The life and times of the infallible pope Urban VI

What heresies did he teach?

 

Curtis, the college didn't elect the wrong pope, they elected the right one. The French cardinals ran away to elect a schismatic one because they were afraid and jealous that Urban would put more Italian cardinals in the college than French(typical French ). The college has no authority to elect a pope and then declare the election invalid because they don't like the pope's behavior. That's why they call it the Western Schism. This has nothing to do with papal infallibility. It's really not that difficult of a concept when you use your brain.

Protestants continually show on this board that history is not their strong point and/or they have no clue of how to interpret it.

 

For all the colored past of Catholicism that Protestants like to rub in our faces (and there is quite a bit because unfortuantly there are sinners in the Catholic Church), a recurring question came to mind when reading Curtis's posts. We know after the reformation there were questionable activities and abuses among Protestants. Not to rub it in there faces but the Geneva Inquisition, the killing of 19 nuns in Switzerland, the intense persecution of Catholicis in England, the ties of the KKK to Baptist, Slavery to Methodists and Baptists, etc. etc.. Now here is the odd thing. I cannot find one sin attribuable to a Protestant sect before 1515. Further the Baptists who have more than there share of indiscretion also, who claim the trail of Blood theory, paint these "Christians", (Paulicaians, donatists, etc. etc.) as peaceful, king of perfect people. So my question is what happened at the reformation. Did Protestants start sinning? Or more likely Protestants didn't really exist before the deformation. Which cause a problem with that verse "the gates of hell shall not prevail".

Blessings

 

"wrong pope"? By who's judgement? Was Paul the wrong Apostle because "the evil that I would not do, I do". Was Judas that "wrong" apostle because Jesus, praying and then choosing the twelve chose one who would betray him? God's ways are not man's ways. Further as Mike said your history is very superficial on the issue as it is on every issue. You use history rather than understand it.


Blessings

 

Thess, you bring up a very good point. Unfortunately, I have the feeling that Protestants have been trying to answer this question for a long time but really have no answer for it. Why? As you suggest, Protestanism is a fraudulent sect whose history is as tainted as Catholicism. The crimes of the reformers are absouletely atrocious and an abomination. Of course, Catholics are guilty too, but Catholics don't use the double standard like Protestants do. You make it quite clear though. Why does none of this matter in the end? Because the Catholic Church is Christ's Church which the gates of hell shall never prevail against it. The Catholic Church's validity and merit is ultimately not based on its history, its based on Christ's simple commandment. Protestants, however, must try to espouse and rehash their version of history because their window of truth is based on the achievements of history and men, the reformers.

Excellent observation by you Thess.

 

"So by the 1300's, popes had been GOD ON EARTH for 300 years, yet they still don't demonstrate innerrancy, by a long shot. "

I believe the phrase was VICE REGENTS OF GOD ON EARTH. Not God on Earth. Typical snippeting and Protestant distortion. You ignore our questions and continuously throw stones. Seems there were some stone throwers in the NT. Seems like you relate to them. So Curtis did God Jesus make a mistake in calling Judas to Apostleship. By the way Judas is an interesting case study in what is false about Calvinism. Maninly irresistable grace. But that's another thread.

Blessings

 

Bro. Curtis, a wrong pope was not elected. The right pope was elected, Urban VI. The French Cardinals then decided to elect an antipope. Again, this is why they call it a schism, perhaps you might want to look that word up since you seem to be having some problems with this whole thread. The college has no authority to invalidate a lawful election and then elect someone else, therefore they were acting in schism.

I might get a group of my friends together and declare the election of George Bush invalid and then presume to elect you as president (scarry thought). You can therefore claim to be president, but you aren't actually the president. My group of friends had no authority to do that, just like the college had no authority to elect another pope.

Again, it is really not that difficult.

 

Curtis,

My understanding is that an Interdict (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08073a.htm) is the only way a new Pope can be removed and a new one installed. This has been a part of Church law long before Urban VI was elected Pope. This never happened with Urban VI so Clement was never Pope no matter who elected him to be. No matter how much he claimed to be and who supported him at it. Is there something difficult to understand in JS's presidential example?

