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PAPAL CLAIMS ARE UNREASONABLE

The new pope is elected by votes cast in the Sistine Chapel. Yet the Church says that the Holy Spirit chooses the pope for it. So how does the Holy Spirit manage to get voters to think his way? What if they don’t want to? Why is the Church not infallible when it picks the pope for it has picked some disasters? Does it make sense to say God picks the pope at all? It would be more reasonable if names were just pulled out of a hat for then the Spirit could make the right slip of paper miraculously get between the cardinal’s thumb and fingers when he is pulling it out. The Holy Spirit is stronger with the pope than with anyone so shouldn’t the pope have some control over who his successor will be? This is all ecclesiastical politics.

The pope allegedly functions as a marker for the true Church. Catholics argue that when there is a true Church there must be a pope. But if the Church errs then it is not the true Church and Christians are obliged to set up a reformed one which would then be the true Church. The Catholic Church is drunk with error and obstinately refuses to change therefore the papacy is a hoax for it does not mark a true Church.

Reason and Belief, pages 82-83, tells us that Innocent I excommunicated the Pelagians for heresy and the Greek pope, Zozimus who succeeded him cancelled the excommunication and accepted the Pelagians as true orthodox Catholics. Nicholas III was contradicted by John XXII who disputed his doctrine that Christ and the apostles practiced extreme poverty.

If popes were really markers for the true Church only men who would not excommunicate unjustly would be chosen by God. Popes that do excommunicate unfairly will only divide the Church. Even if an excommunication is invalidated by its unfairness a division still results. The Church says the pope will be forcibly stopped by God if he tries to make an infallible dogma that owing to its falsity should not be made at all. But unreasonable or mistaken excommunications do the faith more harm than fake dogmas and always cause harm to the deposit of faith. They always affect belief in what group is the true Church which is worse if the true Church has to claim to be infallible to the exclusion of all others. If the pope were infallible and if the Church was infallible then their excommunications would be infallible too. But neither of these entities go that far. Why should we trust the pope at all when he says he is infallible? Infallibility is just a superstition. We can take it for granted that when the pope or Church excommunicates anybody for heresy that they are also automatically stating that the doctrine at the centre of the issue is automatically and indirectly and authentically being infallibly defined. People were excommunicated for protesting against the persecution of Jews and heretics and witches by the papacy. What does that tell you then?

Doctrinal disagreement in the one true Church means there are at least two factions and one of the factions has to be closer to the truth than the other or the others meaning you have the truest Church within the true Church! The divisions cannot really be one Church for you need doctrinal unity to have a Church. Their existence in one Church is a case where looks can be deceiving. Doctrinal division is worse than a schism in which the two factions still follow similar doctrines for they may be divided in physical unity but the unity of doctrine is more important for it is basic to physical unity.

If the pope or Church condemns something as heresy then it follows that they are saying you will be excommunicated if you refuse to believe in it. So even if infallibility is not expressly invoked it is indirectly invoked for if excommunications have to be infallible it follows that they have to be just and they can only be just if a person is stepping outside the faith by denying a particular doctrine meaning that the doctrine is being recognised by the Church as a part of the infallible inerrant faith.

There have been some disputed elections of popes in the past. The cardinals who elected Urban VI later said that they did it for they were afraid of a mob and they declared him an antipope and so they elected a new pope, Clement VII. The Church was divided causing the Great Western Schism. This happened several times in the history of the papacy and who the real pope was is just a matter of opinion. If such a thing could happen then surely the pope can fall into heresy and lead the Church astray? It is better to have a pope who goes bad than to be following a man as the infallible Vicar of Christ and the rock the Church is built on who might not even be pope. If such a thing can happen it is possible for somebody who is invalidly elected – for example, somebody who doesn’t want to be a real pope but just goes through the motions to get favours from the Devil or out of hatred for Christ – to be thought by the whole Church to be pope. Perhaps Pius IX who loved power so much wasn’t a real pope? Some rock!

The papacy is a blight on the world with many of its evil policies. To argue that the Catholic Church is the true Church because it is led by Peter’s successor is simplistic. Yet it is the kind of thinking that the Catholic Church deceptively fosters in the naïve.

APPENDIX

FROM ST GREGORY’S SEMINARY

The book published by a trusted Catholic publishing company, Image Books, and written by a Seminary lecturer, Thomas Bokenkotter, A Concise History of the Catholic Church, makes some astonishingly frank admissions about the real history of the papacy. When a respected Catholic history book says things without meaning to that undermine the papacy we have to rejoice.

