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Christ

The "Vicars of Christ"
Exposed

Pages :
 1   2   3   		a Pope

Belief in the infallibility of Popes
is itself heresy


        Many people don't realize how novel the idea of infallible popes is.  It was only proclaimed at the instigation of Pope Pius IX at the First Vatican Council in 1870, about whom his private secretary, Monsignor Talbot said:  "Theology was not Pius' forte." and "As the Pope is no great theologian, I feel convinced that when he writes, his encyclicals are inspired by God."  Complete ignorance was no bar to infallibility, he said,  since God can point out the right road even by the mouth of talking ass."  (p. 133)
        This is what we might call a "latter day Roman Catholic" belief, but this teaching is not just "heresy" in the eyes of every other body of Christian believers today,  it would have been considered heresy by most Catholic popes and theologians as well through most of that church's history!

        'Many Roman Pontiffs were heretics.'  To Catholics this sounds like a quote from a bigoted Protestant.  A heretical pope seems as contradictory as a square circle.  The quote is not in fact from a Protestant but from Pope Adrian VI in 1523:

        "If by the Roman church you mean its head or pontiff, it is beyond question that he can err even in matters touching the faith.  He does this when he teaches heresy by his own judgement or decretal.  In truth, many Roman Pontiffs were heretics.  The last of them was Pope John XXII." [1316-1334].          The themes of papal heretics and popes excommunicated by the church used to be common in theology but little has been heard of them since 1870.  Even the imperious Innocent III admitted: `I can be judged by the church for a sin concerning matters of faith.' Innocent IV, though he claimed that every creature was subject to him as Vicar of the Creator, none the less conceded that any papal utterance that is heretical or tends to divide the church is not to be obeyed.          "Of course, a pope can err in matters of faith.  Therefore, no one ought to say, 'I believe that because the Pope believes it', but because the Church believes it.  If he follows the Church he will not err." For some reason, these words which appeared in the original text of Innocent IV's Commentary on the Decalogue were expunged from later editions.  It is hard to know why, since any number of popes said more or less the same thing.
        So great is the aura surrounding the papacy today that few Catholics realize that it is against faith and tradition to say a pope cannot fall into heresy." (p. 204)
          The pope was fallible long before he was infallible.  From the earliest times it was taken for granted that Roman pontiffs not only can err but have erred in fundamental matters of Christian doctrine.  Nor did anyone hasten to add in those distant days: `Of course, he only erred as a private teacher or theologian.' That suggests that in addition to his own convictions and his responses to his diocesans he also regulated the faith of the whole church.  There is no evidence for this.  What is known today as papal infallibility was not even hinted at in the early church, and any suggestion that a Bishop of Rome was himself infallible would have aroused at times a degree of mirth.  The church's faith belonged to the church and was regulated by the successors of all the apostles, namely, the bishops.  They testified to the faith of their communities, especially when they met together in a General Council.  A pope who stepped out of line in matters of faith was condemned as a heretic.  Peter made mistakes.  So did the Bishop of Rome.  When he did so, the church had the right and duty to correct or depose him.  After all, the pope, too, was a member of the church, not some sort of divine oracle separate from it.  (p. 205)
        Here's an interesting dilemma for believers in papal infallibility:
        Though the legitimate pope, Benedict V declared himself to be illegitimate.
        " With one monster (pope) out of the way, the Romans chose Benedict V as a replacement.  (The "Holy Roman Emperor) Otto, outsmarted, was furious.  `No one can be pope without the emperor's consent,' he declared.  `This is how it has always been.'  His choice rested on Leo VIII.  Cardinal Baronius, in his sixteenth-century Ecclesiastical Annals, which Acton called `the greatest history of the Church ever written', maintained that Benedict was true pope and Leo the antipope.  It is hard to dispute this.  Yet Benedict grovelled at Otto's feet and declared himself an imposter.  To prove it, he stripped himself of his regalia and confessed on his knees before Leo (the imposter) that he was the lawful successor of St Peter.  It is not clear if a genuine pope's assertion that he is not genuine is an exercise in infallibility, though it must carry a message to the whole church concerning faith and morals.".  (p.52)         Here are some noteworthy examples of just how fallible and / or immoral these self-proclaimed "Vicars of Christ" have proven that they could be :
        According to Matthew, Ch. 16, Jesus said to Peter:
        "Thou art Peter (a stone), and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.  And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven."
        In order for any Catholic to believe that Jesus was talking about the any of Peter's successors (i.e. the best of them), they must believe that it applies to all of them (including the worst of them).


