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A Woman Rides The Beast
by Dave Hunt
[The following is chapter 6 of A Woman Rides the Beast: The Roman Catholic Church and the Last Days, copyright 1994 by Dave Hunt, Harvest House Publishers, Eugene, Oregon 97402; order from The Berean Call, P.O. Box 7019, Bend, OR 97708. $10 + $2 S/H.]
"The woman which thou sawest is that great city, which reigneth over the kings of the earth. ... Here is the mind which hath wisdom: The seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman sitteth" (Revelation 17:18,9).
A woman rides the beast, and that woman is a city built on seven hills that reigns over the kings of the earth! Was ever in all of history such a statement made? John immediately equates the readers' acceptance of this revelation with "wisdom." We dare not pass over such a disclosure casually. It merits our careful and prayerful attention.
Here is no mystical or allegorical language but an unambiguous statement in plain words: "The woman...is that great city. There is no justification for seeking some other hidden meaning. Yet books have been written and sermons preached insisting that "Mystery Babylon" is the United States. That is clearly not the case, for the United States as Sodom, considering the honor now given to homosexuals, but it is definitely not the Babylon that John sees in this vision. The woman is a city.
Furthermore, she is a city built on seven hills. That specification eliminates ancient Babylon. Only one city has for more than 2000 years been known as the city on seven hills. That city is Rome. The Catholic Encyclopedia states: "It is within the city of Rome, called the city of seven hills, that the entire area of Vatican State proper is now confined" (The Catholic Encyclopedia, Thomas Nelson, 1976, s.v. "Rome").
There are, of course, other cities, such as Rio de Janeiro, that were also built on seven hills. Therefore, John provides at least more characteristics to limit the identification to Rome alone. We will examine each one in detail in subsequent chapters. However, as a preview of where we are going, we will limit them now and discuss each one briefly. As we shall see, there is only one city on the earth which, in both historical and contemporary perspectives, passes every test John gives, including its identification as Mystery Babylon. That city is Rome, and more specifically, Vatican City.
Even Catholic apologist Karl Keating admits that Rome has long been known as Babylon. Keating claims that Peter's statement "The church here in Babylon ... sends you her greeting" (from 1 Peter 5:13) proves that Peter was writing from Rome. He explains further:
"Babylon is a code word for Rome. It is used that way six times in the last book of the Bible [four of the six are in chapters 17 and 18] and in extrabiblical works such as Syblling Oracles (5, 159f.), and Apocalypse of Baruch (ii, 1), and 4 Esdras (3:1).
"Eusebius Pamphilius, writing about 303, noted that `it is said that Peter's first epistle ... was composed at Rome itself; and that he himself indicates this, referring to the city figuratively as Babylon" (Karl Keating, Catholicism and Fundamentalism: The Attack on "Romanism" by "Bible Christians," Kgnatius Press, 1988, p. 200).
As for "Mystery," that name imprinted on the woman's forehead is the perfect designation for Vatican City. Mystery is at the very heart of Roman Catholicism, for the words "Mysterium Fidev pronounced at the alleged transformation of the bread and wine into the literal body and blood of Christ to the enigmatic apparitions of Mary around the world. Every sacrament, from baptism to extreme unction, manifests the mysterious power which the faithful must believe the priests wield, but for which there is no visible evidence. Rome's new Catechism explains that liturgy "aims to initiate souls into the mystery of Christ (It is 'mystagogy.')" and that all of the Church's liturgy is "mystery" (Catechism of the Catholic Church, The Wanderer Press, 1994, para. 1075).
WHO IS THE ***** ?
The first thing we are told about the woman is that she is a "***** " (Revelation 17:1), that earthly kings "have committed fornication" with her (verse 2) , and that "all the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication" (verse 3). Why would a city be called a ***** and be accused of having committed fornication with kings? Such an indictment would never be made of London or Moscow or Paris--or any other ordinary city. It wouldn't make sense.
Fornication and adultery are used in the Bible in both the physical and the spiritual sense. Of Jerusalem God said, "How is the faithful city become a harlot!" (Isaiah 1:21). Israel, whom God had set apart from all other peoples to be holy for His purposes, had entered into unholy, adulterous alliances with the idols-worshiping nations about her. She had "committed adultery with stones and with stocks [idols] (Jeremiah 3:9); "and with their idols have they committed adultery" (Ezekiel 23:37). the entire chapter of Ezekiel 16 explains Israel's spiritual adultery in detail, both with heathen nations and with their false gods, as do many other passages.
There is no way that a city could engage in literal, fleshly fornication. Thus we can only conclude that John, like the prophets in the Old Testament, is using the term in its spiritual sense. The city, therefore, must claim a spiritual relationship with God. Otherwise such an allegation would be meaningless.
Though it is built on seven hills, there would be no reason to accuse Rio de Janeiro of spiritual fornication. It makes no claim of having a special relationship with God. And though Jerusalem has that relationship, it cannot be the woman riding on the beast, for it is not built on seven hills. Nor does it meet the other criteria by which this woman is to be identified.
Against only one other city in history could a charge of fornication be leveled. That city is Rome, and more specifically Vatican City. She claims to have been the worldwide headquarters of Christianity since its beginning and maintains that claim to this day. Her pope enthroned in Rome claims to be the exclusive representative of God, the vicar of Christ. Rome is the headquarters of the Roman Catholic Church, and in that too she is unique.
Numerous churches, of course, are headquartered in cities, but only one city is the headquarters of a church. The Mormon Church, for example, is headquartered in Salt Lake City, but there is much more to Salt Lake City than the Mormon Church. No so with Vatican City. It is the heartbeat of the Roman Catholic Church and nothing else. She is a spiritual entity that could very well be accused of spiritual fornication if she did not remain true to Christ.
IN BED WITH THE RULERS
Not only does Rome's pope call himself the vicar of Christ, but the Church he heads claims to be the one true Church and the bride of Christ. Christ's bride, whose hope is to join her Bridegroom in heaven, is to have no earthly ambitions. Yet the Vatican is obsessed with earthly enterprise, as history proves; and in furtherance of these goals it has been, exactly as John foresaw in his vision, engaged in adulterous relationships with the kings of the earth. That fact is acknowledge even by Catholic historians.
Christ said to His disciples, "If ye were of the world, the world would love his own; but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you" (John 15:19). The Catholic Church, however, is very much of this world. Her popes have built an unrivaled worldwide empire of property, wealth, and influence. Nor is empire-building an abandoned feature of the past. We have already seen the Vatican II clearly states that the Roman Catholic Church today still ceaselessly seeks to bring under its control all mankind and all their goods.
Popes have long claimed dominion over the world and its peoples. Pope Gregory XI's papal bull or 1372 (In Coena Domini) claimed papal dominion over the entire Christian world, secular and religious, and excommunicated all who failed to obey the popes and to pay them taxes. In Coena was confirmed by subsequent popes and in 1568 Pope Pius V swore that it was to remain an eternal law.
Pope Alexander VI (1492-1503) claimed that all undiscovered lands belonged to the Roman Pontiff, for him to dispose of as he pleased in the name of Christ as His vicar. King John II of Portugal was convinced that in his Bull Romanus Pontifex the pope had granted all that Columbus discovered exclusively to him and his country. Ferdinand and Isabel of Spain, however, thought the pope had given the same lands to them. In May 1493 the Spanish- born Alexander VI issued three bulls to settle the dispute.
In the name of Christ, who had no place on this earth that He called his own, this incredibly evil Borgia pope, claiming to own the world, drew a north-south line down the global map of that day, giving everything on the east to Portugal and on the west to Spain. Thus papal grant, "out of the plenitude of apostolic power," Africa went to Portugal and to the America to Spain. When Portugal "succeeded in reaching India and Malaya, they secured the confirmation of these discoveries from the Papacy..." There was a condition, of course: "to the intent to bring the inhabitants...to profess the Catholic Faith" (Sidney Z. Ehler, John B. Morrall, trans. and eds., Church and State Through the Centuries, London, 1954, pp. 153-59; Hakluytus Posthumus, William Stansby for Henrie Fetherstone, London, 1625, as cited in Avro Manhattan, The Vatican Billions, Chino, CA, 1983, p. 90).
It was largely Central and South America which, as a consequence of this unholy alliance between church and state, had Roman Catholicism forced upon them by the sword and remain Catholic to this day. North America (with the exception of Quebec and Louisiana) was spared the dominance of the Roman Catholicism because it was settled largely by Protestants.
Nor have the descendants of Aztecs, Incas, and Mayas forgotten that Roman Catholic priests, backed by the secular sword, gave their ancestors the choice of conversion (which often meant slavery) or death. They made such an outcry when John Paul II in a recent visit to Latin America proposed elevating Junipero Serra (a major eighteenth-century enforcer of Catholicism among the Indians) to sainthood that the pope was forced to hold the ceremony in secret.
Christ said, "My kingdom is not of this world; otherwise my servants would fight." The popes, however, have fought with armies and navies in the name of Christ to build a huge kingdom which is very much of this world. And to amass their earthly empire they have repeatedly engaged in spiritual fornication with emperors, kings, and princes. Claiming to be the bride of Christ, the Roman Catholic Church has been in bed with godless rulers down through history, and these adulterous relationships continue to this day.
This spiritual fornication will be documented in detail later.
ROME EQUALS VATICAN
Some may object that it is Rome, and not that small part of it known as Vatican City, which is built on seven hills, and that the Vatican can hardly be called a "great city," Though both objections are true, the words "Vatican" and "Rome" are universally used interchangeably. Just as one would refer to Washington and mean the government that runs the United States, so one refers to Rome and means the hierarchy that rules the Roman Catholic Church.
Take for example a placard carried by a demonstrator outside the November 15-18, 1993, meeting in Washington D.C. of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops. Protesting any deviation from the pope's wishes, it read:
"ROME'S WAY OR THE HIGHWAY" (Our Sunday Visitor, December 5, 1993, p. 3).
Obviously by "Rome" it meant the Vatican. Such is the common usage. So closely are Catholicism and Rome linked that the Catholic Church is known as the Roman Catholic Church, or simply the Roman Church.
Moreover, for more that a thousand years the Roman Catholic Church exercised both religious and civil control over the entire city of Rome and its surroundings. Pope Innocent III (1198-1216) abolished the secular Roman Senate and placed the administration of Rome directly under his command. The Roman Senate that had governed the city under the Caesars had been known as the Curia Romana (Roman Curia). That name, according to the Pocket Catholic Dictionary, is now the designation of "the whole ensemble of administrative and judicial offices through which the Pole directs the operations of the Catholic Church" (John A. Hardon, S.J., Pocket Catholic Dictionary, Image Books [Doubleday], 1985, p 99).
The popes' authority even extended to large territories outside Rome acquired in the eighth century. At that time, with the help of a deliberately fraudulent document manufactured for the popes known as The Donation of Constantine, Pope Stephen III convinced Pepin, king of the Franks and father of Charlemagne, that territories recently taken by the Lombards from the Byzantines actually had been given to the papacy by the Emperor Constantine. Pepin routed the Lombards and handed to the pope the keys to some 20 cities (Revena, Ancona, Bologna, Ferrara, Iesi, Gubbio, etc.) and the huge chunk of land joining them along the Adriatic coast.
