Spanish Inquisiton

jamiec said:

Perhaps the “Enskotiōsis” - from Gk. *skotia*, “darkness”.

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jamiec said:

The sources I have found on-line give figures of between 50 million and 68 million. My guess is that I found the figure of 130 million in the first of the Alberto comics, published by Jack Chick. I no longer have my copy, and I am very unwilling to buy another in order to verify the reference, because I do not wish to enrich any part of the Chick tracts business.

There seem to be quite a few sources online that give the lower figure of of 50 million to 68 million. I have not, for several years, researched any sources I know to be affiliated with the SDAs.

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The Liturgist said:

Well someone in this thread did claim 125 million, so unfortunately even the shockingly offensive and inaccurate claim of 50-68 million casualties, which exceeds those of Stalin and Hitler combined, does not represent the nadir of this repugnant anti-Catholic libel, which is evocative in its scale and total inaccuracy to those infamous accusations made against Semitic peoples such as practitioners of Judaism by various European and West Asian nation-states which had developed anti-Semitic nationalist policies, such as the Third Reich, Czarist Russia, the USSR and the Islamic Republic of Iran.

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The Liturgist said:

It does, in that it refers to the Church, but how we interpret the Church is a matter of ecclesiological debate.

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As an aside, I would note that the only ways I can think of one might arrive at 125 million people killed in total by Roman Catholics would be by either attributing most casualties of the two World Wars to Roman Catholicism, which is preposterous, since in no sense was the RCC responsible for them, or by attributing all cases of unnatural death in Western Europe between the fall of the Roman Empire and the Renaissance to Roman Catholicism, which is equally preposterous, given the Plague that spread into Europe from Asia along the trade routes of the Mongolian Empire being responsible for so much death during that historical epoch.

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The Liturgist said:

Actually insofar as the number includes the Spanish Inquisition, it is topical. Thus to respond to the rest of your post:

There is no doubt that a tremendous number of people lived and died during the long span of Christian history. Nor is it controversial that many of them died unjustly—sometimes at the hands of fellow Christians, whether Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, or Protestant. What is controversial—what I believe must be rejected—is the claim that between 50 and 125 million people were killed by the Roman Catholic Church itself, as a matter of direct religious persecution.

It is variously a demographic impossibility, a methodological error, and a collapse of historical proportion.

We must distinguish between what can be imagined and what can be responsibly claimed. For example:

• It is true that Europe’s population may have reached 100 million at points during the High Middle Ages. But that includes all people, of all faiths, all ages, many of whom died of plague, war, famine, childbirth, or ordinary disease. It does not mean the Roman Catholic Church killed them.

• It is true that much persecution has gone undocumented, especially outside Europe. But again, persecution is not evidence of a systematic campaign responsible for 50 to 125 million deaths.

• It is true that injustice has been done in the name of religion. But the same is true of secular ideologies. Numbers matter. If we don’t respect scale, we turn history into propaganda.

This number—whether 50 million or 125 million—is not grounded in serious scholarship. No Vatican decrees, no episcopal records, no court registers, no military archives, no papal bulls, no legal transcripts, no demographic studies, no forensic evidence has ever indicated a death toll remotely near that figure attributable to Roman Catholic ecclesiastical authority alone.
When we abandon evidence in favor of enormity, we are no longer doing history. We are doing myth.

“Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.” — Exodus 20:16

“He that hideth hatred with lying lips, and he that uttereth a slander, is a fool.” — Proverbs 10:18

“But I say unto you, That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment.” — Matthew 12:36

Let me speak plainly: I am not a Roman Catholic. I am Eastern Orthodox, with deep affinity for the Oriental Orthodox. My Church and other non-Latin Churches were often persecuted—by Roman Catholics, by Byzantines, by Muslims, by secular states. But truth is not a weapon we may bend for our own cause. If I refuse to defend the Roman Catholic Church from falsehood now, merely because I belong to another communion, I am no better than the persecutor who cared more for power than for truth.

The Roman Catholic Church has made serious historical errors. So have the Orthodox, Protestants, monarchs, revolutionaries, and secular empires. The pursuit of truth demands that we neither minimize real evil nor invent imaginary ones.

To anticipate a possible objection: yes, this thread concerns the Spanish Inquisition—but that only underscores the problem. If a total of 3,000–5,000 deaths from that infamous tribunal, over several centuries, is the best-attested figure from one of the most infamous institutions in Western ecclesiastical history, it makes the claim of 50–125 million deaths across the same Church structure all the more indefensible. It is not an evasion of the topic to challenge the number. It is, in fact, required by the topic.