        The Catholic interpretation of Jesus' words requires them to believe when Stephen VII was the current successor to Peter, the words should read :
        "Thou, Stephen, art the rock upon which I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.  And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven."         "Stephen VII, was completely mad.  He dug up a Corsican predecessor, Pope Formosus (891-6) when he had been dead for over nine months.  In what came to be known as the Cadaveric Synod, he dressed the stinking corpse in full pontificals, placed him on the throne in the Lateran and proceeded to interrogate him personally.  Formosus was charged with becoming pope under false pretences; he was bishop of another place, hence ineligible for Rome.  According to Pope Stephen, it made all his acts invalid, especially his ordinations.  A chattering teenaged deacon replied on Formosus' behalf.  After being found guilty, the corpse was condemned as an antipope, stripped of all but a hair-shirt clinging to the withered flesh and, minus the two fingers with which he had given his fake apostolic blessing, was thrown into the Tiber.  The body, held together by the hair-shirt like a carcass of meat, was recovered by some of Formosus' admirers and given a quiet burial.  Later, it was returned to its tomb in St Peter's.  Stephen himself was soon strangled.
        Popes maimed and were maimed, killed and were killed.  Their lives bore no resemblance to the gospels.  They had more in common with modern rich kids turned hooligans and junkies who haunt beach cafés and nightclubs than with Roman pontiffs as the world now sees them.  Some owed their preferment to ambitious parents, some to the sword, some to the influence of high-born and beautiful mistresses in what became known as `The Reign of the Harlots'."  (p. 48)

        The Catholic interpretation of Jesus' words requires them to believe when John XII was the current successor to Peter, the words should read :
        "Thou, John, art the rock upon which I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.  And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven."         (John XII's) "youth may explain in part his irreligious behaviour - since he was only sixteen when he assumed the burdens of office (in 955).  Whole monasteries spent their days and nights praying for his decease.  Even for a pope of that period he was so bad that the citizens were out for his blood.  He had invented sins, they said, not known since the beginning of the world, including sleeping with his mother.  He ran a harem in the Lateran Palace He kept a stud of two thousand horses which he fed on almonds and figs steeped in wine.  He rewarded the companions of his nights of love with golden chalices from St Peter's..  He gambled with pilgrims' offerings.  He did nothing for the most profitable tourist trade of the day, namely, pilgrimages.  Women in particular were warned not to enter St John Lateran if they prized their honour; the pope was always on the prowl.  In front of the high altar of the mother church of christendom, he even toasted the Devil.
        Pope John aroused such wrath that, fearing for his life, he plundered St. Peter's and fled to Tivoli.
        A synod was called to sort things out.  Present were sixteen cardinals, all the numerous Italian bishops and many others who were conscripted from Germany.  The Bishop of Cremona left a precise record of the charges brought against the pope.  He had said mass without communicating.  He had ordained a deacon in a stable.  He had charged for ordinations.  He had copulated with a long list of ladies, including his father's old flame and his own niece.  He had blinded his spiritual director.  He had castrated a cardinal, causing his death.  All these accusations were confirmed under oath.
        Otto then wrote John a letter that must rank among the great curiosities of all time.
        'Everyone, clergy as well as laity, accuses you, Holiness, of homicide, perjury, sacrilege, incest with your relatives, including two of your sisters, and with having, like a pagan, invoked Jupiter, Venus and other demons.'
        John's family raised an army to give him safe passage home.  In Rome he resumed the Petrine office.  Not satisfied with anything as mild as excommunication, he maimed or executed all who had contributed to his exile.
        No pope ever went to God in a more embarrassing position.  One night, a jealous husband, one of many, caught his Holiness with his wife in flagrante delicto and gave him the last rites with one hammer blow on the back of the head.  He was twenty-four.  The Romans, noted for their savage wit, said that this was the climax of his career.  At least he was lucky to die in bed, even if it was someone else's.  (p. 51-2)

