Passion Week: before Abraham was, I AM

This is Passion Week.

We begin the days when our Lord preached the most intensely and tellingly to the Jews, the Scribes, the Pharisees and the people, knowing that His hour approached.

Here He began to reveal Himself more fully than ever to His people and, in consequence, His enemies began more and more to compass His death.

Let us make the most of these last few days of Lent and read the lessons of Scripture in the Mass with careful attention. Let us savour the words of Christ as He prepares for His Passion.

He came down from Mount Olivet, St John tells us, and He began to teach in the Temple to the Jews - Pharisees and people - most not knowing that they beheld the very face of God!

The Pharisees sought to trick Him and brought the woman caught in adultery before Him and asked if He condemned her and He replied famously that he who was without sin should cast the first stone at her, writing in the sand as He spoke. He read their minds and silently convicted each of them of sin so that they went away and left the woman with Him. He did not condemn her but forgave, telling her to go and sin no more.

Thereafter, continuing His teaching in the Temple, our Lord further pricks the conscience and understanding of the Pharisees and they accuse Him of having a devil.

St John continues:

"48 The Jews therefore answered and said to him: Do not we say well that thou art a Samaritan and hast a devil? 49 Jesus answered: I have not a devil: but I honour my Father. And you have dishonoured me. 50 But I seek not my own glory: there is one that seeketh and judgeth. 51 Amen, amen, I say to you: If any man keep my word, he shall not see death for ever. 52 The Jews therefore said: Now we know that thou hast a devil. Abraham is dead, and the prophets: and thou sayest: If any man keep my word, he shall not taste death for ever. 53 Art thou greater than our father Abraham who is dead? And the prophets are dead. Whom dost thou make thyself? 54 Jesus answered: If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing. It is my Father that glorifieth me, of whom you say that he is your God. 55 And you have not known him: but I know him. And if I shall say that I know him not, I shall be like to you, a liar. But I do know him and do keep his word. 56 Abraham your father rejoiced that he might see my day: he saw it and was glad. 57 The Jews therefore said to him: Thou art not yet fifty years old. And hast thou seen Abraham? 58 Jesus said to them: Amen, amen, I say to you, before Abraham was made, I AM. 59 They took up stones therefore to cast at him. But Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple."

[John 8:48-59]

"I AM" says the Lord!

In Hebrew this can be rendered "Yahweh", the sacred name of God Himself, rendered by the sacred tetragrammaton in Hebrew thus: YHVH.

It is a sacred word, thought to mean "I AM WHO AM" - recalling the words spoken by God to Moses in the account of the burning bush.

No Jew could even utter this without blasphemy....unless, of course, He was God Himself!

The Jews, when they prayed, said Adonai or "your Majesty", but in the royal plural. They sometimes used Elohim which means "God" but again in the royal plural. Nowadays they tend to say HaShem meaning "the Name" or Shem HaMeforash meaning "the Ineffable Name". One sometimes hears the made-up expression Ado-Shem which has no real meaning but is a merging of Adonai and Shem. Many Jews, in writing, will write simply "G-d" to signify their reverence for the Ineffable Name.

Catholics, too, used to have a great reverence for the Holy Name of Jesus, bowing whenever it was mentioned, but, alas, we see how much that devout and holy practice has fallen in desuetude like so many other good and pious practices. The Jews shame us since they continue to reverence the Ineffable Name whereas so many of us Catholics casually pronounce the Holy Name of Jesus with little or no reverence, still less with a bow of the head, even though Scripture says that "at the name of Jesus every knee should bow" (Philippians 2:10).

Therefore, when our Lord says "I AM", in this way, He is saying "I AM YOUR GOD".

Those who hear Him, believe.

Those who do not, seek instead to stone Him or kill Him for blasphemy.

For at this moment, Christ has revealed Himself for who He truly is - God Himself - and the Pharisees, refusing to believe, begin to seek His destruction.

When you next are to receive Holy Communion, try saying this when the priest holds up the Host and just before you receive: "Before Abraham was, YOU ARE!".