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The best estimates from qualified historians for the Spanish Inquisition—perhaps the most cited incident in these accusations—are around 3,000 to 5,000 deaths over several centuries. Not 125 million. Not 1 million. Not even 10,000

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The war of the Albigenses was the pretext used by the popes for the establishment of the ancient Inquisition; the necessity of checking the apostasy of the converts from Judaism was urged as the reason for introducing the modern. While the Spaniards were engaged in continual wars with one another or with the Moors, the Jews, who had been settled for ages in the Peninsula, by addicting themselves to trade and commerce, had, in the fourteenth century, engrossed the wealth of the nation, and attained to great influence in the government both of Castile and Aragon. Those who were indebted to them, and those who envied them on account of the civil offices which they held, united in stirring up the religious prejudices of the populace against them; and in one year five thousand Jews fell a sacrifice to popular fury. With the view of saving their lives, many submitted to baptism, and it is computed that, in the course of a few years, nearly a million of persons renounced the law of Moses and made profession of the Christian faith.

In the course of the first year in which it was erected, the inquisition of Seville, which then extended over Castile, committed two thousand persons alive to the flames, burnt as many in effigy, and condemned seventeen thousand to different penances.

According to a moderate computation, from the same date to 1517, the year in which Luther made his appearance, thirteen thousand persons were burnt alive, eight thousand seven hundred were burnt in effigy, and one hundred and sixty-nine thousand seven hundred and twenty-three were condemned to penances; making in all one hundred and ninety-one thousand four hundred and twenty-three persons condemned by the several tribunals of Spain in the course of thirty-six years.

There is reason for thinking that this estimate falls much below the truth. For, from 1481 to 1520, it is computed that in Andalusia alone thirty thousand persons informed against themselves, from the dread of being accused by others, or in the hope of obtaining a mitigation of their sentence.

Puigblanch, Inquisition Unmasked, i. 158. According to this author the number of the reconciled and banished in Andalusia, from 1480 to 1520, was a hundred thousand; while forty-five thousand were burnt alive in the archbishopric of Seville. (Ibid. vol. ii. p. 180.)”

And down to the commencement of the seventeenth century, the instances of absolution were so rare, that one is scarcely to be found in a thousand cases; the inquisitors making it a point, that, if possible, none should escape without bearing a mark of their censure, as at least suspected de levi, or in the lowest degree.

It was to be expected that the inquisitors would exert their power in checking the cultivation of biblical learning. In 1490, many copies of the Hebrew Bible were committed to the flames at Seville by the order of Torquemada; and in an auto-da-fe celebrated soon after at Salamanca, six thousand volumes shared the same fate, under the pretext that they contained judaism, magic, and other illicit arts.

Deza, archbishop of Seville, who had succeeded Torquemada as inquisitor-general, ordered the papers of Lebrixa to be seized, and passed sentence against him as suspected of heresy, for the corrections which he had made on the text of the Vulgate, and his other labors in elucidation of the scriptures. “The archbishop’s object (says Lebrixa, in an apology which he drew up for himself) was to deter me from writing. He wished to extinguish the knowledge of the two languages on which our religion depends; and I was condemned for impiety, because, being no divine but a mere grammarian, I presumed to treat of theological subjects. If a person endeavor to restore the purity of the sacred text, and point out the mistakes which have vitiated it, unless he will retract his opinions, he must be loaded with infamy, excommunicated, and doomed to an ignominious punishment! Is it not enough that I submit my judgment to the will of Christ in the scriptures? must I also reject as false what is as clear and evident as the light of truth itself? What tyranny! To hinder a man, under the most cruel pains, from saying what he thinks, though he express himself with the utmost respect for religion, to forbid him to write in his closet or in the solitude of a prison, to speak to himself, or even to think! On what subject shall we employ our thoughts, if we are prohibited from directing them to those sacred oracles which have been the delight of the pious in every age, and on which they have meditated by day and by night?”

Arbitrary as this court was in its principles, and tyrannical and cruel as it has proved in its proceedings, so blinded did the Spanish nation become as to felicitate herself on the establishment of the Inquisition. The cities of ancient Greece vied with one another for the honor of having given birth to Homer. The cities of modern Germany have warmly disputed the honor of having invented the art of printing. Even the credit of having first adopted this German invention has given rise to an honorable rivalry among the states of Italy; and the monastery of St. Subiac, in the Campagna di Roma, has endeavored to wrest the palm from both Milan and Venice.

But the cities of Spain have engaged in a more than inglorious contest for the credit of having been the first seat of an institution which, after failing to strangle learning in its birth, has all along persecuted it with the most unrelenting malice. The claims of the inhabitants of Seville are engraven on a monument erected in their city to the memory of this event. Segovia has contested this honor with Seville, and its historians are seriously divided on the question, whether the Holy Office held its first sitting in the house of the marques de Moya, or in that of the majorat de Caceres.

It is but justice, however, to the Spaniards to state, that this perverted and degrading sentiment was the effect of the Inquisition, and formed no original trait in the national character. The fact is now ascertained beyond all question, that the erection of this tribunal was viewed by the nation with the greatest aversion and alarm.

