get the Bible into the English language, the language of the people. But it was translated from the Vulgate. But it was a start.



But then William Tyndale came along (1494-1536), a martyr for the faith. Schooled at Cambridge and Oxford, he was a scholar who could and did translate the Scriptures from Hebrew and Greek into the English language, which became the foundational work for the KJV and most translations that we have today. All Christians alive today owe a great debt of gratitude to William Tyndale and the work that he has done. The RCC was glad to burn him at the stake, get rid of him, gather his Bibles up and burn them as well. They still tried to keep God's Word out of the hands of the common person.



In 1522 Tyndale made this rather "prophetic" statement, as he proclaimed to one of the religious leaders at Gloucestershire: "If God spare my lyfe, ere many yeares I wyl cause a boye that dryveth the plough shall know more of the scriptures than thou doest."


Shortly after his death, the prophetic statement came true as his Bible rolled off the presses into the hands of the public, much to the chagrin of the RCC.

 

But divorce is OK - right? Right.

Peace!

 

Sure! Just be politically correct and call it an annulment.
Catholics do it all the time to avoid the stigma. Isn't that's what its all about?

 

You know that isn't true, DHK. If the criterion for marriage was never met then the marriage was invalid to begin with and an annulment can be granted.

Evangelicals get divorced and remarried all the time (sometimes two, three or more times) and still hold positions of leadership in their churches. Whats up with that??

The Associated Press 12/30/99 1:31 AM Eastern

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) -- Baptists have the highest divorce rate of any Christian denomination, and are more likely to get a divorce than atheists and agnostics, according to a national survey.

The survey conducted by Barna Research Group in Ventura, Calif., found that 29 percent of all adult Baptists have been through a divorce. Among Christian groups, only those who attend non-denominational Protestant churches were more likely to be divorced, with a 34 percent divorce rate.

Alabama, with a population of 4.3 million, has more than one million Southern Baptists and a majority of evangelical Protestants. The state ranks fourth nationally in divorce rates, behind Nevada, Tennessee and Arkansas, according to U.S. government statistics.

Barna Research Group interviewed 3,854 adults from the 48 continental states, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percent. The survey found that while just 11 percent of the adult population is currently divorced, 25 percent of all adults have experienced at least one divorce, the survey showed.

Twenty seven percent of those describing themselves as born-again Christians are currently or have previously been divorced, compared to 24 percent among other adults.

"While it may be alarming to discover that born-again Christians are more likely than others to experience a divorce, that pattern has been in place for quite some time," said George Barna, president of Barna Research Group.

A Birmingham minister, the Rev. Stacy Pickering, said the numbers are skewed because Baptist churches encourage young people to get married -- sometimes before they're ready -- before living together.

"Fewer people are getting married and the number of couples living together has increased," said Pickering, minister of young married adults and director of counseling at Shades Mountain Baptist Church.

He said his church now requires premarital counseling for couples who want to marry at the church.

Of major Christian denominations, Catholics and Lutherans have the lowest divorce rate at 21 percent, according to Barna. People who attend mainstream Protestant churches have an overall divorce rate of 25 percent.

BTW, Catholics and Lutherans have the lowest divorce rate among Christians.

 

I did not think that the RCC considered themselves a "denomination". Do they?

 

That is why I made the note on the bottom of the post after the AP article.

 

The problem with many surveys are the ignorance of the ones asking the questions.

Like they will say things like 90% of people in the united states are Christians, just because they said they were.

"Well, my grandmother was a Methodist, so I guess that makes me one too"

 

Does the survey take into consideration that many attending church are not Christians? Like I said, many of these surveyers don't really know what a Christian is. I bet if they could see as God sees the numbers would change dramatically.

 

Don't really want to get side-tracked into another topic. Please start another thread if you want to discuss this topic. I only answered this for two reasons:
1. Because someone else brought it up.
2. To add to the list that I had started.

The point is that our society easily changes the meaning of sin. Back to the topic. The Catholic historians don't even want to call the Dark Ages "dark." Perhaps some others don't want to call it by that name either. It is too offensive a name. But that doesn't change the fact any.