Just for an instant one glimpses a sense of the awe and majesty of our God who yet so meekly comes to feed Himself to His people in the humble form of bread. Marvellous idea!

Abraham and Isaac. Rembrandt. 1634.


"AMEN, AMEN, I SAY UNTO YOU, BEFORE ABRAHAM WAS

I AM"

"I AM WHO AM"

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Credit where credit is due...

Fr Jay Scott Newman's letter on facing God ad orientem at mass is well worth reading.

Since I've had to challenge him in the past quite strongly, I think it is only fair that I should praise him when it is due.

So, well done , Father, keep it up!

You can read his letter here:

http://www.stmarysgvl.org/ourparish/2008-fourth-sunday-of-lent

I cannot help recalling that Cardinal James Knox, when he was still alive, brutally and carelessly ordered a forward altar and mass versus populum at the Chiesa Nuova in Rome despite the strong oppositon of the protectress of the Church, Princess Borghese, and the strong feelings of the Faithful, not to mention the Fathers (they are Oratorians).

This was all too typical of those times - brutal, senseless, unjust and uncharitable actions were all too common in liturgical matters. That is partly why Pope John Paul II felt it necessary to apologise for them in 1988 and after.

Too many of those with authority rode roughshod over the deeply-held religious beliefs and sensibilities of all too many of the Faithful without a word of apology or sympathy.

Those of the Faithful who had been deeply loyal and loved the Church to the uttermost, politely asked if they could worship as they always had and were brushed aside like so much chaff. Heedless of age, sex or sensibility, decent and humble people were arrogantly treated.
No wonder so many people left the Church!

The sheep looked up to be fed and what happened?

They were clouted on their snouts even by their own shepherds!

It was particularly odious to witness the ill-treatment of elderly people who often had the greatest difficulty adapting to the liturgical changes. What did this behaviour say about the attitude that Christians should have to old people?

Personally, I think it added to the general decline in proper behaviour toward the elderly in our society. It was a scandalous bad example.

Thank God we now have a Pope who finally understands and sympathises with the Faithful who have been so bruised, battered, scandalised and horrified by the senseless uncharity of so many of those in authority in relation to liturgical issues in the recent past.

Still, there are too many who, whilst abusing and insulting those whose tastes are for the traditional, nevertheless accuse them of being sour, cross and abusive.

They never seem to stop and think about the insults, calumnies, detractions and abuse that the Faithful with traditional preferences have had to put up with over the recent past.

If, as they claim, the Faithful with traditional preferences are but a small number of disaffected people, then why abuse and insult them?

There is nothing easier than for the majority to pick on a small minority.

And there is nothing easier than swimming with the tide.

Dead fish do it all the time.

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The Blessed Sacrament at Benediction...

Consider, if you will, the High Altar flooded with the light of an hundred or more candles and bedecked with flowers, in the midst whereof stands the Blessed Sacrament in a golden Monstrance.

Arrayed around the Sanctuary are priest, deacon, sub-deacon, clerks, servers and brothers. The schola in robes stand in the nave outside the Sanctuary singing the praises of God whose blessed Body is enthroned upon high.

In the pews the Faithful look up with adoration at the tiny white Host that lies within its golden throne.

It is Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament at the commencment of the Quarant'ore (or Forty Hours) devotions at the Brompton Oratory.

To an outsider it seems unusual indeed.

Why are all these people focusing so much devotion and splendour on the small white circle so lavishly encased upon high?

What can this mean?

How can so small a thing be the focus of so much attention and solicitude?

Well, it is perhaps rather remarkable.

In former times, popes and emperors, bishops and kings, dukes and prelates knelt before the tiny disc of wheaten bread in the self-same way but perhaps with even greater solemnity, pageantry and awe.

Who but God could ever have conceived of such an idea, combining, as it does, the due splendour that is, and ought, to be accorded to the Almighty but at the same presenting Himself to us in so simple and humble a form, concealing His might and greatness in the form of the food of the poor, simple bread?

Without doubt it is the same God that chose to come to save His people, the world and creation in the form of a new-born babe - weak, tiny and helpless, mewling in the arms of His mother and suckling at the maternal breast. The greatness of God is even more magnified by the depths of His extraordinary humility: He keeps Heaven and Hell, and the whole Universe and all Creation, in being whilst simultaneously appearing to men as a tiny child or a morsel of bread.