Talavera, the excellent archbishop of Granada, resisted its introduction with all his influence. The most enlightened Spaniards of that age spoke of its proceedings with horror and shame. “The losses and misery which the evil ministers of the Inquisition have brought upon my country can never be enough deplored,” says the chevalier de Cordova, Gonzalez de Ayora, in a letter to the secretary of king Ferdinand.

“O unhappy Spain, mother of so many heroes, how unjustly disgraced by such a horrible scourge!” exclaims Peter Martyr.

D’Arbues, the first inquisitor of Aragon, and afterwards canonized as a martyr, was not the only individual who fell a sacrifice to the indignation against the Inquisition, shared by all classes of the community. Torquemada, the first inquisitor-general, was obliged to adopt the greatest precautions for his personal safety. In his journeys he was uniformly accompanied by a guard of fifty familiars on horseback, and two hundred on foot; and he had always on his table the tusk of a wild animal, to which he trusted for discovering and neutralizing poisons.

In Aragon, where the inhabitants had been accustomed to the old Inquisition for two centuries and a half, the introduction of it in its new form excited tumults in various places, and met with a resistance almost national.

No sooner had the inhabitants of Castile felt the yoke, than they sought to throw it off; and the cortes of that kingdom joined with those of Aragon and Catalonia, in representing the grievances which they suffered from the Inquisition, and in demanding a radical reform on its iniquitous and oppressive laws.

It is unnecessary to say, that these attempts, which were renewed at intervals during thirty years from the establishment of that tribunal, proved finally abortive.

This unfortunate issue was in no small degree owing to cardinal Ximenes, who contributed more than any other individual to rivet the chains of political and spiritual despotism on his native country. Possessed of talents which enabled him to foresee the dire effects which the Inquisition would inevitably produce, he was called to take part in public affairs at a time when these effects had decidedly appeared. It was in his power to abolish that execrable tribunal altogether as an insufferable nuisance, or at least to impose such checks upon its procedure as would have rendered it comparatively harmless. But he not only allowed himself to be placed at its head, but employed all his influence and address in defeating every attempt to reform its worst and most glaring abuses. In 1512, the New Christians made an offer of six hundred thousand crowns to Ferdinand, to assist him in carrying on the war in Navarre, on condition that a law were passed enjoining the testimonies of the witnesses, in processes before the Inquisition, to be made public. With the view of diverting the king from acceding to this proposal, Ximenes seconded his remonstrances against it by placing a large sum of money at the royal disposal. And, in 1516, when a similar offer was made to the ministers of Charles V., and when the universities and learned men of Spain and Flanders had given their opinion, that the communication of the names and depositions of the witnesses was conformable both to divine and human laws, the cardinal again interposed, and by messengers and letters urged the rejection of the measure, upon the wretched plea that a certain nameless witness had been assassinated, and that the person of the king was put in danger by the admission of converted Jews into the palace.

He exerted himself with equal zeal in resisting the applications which the New Christians made to the court of Rome for the same object.

During the eleven years that he was at the head of this tribunal, fifty-one thousand one hundred and sixty-seven persons were condemned, of whom two thousand five hundred and thirty-six were burnt alive.

Not satisfied with perpetuating the Inquisition in his native country, he extended the precious boon to two quarters of the globe, by establishing one tribunal at Oran in Africa, and another at Cuba in America.

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Amo2 said:

Nevertheless, regarding the world wars though, more than just a little contention exists concerning the Vatican's support of Adolf Hitler and Mussolini. Without which perhaps, these tyrants would not have been so successful. The Vatican was the first political entity to sign an accord with the Nazi party. If religions and or Christianity is going to get entangled in the politics of this world, then they will therefore be somewhat responsible for the effects of the political entities or principles which they supported.

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In Pope Pius XI did sign a concord trying to protect the rights of Catholics , which Hitler quickly violated. He issued encylicals against Fascism and Nazism, "We Do Not Need to Acquaint You" and Mit Brennender Sorge (“With Burning Anxiety”). That was written in German and distributed to all of the priests in Germany by hand. Tragically for so many, the United States only entered the war after Germany declared war on the U.S. in December, 1941. The New York Times and other publications had very much suppressed knowledge of the plight of Jews in Germany.​

Pope Pius XII's 1942 Christmas speech condemning Nazism was the "shot heard round the world." The Nazis knew well how strongly Catholics, of all of the religions, opposed them, there were 2,720 total clerics held at Dachau concentration camp and 2,579 of them were Catholics. There are many anti-Catholics who have tried to rewrite history, be careful of your sources. Pope Pius XII, for example, has been criticized in recent times but the truth is he was honored by the Jews themselves after the war for his contributions.​

Amo2 said:

the Vatican's support of Adolf Hitler and Mussolini

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The Liturgist said:

The Vatican was opposed to Hitler, and while initially Mussolini did some things which were meant to curry favor with the Church, such as the negotiation of the Lateran treaty under which Italy recognized the sovereignty of the Vatican City State and its extraterritorial posessions (which were the sole remnants of the Papal States which had been illegally annexed by the Kingdom of Savoy in its bid to unify the diverse ethnic groups into “Italy”, similar to the disastrous forced unification of the Bavarians, Saxons, Nederdeutsche, Hannoverians, Rheinlanders, Hessians and other ethnic groups analogous to the Austrians, Swiss and Letzeburgisch (German speaking residents of Luxembourg) by the Kingdom of Prussia in the 19th century, this relationship soon turned hostile as a result of the alliance between Mussolini and HItler. Indeed, the commander of the SS in Germany received an order, approved by Hitler personally, to abduct the Pope and the senior Vatican leadership, but delayed executing it, and Hitler was ultimately dissuaded from forcing through the plan as this could have caused him to lose all support in Southern Germany and Austria just as conditions in the war were really starting to turn against Germany.

There are historical acts one can criticize the Roman Catholic Church for, such as the Fourth Crusade against the Byzantine Empire or the theft of relics by various Western European states from Eastern and Oriental Orthodox churches during and after the crusades, including the relics of St. Nicholas of Myra, and of St. Mark the Evangelist, among many others (such as the Three Holy Hierarchs - St. John Chrysostom, St. Basil the Great and St. Gregory the Theologian). Recently some relics have been returned to the Orthodox, including the Three Holy Hierarchs, although in that case I wish the Roman Catholics had held onto them or given them to the Church of Greece rather than the Ecumenical Patriarchate, since the relics are now located in St. George’s Patriarchal Cathedral in the Phanar district of Constantinople, which is the last remaining refuge of ethnic Greeks in Turkey, and home to most of the senior leadership of the Ecumenical Patriarch including Patriarch Bartholomew and the current Archbishop of North America; the problem is, with the recent Islamist direction of the regime in Turkey and the rejection of the secular state established by Mustafa Kamal Ataturk, as demonstrated by the conversion of Hagia Sophia back into a mosque, and the fact that St. George’s Cathedral has never even been fully repaired from damage inflicted to it by an anti-Greek pogrom in the 1950s, which occurred in spite of the Turkish regime at the time being officially secular, and given the tendency of Islamist fundamentalists to destroy Christian relics, icons, and archaeological treasures, such as the ancient house church and synagogue at Dura Europos in Syria, and the sickening vandalism of the church and convent in the Aramaic speaking village of Maaloula in Syria by Al Nusra in 2014, which proceeded to hold the Aramaic-speaking Antiochian Orthodox nuns hostage for nine months, I do have concerns about the safety of those relics in Constantinople, but we have to pray.

In general however, there remain a number of important relics that have not been returned, however, given the friendly relations that now exist between Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy, this is much less of a problem, particularly since RC priests make an effort to ensure Orthodox pilgrims have access to the relics for purposes of veneration.

Now, the above is an actual, legitimate criticism of Rome.

On the other hand, the idea that the Roman Catholic Church supported Hitler and Mussolini is demonstrably false, a libel against Roman Catholics, spawned of hate, intolerable intolerance, which is entirely improper. Roman Catholics include many of the most pious Christians in the world, yet they continue to be trashed and falsely accused of various forms of sinful behavior by various denominations, particularly Restorationist denominations (some of which describe themselves as Protestants, but there is a distinction between Restorationism and Protestantism).

For example, the SDA relentlessly attacks the Roman church, for various reasons that have no basis in the actual history of the Roman church, but which rather are based on an inaccurate “alternative history” similiar to the false history of the Roman church known as the “trail of blood” promoted by the Landmark Baptists (and also the basis for various ahistorical works such as those of Thomas McCrie), despite the fact that the majority of worshippers on every Saturday throughout the year, and indeed the majority of worship services offered on the Sabbath, are Roman Catholic (and additionally, most of the Roman Catholic worship services on the Sabbath are Masses, and as such, feature the celebration of Holy Communion, which is celebrated daily in the Roman church; the Adventists on the other hand only celebrate it quarterly, and adopt a Memorialist sacramental theology, shared with many Baptists, which was unknown to the Early Church, even to those sects which broke away from the early church over worship-related issues such as the Messalians, Hydroparastae and Collyridians.