        The Catholic interpretation of Jesus' words requires them to believe when Benedict IX was the current successor to Peter, the words should read :
        "Thou, Benedict, art the rock upon which I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.  And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." The Boy-Pope
        In 1032,  Count Alberic III paid a fortune to keep the job (papacy) in the family.  Who better to fill the vacancy than his own son, Theophylactus?  Raoul Glaber, a monk from Cluny, reports that at his election in October of 1032 his Holiness was eleven years old. . .
        It was an odd spectacle:  a boy not yet in his teens, his voice not yet broken, was chief legislator and ruler of the Catholic church, called upon to wear the tiara, celebrate high mass in St Peter's, grant livings, appoint bishops and excommunicate heretics.  His Holiness's exploits with the ladies prove that the boy-pope reached the age of puberty very early.  By the time he was fourteen, a chronicler said, he had surpassed in profligacy and extravagance all who had preceded him. St Peter Damian, a fine judge of sin, exclaimed:  `That wretch, from the beginning of his pontificate to the end of his life, feasted on immorality.'  Another observer wrote:  `A demon from hell in the disguise of a priest has occupied the Chair of Peter'.  ( p. 53-54)

        The Catholic interpretation of Jesus' words requires them to believe when Sixtus IV was the current successor to Peter, the words should read :
        "Thou, Sixtus, art the rock upon which I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.  And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven."         "In the fifteenth century, there was not one voice raised in defence of the papacy.  With men like Francesco de la Rovere on the throne it is not hard to see why."
        Francesco became Sixtus IV in 1471.  He had several sons, called according to the custom of the day 'the pope's nephews'.  Sixtus gave three nephews and six other relatives the red hat (making them Cardinals).  Among the beneficiaries was Giuliano de la Rovere, the future Julius II.
        Sixtus' favourite was Pietro Riario, whom the historian Theodore Griesinger believed was his son by his own sister.  Certainly, the new pope had an alarming fondness for the boy.  He made him Bishop of Treviso, Cardinal Archbishop of Seville, Patriarch of Constantinople, Archbishop of Valencia and Archbishop of Florence. . . 
        Sixtus IV built the (Sistine) chapel named after himself in which all popes are now elected.  It has seen pomp and ignominy. . .
        Sixtus was the first pope to license the brothels of Rome; they brought him in thirty thousand ducats a year.  He also gained considerably from a tax imposed on priests who kept a mistress.  Another source of income was granting privileges to rich men `to enable them to solace certain matrons in the absence of their husbands'.
        It was in the area of indulgences that Sixtus showed a touch of genius.  He was the first pontiff to decide that they could be applied to the dead.  Even he was overwhelmed by their popularity.  Here was an infinite source of revenue that even his greediest predecessors had not dreamed of.  It was breathtaking in its implications: the pope, creature of flesh and blood, had power over the regions of the dead.  Souls in torment for their misdemeanours could be released by his word, provided their pious relatives dipped into.their pockets.  And which of them wouldn't if they had a spark of Christian decency? Widows and widowers, bereaved parents spent their all trying to get their loved ones out of Purgatory, painted in ever more lurid colours.
        Praying for the dead was one thing, paying for them another.  Simple folk were led to believe that the pope, or those who came to their village and sold the pope's pardon, guaranteed their dead would go to heaven on the wings of indulgences.  The potential for abuse was considerable.  The sale of relics from the tenth century had been bad enough. . .  Martyr's bones, like oil, were not a renewable commodity, but indulgences were limitless and could be priced to suit every pocket.  Nothing was required of the donor or recipient, not love or compassion or prayer or repentance - only money.  No practice was ever more irreligious than this.  The pope grew rich in the measure that the poor were duped.
        Purgatory had no justification, whether in Scripture or in logic.  Its real basis was papal avarice.  An Englishman, Simon Fish, in A Supplicacyion for the Beggars, written in the year 1529, was to point that out irrefutably.         'There is not one word spoken of it in all holy Scripture, and also if the Pope with his pardons may for money deliver one soul hence, he may deliver him as well without money: if he may deliver one, he may deliver a thousand: if he may deliver a thousand, he may deliver them all; and so destroy purgatory: and then he is a cruel tyrant, without all charity, if he keep them there in prison and in pain, till men will give him money.'         In 1478, Sixtus published a Bull that did even more harm to the church.  He sanctioned the Inquisition in Castile.  It spread, literally, like fire.  In 1482 two thousand heretics were burned in Andalusia alone.
        Of Sixtus it was said that he ..`embodied the utmost possible concentration of human wickedness'.  In Bishop Creighton's words, `he lowered the moral tone of (all of) Europe'. " (p.100-102)