It tells us that in the fourth and fifth centuries the papacy began to work on gaining primacy over the Church and getting acceptance for it being boss (page 96). The Eastern section of the Church was opposed to this as was the Latin Church in Africa. They did not want Rome telling them what to believe or laying down the law on how they should be run (page 97).

Pope Nicholas I who died in 867 AD used force against any Archbishop who opposed his claim to be head of the Church (page 132).

For the first millennium, and well into the second, the popes never claimed that they had the authority to choose bishops (page 134). Had they been heads of the Church, their main job would have been to conserve the faith by having a say in who would be consecrated bishop and choosing the right one. There was a danger of heretics being chosen and the Church being corrupted. The modern popes see their choosing of bishops as the most important part of being pope and it follows that if the pope is the head of the Church any bishop he has not chosen is illegitimate for the pope cannot run the Church unless he uses the bishops as his eyes, hands and feet. When candidates for ordination to the priesthood were just tested if they knew the basics of the faith for a few days and then ordained (page 153) there had to have been loads of priests and therefore bishops who did not understand their religion and so who would have preached heresy. Their allegiance to the Church might have been based on what they though the Church was and on what it taught and they might have broken away or lost their faith if they found their perception was wrong.

The Church and the papacy forbade usury (page 162). This tradition has been forgotten though the Church says tradition is infallible truth.

Gregory VII following Pope Gelasius held that even people who are not Christians are obliged to obey the princes of the Church for spiritual authority comes before the state (page 124). Boniface VIII decreed in Unam Sanctum that no earthly power had the right to judge the pope (page 187).

If the papacy is not to rule over the whole world then these men were heretics and not real popes.

BOOKS CONSULTED

A CONCISE HISTORY OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH, Thomas Bokenkotter, Image Books, New York, 1979

A HANDBOOK ON THE PAPACY, William Shaw Kerr, Marshall Morgan & Scott, London, 1962

ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS CATHOLICS ARE ASKING, Tony Coffey, Harvest House Publishers, Oregon ,2006

A WOMAN RIDES THE BEAST, Dave Hunt Harvest House Eugene Oregon 1994

ALL ONE BODY – WHY DON’T WE AGREE? Erwin W Lutzer, Tyndale, Illinois, 1989

ANTICHRIST IS HE HERE OR IS HE TO COME? Protestant Truth Society, London

APOLOGIA PRO VITA SUA, John Henry Newman (Cardinal), Everyman’s Library, London/New York, 1955

BELIEVING IN GOD, PJ McGrath, Millington Books in Association with Wolfhound, Dublin, 1995

BURNING TRUTHS, Basil Morahan, Western People Printing, Ballina, 1993

CATHOLICISM AND CHRISTIANITY, Cecil John Cadoux, George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1928

CATHOLICISM AND FUNDAMENTALISM, Karl Keating, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 1988

DAWN OR TWILIGHT? HM Carson, IVP, Leicester, 1976

DIFFICULTIES, Mgr Ronald Knox and Sir Arnold Lunn, Eyre & Spottiswoode, London, 1958

ENCOUNTERS OF THE FOURTH KIND, Dr RJ Hymers, Bible Voice, Inc, Van Nuys, CA, 1976

FROM ROME TO CHRIST, J Ward, Irish Church Missions, Dublin

FUTURIST OR HISTORICIST? Basil C Mowll, Protestant Truth Society, London

GOD’S WORD, FINAL, INFALLIBLE AND FOREVER, Floyd McElveen, Gospel Truth Ministries, Grand Rapids, MI, 1985

HANDBOOK TO THE CONTROVERSY WITH ROME, Karl Von Hase, Vols 1 and 2, The Religious Tract Society, London, 1906

HANS KUNG HIS WORK AND HIS WAY, Hermann Haring and Karl-Josef Kuschel, Fount-Collins, London, 1979

HERESIES AND HOW TO AVOID THEM, Editors Ben Quash and Michael Ward, SPCK, London, 2007

HITLER’S POPE, THE SECRET HISTORY OF PIUS XII, John Cornwell, Viking, London, LONDON 1999

HOW SURE ARE THE FOUNDATIONS? Colin Badger, Wayside Press, Canada

HOW DOES GOD LOVE ME? Martin R De Haan II, Radio Bible Class, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1986

INFALLIBILITY IN THE CHURCH, Patrick Crowley, CTS, London, 1982

INFALLIBLE? Hans Kung, Collins, London, 1980

IS THE PAPACY PREDICTED BY ST PAUL? Bishop Christopher Wordsworth, The Harrison Trust, Kent, 1985

