The Vicars of Christ exposed (Part 1)

[Guest guest]

The Roman Catholic Church asserts that, of all the churches claiming

to be " Christian " , it alone is genuine because it alone stands on the

foundation which Jesus established for it when he said:

 

" 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. "

{ Matthew ch. 16:18--19}

 

But Jesus also spoke these words to Peter just a few verses later {

20--23 } :

 

" Get behind me, Satan. Thou art an obstacle in my path,

for the way thou thinkest is not God's way but man's. "

 

While the Bishops of Rome have made much of the first quote

above, history shows that more often than not, the so-called " Vicars

of Christ " have been " obstacles in God's path, for the way they have

thought, preached, written and acted has not been God's way but

man's. " Their's has been a " bait and switch " operation, where they

promise people " Christ " to get them into their establishment, but

then deliver their " Catholicism " instead. It is true that some

Catholics do find and follow Christ in the Catholic Church, but we

believe that happens not because of those who claim to be the " Vicars

of Christ " , but in spite of them. The sad truth, as history shows,

is that the papacy has modeled itself after the Emperors of Rome,

rather than the Carpenter of Nazareth, and has thereby

produced " Supreme Pontiffs " who were more " Rivals of Christ "

than " Vicars of Christ " .

 

Most of the material on this web page comes from an excellent

book, by a former Jesuit professor at Rome's prestigious Gregorian

University, Peter De Rosa. The Vicars of Christ was originally

published in America in 1988 but has been out of print for a while

and selling used on the internet for as much $ 139. But it has now

been republished in the new millennium (for about $20 once again) in

Ireland : www.poolbeg.com/asp/product.asp?product=137 & ph.

 

I can't recommend this book enough to Catholics and non-

Catholics alike. The excerpts below are only meant to give the

reader a sense of how little they really know about this very

powerful billion member church and how unjustified its claims are to

be " one " , " true " , " holy " and / or " catholic " ( i.e. universal ).

 

In light of what many books such as this one have revealed

about the kind of men who have been Bishops of Rome, how can anybody

with any kind of honesty and education continue to believe that Jesus

was talking about the Roman Catholic Church when he said that " the

gates of hell shall not prevail against it (my church) " ? It's

members are right to be proud of its church's many accomplishments,

but no more so than the members of many other religions and / or

other benevolent organizations. It is time that enlightened

Catholics urge their church to abandon its arrogant claim to be " the

One True Church " , to recognize, confess and repent for its own

failings, and to show other churches and institutions the respect

that they deserve.

 

The actual total number of popes is debatable, as there have been

times when there were two or even three contenders for that title.

This book lists 263 popes. It doesn't cover them all, but it covers

enough of them to show what a wierd idea it is for people to believe

that Christ entrusted " the keys of the kingdom of heaven " to a bunch

of colossal liars, mass-murderers, rapists, pimps, sadistic tyrants,

and financial connivers who turned the sacraments into gigantic money-

making schemes. Roman Catholics are actually taught that only

leaders who trace their ecclesiastical lineage to this long series of

monstrous churchmen have God on their side. Far from being the

exception to the rule, the author shows that this type of pope was

the rule, and it was holy and wise men of God like John XXIII, who

died trying to reform the church in the early 1960's, who were the

very rare exception.

 

 

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When a former Catholic priest such as myself criticizes the

church, Roman Catholic apologists think that they can escape the

truth by smearing the messengers with names like " anti-Catholic

bigots " or " defrocked priest " (neither of which is true of me -- not

that that makes any difference to them --). But sincere Catholics

have to think twice when Catholic popes and even saints are the ones

delivering that same message. As De Rosa says so well, the history

of the Church shows that the " fiercest attacks on the church came not

from without; they came from within - in fact, from the papacy

itself. " ( p. 46)

 

 

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As President Truman once observed,

 

" The only thing new in the world is the history that you don't know. "

 

 

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" One of the most intriguing conversations ever recorded in Rome was

between the English Pope, Adrian IV (1154 -- 59), and his plain-

spoken compatriot John of Salisbury, later Bishop of Chartres.