        The Catholic interpretation of Jesus' words requires them to believe when Alexander VI was the current successor to Peter, the words should read :
        "Thou, Alexander, art the rock upon which I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.  And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." Alexander VI (Rodrigo Borgia )
        Rodrigo Borgia, a Catalan, was reputed to have committed his first murder when he was twelve years old.  He repeatedly drove his scabbard into another boy's belly.  As a young man, his amorous propensities were not the best-kept secret in the world.
        In 1456, Pope Callistus III (his uncle) made Rodrigo, then twenty-five, Archbishop of Valencia, the chief see in Spain .  Rodrigo was already famous for - having made impartial love to a widow and her two beautiful daughters, one of whom was his ever-beloved Vannozza Catanei.  Summoned to Rome to become a cardinal at twenty-six and ViceChancellor of the church one year later, he could not bear to be too far from his mistress, so he installed her in style in that most stylish of cities, Venice.
        When Rodrigo became pope, he took the name of Alexander VI, not seeming to mind that Alexander V was excluded from the lists as the antipope of Pisa.
        Luther was nine years old when Borgia came to power.  Everything in Rome was for sale, from livings and indulgences to cardinal's hats and the papacy itself. . .
        Having elected Borgia, the cardinals serenaded the Holy Spirit, thanking him for choosing a successor to St Peter. . .  In a frenzy of joy, he exclaimed: `I am pope, pontiff, Vicar of Christ.,'
        This man whom Gibbon called `the Tiberius of Christian Rome' was wicked even for a Renaissance pope.  His eye for a pretty woman was said to be infallible, even in old age.  He had ten known illegitimate children, four of them, including the notorious Cesare and Lucrezia, by Vanozza.  When she became faded, the pope, aged fifty-eight, took another mistress.
        Giulia Farnese was fifteen . . .  became known throughout Italy as `the Pope's Whore' and `the Bride of Christ'.
        By Giulia, the pope had a daughter named Laura. . .  (Alexander) followed Innocent VIII's example and openly acknowledged his children in what was called the Golden Age of Bastards.  Plus II had even said that Rome was the only city in the world to be run by bastards.
        . . . Life in the Vatican in those days was never dull nor wholly evangelical.  There were reliable tales of drunken and sexual orgies.  Alexander was reputed to have had incestuous relations with his daughter, the gorgeous Lucrezia.  If so, and it is not certain, it was a record even for a Renaissance pope to have had sex with three generations of women: his daughter, her mother and her grandmother.
        Cesare, his son, was Machiavelli's model for the utterly ruthless. . .  Francesco Guicciardini, who became lieutenant-colonel of the papal armies, confided to his secret notebook, I Ricordi, that Cesare was born so that `there might be in the world one man vile enough to carry out the designs of his father, Alexander VI'.  In impressive Spanish style, Cesare once slew five bulls with a lance in St Peter's Square, then beheaded a sixth with a single stroke of the sword.  He thought nothing of stealing a man's wife, raping her and tossing her into the Tiber River.
        Early in his reign, the pope nostalgically gave (seventeen-year-old) Cesare his old see of Valencia.. . .  A year later, in the consistory in which Alexander promoted his mistress's brother and fifteen-year-old Ippolito d'Este, Cesare became a cardinal.
        . . . In those days, there was an average of fourteen murders a day in Rome.  When the culprit was caught, Alexander did not scruple to let him off, for a consideration.  As he remarked, with the winning smile he had: `The Lord requires not the death of a sinner but rather that he should pay and live.'
        One of his less endearing habits was to appoint cardinals, for a fat fee, then have them poisoned to increase the turnover.  He favoured cantarella, a concoction made up mostly of white arsenic.  The church, he decreed, could inherit the cardinal's goods and chattels.  He, of course, as Christ's Vicar, was the church.
        One of the few to protest openly at the scandal of the papal court was the Dominican Prior of San Marco in Florence.  The greatest preacher of his age, Savonarola was declared by a later pontiff, Benedict XIV, to be worthy of canonization.  That was not Alexander's view.  He tried to silence the friar by promising him a cardinal's hat for nothing.  When, to his astonishment, that failed, there was no alternative but to have him tried, hanged and burned instead though, it was said, there was no rancour on the pope's part.
        No hypocrite, he never pretended to be a sincere Christian, let alone a saint.  Yet, like most pontiffs, he was intensely devoted to the Virgin Mary.  He revived the ancient custom of ringing the Angelus bell thrice a day.  He had commissioned a painting of a superb Madonna, with the face of ( his young mistress) Giulia Farnese to deepen his love. "  Alexander died (accidentally it appears) of poison which his son Caesare probably intended only for a few of his rich and eminently disposable fellow cardinals.  ( p. 103-108)