Who but God could have thought of such a marvellous idea?

Madonna and Child (Madonna Litta), by Leonardo da Vinci 1452-1519


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To restore the 12 Prophecies at Easter...

The Twelve Prophecies.

Yes, twelve.

What are the Prophecies? They are the readings at the Easter Vigil.

The Easter Vigil is one of the oldest of ceremonies in the Christian Church.

During it the Catechumens are given their last instruction, in the porch of the Church, before being introduced into the Church, one by one, during the reading of the Prophecies.

The rest of the congregation listen to the Prophecies which are the story of salvation from the Creation of the World to the Birth and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Messiah.

So far as we are able to tell there have always been 12 Prophecies. They begin at Genesis with God creating the world and end with the story of Nebuchadnessar, the later Epistle and Gospel telling of the Resurrection of Christ.

These ceremonies are thus of ancient and most hallowed and sacred origin. None but the most impious would dare to interfere with such ancient rites which come to us from the earliest of times in the Church.

The structure of the Vigil has been as follows:

1. The Blessing of the Fire and the Paschal Candle (with the grains of incense in the shape of a Cross) and the singing of the Exultet by a Deacon, followed by the Procession into Church and the spreading of Lumen Christi, the Light of Christ (signified by slowly re-lighting the lamps in the Church).

2. The Prophecies, sung just as the Catechumens, dressed in white robes, are, one by one, introduced into Church.

3. The Blessing of the Baptismal Water (if there is a Font) by which the Catechumens will be baptised.

4. The Litany of the Saints during which the Catechumens are baptised.

5. The Solemn Mass of the Vigil during which the Neophytes, newly baptised, will communicate.

This is then followed by Compline of the Easter Vigil (now Solemn Lauds of Easter Day since the Vigil is celebrated around midnight and not in the afternoon or morning).

Until Bugnini's cut and paste job of 1955, the Easter Candle was not lit directly from the Easter fire but rather from a three-branched olive stem housed in a candelabrum which was lit, to signify the Holy Trinity and the olive branch of peace, first from the Easter fire. From this triple branch, introduced into the Church with the chant of Lumen Christi, as now, was then lit the Easter Candle, standing in the Sanctuary atop its pillar, to symbolise the Pillar of Fire that, by night, led the Children of Israel out of bondage. Thereafter, the lamps of the Church were then slowly lit - not all at once in a rush but slowly - to symbolise the gradual spreading of the Light of Christ throughout the world.

This was but some of the most ancient, most fitting and beautiful symbolism that the irreverent Bugnini dared to interfere with.

Moreover, in the early Church and right up until around 1100AD or thereabouts, the ceremonies began late in the evening and did not conclude until daybreak. Psalms, chants and prayers were sung - as they still are among the Greeks - and ceremonies and rituals were carried out in search of Christ's sacred but resurrected Body by way of demonstration that He had risen in deed and would not return until the morrow when He would first be seen by St Mary Magdalene and mistaken for the gardener.

The Holy Women come early on the Sabbath to the tomb to anoint the Body of Jesus but find Him not therein

There is a lot of talk about how it was wrong to celebrate the Vigil during the day and not at night and that this was an abuse which crept in over the years. This is true and I see no reason for not returning the Vigil to its place at night. It is not an issue.

That argument is a distraction from the main issue which is that the 12 Prophecies were cut from 12 to 4 by the scheming and devious Bugnini when he "reformed" the Easter Triduum in 1955.

He did this in his usual underhand way by soothing the concerns of Pope Pius XII that the changes were small and reasonable. The Pope was deceived by Bugnini - and he was not the first so to be deceived!

The changes are major and all the worse for being done to so ancient a ceremony that comes to us from the earlies times, hallowed as they are by ancient usage and tradition.

The necessity for the 12 Prophecies, quite apart from their being ancient, hallowed and traditional, is that they tell the story of salvation from Creation to Christ.