That was the whole point of the post. Let's stay on topic.

 

Admittedly, large numbers of the population in the Middle Ages were unable to read. Is that the fault of the Catholic Church? I think the Church did the best they could to spread knowledge of the bible. One of the ways we know this is by the books and other documents that have come down to us from this age. Deeds, correspondence, household books, legal papers, etc. are full of quotes from the bible. Do you find doctors and lawyers and the like creating kinds of documents quoting from the bible today? Not so much.

So how did these people become aquainted with the bible? Through sermons and catechism, through drama and 'sacred plays'. They learned through statuary and frescoes in Church. In Catholic countries, the wall of Churches are covered with with stained glass and painting depicting scriptural scenes. Hymns and simple devotional books were also used to teach biblical truth.

There were two classes of people in the Middle Ages. Those who were able to read and those who were not. Those who could read were able to read Latin. If you are among people who cannot read, how do you communicate the gospel to them? I propose it is done much in the way that I mentioned above.

 

They were the Dark Ages because the RCC did their best to keep knowledge away from the public. If you look through that era you will find the brightest minds of that era: theologians, musicians, inventors, etc. were Christians, not Catholics.
For example: Handel, Galileo, Copernicus, Kepler etc. Those that the RCC condemned excelled in knowledge. Otherwise the RCC tried to keep the population in the dark. The Lollards (followers of Wycliffe) taught their own people to read and write, and many of them went on and became mighty preachers of the Word, though hated of the RCC.

Tischendorf found the Sinaiticus Manuscript in St. Catherines Monastery near Mount Sinai in 1844. Where did he find it? In a trash can! He also found evidence of other MSS burned or destroyed. Does that sound like the RCC was the "protector of the Scripture," or rather that they kept the population in the DARK.

The Vaticanus was kept (as the name implies) at the Vatican, in a vault, where no one had access. They didn't want the population to have access to it.

The RCC kept the Bible in Latin when the population couldn't read Latin.
In the time of the Apostles the Bible was in Koine Greek, common Greek, the language of the people, so that all could read it. As it spread throughout the known world of the time it was translated into the common languages of the time--Syrian, and so forth. But the RCC but a stop to it as soon as possible.

Drama and plays do not teach the truth of the gospel. They are entertainment. It is a joke. Sermons and catechism are indoctrination by the RCC--heresies that are anti-Biblical. Nothing accomplished there. They could listen but they could not read. Listen to the heresies of the RCC.

And the RCC did nothing to further their cause. They called them swine. Their attitude was not to give the pearls of the Scripture to the swine of the common people. How complimentary. Thus the Scripture was kept in the "holy Latin," away from the common person. How convenient!

 

HP: In the case of that particular manuscript, they knew full well a corrupt manuscript when they saw it. They simply did not view it as trustworthy, and neither do many other well qualified authorities. There has not been the slightest proven revelation of truth that has came from that trash can find, and it has breed a whole lot of confusion within the Church as to what is in reality the Word of God.

 

DHK, I think the Passion play of today at Oberammergau communicates gospel truth quite effectively. As far as RCC indoctrination by way of sermons and catechism, the same could be said of Baptist sermons and Baptists Sunday school. You are incredibly biased. The rest of your conclusions and accusations just shows your extreme 'Jack Chick' like thinking.

 

HP: Who is Jack Chick and what is it about his thinking that makes him 'extreme?'

 

Your baseless accusation is as hollow as HP's accusation every time he calls me a Calvinist. I am not a Calvinist, and I don't read Jack Chick. When will you two learn, and how often do I have to tell you. These two wild accusations are repeated more often on these threads more than any other.

 

What is about Calvin that makes him extreme?
Two peas in a pod, eh?

 

HP:Would not it be closer to the truth to say that I claim the end of your theology and that of Calvinism are both deterministic in nature, and that there is little to no practical difference between many positions you hold to and those justly associated with Calvinism?