Dated 30 March 315, The Donation declared that Constantine had given these lands, along with Rome and the Lateran Palace, to the popes in perpetuity. In 1440 this document was proven to be a forgery by Lorenzo Valla, a papal aide, and is do recognized by historians today. Yet allegedly infallible popes continue for centuries to assert that The Donation was genuine and on that basis to justify their pomp, power, and possessions. That fraud is still perpetuated by and inscription in the baptistry of Rome's St. John Lateran, which has never been corrected.
Thus the Papal States were literally stolen by the popes from their rightful owners. The papacy controlled and taxed these territories and derived great wealth from them until 1848. At that time the pope, along with the rulers of most of the other divided territories of Italy, was forced to grant his rebellious subjects a constitution. In September 1860, over his raging protests, Pius IX lost all of the papal states to the new, finally united Kingdom of Italy, which left him, at the time of the First Vatican Council in 1870, still in control of Rome and its surroundings.
The point, exactly as John foresaw in his vision, a spiritual entity that claimed a special relationship with Christ and with God became identified with a city that was built on seven hills. That "woman" committed spiritual fornication with earthly rulers and eventually reigned over them. The Roman Catholic Church has been continuously identified with that city. As "the most definitive Catholic encyclopedia since Vatican II" declares:
"...hence, one understands the central place of Rome in the life of the Church today and the significance of the title, Roman Catholic Church, the Church that is universal, yet focused upon the ministry of the Bishop of Rome. Since the founding of the Church there by St. Peter, Rome has been the central of all Christendom" Our Sunday Visitor's Catholic Encyclopedia, 1991, p. 842).
WEALTH FROM ILL-GOTTEN GAIN
The incredible wealth of this woman caught John's attention next. She was dressed "in purple and scarlet color, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication" (Revelation 17:4). The colors of purple and scarlet once again identify the woman with both pagan and Christian Rome. These were the colors of the Roman caesars with which the soldiers mockingly robed Christ as "King" (see Matthew 27:28 and John 19:2,5), which the Vatican took to itself. The woman's colors are literally still the colors of the Catholic clergy! The same Catholic Encyclopedia quoted above states"
Cappa Magna: "A cloak with a long train and a hooded shoulder cape. . .[it] was purple wool for bishops; for cardinals, it was scarlet watered silk (for Advent, Lent, Good Friday, and the conclave, purple wool); and rose watered silk for Gaudete and Laetare Sundays; and for the pope, it was red velvet for Christmas Matins, red serge at other times."
Cassock (also Soutand): "The close-fitting, ankle-length robe worn by the Catholic clergy as their official garb. ...The color for bishops and other prelates is purple, for cardinals scarlet" (Ibid., pp. 175, 178).
The "golden cup [chalice] in her hand" again identifies the woman with the Roman Catholic Church. Broderick's edition of The Catholic Encyclopedia declared of the chalice: "[It is] the most important of the sacred vessels...[It] may be of gold or silver, and if the latter, then the inside must be surfaced with gold" (Robert Broderick, ed., The Catholic Encyclopedia, Thomas Nelson, 1976, pp. 103-4). The Roman Catholic Church possess many thousands of solid gold chalices kept in its churches around the world. Even the bloodstained cross of Christ has been turned to gold and studded with gems in reflection of Rome's great wealth. The Catholic Encyclopedia says: "The pectoral cross [suspended by a chain around the neck and worn over the breast by abbots, bishops, archbishops, cardinals, and the pope] should be made of gold and ... decorated with gems..." (Ibid., p. 466).
Rome has practiced evil to gather her wealth, for the "golden cup" is filled with "abominations and filthiness." Much of the wealth of the Roman Catholic Church was acquired through the confiscation of the property of the pitiful victims of the Inquisitions. Even the dead were exhumed to face trial and property was taken from their heirs by the Church. One historian writes:
"The punishments of the Inquisition did not cease when the victim was burned to ashes, or immured for life in the Inquisition dungeons. His relatives were reduced to beggary by the law that all his possessions were forfeited. The system offered unlimited opportunities for loot. ...
"This source of gain largely accounts for the revolting practice of what has been called `corpse-trials.' ... That the practice of confiscating the property of condemned heretics was productive of many acts of extortion, rapacity and corruption will be doubted by no one who has any knowledge either of human nature or of historical documents. ... no man was safe whose wealth might arouse cupidity, or whose independence might provoke revenge" (William Shaw Kerr, A Handbook of the Papacy, London: Marshall, Morgan & Scott, p. 241).
Most of Rome's wealth has been acquired through the sale of salvation. Untold billions of dollars have been paid to her by those who thought they were purchasing heaven on the installation plan for themselves or loved ones. The practice continues to this day--blatantly where Catholicism is in control, less obviously here in the United States. No greater deception or abomination could be perpetrated. When Cardinal Cajetan, sixteenth-century Dominican scholar, complained about the sale of dispensations and indulgences, the Church hierarchy was indignant and accused him of wanting "to turn Rome into an uninhabited desert, to reduce the Papacy to impotence, to deprive the pope...of the pecuniary resources indispensable for the discharge of his office" (J.H. Ignaz von Dollinger, The Pope and the Council, London, 1869, pp. 307-08).
In addition to such perversions of the gospel which have led hundreds of millions astray, there are the further abominations of corrupt banking practices, laundering of drug money, trading in counterfeit securities, and dealings with the Mafia (fully documented in police and court records), which the Vatican and her representatives around the world have long employed. Nino Lo Bello, former Business Week correspondent in Rome and Rome bureau chief for New York Journal of Commerce, writes that the Vatican is so closely allied with the Mafia in Italy that "many people...believe that Sicily...is nothing more than a Vatican building" (Nino Lo Bello, The Vatican Empire, Trident Press, 1968, p. 167; see also David A. Yallop, In God's Name, Bantam Books, 1984; Richard Hammers, The Vatican Connection, Penguin Books, 1983).
The Roman Catholic Church is by far the wealthiest institution on earth. Yes, one hears from Rome periodic pleas for money--persuasive appeals claiming that the Vatican cannot maintain itself on its limited budget and needs monetary assistance. Such pleas are unconscionable ploys. The value of innumerable sculptures by such masters as Michelangelo, paintings by the world's greatest artists, and countless other art treasures and ancient documents which Rome possesses (not only at the Vatican but in cathedrals around the world) is beyond calculation. At the World Synod of Bishops in Rome, England's Cardinal Heenan proposed that the Church sell some of these superfluous treasures and give the proceeds to the poor. His suggestion was not well-received.
Christ and His disciples lived in poverty. He told His followers not to lay up treasure on this earth but in heaven. The Roman Catholic Church has disobeyed that command and has accumulated a plethora of riches without equal, of which "the Roman Pontiff is the supreme administrator and steward. ..." (James A. Coriden, Thomas J. Green, Donald E. Heintschel, eds., The Code of Canon Law, Paulist Press, 1985, Canon 1273). There is no church, no city which is a spiritual entity, no religious institution past or present which even comes close to possessing the wealth of the Roman Catholic Church. A recent newspaper article described only a fraction of that treasure at one location:
"The fabulous treasure of Lourdes [France], whose existence was kept secret by the Catholic Church for 120 years, has been unveiled. ...Rumors have been circulating for decades about a priceless collection of gold chalices, diamond-studded crucifixes [a far cry from the bloodstained cross on which Christ died], silver and precious stones donated by grateful pilgrims.
"After an indiscreet remark by their press spokesman this week, church authorities agreed to reveal part of the collection...[some] floor-to- ceiling cases were open to reveal 59 solid gold brooches, many encrusted with precious stones.
"Almost hidden by the other treasures in the "Crown" of Notre Dame de Lourdes, made by a Paris goldsmith in 1876 and studded with diamonds.
"Church authorities say they cannot put a value on the collection. `I have no idea,' says Father Pierre-Marie Charriez, director of Patrimony and Sanctuaries. `It is of inestimable value.' ...
Across the road is a building housing hundreds of [antiques] ecclesiastical garments, robes, mitres and sashes--many in heavy gold thread. ...
"`The Church itself is poor.' insists Father Charriez. `The Vatican itself is poor.' (The European, April 9-12, 1992, p. 1). [The treasure described here is only part of that which is kept in one location, the small town of Lorudes, France!]
THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS
The more deeply one probes into the history of the Roman Catholic Church and its current practices, the more impressed one becomes with the amazing accuracy of the vision John received centuries before it would all be lamentable reality. John's attention is drawn to the inscription boldly emblazoned upon the woman's forehead: 'MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH" (Revelation 17:5) Sadly enough, the Roman Catholic Church fits the description "mother of harlots and abominations" as precisely as she fits the other. Much of the cause can be traced to the unbiblical demand that her priests be celibates.
The great apostle Paul was a celibate and recommended that life to others who wanted to devote themselves fully to serving Christ. He did not, however, make it a condition for church leadership as the Catholic Church has done, thereby imposing an unnatural burden upon all clergy that very few could bear. On the contrary, he wrote that bishop should by "the husband of one wife" (1 Timothy 3:2) and set the same requirement for elders (Titus 1:5,6).
Peter, whom the Catholics erroneously claim was the first pope, was married. So were at least some of the other apostles. This fact was not the chance result of their having been married before Christ called them, but it was accepted as an ongoing norm. Paul himself argued that he had the right to marry like the rest: "Have we not power [Greek exousia, the right or privilege or authority] to lead about a sister, a wife, as well as other apostles and as the brethren [half-brothers, sons of Mary and Joseph] of the Lord, and as Cephas [Peter]?" (1 Corinthians 9:5).
The Roman Catholic Church, however, has insisted upon celibacy even though many popes, among them Sergius III (904-11), John X (914-28), John XII (955-63), Benedict V (964), Innocent VIII (1484-92), Urban VIII (1623-44), and Innocent X (1644-55), as well as millions of cardinals, bishops, archbishops, monks, and priests throughout history, have repeatedly violated such vows. Not only has celibacy made sinners of the clergy who engage in fornication, but makes harlots out of those with whom they secretly cohabit. Rome is indeed "the mother of harlots"! Her identification as such is unmistakable. No other city, church, or institution in the history of the world is her rival in this particular evil.
History is replete with sayings that mocked the church's false claim to celibacy and revealed the truth: "The holiest hermit has his ***** " and "Rome has more prostitutes than any other city because she has the most celibates" are examples. Pius II declared that Rome was "the only city run by bastards" [sons of popes and cardinals]. Catholic historian and former Jesuit Peter de Rosa writes:
"Popes had mistresses of fifteen years of age, were guilty of incest and sexual perversions of every sort, had innumerable children, were murdered in the very act of adultery [by jealous husbands who found them in bed with their wives]. ...In the old Catholic phrase, why be holier than the pope?" (Peter de Rosa, Vicars of Christ: The Dark Side of the Papacy, Crown Publishers, 1988, pp. 396-97).