 

" What " , the Pope whispered, " do people really think of the Pope and

the Church? " " People are saying " , John answered boldly, " that the

church behaves more like a stepmother than a mother: that in it is a

fatal vein of avarice, scribes and Pharisees laying grievous burdens

on men's shoulders, accumulating precious furniture, covetous to a

degree. And " he added, " that the holy Father himself is burdensome

and scarcely to be borne. "

 

" St. Bonaventure, Cardinal and General of the Franciscans, likened

Rome to the harlot of the Apocalypse, thus anticipating Luther by

three centuries. This harlot, he said, makes kings and nations drunk

with the wine of her whoredoms. In Rome, he claimed to have found

nothing but lust and simony, even in the top ranks of the church.

Rome corrupts prelates, they corrupt their clergy, the clergy corrupt

the people. "

 

Dante, a devout Catholic, not only gave hell to pope after pope, he

dealt just as firmly with the Curia. Cardinals, who, according to a

devout Durham monk, were once 'glittering like prostitutes', are

stripped naked in the Fourth Circle of the Inferno.

 

" Bishop Pelayo, a papal aide in Avignon, suggested that the Holy See

had infected the whole church with the poison of avarice. " If the

pope behaves like this, people say, why shouldn't we? " On a quite

ordinary day, his master, Pope John XXII, excommunicated one

patriarch, five archbishops, thirty bishops and forty-six abbots.

Their only crime: they were behind in paying the pope his taxes. "

" Petrach's friend, Machiavelli wrote: " The Italians owe a great debt

to the Roman church and its clergy. Through their example, we have

lost all true religion and become complete unbelievers. Take it as a

rule, the nearer a nation dwells to the Roman Curia, the less

religion it has. "

 

" St. Catherine of Sienna told Pope Gregory XI that she did not need

to visit the papal court to smell it. 'The stench of the Curia,

Holiness, has long ago reached my city.' "

 

" In the 15th century, St. Antonino, Archbishop of Florence,

disapproved of his city selling bonds at a profit: this was usury.

When his critics argued, " The Roman church allows it " , Antonino

replied: " Members of the Curia have concubines. Does that prove that

concubinage is lawful? " The sheer ordinariness of his argument is

striking. "

 

" One reason for there being more prostitutes in Rome than in any

other capital city was the large number of celibates. The convents

were often brothels. Women sometimes took a dagger with them to

confession to protect themselves against their confessor. "

 

The 16th centuries scholar Erasmus, one of the wittiest men of his or

any age, said the tyranny of Rome was worse than that of the Turks.

He wrote a sketch in which Pope Julius is trying to bluster his way

past St. Peter at the heavenly gates. Peter screws up his eyes,

unable to recognize a successor (of St. Peter) in this bearded

warrior. Julius removes his helmet and dons his tiara. Peter is

even more suspicious. Finally an exasperated Julius holds up his

keys in front of Peter's nose. The apostle having examined them,

slowly shakes his head. " Sorry, but they will not fit anything in

this Kingdom. "

 

The Dutchman, Pope Adrian VI, confessed to the diet of Nuremberg in

1522 that all evils in the church proceeded from the Roman

Curia. " For many years, abominable things have taken place in the

chair of Peter, abuses in spiritual matters, translations of the

commandments, so that everything here has been wickedly perverted. "

" The Jesuit scholar and papal defender, Robert Cardinal Bellarmine

was later to admit: " For some years before Luther and Calvin there

was in the church almost no religion left. " The papacy, he said, had

almost eliminated Christianity. "

 

" Two years before he was excommunicated by Pope Leo, Luther wrote " It

is a distressing and terrible thing to see the Head of Christendom,

who boasts of being the Vicar of Christ and successor to St. Peter,

living in a worldly pomp that no king or emperor can equal: so that

in him who calls himself most Holy and most spiritual there is more

worldliness than in the world itself. " (pp. 119-120)

 

And one final evaluation by Cardinal Baronius, in his sixteenth-

century Ecclesiastical Annals, which the famous Catholic Lord Acton

called 'the greatest history of the Church ever written " . Cardinal

Baronius was understandably embarrassed by events he records with

remarkable honesty. The pontiffs of this period he calls " invaders

of the Holy See, less apostles than apostates " . On the Chair of St.