In their "Crusades", "Vicars of Christ"
murdered innocent people by the thousands,
all in Christ's name,

        When Jesus promised that the "gates of hell will not prevail against his church", surely he didn't have this institution in mind, with its "Vicars of Christ" who themselves directed and applauded the torture and killing of many more of their fellow Christians than the pagan emperors had killed or persecuted, often just because they did not accept the often attrocious teaching and/or behavior of the so-called "Holy See".


        (in the early 1200's) When the King of France refused to lead the Crusade, Pope Innocent III made his legate, Arnald-Amalric, the General of the Cistercian (i.e. "Trappist") monks at Citeaux, its commander in chief. . .
        Arnald called on the Catholics in the town of Béziers, an Albigensian stronghold, to hand over the 200 or so known heretics.  If they didn't they would suffer with them.  The townsfolk decided to stand together against these foreigners . . .
        The townsfolk took refuge inside the cathedral and the great churches of St. Jude and St. Mary Magdalene. . .  The command went out from Arnald:  "Kill them all: the Lord will look after his own."
        Behind the locked doors of St. Mary Magdalene's, the clergy tolled the bells, while celebrants vested in black for a requiem.  The churches, places of sanctuary from time immemorial, were crammed.  In that church alone there were 7000 women, children and the elderly.  To the sound of priests chanting mass was added that of axes splitting the timber of the doors.  When the doors gave way, the only noise and church was the Latin of the liturgy and the babble of babies in their mothers' arms.
        The invaders, singing lustily Veni Sancte Spiritus (Come, Holy Spirit) spared no one, not even the babies.  The last to be cut down were two priests in the sanctuary.  One held on high a crucifix, the other the chalice.  With a clang, the chalice hit the stone floor, and Christ's blood mingled with that of the people of Béziers.  It was, said Lea, in his book The Inquisition in the Middle Ages, "a massacre almost without parallel in human history".
        The crusaders then destroyed everything in the town, including the cathedral.  "All that was left of Béziers was a smouldering heap under which all the citizens lay dead."
        "In the cool of the evening, the monk Arnald settled down to write to his superior.  "Today, your Highness, 20,000 citizens were put to the sword, regardless of age or sex." That is unusual.  After a siege, women and children were spared, and especially clergy who had immunity.  Slaughtering babies was bad enough, but it was an unspeakable crime to cut priests down as they celebrated the ritual sacrifice of Calvary.  Blood-lust had taken hold of the Pope's crusade and was never to relax its grip."
        "Pope Innocent was deeply moved by Arnald's letter.  He thanked God for His great mercy.  Never once did he question the legitimacy of a monk slaughtering heretics and the Catholics who harboured them."  It seemed right to defend Christ's truth by (the very same) methods that led to Christ's (own) crucifixion."
        "It has been reckoned that in the last and most savage persecution under Emperor Diocletian, about 2,000 Christians perished, throughout the empire.  In the first vicious incident of Pope Innocent III's crusade, ten times that number of people were slaughtered.  Not all were Albigensians, by any means.  It comes as a shock to discover that, at a stroke, a pope killed far more Christians than (the pagan emperor) Diocletian."(P. 158 - 160)
        ( Those who were killed, however, may have been the lucky ones.  Here is the way some of the living were treated: )
        After capturing the castle at Bram in 1210, "instead of killing the vanquished, the commander of the Pope's crusaders, de Montfort, ordered his soldiers to lop off their noses and gouge out their eyes.  One man was allowed to keep one eye to guide the rest.  Each of them put a hand on the shoulder of the fellow in front and, like a giant bloodied whining insect, they wended their way to Cabaret to put the fear of God into the encampment there. ( p. 160)
        Pope Innocent "was kept informed at every stage.  He opened one letter to de Montfort with the words 'praise and thanks to God for that which He hath mercifully wrought through thee and through these others whom zeal for the orthodox faith hath kindled to this work against His most pestilential enemies.' "
        It wasn't bad enough that some "Vicars of Christ" used the name of Christ to visit unspeakable evil on others, this organization, which claimed to be God's one and only "Holy Catholic Church" institutionalized its cruel criminality and called its creation "the Holy Office of the Inquisition".
        Through more than five centuries, this "Holy Office" terrified, tortured and murdered innocent people by the thousands, on behalf of an uninterrupted stream of "Vicars of Christ".  Though their victims were called "heretics", the faith and lives of these "heretics" were often, if not always, more genuinely Christian than the "Holy Fathers" of "Holy Mother the Church" who thought themselves worthy of judging and condemning others.