 

You also might want to check your stories with that of newadvent.org. For instance your post implies that all the cardinals elected clement. It appears that is not the case as only the French cardinals did. Once again I think JS's example of an invalidly elected president is quite valid in light of this fact. Look under anti-popes to get to the story on Clement VII.

I do like the anti-popes as a defense of the papacy actually. Especially since there were few anti-bishops in any other diocese. That shows that everyone saw Rome from the very earliest times being the head of the Church. I especially like the anti-popes Hippolatus and Novation since they put the idea that Constantine started the Catholic Church in the rubbish pile where it belongs. At the time they claimed papal authority, long before Constantine make Christianity legal, they claimed the chair in Rome. At this time by Protestant thinking the chair would have been worthless. Even worse anyone claiming it was in danger of being killed. But by historical evidence shows they claimed it because it really was the Primacy of the Christian world.

Blessings

 

Actually, a lot of the RCC's leaders, including Popes, have been heretics, even by the RCC's own standards. Pope Honorius, for example, taught the heresy of Monothelitism, and was condemned as a heretic by the Sixth Ecumenical Council and by other Popes (http://www.christiantruth.com/pope.html).

Philip Schaff, in his History of the Christian Church, writes the following about the Roman bishops Felix II and Liberius: "Liberius, having in his exile subscribed the Arian creed of Sirmium, was in 358 reinstated, and Felix retired, and is said to have subsequently repented his defection to Arianism....Even the papal chair was desecrated by heresy during this Arian interregnum; after the deposition of Liberius, the deacon Felix II 'by antichristian wickedness,' as Athanasius expresses it, was elected his successor....The Roman people desired the recall of Liberius, and he, weary of exile, was prevailed upon to apostatize by subscribing an Arian or at least Arianizing confession, and maintaining church fellowship with the Eusebians."

Other Roman bishops taught things for which they would be under the RCC's anathema today. Leo I, for example, denied that Mary was immaculately conceived.

Gregory I denied the canonicity of 1 Maccabees.

Some Roman bishops taught that infants go to Hell if they die without being baptized or without participating in the eucharist. Etc.

 

Pope Stephen VII. put the corpse of the previous Pope (Formosus) on trial after he had been dead for eight months. Formosus was dragged from the tomb, dressed again in sacerdotal robes, and given council. Stephen VII condemned him, and the three fingers of benediction on the right hand were hacked off Formosus. The late pope was then dragged through the palace, and hurled into the Tiber by a yelling mob.

Stephen VII. himself was later strangled. Following this, within 12 months four popes met their demise as political factions struggled to control the papacy.

The Popes from 926-1046 were from the House of Theophylact. Chamberlin documents the legend of Pope Joan, and discounts it as myth. But like some myths, elements of the fiction have been drawn from historical accounts. The women from the House of Theophylact had a grip on the papacy, as it placed there own nominees in papal power. One paved the way for her lover to take the papacy, Pope John X.

Pope John XII is referred to as a Christian Caligula, . with charges that he turned the Lateran into a brothel. He and “his gang violated female pilgrims in the very basilica of St. Peter; …offerings of the humble laid upon the alter were snatched up as casual booty”(p.43). Some bishops who dared to take part in a trial condemning John’s abuses came under the rage of this pope. “One had his tongue torn out, his nose and fingers cut off; another scourged; the hand of a third was hacked off”(p.60). John XII is rumored to have been killed by an angry husband who caught the Holy Father in the act, but Chamberlin is cautious to say that perhaps this was perhaps gossip of the day with no verification.

Pope Benedict IX sold the papacy for 1,500 pounds of gold. to Giovanni Gratiano. Rumor has it, he wished to cease being pope to marry. The reason he is said to have sold it, is because Benedict, while willing to cease being Pope, was not willing to give up a luxurious lifestyle.

Perhaps the saddest tale of all is the story of Peter of Morone, who became Pope Celestine. He was a “holy man who hung his cowl upon a sunbeam, whose hours of devotions were marked by the tolling of a supernatural bell”(p.79). He lived in a cave high up on Monte Morone. Chamberlin calls him a “simple good man”(83). Celestine, once Pope, longed to be a recluse monk again. He abdicated, and then Boniface VIII stepped in. Boniface feared the followers that Celestine had, . so he decided to have the ex-pope arrested and brought back to Rome. Bonfice eventually did capture him, condemned all that Celestine had done as Pope, and imprisoned him for the remainder of his life.