Cutting them to only 4 is thus a complete nonsense since it does not tell the story of salvation but only a few unconnected bits i.e. Genesis, Exodus and the crossing of the Red Sea, a short piece from Isaiah and a reversion back to Deuteronomy.

Bugnini has done little more than take a pair of scissors to the 12 Prophecies and cut 8 of them out more or less arbitrarily.

By what conceivable right did this relatively minor Vatican official dare to do such a thing to so ancient and hallowed a right? And how can his arbitrary slashing be in any way right or conducive to edify the people? It is but a piece of wonderful impudence introduced by a kind of deception.

Indeed, so impudent was it that, when the new rites were being constructed, he felt that he had to restore some of the readings so that, in the Novus Ordo, it is possible, once again, to have most, if not all, of the 12 ancient Prophecies.

In this sense, then, and ironically, the Novus Ordo Easter Vigil is superior to that of 1955 and 1962!

The Greeks were, and remain, horrifed by what they regard as yet further blasphemy by the Latins in interfering with the ancient ceremonies, since they, the Greeks, still continue with the full ancient ceremonies that have been in place since the earliest times.

Even today, the Greek Church begins the ceremonies in the late evening and continues near enough until dawn, the Faithful, having processed around the Church in search of their Crucified Lord, waiting threafter with expectation, chanting and praying, for their Resurrected Saviour.

The Tomb lay empty...

It makes us Latins look weak indeed by comparison!

Now we are weaker still, since Bugnini chopped the Prophecies by a third.

In the Basilica of St John Lateran, there were, in effect, 24 Readings since the ancient Propheices were sung twice over, once in Greek and once in Latin, another ancient ceremony.

Moreover, from the days of the early Church right up until the late 19th century - and in various places even well into the 20th century - the Deacon sang in the Exultet not only prayers for the Pope and bishops but also prayers for the Roman Emperor and the civil rulers.

Emperor Charles IV at prayer, wearing the ancient imperial crown of the Emperor Charlemagne. 1375. Detail from a votive panel of Jan Ocko of Vasim.

This ancient prayer was not formally removed from the Exultet until Bugnini removed it in 1955, although Pope Pius XII, under strong pressure from Republican American prelates in 1942 when the Vatican was under the immediate threat of the Nazi Republicans, allowed it to be left out.

Let me conclude with that ancient prayer for the Roman Emperor, prayed throughout the Catholic world for so many centuries during the Easter Vigil:

EASTER VIGIL – THE EXULTET
PRAYERS FOR THE ROMAN EMPEROR

(The lamps were traditionally lit but gradually from the Paschal fire halfway through the Exultet to signify the Resurrection of Jesus Christ)

Respice etiam ad devotissimum imperatorem nostrum (Nomen) cujus tu, Deus, desiderii vota praenoscens, ineffabili pietatis et misericordiae tuae munere, tranquillum perpetuae pacis accommoda, et coelestem victoriam cum omni populo suo.

Regard also our most devout Emperor [Name] and since Thou knowest, O God, the desires of his heart, grant by the ineffable grace of Thy goodness and mercy, that he may enjoy with all his people the tranquillity of perpetual peace and heavenly victory.

Restore to us our 12 ancient Prophecies, O Lord!

A Pillar of Fire by night went before the Children of Israel...


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The Wind That Shakes the Barley: a sorry tale.

The Wind That Shakes The Barley is, I think, a very good film.

Readers of Roman Christendom may find this a surprising comment.

I saw it recently for the first time.

The reason I think it good is because I think it is probably highly accurate historically - an unusual thing for many a modern film (although, be warned, there is an unnecessary amount of unpleasant bad language).

I put off seeing it because I thought it would just be Fenian propaganda, especially as the producer is, apparently, an Irish Communist.

However, the real horror of the war comes out in the film in all its brutality and terror.

It ought to be enough to persuade anyone that both sides in the war were utterly reprehensible and a disgrace to humanity.

The IRA are shown to be a mixture of Marxian Socialists and non-Marxist Nationalists which is exactly what they largely were.