Peter sat not men but monsters in the shape of men.

 

" Vainglorious . . . filled with fleshly lusts and cunning in all

forms of wickedness governed Rome and prostituted the Chair of St.

Peter for their minions and paramours. "

 

This is the lesson he drew from all his observations is the

whole point of this section of the " Liberals Like Christ " web site:

" The chief lesson of these times is that the Church can get along

very well without popes. What is vital to the Church's survival is

not the pope but Jesus Christ. He is the head of the Church, not the

pope. "

 

" For (the people of Rome), the Gates of Hell had visibly prevailed.

If this was not the victory of the Prince of Darkness, what was? The

only question that puzzled them was not 'How can the pope save the

church?' but 'How can the pope save his own soul?' " (from p. 52-3)

 

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There are Catholics for whom reason is of no avail, because

their idea of " faith " is to believe in spite of human reason and

logic, as epitomized by this quote from the very scholarly defender

of the papacy, Jesuit Robert Bellarmine, who states in his book on

the Roman pontiff that " whatever the pope commands, however evil or

ridiculous, has to be obeyed, as if it is virtue itself. Whatever the

pope does, even when he deposes an emperor ( or Prime Minister or

President ?) on the most frivolous pretext, has to be accepted by

Catholics who henceforward have to obey the pope and not the

emperor. " (p. 221)

 

See Pope Urban's similarly nonsensical declaration to Galileo

further on in this web page.

 

 

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Pope John Paul II message to " Liberal " Catholics ( 16 September

1987 ) :

 

" It is sometimes reported that a large number of Catholics

today, do not adhere to the teaching of the Church on a number of

questions; notably, sexual and conjugal morality, divorce and

remarriage, some are reported as not accepting the Church's clear

position on abortion. It has also been noted that there is a tendency

on the part of some Catholics to be selective to their adherence to

the Church's moral teaching. It is sometimes claimed that dissent

from the Magisterium is totally compatible with being a " good

Catholic " and poses no obstacle to the reception of the sacraments.

This is a grave error that challenges the teaching office of the

Bishops of the United States and elsewhere. "

 

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Critics of the Papacy, beware !

 

The Council which met at Basle in 1432, like the Second

Vatican Council which was held in the 1960's, made some rather

idealistic efforts at church reform, declaring, for example that :

" From now on, all ecclesiastical appointments shall be made according

to the canons of the Church; all simony (the buying and selling of

spiritual goods for money) shall cease.

 

From now on, the Roman Curia, that is, the popes shall neither demand

nor receive any fees for ecclesiastical offices.

 

From now on, all priests whether of the highest or lowest rank, shall

put away their concubines, and. whoever within two months of this

decree neglects its demands shall be deprived of his office, though

he be the Bishop of Rome.

 

From now on, the ecclesiastical administration of each country shall

cease to depend on papal caprice....

 

The abuse of ban and anathema ( imposed on Civil leaders) by the

popes shall cease....

 

From now on, a pope should think not of this world's treasures but

only of those of the world to come. "

 

(No sooner had the reformers gone home, however, but) " The

ruling pope, Eugene IV, summoned his own Council at Florence. (The

Council of) Basle he labelled 'a beggarly mob, mere vulgar fellows

from the lowest dregs of the clergy, apostates, blaspheming rebels,

men guilty of sacrilege, jailbirds, men who without exception deserve

only to be hunted back to the devil whence they came.' " (p. 100)

Thanks to the superior military might of his family, Eugene won hast

the last word, which in this case may have been " Tell it to the

(eternal) Judge, to whom he had them dispatched.)

 

http://liberalslikechrist.org/about/PopesvsChrist-1.html