        In the early days of the church, violence and war had been explicitly and officially condemned:
        As early as the year 384, a synod in Rome denounced the use of torture, and Gregory the Great in the sixth century ordered judges to ignore testimony given under duress..  In the Dark Ages, Nicholas I had condemned torture as a violation of the divine law.  But things changed for the worse in many respects, as time went on:
The Unimaginable Cruelty of the "Holy Office of the Inquisition" :
        "The terror began in earnest with Gregory IX, who ascended the papal throne in the year 1227.  Two years later, at the Council of Toulouse, Gregory decreed that heretics had to be handed over to the secular harm for punishment.  "It is the duty of every Catholic", he said, "to persecute heretics."
        The Inquisition is born
        Gregory published a bull establishing the Inquisition.  Anybody opposed to any papal pronouncement was to be identified as a "heretic" and handed handed over to the civil authorities for burning.  If they repented, they were to be imprisoned for life.  No pope ever took up to torch of terror with more enthusiasm.  (p. 162)
        Since Gregory VII, however, fanatcism had crept into the papacy.  Since the Pope cannot make a mistake, he must be blindly obeyed in all things, however trivial.  Between 1200 and 1500 a series of papal laws did away with every shade of difference in belief and discipline.(i.e. between God's will and man's whim).
        There was no limit to the cruelty of the "Holy Inquisition":
        Innocent IV's contribution in his Bull Ad extirpanda was to allow the Inquisition to use torture.  From then on, any disobedience even in thought was punishable.  Bad thoughts threatened church unity which was built on the loyalty to the Vicar of Christ.
        History does not support the view that the Catholic Church has always championed the rights of man.  In the 13th century, it went so far as to teach what the early church condemned: "heretics have no rights".  They can be tortured without scruple.  Like traitors to the state, heretics have put themselves outside the mercy of the law.  They must be put to death.  (P. 163)
        To the medieval Inquisition, everything was permitted.  The Dominican Inquisitors, being the Pope's appointees, were subject to no one but God and his Holiness.  They were outside the jurisdiction of bishops and of civil law.  In the Papal States they were a law unto themselves, acting as prosecutors and judges.  Their guiding principle was: "Better for a hundred innocent people to die than for one heretic to go free."
        They operated arbitrarily and in total secrecy.  Anyone present at the interrogation -- victim, scribe, executioner -- who broke his silence incurred a censure that only the Pope could lift.  The Inquisitors, like the pope, could make no mistake and do no wrong.
        By papal command, they were explicitly forbidden to have mercy on their victims.  Pity was un-Christian, where heresy was concerned.  They were told that his Holiness would take on himself any guilt they incurred if they overstepped the mark inadvertently.  Like the Nazi S S.  in the 20th century, they were able to torture and destroy with a quiet mind because their superior officer -- in this case, the Pope -- assured them that heretics were a dirty, diseased and contagious foe that must be purged at all costs and by all means. . .  ( pp. 163-164)
        { Until the end of the 19th-century there was on display in the Inquisitors' headquarters or the "Holy Office" as it is now called a large black book or Libro Negro, also known as the "book of the dead".  This manuscript in folio form was the charge of the grand Inquisitor.  Here is a sample of its instructions:         "Either the accused confesses and he is proved guilty by his own confession, or he does not confess, and is equally guilty on the evidence of witnesses.  If a person confesses the whole of what he is accused of, he is unquestionably guilty of the whole; but if he confesses only a part, he ought still to be regarded as guilty of the whole, since what he has confessed proves him to be capable of guilt as to the other points of the accusation. . .
        Bodily torture has ever been found the most salutary and efficient means of leading to spiritual repentence.  Therefore, the choice of the most to befitting mode of torture is left to the judge of the Inquisition, who determines according to the age, the sex, and the constitution of the party. . .  If, notwithstanding all the means employed, the unfortunate wretch still denies his guilt, he is to be considered as a victim of the devil: and, as such, deserves no compassion from the servants of God, nor the pity and indulgence of Holy Mother Church: he is as son of perdition.  Let him perish among the damned."         "It would be hard to find any document so contrary to the principles of natural justice.  According to the black book, a child must betray his parents, a mother must betray or child.  Not to do so it is a "stand against the Holy Office" and merits excommunication, that is, the exclusion from the sacraments and, if there is no amendment, exclusion from heaven."