As for abominations, even Catholic historians admit that among the popes were some of the most degenerate and unconscionable ogres in all of history. Their numerous outrageous crimes, many of which almost beyond belief, have been recited by many historians from preserved documents that reveal the depths of papal depravity, some of which we will cover in later chapters. To call any of these men "His Holiness, Vicar of Christ" makes a mockery of holiness and of Christ. Yet the name of each one of these unbelievably wicked popes--mass murderers, fornicators, robbers, warmongers, some guilty of the massacre of thousands--is emblazoned in honor of the Church's official list of popes. These abominations that John foresaw not only occurred in the past but continue to this very day, as we shall see.
DRUNK WITH THE MARTYR' BLOOD
John next notices that the woman is drunk--and not with an alcoholic beverage. She is drunk with "the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus..." (Revelation 17:6). The picture is a horrible one. It is not merely her hands that are red with this blood, but she is drunk with it! The slaughter of innocents who, for conscience' sake, would not yield to her totalitarian demands has so refused and exhilarated her that she reels in ecstasy.
One thinks immediately of the Inquisitions (Roman, Medieval, and Spanish) which for centuries held Europe in their terrible grip. In his History of the Inquisition, Canon Llorente, who was the Secretary to the Inquisition in Madrid from 1790-1792 and had access to the archives of all the tribunals, estimated that in Spain alone the number of condemned exceeded 3 million, with about 300,000 burned at the stake (R.W. Thompson, The Papacy and the Civil Power, New York, 1876, p. 82). A Catholic historian comments upon events leading up to the suppression of the Spanish Inquisition in 1809:
"When Napoleon conquered Spain in 1808, a Polish officer in his army, Colonel Lemanouski, reported that the Dominicans [in charge of the Inquisition] blockaded themselves in their monastery in Madrid. When Lemanouski's troops forced an entry, the inquisitions denied the existence of any torture chambers.
"The soldiers searched the monastery and discovered them under the floors. The chambers were full of prisoners, all naked, many insane. The French troops, used to cruelty and blood, could not stomach the sight. They emptied the torture-chambers, laid gunpowder to the monastery and blew the place up" (De Rosa, op. cit., p. 172).
To wring out confessions from these poor creatures, the Roman Catholic Church devised ingenious tortures so excruciating and barbarous that one is sickened by their recital. Church historian Bishop William Shaw Kerr writes:
"The most ghastly abomination of all was the system of torture. The accounts of it cold-blooded operations make one shudder at the capacity of human beings for cruelty. And it was decreed and regulated by the popes who claim to represent Christ on earth. ...
"Careful notes were taken not only of all that was confessed by the victim, but of his shrieks, cries, lamentations, broken interjections and appeals for mercy. The most moving things in the literature of the inquisition are not the accounts of their sufferings left by the victims but the sober memoranda kept by the officers of the tribunals. We are distressed and horrified just because their is no intention to shock us" (Kerr, op. cit., pp. 239-40).
The remnants of some of the chambers of horror remain in Europe and may be visited today. They stand as memorials to the zealous outworking of Roman Catholic dogmas which remain in force today, and to a Church which claims to be infallible and to this day justifies such barbarism. They are also memorials to the astonishing accuracy of John's vision in Revelation 17. In a book published in Spain in 1909, Emelio Martinez writes:
"To these three million victims [documented by Llorente] should be added the thousands of Jews and Moors deported from their homeland. ... In just one year, 1481, and just in Seville, the Holy Office [if inquisition] burned 2000 persons; the bones and effigies of another 2000 ... and another 16,000 were condemned to varying sentences" (Emelio Martinez, Recuerdos [Memoirs] de Antano, CLIE, 1909, pp. 105-06).
Peter de Rosa acknowledges that his own Catholic Church "was responsible for persecuting Jews, for the Inquisition, for slaughtering heretics by the thousand, for reintroducing torture in to Europe as part of the judicial process." Yet the Roman Catholic Church has never officially admitted that these practices were evil, nor has she apologized to the world or to any of the victims or their descendants. Nor could Pope John Paul II apologize today because "the doctrines responsible for those terrible things still underpin his position" (De Rosa, op. cit., pp. 20-21). Rome has not changed at heart no matter what sweet words she speaks when it serves her purpose.
MORE BLOOD THAN THE PAGANS
Pagans Rome made sport of throwing to the lions, burning and otherwise killing thousands of Christians and not a few Jews. Yet "Christian" Rome slaughtered many times that number of both Christians and Jews. Beside those victims of the Inquisition, there were Huguenots, Albigenses, Waldenses, and other Christians who were massacred, tortured, and burned at the stake by the hundreds of thousands simply because they refused to align themselves with the Roman Catholic Church and its corruption and heretical dogmas and practices. Out of conscience they tried to follow the teachings of Christ and the apostles independent of Rome, and for that crime they were maligned, hunted, imprisoned, tortured, and slain.
Why would Rome ever apologize for or even admit this holocaust? No one calls her to account today. Protestants have now forgotten the hundreds of thousands of people burned at the stake for embracing the simple gospel of Christ and refusing to bow to papal authority. Amazingly, Protestants are now embracing Rome as Christian while she insists that the "separated brethren" be reconciled to her on her unchangeable terms!
Many evangelical leaders are intent upon working with Roman Catholics to evangelize the world by the year 2000. They don't want to hear any "negative" reminders of the millions of people tortured and slain by the Church to which they now pay homage, or the fact that Rome has a false gospel of sacramental works.
"Christian" Rome slaughtered Jews by the thousands--far more than pagan Rome ever did. The land of Israel was seen as belonging to Roman Catholic Church, not to the Jews. In 1096 Pope Urban Ii inspired the first crusade to retake Jerusalem from the Muslims. With the cross on their shields and armor, the Crusaders massacred Jews across Europe on their way to the Holy Land. Almost their first act upon taking Jerusalem "for Holy Mother Church" was to herd all of the Jews into the synagogue and set it ablaze. These facts of history cannot be swept under the carpet of ecumenical togetherness as though they never happened.
Nor can the Vatican escape considerable responsibility for the Nazi Holocaust, which was thoroughly known to Pius XII in spite of his complete silence throughout the war on the most important of subjects (E.g. Guenter Lewy, The Catholic Church and Hazi Germany, McGraw-Hill, 1964, pp. 300-04).
The involvement of Catholicism in the Holocaust will be examined later. Had the pope protested, as representatives of Jewish organizations and the Allied Powers begged him to do, he would have condemned his own church. The Facts are inescapable:
"In 1936, Bishop Berning of Osnabruch had talked with the Fuehrer for over an hour. Hitler assured his lordship there was no fundamental difference between National Socialism and the Catholic Church. Had not the church, he argued, looked on Jews as parasites and shut them in ghettos?
"`I am only doing,' he boasted, `What the church has done for fifteen hundred years, only more effectively.' Being a Catholic himself, he told Berning, he told Berning, he `admired and wanted to promote Christianity.'" (De Rosa, op. cit., p. 5; Lewy, op. cit., p. 111).
There is, of course, another reason why the Roman Catholic Church has neither apologized for not represented of these crimes. How could she? The execution of heretics (including Jews) was decreed by "infallible" popes.
The Catholic Church herself claims to be infallible, and thus her doctrines could not be wrong.
REIGNING OVER THE KINGS OF THE EARTH
Finally, the angel reveals to John that the woman "is that great city which reigneth over the kings of the earth" (Revelation 17:18). Is there such a city? Yes, and again only one: Vatican City. Popes crowned and deposed kings and emperors, exacting obedience by threatening them with excommunication. At the time of the First Vatican Council in 1869 J.H. Ignaz von Dollinger, Professor of Church History in Munich, warned that Pope Pius IX would force the Council make an infallible dogma out of "that pet theory of the Popes--that they could force kings and magistrates, by excommunication and its consequences, to carry out their sentences of confiscation, imprisonment, and death. ..." He reminded his fellow Roman Catholics of some of the evil consequences of papal political authority:
"When, for instance, [Pope] Martin IV placed King Pedro of Aragon under excommunication and interdict ... then promised indulgences for all their sins to those who fought with him and [tyrant] Charles [I of Naples] against Pedro, finally declared his kingdom forfeit ... which cost the two kings of France and Aragon their life, and the French the loss of an army" (Dollinger, op. cit., pp. 10-12).
Though John Paul II lacks the power to enforce such brutal claims today, his Church still retains the dogmas which authorize him to do so. And the practical effects of his power are no less than those of his predecessors, though exercised quietly behind the scenes. The Vatican is the only city which exchanges ambassadors with nations, and she does so with every major country on earth. Ambassadors come to the Vatican from every major country, including the United States, not out of mere courtesy but because of the pope is the most powerful ruler on earth today. Even President Clinton journeyed to Denver in August 1993 to greet the pope. He addressed him as "Holy Father" and "Your Holiness."
Yes, ambassadors of nations come to Washington D.C., to Paris, or to London, but only because the national government has its capital there. Nor does Washington, Paris, London, or any other city send ambassadors to other countries. Only Vatican City does so. Unlike any other city on earth, the Vatican is acknowledged as a sovereign state in its own right, separate and distinct from the nation of Italy surrounding it. There is no other city in history of which this has been true, and such is still the case today.
Only of the Vatican could it be said that a city reigns over the kings of the earth. The phrase "the worldwide influence of Washington" means the influence not of that city but of the United States, which has its capital there. When one speaks, however, of the influence of the Vatican around the world, that is exactly what is meant--the city and the worldwide power of Roman Catholicism and its leader the pope. Vatican City is absolutely unique.
FORGET A REBUILT BABYLON
Some suggest that the Vatican will move to Babylon in Iraq when it is rebuilt. But why should it? The Vatican has been fulfilling John's vision from its location in Rome for the past 15 centuries. Moreover, we have shown the connection to ancient Babylon which the Vatican has maintained down through history in the paganized Christianity it has promulgated. As for ancient Babylon itself, it wasn't even in existence during the past 2300 years to "reign over the kings of the earth." Babylon lay in ruins while pagan Rome and later Catholic Rome, the new Babylon, was indeed reigning over kings.
One eighteenth-century historian counted 95 popes who claimed to have divine power to depose kings and emperors. Historian Walter James wrote that Pope Innocent III (1198-1216) "held all Europe in his net" (Walter James, The Christian in Politics, Oxford University Press, 1962, p. 47). Gregory IX (1227-41) thundered that the pope was lord and master of everyone and everything. Historian R.W. Southern declared: "During the whole medieval period there was in Rome a single spiritual and temporal authority [the papacy] exercising powers which in the end exceeded those that had ever lain within the grasp of a Roman emperor" (R.W. Southern, Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages, Vol. 2, Pelican History of the Church series, Penguin Books, 1970, pp. 24-25).
