Peter de Rosa, Vicars of Christ: The Dark Side of the Papacy

[Guest guest]

>

> " After Peter, the centuries roll by, full of controversies, any one

> of which today would involve immediate recourse to Rome for a

> decision... We have already noted that not a single Father can

> find any hint of a Petrine office in the great biblical texts that

> refer to Peter. Papal supremacy and infallibility, so central to the

> Catholic church today, are simply not mentioned. Not a single creed,

> nor confession of faith, nor catechism, nor passage in patristic

> writings contains one syllable about the pope, still less about

> faith and doctrine being derived from him. "

>

> Peter de Rosa, Vicars of Christ: The Dark Side of the Papacy,

> p. 206.

> Publisher: Crown (January 13, 1988)

> ISBN-10: 0517570270

> ISBN-13: 978-0517570272

>

 

" The Pope and the Council contained aspects of papal history

completely unknown to me. I had been brought up as a Catholic, had

gone through the usual six-year seminary course prior to ordination,

had graduated from a Catholic university, the Gregorianum in Rome,

and had never come across such ideas. This is partly to be explained

by the partisan nature of seminary education and the fact that in

such establishments history is a Cinderella subject. The misbehaviour

of popes is lightly dwelt or even excised, rather in the way that

Trotsky was cut out of all Soviet history by Stalin ... My ignorance

must also be set down to the preference Catholics have for a history

of the papacy that can be read with white gloves on. It is not easy

to admit that one's leaders were often barbarians, or that the good

popes sometimes did far more harm than good.

 

Thus, quite late in my career, I felt obliged to examine the history

of Catholic ideas and institutions, the later of course including the

papacy. It was a long and sometimes painful form of a self-education. "

 

Peter de Rosa, Vicars of Christ: The Dark Side of the Papacy,

Bantam Press, 1988, p. 455-56.

 

(Peter de Rosa is author of many books including Bless Me, Father,

Christ and Original Sin, and Jesus Who became Christ. In Vicars of

Christ. He dispels myths about the papacy in favor of hard facts, and

provides everyone, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, with the true,

alarming story of the dark origins of the Church.)

 

 

" The subject of papal heretics and papal excommunication is little

practiced since 1870. Even the arrogant Innocent III admitted: 'I can

be judged by the church for a sin concerning matters of faith.'

Innocent IV, affirmed that all creatures were subject to him as Vicar

of the Creator, even, as in his own words: " Of course a pope can err

in matters of faith. " Therefore his naive creatures are to believe

not because the Pope believes but because the Church believes. In

simpler language even if popes err somehow, the Church will not err.

These words appeared in the original text of Innocent IV's Commentary

on the Decalogue. They were later erased from later editions. No one

knows why, since a number of popes said more or less the same.

 

The aura and awe surrounding the papacy today is so entrenched that

few Catholics question their conscience about the history of papal

infallibility, a long dark, mysterious mixture of humans — the normal

pious, the obscenely pompous, the truly mad, the frightfully

murderous, the devilishly lecherous, the senilely elderly, the

lustily youthful, and immature children. These popes were fallible

long before they became infallible. Roman pontiffs not only erred but

erred in fundamental matters of Christian doctrine.

 

Most Catholics go through life and never hear in school or church a

word of reproach for any pope. Yet a devout Catholic like Dante had

no scruple about dumping pontiff after pontiff in the deepest pit of

hell. "

 

Peter de Rosa, Vicars of Christ: The Dark Side of the Papacy,

Bantam Press, 1988, p. 30.

 

 

" It was probably Siricus, Bishop of Rome in 385, who first told

married priests they must give up sleeping in a double bed . . . Sex

with their wives had, as it were, soiled them for ever. This great

burst of puritanism, totally alien to the Gospel, was very unjust on

the priests' wives . . . He cites not one canon of a Council, no

letters of earlier popes, no biblical or patristic text. "

 

Peter de Rosa, Vicars of Christ: The Dark Side of the Papacy,

Bantam Press, 1988, p. 401.

 

 

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

 

De Rosa ( Prayers for Pagans and Hypocrites ) is an angry Catholic.