LECTURES AND REPLIES, Thomas Carr, Archbishop of Melbourne, Melbourne, 1907

NO LIONS IN THE HIERARCHY, Fr Joseph Dunn, Columba Press, Dublin, 1994

PETER AND THE OTHERS, Rev FH Kinch MA, Nelson & Knox Ltd, Townhall Street, Belfast

POPE FICTION, Patrick Madrid, Basilica Press, San Diego California 1999

PUTTING AWAY CHILDISH THINGS, Uta Ranke-Heinemann, HarperCollins, San Francisco, 1994

REASON AND BELIEF, Brand Blanschard, George Allen & Unwin Ltd, London, 1974

REASONS FOR HOPE, Editor Jeffrey A Mirus, Christendom College Press, Virginia, 1982

ROMAN CATHOLIC CLAIMS, Charles Gore MA, Longmans, London, 1894

ROMAN CATHOLIC OBJECTIONS ANSWERED, Rev H O Lindsay, John T Drought Ltd, Dublin

ROMAN CATHOLICISM, Lorraine Boettner, Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, Phillipsburg, NJ, 1962

SECRETS OF ROMANISM, Joseph Zacchello, Loizeaux Brothers, New Jersey, 1984

ST PETER AND ROME, J B S, Irish Church Missions, Dublin

THE CHURCH AND INFALLIBILITY, B C Butler, The Catholic Book Club, London, undated

THE EARLY CHURCH, Henry Chadwick, Pelican, Middlesex, 1987

THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY, LION BOOKS, Herts, 1977

THE LATE GREAT PLANET EARTH, Hal Lindsay, Lakeland, London, 1974

THE LION CONCISE BOOK OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT, Tony Lane, Lion, Herts, 1986

THE PAPACY IN PROPHECY! Christadelphian Press, West Beach S A, 1986

THE PAPACY ITS HISTORY AND DOGMAS, Leopold D E Smith, Protestant Truth Society, London

THE PETRINE CLAIMS OF ROME, Canon JE Oulton DD, John T Drought Ltd, Dublin

THE PRIMITIVE FAITH AND ROMAN CATHOLIC DEVELOPMENTS, Rev John A Gregg, BD, APCK, Dublin, 1928

THE SHE-POPE, Peter Stanford, William Hienemann, Random House, London, 1998

THE VATICAN PAPERS, Nino Lo Bello, New English Library, Sevenoaks, Kent, 1982

TRADITIONAL DOCTRINES OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH EXAMINED, Rev CCJ Butlin, Protestant Truth Society, London

VICARS OF CHRIST, Peter de Rosa, Corgi, London, 1993

WAS PETER THE FIRST POPE? J Bredin, Evangelical Protestant Society, Belfast

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO HEAVEN?, Dave Hunt, Harvest House, Eugene, Oregon, 1988

THE WEB

Pope John Paul II condemned as an immoral and traitorous and heretical pope

www.trosch.org

Of Bones and Boners: St Peter at the Vatican, Frank R. Zindler ,

www.atheists.org/church/bones.html

Has Rome Become the Seat of the Antichrist? Br Michael Diamond OSB

http://catalog.com/endtimes/diamond.html

This page claims that prophecies about the Vatican apostatising have come true and that the pope, John Paul II is a fake and a heretic. It reports on evidence from Masons and Communists that they had a plan to subvert the Church from within and had placed spies and impostors in the Church. Pope John Paul II was the first pope not to take the standard oath to defend the traditions of the Church and the canon laws and to excommunicate anyone who threatened the faith of the Church. That shows that there is more to this heretic than meets the eye and he is famous for allowing fake Catholics to function within the Church. Padre Pio who was famous for seeing the future snubbed Karol Wojtyla, he who would become John Paul II. It is said too that John Paul II having stated that religious freedom is lawful is contradicting Leo XIII who said that once you give men the right to believe whatever they will you give them the right to refuse to believe in loving God and remove all restraint on crime. It has been noticed too that the pope claims that Muslims worship the same God as Christians though the Muslim God said that anybody who believes in a three in one God is as impure as dung. In 1986 the pope let ash that was a sign of devotion to the Hindu god Shiva be placed on his forehead. In Assisi 1986 the pope invited devil-worshipping animists to pray with him there for peace. The psalm says that the gods of the pagans are all evil or demons (95:5). And there have been similar meetings since, ones in Warsaw and Bari for instance. Another fault is that Cardinal Ratzinger, the pope’s right hand man, has stated that the resurrection of Jesus is not a historical event the way the crucifixion of Jesus is. The 1917 Code of Canon Law states that if the pope becomes a heretic he is no longer pope. Even the autocratic Innocent III stated that a pope who becomes a heretic is to be cast out and ignored.

Friday, 28 December 2007