That the popes reigned over kings is an undisputed fact of history that we will more fully document later. That in so doing horrible abominations were committed, as John foresaw, is also indisputable. Pope Nicholas I (858-67) declared: "We [popes] alone have the power to bind and to loose, to absolve Nero and to condemn him; and Christians cannot, under penalty of excommunication, execute other judgment than ours, which alone is infallible." In commanding one king to destroy another, Nicholas wrote:
"We order you, in the name of religion, to invade his states, burn his cities, and massacre his people" (Cormenin, History of the Popes, p. 243, as cited in R.W. Thompson, op. cit., p. 368).
The qualifying information which John gives us under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit for identifying this woman, who is a city, is specific, conclusive, and irrefutable. There is no city upon earth, past or present, which meets all of these criteria except Catholic Rome and now Vatican City. That inescapable conclusion will become increasingly clear as we proceed to uncover the facts.
[The previous is chapter 6 of A Woman Rides the Beast, copyright 1994 by Dave Hunt, Harvest House Publishers, Eugene, Oregon 97402; order from The Berean Call, P.O. Box 7019, Bend, OR 97708. $10 + $2 S/H.]
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[The following is chapter 7 of A Woman Rides the Beast: The Roman Catholic Church and the Last Days, copyright 1994 by Dave Hunt, Harvest House Publishers, Eugene, Oregon 97402; order from The Berean Call, P.O. Box 7019, Bend, OR 97708. $10 + $2 S/H.]
"Every cleric must obey the Pope, even if he commands what is evil; for no one may judge the Pope." --Pope Innocent III (1198-1216)
"The First See [Rome/papacy] is judged by no one. It is the right of the Roman Pontiff himself alone to judge...those who hold the highest civil office in a state. ... There is neither appeal nor recourse against a decision or decree of the Roman Pontiff." --From today's Code of Canon Law
The Roman Catholic pope has often been the most powerful religious and political figure on earth. This is true today, even though the pope no longer has at his disposal the armies and navies of past Roman pontiffs. The papacy is crucial to Roman Catholicism, which is destined to play a vital role in the last days prior to Christ's second coming. Therefore we must take time to understand the papacy in relation to both the Church and the world. How did the papal office arise? What is its significance today?
The Vatican's constituency of 980 million followers is at least three times the number of citizens in any Western democracy and is exceeded only by the population of China. Even more important, these 980 million people are scattered throughout the world, many of them holding high political, military, and commercial positions in non-Catholic countries. Moreover, the pope has thousands of secret agents worldwide. They include Jesuits, the Knights of Columbus, Knights of Malta, Opus Dei, and others. The Vatican's Intelligence Service and its field resources are second to none.
Politically the pope's power is exercised mostly behind the scenes, at times in cooperation with and at other times in opposition to the CIA, British Intelligence, Israeli Mossad, and other intelligence services. Remember, the pope's 980 million subjects are bound to him by religious ties, which are far stronger than any political loyalties could ever be. No secular government can compete with the motivational power of religious belief.
The typical Roman Catholic, though he may disagree with his church on such issues as homosexuality, abortion, extramarital sex, contraceptives, and the necessity for confession, nevertheless believes that, when it comes time for him to die, Rome holds his only hope. The pope as Christ's Vicar gives a visible reality and practical expression to that hope. The extraordinary position of the pope in relation to members of the Church was expressed succinctly in Rome's La Civilta Cattolica, which a papal brief described in the mid-nineteenth century as "the purest journalistic organ of true Church doctrine" (J.H. Ignaz von Dollinger, The Pope and the Council, London, 1869, p. 3).
"It is not enough for the people only to know that the Pope is the head of the Church ... they must also understand that their own faith and religious life flow from him; that in him is the bond which unites Catholics to one another, and the power which strengthens and the light which guides them; that he is the dispenser of spiritual graces, the giver of the benefits of religion, the upholder of justice, and the protector of the oppressed" (La Civilta Cattolica, 1867, Vol. xii, p. 86).
Similar words have been spoken by the followers of Joseph Smith, Sun Myung Moon, and other cult leaders. The pope is "another Christ" and "God on earth" to his followers, and, as Vatican II says, he can be judged by neither man nor tribunal (Austin Flannery, O.P., gen. ed., Vatican Council II: The Conciliar and Post Cinciliar Documents, rev. ed., Costello Publishing, 1988, p. 380).
CHECK YOUR MIND AT THE DOOR
The pope, and therefore the Church through him as its head, both claim to be in infallible. Ordinary Catholics must not question anything the pope or Church have to say concerning faith and morals. The councils and catechisms have for centuries declared the need for such total submission and still insist upon it today. The Catholic World reminded all Roman Catholics in the United States at the time of the First Vatican Council:
"Each individual must receive the faith and law from the Church with unquestioning submission and obedience of the intellect and the will. ... We have no right to ask reasons of the Church, any more than of Almighty God. ... We are to take with unquestioning docility whatever instruction the Church gives us" (The Catholic World, August 1871, vol. xiii, pp. 58089).
Here we have as clear a denial of individual moral responsibility as can be found in any cult. The same requirement of unthinking submission is demanded in Vatican II. The Code of Canon Law likewise reasserts the same rule:
"The Christian faithful, conscious of their own responsibility, are bound by Christian obedience to follow what the sacred pastors, as representatives of Christ, declare as teachers of the faith or determine as leaders of the Church" (James A. Coriden, Thomas J. Green, Donald E. Heintschel, eds., The Code of Canon Law, Paulist Press, 1985, Canon 212, Section 1).
When it comes to faith and morals and the way of salvation, Catholics must check their minds at the door and accept whatever Church says. They can't even study the Bible for themselves because only the Magisterium can interpret it. Obviously, this prohibition against freedom of conscience is related to the total suppression of basic human rights for all mankind everywhere, which is the unchanging goal of Roman Catholicism.
To understand Roman Catholicism one must ignore the public posturing and public-relations-motivated profile offered by the Catholic Church. The face that Rome shows to the world varies from country to country depending upon the control it has and what it can effect. Instead, we must look to Catholicism's official doctrines, which never change.
Vatican II is thought by most Catholics and non-Catholics to have liberalized Catholicism. In fact, it reaffirmed the canons and decrees of previous key councils: "The sacred council accepts loyally the venerable faith of our ancestors ... and it proposes again the decrees of the Second Council of Nicea, of the Council of Florence, and of the Council of Trent" (Corden, et al., op. cit., Canon 212, Section 1). The Council of Trent denounced the Reformation and damned evangelicals' beliefs with more than 100 anathemas. All of these condemnations of the gospel of God's grace are endorsed and reaffirmed by Vatican II. As for the pope, Vatican II clearly states:
"The Roman Pontiff, head of the college of bishops, enjoys this infallibility in virtue of his office [not the holiness of his life], when, as supreme pastor and teacher of all the faithful ... he proclaims in an absolute decision a doctrine pertaining to faith or morals. For that reason his definitions are rightly said to be irreformable ... in no way in need of the approval of others, and do not admit of appeal to any other tribunal.
"... the faithful, for their part, are obliged to submit to their bishops' decision, made in the name of Christ, in matters of faith and morals, and to adhere to it with a ready and respectful allegiance of mind. This loyal submission of the will and intellect must be given, in a special way, to the authentic teaching authority of the Roman Pontiff, even when he does not speak ex cathedra in such wise, indeed, that his supreme teaching authority be acknowledged with respect, and the one sincerely adhere to decision made by him, conformably with his manifest mind and intention..." (Ibid., pp. 379-80).
Obliged to submit to their bishop's decision ... submission of the will and intellect must be given ...! That gives Rome incredible power over devout Catholics. That every Catholic does not obey is not the point; the point is that such wording is the unchangeable teaching and intent of the Church, not only for its members but for all mankind.
While many Catholics rebel against certain Church doctrines, they remain nominally attached to the Church, though they may only attend on Christmas or Easter. When it comes, however, to their hope of someday being released from purgatory and getting to heaven, no Catholic can question the Church or he would cease to be under its protection and thus be damned. Vatican II clearly says:
"This holy Council teaches ... that the Church ... is necessary for salvation. ... Hence, they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it, or to remain in it" (Ibid., pp. 365-66).
Remember that Hitler and Mussolini remained Catholics to the end and were never excommunicated from the Church. So did thousands of the worst Nazi war criminals, whom the Vatican smuggled out of Europe into safe havens in South America. Such archcriminals are honored with Catholic funerals and, like Mafia members, die with the assurance that their Church will continue to say Masses in order to get them out of purgatory and eventually into heaven. It is an insurance policy that very few allow to lapse completely.
"IMPECCABILITY" VERSUS "INFALLIBILITY"
The required blind faith in the pronouncements of the pope and the clergy seems to make sense because the Roman Church is the largest and oldest. Surely so many billions of religious people couldn't be wrong for the past 1500 years! Faith is also bolstered by the assurance that the Roman Catholic Church is the now true church, the one which alone can be traced back to the original apostles, and that its papal authority comes directly from Christ through Peter by a long and unbroken line of apostolic succession.
As proof, the Church provides a list of its popes (thus far 263) all the way back to Peter. Few Catholics know that popes quarreled and fought with one another, excommunicated one another, and sometimes even killed each other. It is difficult to find even a few among the popes after the fifth century who exhibited the basic Christian virtues. Their lives as recorded in the Catholic Encyclopedia read like an unbelievable soap opera of lust, madness, mayhem, and murder. Nevertheless, all of these master criminals, prisoners, adulterers, and mass murderers are considered to have been infallible when they spoke ex cathedra--that is, made dogmatic pronouncements upon faith and morals to the whole church.
Catholic apologists argue that there is a difference between impeccability in character and conduct, which the popes certainly did not have, and infallibility in faith and morals, which every Catholic must believe they had (Karl Keating, Catholicism and Fundamentalism: The Attack on "Romanism" by "Bible Christians," Ignatius Press, 1988, pp. 215-18). What folly to believe that a man who in his life denies the faith and is habitually immoral is nevertheless infallible when he speaks of faith and morals!
Knowledgeable Catholics readily admit that many popes were incredibly evil. But that fact, it is argued, simply proves they were human and allows one to disagree with them in good conscience. To the Catholic it makes good sense that, in spite of the undeniable wickedness of her clergy, the Roman Catholic Church must be mankind's only hope. After all, it was established by Christ Himself, who made Peter the first pope. That is supposedly proved by the Scripture "Thou are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church" (Matthew 16:18), which we will deal with in detail later.
THE UNKNOWN DOGMA
Contrary to what Roman Catholics are taught, the papal office did not originate with Peter. It was centuries before the Bishop of Rome attempted to dominate the rest of the Church, and many centuries more before this primacy was generally accepted. Leo the Great's letter to Flavian in 449 was not accepted until the Council of Chalcedon had approved it.
"[Pope] Leo [I] himself acknowledged that his treatise could not become a rule of faith till it was confirmed by the bishops" (Dollinger, op. cit., p. 59).