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Valletta said:

In Pope Pius XI did sign a concord trying to protect the rights of Catholics , which Hitler quickly violated. He issued encylicals against Fascism and Nazism, "We Do Not Need to Acquaint You" and Mit Brennender Sorge (“With Burning Anxiety”). That was written in German and distributed to all of the priests in Germany by hand. Tragically for so many, the United States only entered the war after Germany declared war on the U.S. in December, 1941. The New York Times and other publications had very much suppressed knowledge of the plight of Jews in Germany.​

Pope Pius XII's 1942 Christmas speech condemning Nazism was the "shot heard round the world." The Nazis knew well how strongly Catholics, of all of the religions, opposed them, there were 2,720 total clerics held at Dachau concentration camp and 2,579 of them were Catholics. There are many anti-Catholics who have tried to rewrite history, be careful of your sources. Pope Pius XII, for example, has been criticized in recent times but the truth is he was honored by the Jews themselves after the war for his contributions.​

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Roman Catholic economic thought, as developed by the popes in their encyclicals and by Roman Church-State councils, has been a contributor to, if not the only source of, several forms of anti-capitalist political and economic organization during the long hegemony of the Roman Church-State. Among these forms are

1. feudalism and guild socialism in Europe during the Middle ages.
2. fascism in Italy, Spain, Portugal, Croatia, and Latin America in the twentieth century;
3. Nazism in Germany in the twentieth century;
4. interventionism and redistributive state in the West, including the United States in the twentieth century; and
5. liberation theology in Latin America and Africa in the twentieth century.
(Ecclesiastical Megalomania, John W. Robbins, Pt. 1, chap. 1, pg. 30)

From these doctrines of the natural community of goods and the moral primacy of need developed all the forms of anti-capitalist social organizations that the Roman Church-State has supported for the thousand years. The Roman Catholic doctrine of private property is echoed in the nineteenth century Communist slogan, “From each according to his ability; to each according to his need.” The Roman Catholic doctrine reverberates in the slogan of twentieth century American liberals: “Human rights are more important than property rights.” It was the creed of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society:, “We shall take from the haves and give to the have nots, who need it so much.” It appears in the literature of fascism, Nazism, liberation theology, interventionism, and socialism. (Ibid., pg. 35)

These Thomistic notions - that private property is merely a construct of human reason and government, and that need gives the needy title to the goods of others - are the reason the Roman Catholic bishops in Brazil in 1998 pronounced that looting is neither sin nor a crime. The needs of the looters gives the looters title to the goods they are taking. According to Roman Catholic doctrine, the looters are, by natural and divine law, the rightful owners of those goods.(Ibid., pgs. 35&36)

The dispensing of riches to the needy is not merely a private moral obligation in Thomisitic thought, as fundamentally important as that is, but a public legal obligation that is properly enforced by the public authorities. That is the position officially adopted by the Roman Church-State shall become abundantly clear. (Ibid., pg. 36)

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Ecclesiastical Megalomania by John W. Robbins : Dr. John W. Robbins : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

The Economic and Political Thought of the Roman Catholic Church In his Aquinas: Selected Political Writings, A. P. D’Entreves argues that “it is hardly...

archive.org

The Liturgist said:

The Vatican was opposed to Hitler, and while initially Mussolini did some things which were meant to curry favor with the Church, such as the negotiation of the Lateran treaty under which Italy recognized the sovereignty of the Vatican City State and its extraterritorial posessions (which were the sole remnants of the Papal States which had been illegally annexed by the Kingdom of Savoy in its bid to unify the diverse ethnic groups into “Italy”, similar to the disastrous forced unification of the Bavarians, Saxons, Nederdeutsche, Hannoverians, Rheinlanders, Hessians and other ethnic groups analogous to the Austrians, Swiss and Letzeburgisch (German speaking residents of Luxembourg) by the Kingdom of Prussia in the 19th century, this relationship soon turned hostile as a result of the alliance between Mussolini and HItler. Indeed, the commander of the SS in Germany received an order, approved by Hitler personally, to abduct the Pope and the senior Vatican leadership, but delayed executing it, and Hitler was ultimately dissuaded from forcing through the plan as this could have caused him to lose all support in Southern Germany and Austria just as conditions in the war were really starting to turn against Germany.

There are historical acts one can criticize the Roman Catholic Church for, such as the Fourth Crusade against the Byzantine Empire or the theft of relics by various Western European states from Eastern and Oriental Orthodox churches during and after the crusades, including the relics of St. Nicholas of Myra, and of St. Mark the Evangelist, among many others (such as the Three Holy Hierarchs - St. John Chrysostom, St. Basil the Great and St. Gregory the Theologian). Recently some relics have been returned to the Orthodox, including the Three Holy Hierarchs, although in that case I wish the Roman Catholics had held onto them or given them to the Church of Greece rather than the Ecumenical Patriarchate, since the relics are now located in St. George’s Patriarchal Cathedral in the Phanar district of Constantinople, which is the last remaining refuge of ethnic Greeks in Turkey, and home to most of the senior leadership of the Ecumenical Patriarch including Patriarch Bartholomew and the current Archbishop of North America; the problem is, with the recent Islamist direction of the regime in Turkey and the rejection of the secular state established by Mustafa Kamal Ataturk, as demonstrated by the conversion of Hagia Sophia back into a mosque, and the fact that St. George’s Cathedral has never even been fully repaired from damage inflicted to it by an anti-Greek pogrom in the 1950s, which occurred in spite of the Turkish regime at the time being officially secular, and given the tendency of Islamist fundamentalists to destroy Christian relics, icons, and archaeological treasures, such as the ancient house church and synagogue at Dura Europos in Syria, and the sickening vandalism of the church and convent in the Aramaic speaking village of Maaloula in Syria by Al Nusra in 2014, which proceeded to hold the Aramaic-speaking Antiochian Orthodox nuns hostage for nine months, I do have concerns about the safety of those relics in Constantinople, but we have to pray.