In the worst proselytizing tradition, this devil's advocate

overstates familiar arguments, bludgeoning the reader with his

dossier against the Church. Among De Rosa's tamer charges: Jesus

renounced possessions, but his vicars celebrate high mass garbed in

cloth of gold; the Church has never lifted strictures against usury,

yet the Vatican operates a bank. De Rosa sweeps through Church

history to parade popes who begat children, popes who fornicated on a

grand scale, popes who married. Then in the second half of this

polemic, he addresses Church teaching, conjoining the " immaculate

conception " doctrine to decrees governing birth control, abortion,

celibacy. The doctrine of papal infallibility is dealt with, as is

Church anti-Semitism through the ages leading to the Holocaust

silence of Pius XII, the " one man in the world whose witness Hitler

feared. " And in wrapping up his catalog of " the sins of the papacy, "

De Rosa virtually dismisses internal reform: " It is not Catholics but

other Christians who chiefly can make the papacy what it ought to

be. "

Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

 

From Library Journal

In his history of the papacy, former Jesuit De Rosa aims to undermine

belief in papal infallibility. Although he claims to be a friend of

the Catholic Church, and does at times express admiration for the

holiness of many of the Popes, his book is so heavily weighted with

information on the corruption of the Papacy that it would be hard for

any reader to see any good in the office. The book cannot be faulted

historically or stylistically, though most of the information

including the most sordidcan be found in the standard Roman Catholic

sources. Patrick Grainfeld's The Limits of the Papacy (Crossroad,

1987) offers a more balanced view of the expansion of papal power.

Augustine J. Curley, Newark Abbey, N.J.

Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

 

 

Expose of the history of the Papacy from an insiders view., February

24, 1999

By A Customer

 

This book would make your hair curl. No wonder the christians got

such a poor reputation!

 

 

Syllabus of Errors... And Crimes, May 12, 2004

By " bute2 " (Paris, France)

 

This book had me shaking with laughter and trembling with rage--rage

at the misdeeds of the papacy, not the book. It brilliantly recounts

the endless crimes, hypocrisies, errors, indecencies, murders,

debaucheries, illogicalities, idiocies and fanaticisms of the papacy

from the " first pope " to the present. It is written in a highly

engaging and breezy journalistic style, with more than a dash of

humour and wit. For the most part the author lets the deeds (or

rather, misdeeds) of the Bishops of Rome speak for themselves,

although his own dim view of his subject is abundantly clear

throughout. He is himself a former priest (educated at the Gregorian

University in Rome) who unfolds the theologial groundlessness of the

office of Pope itself, the ethical depravity of a depressingly high

percentage of its occupants, the religious zealotry of many Popes,

and the laughable absurdity of so many Roman Catholic doctrines such

as Papal Infallibility. The overall effect of this is devastating for

the Papacy, which emerges from the pages of this book as one fo the

most hypocritical, malevolent and unjustifiable institutions in human

history--which is saying a great deal. The book is the perfect

antidote to the awe in which the office of Pope is held today, and a

very welcome reminder of the dark history of a powerful institution

built on a mountain of absurdities and atrocities that we all-too-

easily forget. De Rosa has done his readers a great service in

putting that history into a single volume without mincing his words

of pulling his punches. Read it and weep.

 

 

Authenticity and sources, July 23, 2000

By C.T. Garrett (Houston, Tx USA)

 

Peter De Rosa was brought up Catholic, went through the six year

seminary course prior to ordination, and graduated from a Catholic

university, the Gregorianum in Rome. He dedicated eight pages of

bibliography listing authors, titles, and year published. Not to

mention the fact that historians such as Edward Gibbon in " The

Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire " substantiates the demeanor, to

say the least, of the Papacy.

 

De Rosa had done a marvelous job in exposing the " Great Lie " ,

revealing its truths with documented sources some of which are Papal

documents themselves which can be found on the Vatican website, if

you have a hard time taking his word for it. And if your still not

sure that what De Rosa says is true, read Revelation by John the

Apostle. Surely John's vision will substantiate all that was done

that De Rosa has documented, even if you read the Latin Vulgate

version. <smile> There's no hiding the truth, Vicars of Christ is De

Rosa's testimony of the truth, another witness, another Martin Luther

another Wycliffe, another man that had the courage to speak out

against the horrid evilness of the extension of the Roman Empire, and

its time is short.

 

 

Too bad this is out-of-print, February 1, 2002

By Michael Freeman (Blanchard, OK)

 

This is a book that every Christian and every Catholic needs to read.

De Rosa is a Catholic himself, though the pope would probably

consider him less-than-orthodox. His description of the corruption

and wickedness of the " Mother of Harlots " is certainly less than

flattering.

 

De Rosa chronicles the centuries of Roman Catholic " rule " over

the " Church. " It is fascinating to read the history behind the

development of the " Church " as we know it, and behind some of the

doctrines of Catholicism. The teaching of Purgatory, for instance,

grew out of the need to raise funds. The Pope invented Purgatory so

he could sell indulgences in order to allow souls out!

 

After reading this description of the vast wickedness of this pseudo-

church, one must read the seventeenth chapter of Revelation. The

Apostle John perfectly described what was to come!