There were eight councils of the Church before the schism in 1054 split into Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, when the Bishop of Rome and the Patriarch of Constantinople excommunicated each other. None of these eight councils was called by the Bishop of Rome, but by the emperor, who also put his stamp of approval upon their decrees. As for papal authority, one Catholic historian reminds us:
"Pope Pelaguis (556-60) talks of heretics separating themselves from the Apostolic See, that is, Rome, Jerusalem, Alexandria plus Constantinople. In all the early writings of the hierarchy there is no mention of a special role for the Bishop of Rome, nor yet the special name of 'Pope' ... Of the eighty or so heresies in the first six centuries, not one refers to the authority of the Bishop of Rome, not one is settled by the Bishop or Rome ... No one attacks the [supreme] authority of the Roman pontiff, because no one has heard of it" (Peter de Rosa, Vicars of Christ: The Dark Side of the Papacy, Crown Publishers, 1988, pp. 205-06).
The Easter Synod of 680 called by Pope Agatho was the first ecclesiastical body that asserted the primacy of Rome over the rest of the Church, but this was not an ecumenical council of the entire Church, so its decision was not generally accepted. As Catholic historian Peter de Rosa points out:
"...not one of the early Fathers of the church say in the Bible any reference to papal jurisdiction over the church. On the contrary, they take it for granted that bishops, especially metropolitans, have the full right to govern and administer their own territory without interference from anyone. The Eastern church never accepted papal supremacy; Rome's attempt to impose it led to the schism.
"...one looks in vain in the first millennium for a single doctrine or piece of legislation imposed by Rome alone on the rest of the church. The only general laws came out of Councils such as Nicaea. In any case, how could the Bishop of Rome have exercised universal jurisdiction in those early centuries when there was no [Roman] Curia, when other bishops brooked no interference in their dioceses from anyone, when Rome issued no dispensations and demanded no tribute or taxation, when all bishops, not just the Bishop of Rome, had the power to bind and loose, when no bishop or church or individual was censured by Rome? Further, for centuries, the Bishop of Rome was chosen by the local citizens--clergy and laity. If he had jurisdiction over the universal church, would not the rest of the world want a say in his appointment? When he was believed to have [universal] supremacy the rest of the church did demand a say in his election. This came about only in the Middle Ages" (Ibid., pp. 248-49).
FROM CALVARY TO REGAL PONTIFF
It requires ingenious interpolation to derive from the simple statement "On this rock I will build my church" a Petrine office, apostolic succession, papal infallibility, and all the pomp, ceremony, and power surrounding the pope today. As one Catholic writer rather sarcastically points out:
"... it required [great] skill to take statements made by a poor Carpenter to an equally poor fisherman and apply them to a regal pontiff who was soon to be called Lord of the World" (Ibid., p. 25).
Yet such is the only biblical foundation upon which the entire superstructure of the Roman Catholic Church has been built. It includes an infallible papacy, apostolic succession, an intricate hierarchy of priests, bishops, archbishops, cardinals, et al, the magisterium of bishops which alone can interpret the Bible, the requirement that for his alleged infallibility the pope must speak ex cathedra to the entire Church on matters of faith or morals, etc., etc. That none of these concepts is even remotely suggested, must less specifically stated, either in Matthew 16:18 or elsewhere in Scripture is dismissed by Catholic apologists, who then look to "tradition" for support. There they enter a maze of deceit and actual fraud.
It took centuries of developing ingenious arguments to finally arrive at the theory that the Christ who had "nowhere to lay his head" (Matthew 8:20), who lived in poverty and was crucified naked, was to be represented by a regal pontiff who possessed more than one palace containing in excess of 1100 rooms each, was waited upon day and night by scores of servants, and wore the finest gold-embroidered silk robes! That Christ passed on to Peter such pomp and luxuries, which neither of them knew, is both ludicrous and blasphemous.
The glories and powers enjoyed by popes are not even remotely related to Peter's life of purity and poverty. This fisherman apostle said, "Silver and gold have I none" (Acts 3:6). Nor were papal luxuries and pompous claims of authority over kings and kingdoms known in the Church until centuries later as ambitious popes gradually extended and solidified their authority and control over earthly rulers. Popes began to call themselves by such titles as "supreme ruler of the worlds" and "king of kings." Others claiming to be "God on earth," even the "redeemer" who "hung on the cross as Christ did," asserted that "Jesus put the popes on the same level as God" (August Bernhard Hasler, How the Pope Became Infallible, Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1981, p. 48). Peter would have denounced such pretentious fraud as blasphemy.
Rome had been the capital of the empire before Constantine moved his palace to the East, and it continues to be regarded as the capital of the western half of the empire. With the Emperor Constantine installed in the city of Constantinople (Istanbul today), the pope developed near absolute power, not only as the head of the Church but as the emperor of the West. When the empire later fell, it was the papacy which gave the fragmented remains its continuity. Thomas Hobbes would say, "The papacy is none other than the ghost of the deceased Roman Empire, sitting crowned upon the grave thereof."
W.H.C. Frend, Emeritus Professor of Ecclesisatical History, in his classic, The Rise of Christianity, points out that by the middle of the fifth century the Church "had become the most powerful single factor in the lives of the peoples of the empire. The Virgin and the saints had replaced the [pagan] gods as patrons of cities" (W.H.C. Frend, The Rise of Christianity, Philadelphia, 1984, p. 773). Pope Leo I (440-461) boasted that St. Peter and St. Paul had "replaced Romulus and Remus as the city's [Rome's] protecting patrons" (H. Chadwick, The Early Church, Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1976, p. 243). Frend writes that "Christian Rome was the legitimate successor of pagan Rome ... Christ had triumphed [and] Rome was ready to extend its sway to the heavens themselves" (Frend, op. cit., p. 707).
SHAMELESS REVISION OF HISTORY
Such was the ambition of most of those who were scrambling onto the alleged throne of Peter and at times warring with one another to gain it. Using the name of Christ and piously making the sign of the cross, they labored mightily to satisfy their lust for power and pleasure and wealth. No justification for making themselves the absolute and infallible rulers over the Church, much less the world, could be found in the writings of the early Fathers and certainly not in Scripture. Therefore the popes had to find other support. The means they chose was to rewrite history by manufacturing allegedly historical documents. The first of these bold forgeries was The Donation of Constantine, which we have already mentioned. It was followed by pseudo-Isidorian Decretals, which were early papal decrees allegedly compiled by Archbishop Isidore (560-636) but actually fabricated in the ninth century. These frauds became the foundation for much "tradition" still relied upon today.
Catholic historian J.H. Ignaz von Dollinger writes that prior "to the Isidorian Decretals no serious attempt was made anywhere to introduce the neo-Roman theory of infallibility. The popes did not dream of laying claim to such a privilege" (Dollinger, op. cit., p. 62). He goes on to explain that these fraudulent Decretals would--
"gradually, but surely, change the whole constitution and government of the Church. It would be difficult to find in all history a second instance of so successful and yet so clumsy a forgery.
For three centuries past [he wrote in 1869] it [the fabrication] has been exposed, yet the principles it introduced and brought into practice have taken such deep root in the soil of the Church, and have so grown into her life, that the exposure of the fraud has produced no result in shaking the dominant system" (Ibid., pp. 76-77).
The Isidorian Decretals involved about a hundred concocted decrees allegedly promulgated by the early popes, along with counterfeit writings of supposed Church authorities and synods. These fabrications were just what Nicholas I (585-67) needed to justify his claims that the popes "held the place of God on earth" with absolute authority over kings, including even the eight to "command massacres" of those who opposed them--all in the name of Christ.
The popes who followed Nicholas were only too happy to emulate his ways, and each of them used his predecessors' actions to justify his own, thus building an ever-larger case for infallibility, but upon a fraudulent foundation. Writing in the nineteenth century, Church historian R.W. Thompson, himself a Catholic, comments:
"Such times as these were adapted to the practice of any kind of imposture and fraud which the popes and clergy considered necessary to strengthen the authority of the papacy. ... the personal interest [and] ambition of Innocent III led him to preserve all these forgeries with care, so that. ... the ‘pious fraud’ might become sanctified by time ... The result he hoped and sought for has been accomplished. ... ‘[These] false Decretals, which are now universally considered to have been bold and unblushing forgeries ... constitute the cornerstone of that enormous system of wrong and usurpation which has since been built up by the papacy, to revive which Pope Pius IX has now put forth his Encyclical and Syllabus [of Errors]. ..." (R.W. Thompson, The Papacy and the Civil Power, New York, 1876, p. 372).
Devout Catholics would be shocked to learn that much of the "apostolic tradition" they have been told supports Roman Catholicism (and is to be regarded upon the same level as Scripture) was actually a deliberately manufactured fraud. The doctrines built upon these forgeries became so interwoven into Catholicism that even after the hoax was exposed the popes were reluctant to make the necessary correction. Pope after infallible pope endorsed the counterfeit. To make a clean break from centuries of accumulated lies would tear apart the very fabric of Roman Catholicism.
Pope Pius IX relied upon the fraud, though it had already been exposed for three centuries, to build his case for pressuring the bishops to make papal infallibility an official dogma at Vatican I. But the testimony of history conclusively refutes both apostolic succession and papal infallibility.
[The previous study is chapter 7 of A Woman Rides the Beast: The Roman Catholic Church in the Last Days, copyright 1994 by Dave Hunt, Harvest House Publishers, Eugene, Oregon 97402]
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[The following is chapter 9 of A Woman Rides the Beast: The Roman Catholic Church and the Last Days, copyright 1994 by Dave Hunt, Harvest House Publishers, Eugene, Oregon 97402; order from The Berean Call, P.O. Box 7019, Bend, OR 97708. $10 + $2 S/H.]
"It is beyond question that he [the pope] can err even in matters touching the faith. He does this when he teaches heresy by his own judgment or decretal. In truth, many Roman Pontiffs were heretics." --Pope Adrian VI, 1523
The great importance of the papacy warrants yet further investigation as to its legitimacy. Vital is the claim that the popes are infallible when they speak on morals and dogma to the entire Church. If they are not infallible, the Roman Catholic Church has lost its unique leadership and apostolic authority. Yet popes themselves (Adrian VI quoted above and others) have denied that they or any other popes were infallible. Why not believe them?
Pope Adrian VI's declaration goes even further. If many popes have been heretics, then we have another reason why there cannot be an unbroken line of "apostolic succession back to Peter." Besides proving that a person is not infallible, espousing heresy is a mortal sin in Roman Catholic theology. Its immediate consequence, so says the official Roman Catholic Code of Canon Law (a codification of the canons and decrees of the Church is instant and automatic excommunication (James A. Coriden, Thomas J. Green, Donald E. Heintschel, eds., The Code of Canon Law, Paulist Press, 1985, Canon 1364, p. 920). A heretic has denied the faith and placed himself outside the Church.
A heretical pope is therefore no longer even a member of the Church, much less its head. Consequently, a heretic, though pope, could not possibly provide a channel of apostolic authority to a successor. Yet the list of popes contains numerous heretics who were denounced as such by councils and by other popes.