In general however, there remain a number of important relics that have not been returned, however, given the friendly relations that now exist between Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy, this is much less of a problem, particularly since RC priests make an effort to ensure Orthodox pilgrims have access to the relics for purposes of veneration.

Now, the above is an actual, legitimate criticism of Rome.

On the other hand, the idea that the Roman Catholic Church supported Hitler and Mussolini is demonstrably false, a libel against Roman Catholics, spawned of hate, intolerable intolerance, which is entirely improper. Roman Catholics include many of the most pious Christians in the world, yet they continue to be trashed and falsely accused of various forms of sinful behavior by various denominations, particularly Restorationist denominations (some of which describe themselves as Protestants, but there is a distinction between Restorationism and Protestantism).

For example, the SDA relentlessly attacks the Roman church, for various reasons that have no basis in the actual history of the Roman church, but which rather are based on an inaccurate “alternative history” similiar to the false history of the Roman church known as the “trail of blood” promoted by the Landmark Baptists (and also the basis for various ahistorical works such as those of Thomas McCrie), despite the fact that the majority of worshippers on every Saturday throughout the year, and indeed the majority of worship services offered on the Sabbath, are Roman Catholic (and additionally, most of the Roman Catholic worship services on the Sabbath are Masses, and as such, feature the celebration of Holy Communion, which is celebrated daily in the Roman church; the Adventists on the other hand only celebrate it quarterly, and adopt a Memorialist sacramental theology, shared with many Baptists, which was unknown to the Early Church, even to those sects which broke away from the early church over worship-related issues such as the Messalians, Hydroparastae and Collyridians.

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Vatican City Explained: History, Wealth, and Why It's a Country

The Vatican is the world's smallest country, ruled by the Pope, with its own laws, bank, and army. Formed in 1929, it holds billions in assets and global influence far beyond its tiny size.

www.ibtimes.co.uk

The disgrace and exile of the orthodox bishops of the West were designed as so many preparatory steps to the ruin of Athanasius himself. Six-and-twenty months had elapsed, during which the Imperial court secretly labored, by the most insidious arts, to remove him from Alexandria, and to withdraw the allowance which supplied his popular liberality. But when the primate of Egypt, deserted and proscribed by the Latin church, was left destitute of any foreign support, Constantius despatched two of his secretaries with a verbal commission to announce and execute the order of his banishment. As the justice of the sentence was publicly avowed by the whole party, the only motive which could restrain Constantius from giving his messengers the sanction of a written mandate, must be imputed to his doubt of the event; and to a sense of the danger to which he might expose the second city, and the most fertile province, of the empire, if the people should persist in the resolution of defending, by force of arms, the innocence of their spiritual father. Such extreme caution afforded Athanasius a specious pretence respectfully to dispute the truth of an order, which he could not reconcile, either with the equity, or with the former declarations, of his gracious master. The civil powers of Egypt found themselves inadequate to the task of persuading or compelling the primate to abdicate his episcopal throne; and they were obliged to conclude a treaty with the popular leaders of Alexandria, by which it was stipulated, that all proceedings and all hostilities should be suspended till the emperor’s pleasure had been more distinctly ascertained. By this seeming moderation, the Catholics were deceived into a false and fatal security; while the legions of the Upper Egypt, and of Libya, advanced, by secret orders and hasty marches, to besiege, or rather to surprise, a capital habituated to sedition, and inflamed by religious zeal. The position of Alexandria, between the sea and the Lake Mareotis, facilitated the approach and landing of the troops; who were introduced into the heart of the city, before any effectual measures could be taken either to shut the gates or to occupy the important posts of defence. At the hour of midnight, twenty-three days after the signature of the treaty, Syrianus, duke of Egypt, at the head of five thousand soldiers, armed and prepared for an assault, unexpectedly invested the church of St. Theonas, where the archbishop, with a part of his clergy and people, performed their nocturnal devotions. The doors of the sacred edifice yielded to the impetuosity of the attack, which was accompanied with every horrid circumstance of tumult and bloodshed; but, as the bodies of the slain, and the fragments of military weapons, remained the next day an unexceptionable evidence in the possession of the Catholics, the enterprise of Syrianus may be considered as a successful irruption rather than as an absolute conquest. The other churches of the city were profaned by similar outrages; and, during at least four months, Alexandria was exposed to the insults of a licentious army, stimulated by the ecclesiastics of a hostile faction. Many of the faithful were killed; who may deserve the name of martyrs, if their deaths were neither provoked nor revenged; bishops and presbyters were treated with cruel ignominy; consecrated virgins were stripped naked, scourged and violated; the houses of wealthy citizens were plundered; and, under the mask of religious zeal, lust, avarice, and private resentment were gratified with impunity, and even with applause. The Pagans of Alexandria, who still formed a numerous and discontented party, were easily persuaded to desert a bishop whom they feared and esteemed. The hopes of some peculiar favors, and the apprehension of being involved in the general penalties of rebellion, engaged them to promise their support to the destined successor of Athanasius, the famous George of Cappadocia. The usurper, after receiving the consecration of an Arian synod, was placed on the episcopal throne by the arms of Sebastian, who had been appointed Count of Egypt for the execution of that important design. In the use, as well as in the acquisition, of power, the tyrant, George disregarded the laws of religion, of justice, and of humanity; and the same scenes of violence and scandal which had been exhibited in the capital, were repeated in more than ninety episcopal cities of Egypt. Encouraged by success, Constantius ventured to approve the conduct of his minister. By a public and passionate epistle, the emperor congratulates the deliverance of Alexandria from a popular tyrant, who deluded his blind votaries by the magic of his eloquence; expatiates on the virtues and piety of the most reverend George, the elected bishop; and aspires, as the patron and benefactor of the city to surpass the fame of Alexander himself. But he solemnly declares his unalterable resolution to pursue with fire and sword the seditious adherents of the wicked Athanasius, who, by flying from justice, has confessed his guilt, and escaped the ignominious death which he had so often deserved. (The History of the decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. 2, Chap. 21, pgs. 344 - 347 of the Everyman's Library edition)