The Black and Tans are shown as a pack of brutal scoundrels and portrayed exactly as I suspect they were - brutalised thugs with no sense of morality or decency, every bit as blameworthy as their IRA antagonists.

Both sides in that tragic war readily betray common morality, commit murders and kill the innocent with no regard, seemingly, for common humanity or their own souls.

Hero/anti-hero Damien O'Donovan asks "I hope the Ireland we are fighting for is worth it" as he murders Anglo-Irish landlord, Sir John Hamilton, and, even more horribly, his own childhood friend, Chris Riley, an innocent simpleton caught up in a drama beyond his control.

Damien quite rightly finds his conscience troubled, especially when the boy's mother - entirely rightly - says "Take me to my child" and then later says to Damien: "I never want to see your face again".

For what sort of Ireland were they committing these grotesque sins, crying to Heaven for vengeance? For an Ireland that ended up being ruled by the usual parcel of corrupt politicians who are now busily abandoning their Faith as fast as they can. In other words, all that horrible bloodshed and murder was not even worth it, even if it had not already been horribly sinful.

This is the grave evil of revolution: it is willing to sin and sin horribly, to murder brutally and send any number of innocents to the next world for purely worldly gains which turn out to be no lasting gains at all since they are purely worldly.

Next, of course, the Revolution devours its own. Soon an end must come to the senseless and brutal murders. Both sides agree to sit at table and cut a deal. The deal is never quite what either side wants but then that is the nature of a deal, isn't it? And the extremists will not agree to the deal and so start a war against the dealers. So it happened.

Indeed, in Ireland it was even worse: the deal was brokered by accredited representatives of Dail Eireann and the Dail approved it by a majority. But still the Republican extremists would not accept it.

The Free Staters knew that they had only to wait for an opportune moment and they could declare independence. And they were right. The Free Staters won the Civil War. Then, sure enough, independence eventually came without any help from Sinn Fein/IRA bombs.

As always happens, the bombers and assassins were of no use whatsoever. The constitutional way was the only right way but the revolutionaries wanted to be in charge and no amount of innocent bloodshed would stop them. The Sinn Fein/IRA murderers weren't going to be happy with any deal but their own, were they? Thus the cold-hearted, bloody murders of innocents like Chris Riley were continued.

Worst of all, these sinners are now regarded by many Irish Republicans as heroes. It is pathological. It is nothing less than re-crucifying Christ.

A telling moment is when the Catholic Parish Priest quite rightly pleads for peace, in a Sunday sermon, and excoriates the Free State military courts, on the one hand, and the IRA anti-Treatyites, pillaging and murdering, on the other hand. How right he is to do so!

Anti-hero Damien then stands up and makes a typically unjust outburst against the Catholic Church accusing it - and he lies horribly in so doing - of siding with the rich against the poor, a grotesque falsehood if ever there were one. How many schools, clinics, welfare agencies, and churches did Damien and his like ever build for the poor? Yet everyone knows that the Catholic Church is second to none in such provision. Nevertheless, Damien does not hesitate to frame his lie.

His own brother, Teddy, who had fought in the IRA with him and is now a Free State Officer, tries to reason with him and quite rightly tells him that if he will only wait then they will secure an independent Ireland by constitutional means in time. Damien won't wait. He's a hot-head who wants it all now, whatever the cost in human misery, blood and tragedy. His ideological hatred is remarkably well portrayed in the film.

He scorns his brother's sensible warnings and is determined to spill more innocent blood. But he is captured whilst attacking a Free State police station and taken to his brother for questioning. He is obdurate. He will tell nothing.

He is condemned to die as a terrorist and - terribly and tragically - his own brother, Teddy, commands the firing squad with tears in his eyes.

This is the true picture: the ultimate horror of revolution and rebellion. Brother kills brother, who, in turn, has killed an innocent child like Chris Riley.

Truly, it is a vision of Hell. It is blood-curdling and made all the more so by these same people claiming to be Catholics of a sort. It shows all too well how even the Devil can pretend to be a Catholic.

The whole war was a major tragedy for Ireland given the native charm and decency of most Irishmen and women.