No wonder the theories of apostolic succession and papal infallibility were not proposed until many centuries after Peter's death! It was as the popes grasped after more power, and began to command monarchs and entire nations, that they needed to justify their arrogant and oppressive imperialism. Already they claimed to be "God on earth" and the vicars of Christ, but that was not enough. They necessarily began to assert infallibility as well.
THE ROOTS OF INFALLIBILITY
Kings and emperors had once claimed to be gods, but their luster faded as they fought among themselves and their subjects began to chafe for more freedom. What was needed was an infallible representation of deity on earth to whom the civil rulers could look to settle their disputes. The popes began to fill that need, and by the thirteenth century they had established themselves as the supreme authorities all across Europe. A leading nineteenth-century Catholic historian wrote that this authoritarianism encouraged despotism:
"...the Catholic Church [developed] an hostile and suspicious attitude towards the principles of political, intellectual, and religious freedom and independence of judgment ... [so that the] ideal of the Church [became] an universal empire ... of force and oppression, where the spiritual suppressing every movement it dislikes.
"... we could not, therefore, avoid bringing forward ... a very dark side of the history of the Papacy" (J.H. Kgnaz von Dollinger, The Pope and the Council, London, 1869, pp. xv, xvii).
Much of the "dark side of the history of the Papacy" involving that "empire of force and oppression" resulted from the popes' claim to infallibility. People eagerly embraced the idea in spite of the popes’ wickedness. After all, the pagan gods stole one another's wives and lived riotously, so why not the popes? But the idea that a pope could be thought infallible even while blatantly contradicting himself was remarkable. Yet that fraud was maintained.
Such was the case, for example, when Pope Clement XI (1700-21) confirmed King Philip V of Spain and then shortly thereafter King Charles III of Germany, both with the same titles and privileges, including the highly prized Bull of the Crusade. As a result, Charles went to war with Philip to claim the crown which the pope seemingly had given him. Clement even confirmed two different candidates, one proposed by each sovereign, for the same bishopric.
One would think that such blatant contradictions would be proof enough that the pope was not infallible. Yet the bishops arguing the case for Charles III, according to a contemporary observer, "did allege the Pope's infallibility, and that every Christian is obliged in conscience to follow the last declaration of the Pope, and blindly to obey it, without inquiring into the reasons that did move the Pope to it" (D. Antonio Gavin, A MasterKey to Popery, 3rd ed., London, 1773, pp. 113-14). Such is the illogical and unbiblical but absolute and infallible papal authority which has long been claimed by the popes and which became official Roman Catholic dogma at Vatican I. That Council was coerced by Pius IX (1846-78) even to make submission to the pope a requirement of salvation:
If anyone therefore shall say that blessed Peter the Apostle was not appointed the prince of all the apostles and the visible head of the whole church militant or that the same directly and immediately received from our Lord Jesus Christ a primacy of honor only and not of true and proper jurisdiction [over the whole church], let him be anathema [excommunicated and thus be damned]!
Nearly 300 years earlier, in 1591, the Jesuit Cardinal Robert Bellarmine, whose loyalty to the pope was absolute, had declared that whatever the Roman Pontiff commanded must be believed and obeyed no matter how evil or ludicrous. Of course, he could show neither biblical, logical, not traditional support for such an extreme view, a view which did away with the individual moral accountability to God so clearly taught in Scripture and recognized in every conscience.
Peter Olivi, a Franciscan priest, made one of the earliest attempts to establish papal infallibility. His motive was primarily selfish. Pope Nicholas III (1277-80) had favored the Franciscans by declaring that "communal renunciation of property was a possible way to salvation" (August Bernhard Hasler, How the Pope Became Infallible, Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1981, p. 36). [Roman Catholicism had long taught salvation by works, as it teaches even today.]
Desiring to make the pope's decision in favor of himself and his fellow Franciscans unassailable, Olivi proposed that such papal pronouncements were infallible. A pope could live the most wicked life, murdering rivals, plundering cities, massacring their inhabitants (as many popes did), and denying Christ daily in abominable deeds. Yet if and when he made a pronouncement to the Church on faith and morals he would be under the guidance of the Holy Spirit to such an extent that whatever he said would be infallible.
Olivi's astonishing proposal was a radical departure from Church tradition. Until then few popes had dared to look upon themselves as infallible, though the temptation to the human ego to embrace such folly is especially great for those who are so highly revered and venerated. Catholic theologian Hans Kung writes:
"With regards to the origin of the Roman Doctrine of infallibility: ... [it] did not slowly `develop' or `unfold,' but rather was created in one stroke in the late 1200s [by] an eccentric Franciscan, Peter Olivi (d.1298), repeatedly accused of heresy. At first no one took Olivi's notion seriously. ... The medieval canonists ... had never claimed that the Church needed an infallible head to preserve its faith. ... [And] the modern critical attack on the principles of infallibility has the backing of Scripture and the body of Catholic tradition" (Hasler, How the Pope Became Infallible, from the introduction by Hans Kung, p. 9).
"A WORK OF THE DEVIL"
Olivi's theory was soon denounced by a pontiff, who would take awful vengeance upon the Franciscans. Pope John XXII (1316-34) had his own selfish reasons for denying papal infallibility. Had the Franciscans not been the champions of it, John might have accepted the idea as useful for his own purposes. However, he hated the Franciscans for taking vows of poverty that condemned his own lavish lifestyle. He had amassed a huge fortune "by duping the poor, by selling livings, indulgences and dispensations" (De Rosa, op. cit., p. 180). Angrily, John XXII condemned as heresy both the Franciscan way of life and Nicholas III's commendation thereof.
To justify contradicting another pope, John produced his Bull Qui quorundam (1324), a dogmatic assertion of doctrine made to the entire Church and thus infallible by today's rules. In it John XXII reviled the doctrine of papal infallibility as "the work of the devil."
Though often offered as an example of the consummate heretic, John XXII continued in the "holy office" for 18 wicked years, and his name remains today unashamedly displayed on the Vatican's official list of the vicars of Christ. This pope is described by one Catholic historian as "full of avarice, more worldly than a pimp, and with a laugh that crackled with unimprovable malice" (Ibid., p. 212). Yet he is an essential link in the alleged apostolic succession back to Peter upon which John Paul II's legitimacy depends today.
PAPAL HERETICS'S HERETIC
John XXII's predecessor, Clement V, had given away all of the Church's wealth to his relatives, leaving a bare treasury. That condition the new pope went about to cure with a vengeance. He sold everything for a price, including absolution from sin and eternal salvation. Thus the golden chalice held by the woman riding the beast was refilled with filthy lucre gained by abominable means exactly as the apostle John foresaw in his remarkable vision.
John XXII published a list of crimes and gross sins, together with the individual price for which he, as vicar of Christ, head of the one true Church, would absolve transgressors from each of them. The list left nothing out, from murder and piracy to incest, adultery, and sodomy. The wealthiest one was, the more one could sin; the more Catholics sinned, the richer the Church became.
Much of the wealth thus acquired was spent to further John XXII's passion for wars. One of his contemporaries wrote: "The blood he shed would have incarnadined [reddened] the waters of Lake Constance [an extremely large lake], and the bodies of the slain would have bridged it from shore to shore (Ibid.).
John XXII's pet doctrine was like that of many who are popular on Christian radio and TV today: that Christ and His apostles had been men of great wealth. So he declared in a papal bull, Cum inter nonnullos (1323). To deny this dogma was heresy punishable by death. John demanded that secular rulers burn at the stake Franciscans who had taken vows of poverty. Those who refused to do so were excommunicated. During his pontificate he handed over 114 Franciscans to the Inquisition to be consumed by the flames for the heresy of purposely living in poverty as Christ had. Thus it became official Roman Catholic dogma that Christ and His disciples were men of considerable wealth, and that all Christians ought to be so--a dogma repudiated by other popes.
Such papal heretics and their condemnation of one another are part of the history of the popes, a history which Catholics must honestly face. And Protestants as well, those who admire John Paul II, must realize that the position he holds and the special authority he claims come to him through a long line of criminals and heretics whom he and his Church still honor as past vicars of Christ.
THE HOLY HERETIC
Millions of Catholics from whom the historical truth has been hidden have looked upon John XXII as an exceptionally holy man. Was he not favored above all popes by "Our Lady of Mount Carmel" with one of her rare personal appearances? John swore that the "Virgin Mary" appeared to him to present the Great Promise: that she would personally go into purgatory the Saturday after their death and take to heaven all those who, having met certain other conditions, died wearing her brown scapular. In reliance upon this special Sabbatine [Saturday] Privilege, which was confirmed by others, untold millions of Roman Catholics have since worn (and still wear today) the brown scapular of "Our Lady of Mount Carmel" as their ticket to heaven. John XXII was eventually denounced as a heretic by Emperor Louis of Bavaria, who deposed him and appointed another pope in his place. But the emperor's purging of the papacy turned embarrassing when, shortly after the new pope took office, his wife appeared on the scene. The emperor quickly decided that John XXII wasn't so bad after all. For, as de Rosa sarcastically remarks, although John, like most of the other popes, had illegitimate children, at least he "had never committed the sin of matrimony." Such sarcasm, though it comes from a Catholic historian, may seem unfair at first but is in fact fully warranted. Today's Code of Canon Law 1394, refers to marriage as a "scandal" for a priest, whereas it has no such harsh words for sins of which priests are frequently guilty even today, such as child molestation, keeping a mistress, homosexuality, etc.
Reinstated as pope, John XXII's heretical pronouncements became so outrageous that only his death saved him from removal again from the papacy. Yet he remains on that long list of alleged successors of Peter through whom Pope John Paul II received his authority.
In 896 Stephen VII (896-7) had the corpse of the previous Pope Formosus (891-6) exhumed eight months after burial. Dressed in its former papal vestments and propped on a throne in the council chamber, the cadaver was "tried" and found guilty of having crowned as emperor one of Charlemagne's many illegitimate descendants. In fact, there have been a number of popes who were thus illicit claimants to the alleged throne of Peter and therefore hardly capable of passing on to their successions apostolic authority.
Having been condemned by Pope Stephen VII, the former Pope Formosa's corpse was stripped, the three fingers of benediction on the right hand were hacked off, and the remains thrown to the mob outside, who dragged it through the streets and threw it into the Tiber. Fishermen gave it a descent burial. Pope Stephen VII then declared all of Formosus's ordinations invalid, creating a most serious problem which haunts the Roman Catholic Church to this day.
Formosus had ordained many priests and bishops, who in turned ordained multitudes of others, who also did the same. Thus an open and insoluble question remains concerning which priests, bishops, et al, down to the present time may be in the line of those ordained by Formosus and are therefore without genuine apostolic authority. And what of those who were ordained by the many other heretical popes? And what of the fact that Formosus, too, remains on the official Vatican list of vicars of Christ, as does the pope who exhumed his body and denounced him posthumously?