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II. Notwithstanding the rapid increase of Christians under the reign of the Flavian family, Rome, Alexandria, and the other great cities of the empire, still contained a strong and powerful faction of Infidels, who envied the prosperity, and who ridiculed, even in their theatres, the theological disputes of the church. Constantinople alone enjoyed the advantage of being born and educated in the bosom of the faith. The capital of the East had never been polluted by the worship of idols; and the whole body of the people had deeply imbibed the opinions, the virtues, and the passions, which distinguished the Christians of that age from the rest of mankind. After the death of Alexander, the episcopal throne was disputed by Paul and Macedonius. By their zeal and abilities they both deserved the eminent station to which they aspired; and if the moral character of Macedonius was less exceptionable, his competitor had the advantage of a prior election and a more orthodox doctrine. His firm attachment to the Nicene creed, which has given Paul a place in the calendar among saints and martyrs, exposed him to the resentment of the Arians. In the space of fourteen years he was five times driven from his throne; to which he was more frequently restored by the violence of the people, than by the permission of the prince; and the power of Macedonius could be secured only by the death of his rival. The unfortunate Paul was dragged in chains from the sandy deserts of Mesopotamia to the most desolate places of Mount Taurus, confined in a dark and narrow dungeon, left six days without food, and at length strangled, by the order of Philip, one of the principal ministers of the emperor Constantius. The first blood which stained the new capital was spilt in this ecclesiastical contest; and many persons were slain on both sides, in the furious and obstinate seditions of the people. The commission of enforcing a sentence of banishment against Paul had been intrusted to Hermogenes, the master-general of the cavalry; but the execution of it was fatal to himself. The Catholics rose in the defence of their bishop; the palace of Hermogenes was consumed; the first military officer of the empire was dragged by the heels through the streets of Constantinople, and, after he expired, his lifeless corpse was exposed to their wanton insults. The fate of Hermogenes instructed Philip, the Prætorian præfect, to act with more precaution on a similar occasion. In the most gentle and honorable terms, he required the attendance of Paul in the baths of Xeuxippus, which had a private communication with the palace and the sea. A vessel, which lay ready at the garden stairs, immediately hoisted sail; and, while the people were still ignorant of the meditated sacrilege, their bishop was already embarked on his voyage to Thessalonica. They soon beheld, with surprise and indignation, the gates of the palace thrown open, and the usurper Macedonius seated by the side of the præfect on a lofty chariot, which was surrounded by troops of guards with drawn swords. The military procession advanced towards the cathedral; the Arians and the Catholics eagerly rushed to occupy that important post; and three thousand one hundred and fifty persons lost their lives in the confusion of the tumult. Macedonius, who was supported by a regular force, obtained a decisive victory; but his reign was disturbed by clamor and sedition; and the causes which appeared the least connected with the subject of dispute, were sufficient to nourish and to kindle the flame of civil discord. As the chapel in which the body of the great Constantine had been deposited was in a ruinous condition, the bishop transported those venerable remains into the church of St. Acacius. This prudent and even pious measure was represented as a wicked profanation by the whole party which adhered to the Homoousian doctrine. The factions immediately flew to arms, the consecrated ground was used as their field of battle; and one of the ecclesiastical historians has observed, as a real fact, not as a figure of rhetoric, that the well before the church overflowed with a stream of blood, which filled the porticos and the adjacent courts. The writer who should impute these tumults solely to a religious principle, would betray a very imperfect knowledge of human nature; yet it must be confessed that the motive which misled the sincerity of zeal, and the pretence which disguised the licentiousness of passion, suppressed the remorse which, in another cause, would have succeeded to the rage of the Christians at Constantinople.

