The Inquisition
(Information below is taken from Chuck Missler’s notes
on Revelation)
Called “The Holy Office,” it was instituted by Pope Innocent III and perfected by Pope Gregory IX. Under it everyone was required to inform against heretics. Anyone suspect was liable to torture, without knowing the name of his accuser. The proceedings were secret. The Inquisitor pronounced sentence and the victim was turned over to civil authorities to be imprisoned for life or to be burned. The victim’s property was confiscated and divided between the church and the state. The Inquisition claimed vast multitudes of victims in Spain, Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands and did its most deadly work against the Albigenses.
The
Albigenses, or Carthari, in southern France, northern Spain and northern Italy
preached against the immoralities of the priesthood, worship of saints and
images, completely rejected the clergy and their claims, opposed the claims of
the Church of Rome, made great use of the Scriptures, and lived self-denying
lives with a great zeal for moral purity. By 1167 they embraced a majority of
the population of southern France and were very numerous in northern Italy. In
1208 Pope Innocent III ordered a crusade in which the bloody war of
extermination utterly wiped out town after town - the inhabitants murdered
without discrimination - until all of the Albigenses were utterly wiped out.
The
Waldenses, a similar but not identical group in the same region emphasizing
Bible reading and rejecting clerical usurpation and profligacy were similarly
wiped out (but for the few survivors in the Alpine Valleys southwest of Turin
who are now the leading Protestant body in Italy). It is recorded that in the
30 years between 1540 and 1570 no fewer than 900,000 Protestants were put to
death by the Pope’s war for the extermination of the Waldenses.
For
500 years the Inquisition was the most diabolical thing of human history. For
its record, none of the subsequent line of “holy” and “Infallible” Popes have
ever apologized. Rather, their leadership and instigators have been elevated to
sainthood.
Boniface VIII (1294-1303)
Boniface
VIII (1294-1303), in his famous Bul, Unam Sanctam, he said, “We declare,
affirm, define, and pronounce that it is altogether necessary for salvation
that every creature be subject to the Roman Pontiff.” (However, he was so
corrupt that Dante, who visited Rome during his pontificate, called the Vatican
a “sewer of corruption,” and assigned him, along with Nicolas III and Clement
V, to the lowest parts of Hell.)
French Control of the Papacy (1305-1377)
The
Papacy had been victorious in its 200-year struggle with the German Empire, but
met their match in Philip the Fair, King of France, with whom the history of
modern France begins.
After
the death of Pope Benedict XI, the Papal Palace was removed from Rome to
Avignon on the south border of France and for 70 years the Papacy was the mere
tool of the French Court (1305-1377).
For
the next 40 years there were two sets of Popes, one at Rome and one at Avignon,
each claiming to be “Vicar of Christ,” hurling anathemas and curses at each
other.
Renaissance Popes (1410-1503) It just gets worse and worse
John
XXIII (1410-1415), called by some the most depraved criminal who ever sat on
the Papal throne, was guilty of almost every crime. As Cardinal in Bologna, 200
maidens, nuns and married women fell victim to his amours. As Pope he violated
virgins and nuns; lived in adultery with his brother’s wife; was guilty of
sodomy and other nameless vices; bought the Papal Office; sold Cardinalates to
children of wealthy families; and openly denied the future life.
Pius
II (1458-1464) was said to have been the father of many illegitimate children,
spoke openly of the methods he used to seduce women, encouraged young men, and
even offered to instruct them in methods of self indulgence. Paul II
(1464-1471) “filled his house with concubines.”
Sixtus
IV (1471-1484): sanctioned the Spanish Inquisition, decreed that money would
deliver souls from Purgatory, was implicated in a plot to murder Lorenzo de
Medici and others who opposed his policies, and used the Papacy to enrich
himself and his relatives. He made eight of his nephews Cardinals, while some
of them were mere boys. In wealth and pomp he and his relatives surpassed the
old Roman families.
Innocent
VIII (1484-1492) had 16 children by various married women. He multiplied church
offices and sold them for vast sums of money, decreed the extermination of the
Waldenses, appointed the brutal Thomas of Torquemada Inquisitor General of
Spain, and ordered all rulers to deliver up heretics to him.
Alexander
VI (1492-1503) is called the most corrupt of the Renaissance Popes: licentious,
avaricious, depraved; he bought the Papacy, made many new cardinals for money,
had a number of illegitimate children whom he openly acknowledged and appointed
to high church office while they were yet children - and they with their father
murdered cardinals and others who stood in their way. He had for a mistress a
sister of the cardinal who became the next Pope, Pius III (1503).
I’ll
end here for this part. Can’t handle much more of the bottomless pit of immorality
the Catholic church has been steeped in for centuries and doesn’t seem to have stopped.
There have been many priests that have been accused of sexual molestation and
how many others that were covered up, and never even brought to light? Here’s one, the former ambassador to the
Vatican, Archbishop Vigano, who also wrote 2 letters to President Trump during
his first term in the Whitehouse, about things that are going on right now.
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