Pope Sergius III agreed with Stephen VII in pronouncing all ordinations by heretical popes invalid--which, of course, is only logical in view of the automatic excommunication which we have already noted accompanies heresy. In Cum ex Apostolatus officio, Pope Paul VI declared "by the plenitude of papal power" that all of the acts of heretical popes were null and void. That infallible declaration leaves "apostolic succession" in ruins.
COUNCILS ABOVE POPES
A former unscrupulous Roman official, Vigilius, as pope (537-55), became an even more tragic figure. He changed his mind on doctrine each time the emperor demanded it. Vigilius was finally declared a heretic and excommunicated by the Fifth General Council (553), called at Constantinople by the Emperor Justinian. (No one doubted that a council's authority was above that of a pope.)
Exiled by the emperor, Vigilius confessed his errors and pleaded that he had been deceived by the devil. Yet the reign of this man on Peter's alleged throne was among the longest of any of the popes. More than one pope was condemned as a heretic by a Church council. The Council of Constance (1414-18] deposed three popes who each claimed to be the one true vicar of Christ and had each "excommunicated" the other two.
Pope Honorius (625-38) was condemned as a heretic by the Sixth Ecumenical council 678-87). For centuries each new pope taking office was required to swear by an oath that Honorius had been a heretic and that the council had acted properly in condemning him. Yet he too remained on the official list of Peter's successors!
The action of the Sixth Ecumenical Council, affirmed by subsequent popes, was considered proof for centuries that popes were not infallible. Yet a strong-willed despot, Pope Pius IX, through threats and manipulation, would engineer an affirmation of papal infallibility by the First Vatican Council in 1870.
CONTRADICTIONS, CONTRADICTIONS
Two persons holding opposite opinions can't both be right. Yet popes have almost made a business of contradicting one another on key issues. Agapetus (535-6) burned the anathema which Bonface II (530-2) had solemnly issued against Dioscorus (530). The later is shown as an antipope, but Agapetus, who sided with him, is shown as a true pope. Adrian II (867-72) said civil marriages were valid; Pius VII (1800-23) declared them invalid. Both men are shown as legitimate popes. Nicholas V (1447-55) voided all of Eugenius IV's (1431-47) "documents, processes, decrees, and censures against the Council [of Basle]. ... to be regarded as having never existed" (Dollinger, op. cit., p. 275), yet both remain on the official list of popes today.
On July 21, 1773, Pope Clement XIV issued a decree suppressing the Jesuits, only to have it reversed by a decree restoring them, issued by Pope Pius VII on August 7, 1814. Eugenius IV condemned Joan of Arch (1412-31) to be burned as a witch and heretic, but she was beatified by Pius X (1903-14) in 1909 and canonized by Benedict XV (1914-22) in 1920. Today inside Paris's Cathedral of Notre Dame, one of the most popular images is that of Saint Joan of Arc, France's "natural heroine," with a profusion of candles always burning before it. How could an "infallible pope" condemn a saint to death as a witch? Yet Eugene IV remains on the list of allegedly infallible "successors of Peter."
History conclusively denies both apostolic succession and papal infallibility. And in fact many popes denied the latter also, among them Vigilius (537-55), Clement IV (1265-8), Gregory XI (1370-8), Adrian VI (1522-3), Paul IV (1555-9) and even Innocent III (1198-1216), who ruled Europe with an iron hand. Then why was Pope Pius IX so determined to immortalize this obvious fraud as official dogma?
There was a very special reason: Infallibility was the final desperate prop which Pius IX hoped would support the collapsing structure of Roman Catholic domination over the government of the worlds and their citizens. To establish that dogma once for all, he convened the First Vatican Council December 8, 1869.
[The previous study, Infallible Heretics?, is chapter 9 of A Woman Rides the Beast, copyright 1994 by Dave Hunt, Harvest House Publishers, Eugene, Oregon 97402]
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[The following is chapter 12 of A Woman Rides the Beast: The Roman Catholic Church and the Last Days, copyright 1994 by Dave Hunt, Harvest House Publishers, Eugene, Oregon 97402; order from The Berean Call, P.O. Box 7019, Bend, OR 97708. $10 + $2 S/H.]
"Upon her forehead was a name written … MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS…" --Revelation 17:5
"The history of celibacy makes for reading so black. … A large part [of it] is the story of the degradation of women. … Ivo of Chartres (1040-1115) tells of whole convents with inmates who were nuns only in name … [but] were really prostitutes." --Peter de Rosa, Vicars of Christ
"The recent disclosures of widespread sexual misconduct on the part of certain members of the Roman Catholic clergy come as no surprise to most of us who were once priests or nuns." --Ex-nun Patricia Nolan Savas in USA Today
Let there be no misunderstanding: We are not suggesting that Catholic popes, priests, and nuns are inherently more prone to promiscuity than the rest of mankind. Our hearts are all the same. Many of these tragic individuals no doubt began with high moral and spiritual aspirations and in that spirit set out upon what they sincerely intended to be a life of purity and devotion to Christ. It was the system of hierarchical privilege, power, and authority over the laity which perverted and destroyed them.
That system, as we have seen, gathered momentum through the centuries by the lust and greed of popes whose natural propensity for evil (innate in us all) found occasion through the unusual opportunities afforded by their office. To enhance their power they issued a host of false documents which purported to be the writings of early Church Fathers and decrees of early synods. One self-serving theme of these forgeries was the claim that the popes had inherited "innocence and sanctity from Peter" and could not be judged by any man. Von Dollinger writes:
"A saying ascribed to Constantine, at the Council of Nice, in a legend recorded by Rufinus, was amplified till it was fashioned into a perfect mine of high-flying pretensions. Constantine, according to this fable, when the written accusations of the bishops against each other were laid before him, burned them, saying ... that the bishops were gods, and no man could dare to judge them" (J.H. Ignaz von Dollinger, The Pope and the Council, London, 1869, pp. 89-91).
If one is on the level of the gods, what privileges could not one claim? Gods are above the law. No wonder, then, that the popes began to declare openly that they had power over kings and kingdoms and all persons, and power to behave like tyrants. The added pretense of infallibility only made matters worse.
Each priest and nun, by association, shares (though to a lesser extent) this same corrupting absolutism and elevation above laypersons. Add to this pretended Godlike authority the unnatural rule of celibacy (an intolerable burden which only a small minority of persons could possibly bear) and the stage is set for all manner of evil. A sincere Catholic historian writes:
"The fact is that priestly celibacy had hardly ever worked. In the view of some historians, it has probably done more harm to morals than any other institution in the West, including prostitution. ...
"The proof of the harm done by celibacy comes not from bigoted anti-Catholic sources; on the contrary, it includes papal and conciliar documents and letters of reforming saints. They all point in one direction: far from being a candle in a naughty world, priestly celibacy has been more often than not a stain on the name of Christianity" (Peter de Rosa, Vicars of Christ: The Dark Side of the Papacy, Crown Publishers, 1988, pp. 395-96).
CELIBACY'S ROOTS AND FRUITS
One must understand that mandatory celibacy is not taught in the Bible, nor was it practiced by the apostles. This teaching developed as an integral part of the evolving papal system and gradually became essential to it. The concern was not morality, for celibacy proved to be a veritable cornucopia of evil. In fact, the rule of celibacy was not the prohibition of sex but of marriage. Pope Alexander II (1061-73), for example, refused to discipline a priest who had committed adultery with his father's second wife because he hadn't committed the sin of matrimony. That was the great evil which had to be eliminated for the priesthood to be totally devoted to the Church.
All down through history not only priests and prelates but popes as well had their mistresses and visited prostitutes. Many were homosexuals. No member of the clergy was ever excommunicated for having sex, but thousands have been put out of the priesthood for the scandal of getting married. Why then the strict insistence upon celibacy, even to the present day, if it really doesn't mean abstinence from sex? It is because the rule of celibacy has a very practical and lucrative result for the Church: It leaves priests and especially bishops and popes without families to whom to bequeath property and thereby impoverish the Church. The clergy must have no heirs.
Pope Gregory VII, bemoaning the difficulty in stamping out marriage among priests, declared: "The Church cannot escape from the clutches of the laity unless priests first escape from the clutches of their wives." Here is another vital reason for celibacy: to create a priesthood without the encumbrance (and loving loyalties) of wives and children. Thus fornication and adultery, though forbidden in theory, were preferable to a marriage relationship. Nineteenth-century historian R.W. Thompson explains:
"It was considered absolutely necessary to the perfect working of the papal system that there should organize a compact body of ecclesiastics, destitute of all those generous sympathies which grow alone out of the family relation, that they might be the better fitted to do the work of the popes." (R.W. Thompson, The Papacy and the Civil Power, New York, 1876, p. 443).
Though married men in those early days were allowed to enter the priesthood, they were required to live celibate lives. Pope Leo I (440-61) decreed that married clergy were to treat their wives "as sisters." Few if any Catholics realize that as late as the reign of Pope Gregory VII (1073-85) it was accepted for priests to be married and supposedly live in celibacy with their wives.
Such a requirement was both unnatural and unrealistic. Who could keep such a rule? All over Italy the clerics openly had largely families and no discipline was enacted against them. After all, many of the popes had large families as well and sometime made no secret of it. De Rosa comments:
"This theological confusion in an age of depravity led the clergy, in fifth-century Rome in particular, to become a byword for everything that was gross and perverted. ... When Pope Sixtus III (432-40) was put on trial for seducing a nun, he ably defended himself by quoting Christ's words, `Let him who is without fault among you throw the first stone.'
"...roving monks were proving to be a social menace ... there ... were long periods when many monasteries were nothing but houses of ill repute. ... The second Council of Tours in the year 567 ... publicly admitted there was hardly a cleric anywhere without his wife or mistress" (De Rosa, op. cit., pp. 402-03).
A SYSTEM MADE FOR PROSTITUTION
For centuries the priesthood was largely hereditary. Most priests were the sons of other priests and bishops. More than one pope was the illegitimate son of a previous and supposedly celibate pope. For example, Pope Sylverius (536-7) was fathered by Pope Hormisdas (514-23), and John XI (931-5) by Sergius III (904-11) of his favorite mistress, Marozia, to whom we referred earlier.
Among the other bastards who ruled the Church were Popes Boniface I (41822), Gelasius (492-6), Agapitus (535-6), and Theodore (642-9). There were more. Adrian IV (1154-9) was the son of a priest. No wonder Pope Pius II (1458-64) said Rome was "the only city run by bastards." Pius himself admitted to fathering at least two illegitimate children, by different women, one of them married at the time. The rule of celibacy literal created prostitutes, making Rome the "Mother of Harlots," as the apostle John foresaw.
In his fiery sermons, Savonarola of Florence, Italy (soon to be martyred), called Rome "a harlot ready to sell her favors for coin" (Will Durant, The Story of Civilization, Simon and Schuster, 1950, vol. VI, p. 18) and accused the priests of bringing "spiritual death upon all ... their piety consists in spending their nights with harlots." He cried, "one thousand, ten thousand, fourteen thousand harlots are few for Rome, for there both men and women are made harlots" (Ibid., vol. V, pp. 155-56).