        . . . One ghoulish feature of the tribunal was that it even tried the dead.  The Sixth General Council in the year 680 had declared that the Church can anathematise heretics, living and dead. . .  Hundreds of the dead were tried in this way.  Some had passed on 30 or 40 years before; one had been in his grave for 75 years. . .  This practice also enabled Inquisitors to acquire the goods and chattels of the dead.  When a corpse was pronounced guilty, his former assets were seized.  His heirs lost their inheritance.  A blameless Catholic son often found, after his father's postmortem conviction, that he was deprived not only of his property of also of all civil rights.  He was lucky to be left with his life as a special act of papal clemency.  (p. 165)
        The inquisitors never lost a single case.  There is no record of any acquittal.  When, rarely, the verdict was not proven, no one was declared innocent.  If the accused was not actually guilty of heresy, no matter.  Inquisitors believed that only one in every thousand souls would escape damnation anyway.
The victims
        The victim's ordeal began with knock on the door in the night.  A family man in, say France, Italy or Germany, rose from bed to find at the door the chief of police, armed guards and the Dominican.  From that moment he had no hope. Taken to the "Casa Santa" (or "Holy House", the Catholic name for a house of horrors!) , he was accused of heresy.  His guilt was presumed, though it was policy never to tell him what the charges were and he was forbidden to ask.  At no stage was he allowed to ask a question.  He soon learned that every semblance of justice was to be denied him.
        Alone and friendless, he was refused legal representation.  No lawyer dared take him on in any case.  Since acquittals were unknown, an unsuccessful lawyer risked being painted with heresy himself.  He, too, was likely to be excommunicated and dealt with by the secular arm.
        Defense witnesses were not allowed.  All prosecution witnesses -- their identities were kept secret from prisoner -- were given equal status.  Among them might be the accused's servants whom he had dismissed for theft or incompetence.  They might be persons who were refused a hearing in civil courts: convicted perjurers, the excommunicated, heretics.  Some testimony was nothing more than hearsay or idle gossip.  Cranks, perverts, maniacs, those with a grudge or a vendetta were acceptable.  Saddest of all, the witnesses were often members of the accused own family, who were told that, while the accused had no hope, complete frankness would ease the lot of the rest of family.
        No appeal against sentence was permitted.  What higher tribunal could there be that one acting in the pope's name?   (p. 166)
        Heresy was a fluid concept.  Anything in the slightest degree opposed to the papal system was "against the faith".  Examples: the Inquisitors arrested people for eating meat on Friday, omitting their Easter duties (to confess their sins to a priest and receive communion at least once every year), reading the Bible, saying it is a sin to persecute for conscience's sake, speaking ill of a cleric -- priest or bishop, any jibe against his Holiness was an indictable offense, sacrilege, blasphemy, sorcery, sodomy, non-payment of taxes to the Pope and the clergy, saying that usury is not a sin.  Any baptized person who did not light a fire on a cold Sabbath was presumed to be a covert Jew and merited death at the stake.
        The ultimate injustice was being accused of thinking heresy.  For the Inquisition, Orthodoxy was not only speaking and acting in orthodox (that is, papal) manner: it was also thinking as the pontiff would have a person think.  If under torture a prisoner proved he had never said or done anything heretical, he could still be punished for his inmost thoughts, his doubts, his temptations.  (p . 167)
        Usually, informers approached the place of the Inquisition under cover of night.  On being guaranteed anonymity in the pope's name, every bigot and villain was free to lie as he wished.
        The tribunal consisted of one or two Inquisitors, two or more witnesses, and members of the Inquisitors' staff.  All of them were hidden under hoods.  The phrase constantly on the judge's lips was "Tell the truth".  Whenever the prisoner asked for enlightenment, the inquisitor applied coolly and calmly: "Tell the truth".
        Once it was clear that the accused was not going to confess spontaneously, he was carried to the dungeon where the executioner had his instruments ready.  The sentence of heresy was read out under a crucifix, after which the executioner stripped the prisoner and tied him to a trestle.  "Tell the truth for the love of God," the inquisitor intoned ritually, "as the Inquisitors do not wish to see you suffer."
        With every part of the body accessible, cords were tied around the thighs and arms.  A belt was put under the waist with cords passing from it over the shoulders from front to back.  Each time the cords were tightened, the Dominican interrupted his recitation of the rosary in honour of the Virgin to say: "Tell the truth." If the prisoner was stubborn, sticks were put inside the cords to make a garrotte.  The effect was like a turniquet on several limbs at once.  (p . 168)