The cruel and arbitrary disposition of Constantius, which did not always require the provocations of guilt and resistance, was justly exasperated by the tumults of his capital, and the criminal behavior of a faction, which opposed the authority and religion of their sovereign. The ordinary punishments of death, exile, and confiscation, were inflicted with partial vigor; and the Greeks still revere the holy memory of two clerks, a reader, and a sub-deacon, who were accused of the murder of Hermogenes, and beheaded at the gates of Constantinople. By an edict of Constantius against the Catholics which has not been judged worthy of a place in the Theodosian code, those who refused to communicate with the Arian bishops, and particularly with Macedonius, were deprived of the immunities of ecclesiastics, and of the rights of Christians; they were compelled to relinquish the possession of the churches; and were strictly prohibited from holding their assemblies within the walls of the city. The execution of this unjust law, in the provinces of Thrace and Asia Minor, was committed to the zeal of Macedonius; the civil and military powers were directed to obey his commands; and the cruelties exercised by this Semi-Arian tyrant in the support of the Homoiousion, exceeded the commission, and disgraced the reign, of Constantius. The sacraments of the church were administered to the reluctant victims, who denied the vocation, and abhorred the principles, of Macedonius. The rites of baptism were conferred on women and children, who, for that purpose, had been torn from the arms of their friends and parents; the mouths of the communicants were held open by a wooden engine, while the consecrated bread was forced down their throat; the breasts of tender virgins were either burnt with red-hot egg-shells, or inhumanly compressed betweens harp and heavy boards. The Novatians of Constantinople and the adjacent country, by their firm attachment to the Homoousian standard, deserved to be confounded with the Catholics themselves. Macedonius was informed, that a large district of Paphlagonia was almost entirely inhabited by those sectaries. He resolved either to convert or to extirpate them; and as he distrusted, on this occasion, the efficacy of an ecclesiastical mission, he commanded a body of four thousand legionaries to march against the rebels, and to reduce the territory of Mantinium under his spiritual dominion. The Novatian peasants, animated by despair and religious fury, boldly encountered the invaders of their country; and though many of the Paphlagonians were slain, the Roman legions were vanquished by an irregular multitude, armed only with scythes and axes; and, except a few who escaped by an ignominious flight, four thousand soldiers were left dead on the field of battle. The successor of Constantius has expressed, in a concise but lively manner, some of the theological calamities which afflicted the empire, and more especially the East, in the reign of a prince who was the slave of his own passions, and of those of his eunuchs: “Many were imprisoned, and persecuted, and driven into exile. Whole troops of those who are styled heretics, were massacred, particularly at Cyzicus, and at Samosata. In Paphlagonia, Bithynia, Galatia, and in many other provinces, towns and villages were laid waste, and utterly destroyed.”(The History of the decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. 2, Chap. 21, pgs. 354-358 of the Everyman's Library edition)

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Amo2 said:

It is no coincidence that as Roman Catholic power and influence have gown within the USA, we now have many areas of the country where looting and theft are basically no longer treated as crimes. According to the teachings of Roman Catholic Social Justice, which includes the universal destination of goods, and the common good. Just to mention a few ill effects of Vatican inspired political thought upon our nation, via the ever increasing political power Roman Catholic's who now represent the largest block of power within all three branches of our government. Not only because they have a majority within them, but also the cooperation of many a non Catholic among them.

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Amo2 said:

Nevertheless, regarding the world wars though, more than just a little contention exists concerning the Vatican's support of Adolf Hitler and Mussolini. Without which perhaps, these tyrants would not have been so successful. The Vatican was the first political entity to sign an accord with the Nazi party. If religions and or Christianity is going to get entangled in the politics of this world, then they will therefore be somewhat responsible for the effects of the political entities or principles which they supported.

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The Great Myths 7: "Hitler's Pope"? - History for Atheists

Was Pius XIII really "Hitler's Pope" as New Atheists like Hitchens claim, or is the history of the Catholic Church and the Nazis not what is often depicted?

historyforatheists.com

Valletta said:

This kind of rabid anti-Catholicism belongs in the conspiracy section.

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