Bonifice VIII was known for simony and nepotism. . Bonfice though, countered these charges by holding that, “a pope could not, by definition, commit simony, for he was the church and the church was he and all that it possessed was at his ordering” (p.94). Also known for “witty” speech, . Boniface is recorded as saying something like, “Sexual immorality? Why- there is no more going to bed with women and boys than in rubbing one hand against the other” (p.111). . He is also to have said, “”A man has as much hope of survival after death as that roast fowl on the dining table there” (p.111), this remark made on a fast day. Chamberlin implies that perhaps Boniface was kidding, yet those writing his every word made sure to include these statements. Boniface is also known for the bull Unam Sanctum which “made explicit what had been implicit: It is necessary for salvation that all human creatures shall be subject to the Roman Pontiff”(p.119).

John XXII . was a banker. “He destroyed the little friars who had arisen with their terrible heresy that Christ and his disciples had been poor men, . that the amassing of wealth was contrary to his teaching” (p.131).

Clement VI . was “a happy, splendid priest with a vast taste for the table, considerable culture, and an indiscreet love of women” (p.132). He “made no secret of his liking for feminine company” (p.132). One contemporary said of him that, “…when he was an archbishop he did not keep away from women but lived in the manner of young nobles, nor did he as pope try to control himself. Noble ladies had the same access to his chambers as did prelates and among others, the Countess of Turenne was so intimate with him that, in large part, he distributed his favors through her” (p. 133).

Urban VI was known as a man with a bad temper.. The cardinals at the time thought of him as a madman. To an adviser who doubted his powers to excommunicate one for the mildest misdemeanor he yelled, “I can do anything, anything!” (p. 143). He was said to have physically attacked the cardinal of Limoges in consistory, whereupon many of the cardinals drifted away from Rome. Eventually, a few of the cardinals began devising a plan to remove him from the papacy. Urban was alerted, and had those cardinals “put to the question,” which involved old cardinal Sangro “hoisted to the ceiling three times by the strappado and each time was dropped heavily to the floor” (p.153). Urban, unable to hear Sangro’s screams, directed the examiners to improve their questioning by torturing the old man more severely.

Pope Alexander VI first mistress bore him four children, and he strove to have those children in power and to also become pope. He was fourty years senior his second mistress.

Pope Leo X offered a profound statement, “How very profitable this fable of Christ has been to us through the ages” (p.223) after an advisor quoted from the gospels.

These are but a few examples from the book “The Bad Popes,”. After reading “The Bad Popes,” it was no wonder that the Reformation occurred. One could spend the whole year reading books on Luther’s life or the sixteenth century, and miss the centuries of corruption that provoked the Reformation.

In Christ,

Bob

 

Honorius wasn't condemned as a heretic, he was condemned for not stopping heresy and this condemnation was not on the suggestion of the current pope.

There is no evidence of any Arian Creed that Liberius signed condemning Athanasius. If he did, it was while Liberius was in prision and under extreme duress and possible torture. Felix II wasn't a pope, he was installed as an antipope by the emperor.

Just because a pope expresses an opinion, even if it has to deal with matters of faith and morals, it isn't binding unless the pope specifically is declaring or defining it as so.

I am glad you figured out that humans sin. Again, you could have read the Bible and this would have saved you a whole lot of time. Although, I suppose there are a couple of exceptions. Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Henery VIII, maybe they weren't sinners.

 

So where the Apostles not speaking for God when they wrote the NT?

 

Actually, I quite agree with Bro. Curtis that no human deserves to speak for God.

Yet God has seemed to use humans to speak for him quite a bit nevertheless. Think of poor Jeremiah -- he wasn't too happy about the whole idea either.

Mark

 

Looks like both Mark and trying2understand hit it on the mark. Continuing on, do any of us really deserve anything from God? Do we deserve heaven and salvation from him? No, it is all because of the grace and love of God.