        There is an outstanding four-volume History of the Inquisition in Spain, published by Henry Charles Lea in 1907, which obviously only covers the infamies of the Inquisition in that one Catholic country.

    .    Not one Pope for over three centuries opposed this teaching -- which should therefore by rights be a permanent part of Catholic doctrine.  -- By means it, the Inquisition achieved unprecedented power.  The result was wholesale intimidation of the those who had no protection against the charge or even slightest suspicion of heresy.  (p. 163)
        What history shows is that, for more than six centuries without a break, the papacy was the sworn enemy of elementary justice.  Of eighty popes in a line from the thirteenth century on, not one of them disapproved of the theology and apparatus of Inquisition.  On the contrary, one after another added his own cruel touches to the workings of this deadly machine.
        The mystery is: how could popes continue in this practical heresy for generation after generation?  How could they deny at every point the Gospel of Jesus, who himself received an unjust trial and, though innocent, was crucified for heresy?
        The answer seems to be: once a pope like Gregory IX had initiated the Inquisition, pontiffs preferred to contradict the Gospel than an 'inerrant' predecessor, for that would bring down the papacy itself. . .
        Also to the popes alone was due the reintroduction of torture into the law courts.  It took papal prestige to overturn a long civilized tradition that torture was very wrong.  Lea wrote in The Inquisition in the Middle Ages:
        It [the Inquisition) introduced a system of jurisprudence which infected the criminal law of all the lands subjected to its influence, and rendered the administration of papal justice a cruel mockery for centuries.  It furnished the Holy See with a powerful weapon in aid of political aggrandizement, it tempted secular sovereigns to imitate the example, and it prostituted the name of religion to the vilest temporal ends. . .  The judgement of impartial history must be that the Inquisition was the monstrous offspring of mistaken zeal, utilized by the selfish greed and lust of power to smother the higher aspirations of humanity and stimulate the baser appetites.  (p. 175-6)


        During this period, Columbus rediscovered "the New World" on behalf of the Catholic King and Queen of Spain.  In 1529, Pope Clement VI gave these instructions to Charles V in his papal bull Intra arcana:
        "We trust that, as long as you are on earth, you will compel and with all zeal cause the barbarian nations (of the New World) to come to the knowledge of God, the maker and founder of all things, not only by edicts and admonitions, but also by force and arms, if needful, in order that their souls may partake of the heavenly kingdom."   (Washburn 1971:11).


        As horrible as is the Nazi Holocaust, few people are aware of the fact that the Roman Catholic authorities in the Catholic nation of Croatia conducted a holocaust of its own against the non-Catholics of that nation and its brutality was such that it shocked the Nazi Germans who witnessed it. The stated plan of those authorities, which included many in the Catholic hieararchy, was to convert one third of the Serbian Orthodox population, exile another third, and kill the final third :
http://www.reformation.org/holocaus.html

"Vicars of Christ" tortured and killed
innocent people by the thousands,
just because, like Jesus and most of the
Christians of his day, they were Jews, and
they did so in the name of Jesus of Nazareth.
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