Pope Alexander VI threatened to "lay an interdict upon Florence" if it did not silence Savonarola. The city rulers obeyed for fear that as a result of the interdict all "the Florentine merchants in Rome would be thrown into jail" (Ibid., pp. 157-58). The pope wanted Savonarola brought to Rome for trial as a heretic, but the Signory of Florence wanted to execute him themselves. After signing confessions that had been wrung out of them by the cruelest of torture, Savonarola and two comrade friars were hanged and burned to ashes (Ibid., pp. 159-60). Yet this man who preached against the Church leaders' immorality and was slain by Roman Catholics is now celebrated by the Vatican as "a giant of our faith, martyred May 23, 1498" (Inside the Vatican, April 1994, p. 55 under the heading "23 May"). What revision of history!
Visiting Germany in the eighth century, St. Boniface found that none of the clergy honored their vows of celibacy. He wrote to Pope Zachary (741-52): "Young men who spent their youth in rape and adultery were rising in the ranks of the clergy. They were spending their nights in bed with four or five women, then getting up in the morning ... to celebrate mass." Bishop Rathurio complained that if he excommunicated unchaste priests "there would be none left to administer the sacraments, except boys. If he excluded bastards, as canon law demanded, not even boys [would be left]" (De Rosa, op. cit., pp. 404-05).
Even idealists became unprincipled rogues because the priesthood was one of the surest and fastest ways to wealth and power and afforded unique opportunities for the most profligate pleasure. Today's pope, John Paul II, in his recent encyclical, Veritatis Splendor (Splendor of Truth), soundly condemns promiscuity. One might respect such a treatise if he would admit that his predecessors in the papacy have been some of the worst offenders; that the clergy, because they can't marry, have been more prone to illicit relationships that the laity; and that promiscuity is still widespread among the Roman Catholic clergy. Otherwise Splendor of Truth has a hollow sound.
VICARS OF CHRIST?
John XII (955-64), to whom we referred earlier, became pope at age 16, ran a harem in the Lateran Palace, and lived a life of evil that passes imagination, even toasting the devil in front of St. Peter's altar. Spiritual leader of the Church for neither years. John XII slept with his mother and any other woman he could get his hands on. Women were warned not to venture into St. John Lateran church. Of this man Luitprand wrote in his journal:
"Pope John is the enemy of all things. ... the palace of the Lateran, that once sheltered saints and is now a harlot's brothel, will never forget his union with his father's wench, the sister of the other concubine Stephania. ...
"Women ... fear to come and pray at the thresholds of the holy apostles, for they had heard how John a little time ago took women pilgrims by force to his bed, wives, widows, and virgins alike" (Harry J. Margoulias, Byzantine Christianity: Emperor, Church and the West, Rand McNally, 1982, pp. 103-04).
St. Peter Damian's eleventh-century record of the incredible evils caused by the pledge of celibacy made such scandalous reading that the pope with whom he shared it preserved it in the papal archives. In fact, it "proves that profligacy among the clergy of the time was universal. After six centuries of strenuous efforts to impose celibacy, the clergy were a menace to the wives and young women of the parishes to which they were sent" (De Rosa, op. cit., p. 405).
Pope Innocent IV (1243-54), forced to leave Rome by Emperor Frederick II, took refuge along with his Curia in Lyons, France. Upon the pope's return to Rome after Frederick's death, Cardinal Hugo wrote a letter thanking the people of Lyons. He reminded them that they also owed a debt to the pope and his court. His remarks provide a glimpse of the shameless depravity of the Papal court:
"During our residence in your city, we [the Roman Curia] have been of very charitable assistance to you. On our arrival, we found scarcely three or four purchasable sisters of love, whilst at our departure we leave you, so to say, one brothel that extends from the western to the eastern gate" (Ibid., p. 119).
THE ENFORCEMENT OF CELIBACY
Celibacy was hardly known in England before it was at last enforced by Innocent IV in about 1250. Most priests there were married, a practice long accepted by the Church. But Rome determined that it had to end all familial devotion for priests and nuns; their loyalty must now be given solely to Mother Church and the Pope. R.W. Thompson explains why celibacy was forced upon England:
"The celibacy of the Roman clergy has been, since its introduction, considered one of the most effective means of establishing the supremacy of the popes; and for this purpose the attempt was made to introduce it into England, after the Norman conquest" (Thompson, op. cit., p. 443).
Pope Honorius II (1124-30) sent Cardinal John of Crema to England to see that his decree against marriage for clergy was carried out. The cardinal gathered the senior clerics and chided them vigorously for their evil ways, declaring that "'it was a horrible crime to rise from the side of a harlot, and then to handle the consecrated body of Christ." The clergy whom he had lectured, however, surprised him in his room later that night in bed with one of the local prostitutes (Ibid., p. 444; see also de Rosa, op. cit., p. 412). At least he wasn't married.
In the thirteenth-century St. Bonaventure, cardinal and general of the Franciscans, had said that Rome was just like the harlot of the Apocalypse, exactly as John foresaw as Luther would see to his sorrow three centuries later. Pope Boniface VIII (1294-1303) did not hesitate to have both a mother and daughter as his mistresses together. It was Luther's visit to Rome which completed his growing disillusionment with his Church.
By the fourteenth century the [Catholic] Church had lost all credibility as an example of Christlike living. Cynicism was rampant. It was no secret that Pope John XXII (1316-34) has as son who was raised to cardinal. Like Luther, England's John Colet had been shocked at the brazen ungodliness of the pope and cardinals when he visited Rome. From his pulpit in London's St. Paul Cathedral, of which he was the dean, Colet thundered his disapproval
Oh, the abominable impiety of these miserable priests, of whom this age contains a great multitude, who fear not to rush from the bosom of some foul harlot into the temple of the Church, to the altars of Christ, to the mysteries of God (Frederic Seebohm, The Oxford Reformers, London, 1869, pp. 70-71,74-76,110).
LIFE IN THE PAPAL COURT
For years it has been a common saying that "Rome has more prostitutes than any city in the world because it has the most celibates." Pope Sixtus IV (1471-84) turned that fact into a source of considerable profit by charging Rome's numerous brothels with a Church tax. Then he gathered more wealth still by charging a tax on mistresses kept by priests. Will Durant reports:
"There were 6800 registered prostitutes in Rome in 1949, not counting clandestine practitioners, in a population of some 90,000. In Venice, the census of 1509 reported 11,654 prostitutes in a population of some 300,000. An enterprising printer published a ‘Catalogue of all the principal and most honored courtesans of Venice, their names, addresses, and fees’" (Durant, op. cit., vol. V, p. 576).
Upon becoming Pope Alexander VI (1492-1503), Rodrigo Borgia, who had committed his first murder at age 12, cried triumphantly, "I am Pope, Pontiff, Vicar of Christ!" Gibbon calls him "the Tiberius of Christian Rome." Though he scarcely pretended to be a Christian, he was, like all the popes, deeply devoted to Mary. Of him a leading Florentine scholar wrote:
"His manner of living was dissolute. He knew neither shame nor sincerity, neither faith nor religion. Moreover, he was possessed by an insatiable greed, and overwhelming ambition and a burning passion for the advancement of his many children who, in order to carry out his iniquitous decrees, did not scruple to employ the most heinous means" (Francesco Guicciardini, Storia, I, 20, as cited in E.R. Chamberlin, The Bad Popes, Barnes and Noble, 1969, p. 173).
Like his predecessor, Pope Innocent VIII (1484-92), Borgia as a fond father admitted who his children were, baptized them personally, gave them the best education, and proudly officiated at their weddings in the Vatican, which were attended by Rome's leading families. Alexander VI had ten known illegitimate children, four of them (including the notorious Cesare and Lucrezia) by Vannozza Catanei, his favorite mistress. When Vannozza faded, Borgia, than 58, took newly-married, 15-year-old Giulia Farnese. She obtained a cardinal's red hat for her brother (thereafter known as "the Petticoat Cardinal"), who later became Pope Paul III (1534-49) and convened the Council of Trent to counter the Reformation.
THE RECORD IN ART AND ARCHITECTURE
Papal promiscuity has been immortalized in the very structures and statuary of the Vatican, St. Peter's, and other of Rome's most famous churches and basilicas. The most magnificent Sistine Chapel, for example, was built by and named after Sixtus IV, who taxed others for keeping a mistress but paid none for his own. Here the cardinals meet to elect the next pope. Sixty-five feet above them the huge ceiling bears the incredible artwork of Michelangelo.
Admiring visitors are not aware that this, the world's greatest work of art, was commissioned by Julius II (1503-13), who bought the papacy with a fortune and didn't even pretend to be religious, much less a Christian. A notorious womanizer who sired a number of bastards, Julius was so eaten up with syphilis that he couldn't expose his foot to be kissed. The Sistine Chapel thus stands as one of Rome's many monuments to the fact that the church which owns and proudly displays it is, as John foresaw, the "Mother of Harlots."
Known as "the most important church dedicated to Mary in Western Christendom," Santa Maria Maggiore is the fruit of the combined efforts of a number of promiscuous popes. Sixtus III (432-40), another notorious womanizer, build the main structure. The "golden wood ceiling over the nave was commissioned by the Borgia Pope Alexander VI (1492-1503)" (Inside the Vatican, November 1993, pp. 55,57), who paid for it with gold from America received as gift from Spain's Ferdinand and Isabella, to whom he had given the new world. Borgia's unbelievable wickedness, including his devotion to torture, his mistresses, and his illegitimate children, have been mentioned briefly. He "launched the first censorship of printed books ... the Index, which [lasted] over four hundred years" (E.R. Chamberlin, The Bad Popes, Barnes and Noble, 1969, p. 198).
Inside St. Peter's basilica, the burial monument of Pope Paul III (1534-49) is adorned with reclining female figures. One figure, representing Justice, was naked for 300 years until Pius IX had clothes painted on her. She was modeled after Paul III's sister, Guilis, a mistress of Alexander VI. Thus is immortalized the promiscuity of "celibate" popes.
TODAY'S UNBIBLICAL TOLERANCE
The gross immorality among Roman Catholic clergy is not confined to the past but continues on a grand scale to this day. Such wickedness was rare and a cause for excommunicating the offending party in the days of the apostles. The faithful were not even to associate with fornicators (1 Corinthians 5:8,9) who claimed to be Christians, so the world would know that such conduct was condemned by the church and all disciples of Christ. Of a sexually profligate man at Corinth, Paul wrote to the church: "Therefore put away from among your selves that wicked person" (verse 13).
Yet popes, cardinals, bishops, and priests without number have been habitual fornicators, adulterers, homosexuals, and mass-murderers, ruthless and depraved villains who pursued their degenerate lifestyles immune from discipline. Far from being excommunicated, such popes remain proudly displayed on the list of past "vicars of Christ." today a priest who engages in sexual misconduct is rarely expelled from the priesthood or excommunicated from the Church. Instead, he
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