Home Rule could have come to Ireland as far back as the 1860s or even earlier but for the bombers. Gladstone was ready to give it but the Fenian bombers assassinated policemen in Manchester and set back the cause of Home Rule for another 50 years.

Eventually, thanks to peaceful constitutionalists like John Redmond and John Dillon, the Home Rule Act was passed in 1914 but the First World War intervened. After the war the bombers took over and the blood-letting began.

Yes, this is a film that tells it like it was. And, sadly, it is not a pretty picture.


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The Cathars: a bizarre medieval sect

Well, folks, bloggers get some strange comments on their blogs but this latest one really is a cracker.

I have a post from a gentleman called Bertran de la Farge who actually thinks that the Cathars, that most bizarre of medieval weirdos, were true Christians.

Bertran thinks that because the Cathars used an Occitan translation of the Vulgate that they must therefore have been good Christians.

They called themselves “Good Christians”, too. So they must have been good, mustn’t they? No? Come on, Bertran!

He says the Inquisition was founded in 1233. It wasn’t. The Medieval Inquisition – the first such – was founded in 1184 by the papal Bull Ad Abolendam.

He says that the Cathars had nothing to do with Mani and they were not di-theists.

Well, here is what a typical pro-Cathar website, says about them:

“Cathars believed in two principles, a good creator god and his evil adversary… Cathars maintained a Church hierarchy and practiced a range of ceremonies, but rejected any idea of priesthood or the use of church buildings. They divided into ordinary believers who led ordinary medieval lives and an inner 'elect' of parfaits (men) and parfaits (women)… Cathars believed in re-incarnation and refused to eat meat or other animal products…

Basic Cathar tenets led to some surprising logical implications. For example they largely regarded men and women as equals, and had no doctrinal objection to contraception, euthanasia or suicide. In some respects the Cathar and Catholic Churches were polar opposites. For example the Cathar Church taught that all non-procreative sex was better than any procreative sex. The Catholic Church taught - and still teaches - exactly the opposite….Following their principles, Cathars could deduce that sexual intercourse between man and wife was more culpable than homosexual sex.”

Not quite the same as what Bertran says.

St Dominic, founder of the Order of Preachers (Dominicans) to preach the true Faith to the Cathars

Here is what Reynaldus, a Cistercian monk, wrote of the Cathars of his time whom he knew well:

“First it is to be known that the heretics held that there are two Creators; viz. one of invisible things, whom they called the benevolent God, and another of visible things, whom they named the malevolent God.

The New Testament they attributed to the benevolent God; but the Old Testament to the malevolent God, and rejected it altogether, except certain authorities which are inserted in the New Testament from the Old; which, out of reverence to the New Testament, they esteemed worthy of reception.

They charged the author of the Old Testament with falsehood, because the Creator said, ‘In the day that ye eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil ye shall die’; nor (as they say) after eating did they die; when, in fact, after eating the forbidden fruit they were subjected to the misery of death. They also call this God a homicide, as well because he burned up Sodom and Gomorrah, and destroyed the world by the waters of the deluge, as because he overwhelmed Pharaoh, and the Egyptians, in the sea.

They affirmed also, that all the fathers of the Old Testament were damned; that John the Baptist was one of the greater demons.

They said also, in their secret doctrine (in secreto suo), that that Christ who was born in the visible, and terrestrial Bethlehem, and crucified in Jerusalem, was a bad man, and that Mary Magdalene was his concubine; and that she was the woman taken in adultery, of whom we read in the gospel.

For the good Christ, they said, never ate, nor drank, nor took upon him true flesh, nor ever was in this world, except spiritually in the body of Paul....

They said that almost all the Church of Rome was a den of thieves; and that it was the harlot of which we read in the Apocalypse [NB: This is where extreme Protestants got the idea from].

They so far annulled the sacraments of the Church, as publicly to teach that the water of holy Baptism was just the same as river water, and that the Host of the Most Holy Body of Christ did not differ from common bread, instilling into the ears of the simple this blasphemy, that the Body of Christ, even though it had been as great as the Alps, would have been long ago consumed, and annihilated by those who had eaten of it.

Confirmation and Confession, they considered as altogether vain and frivolous. They preached that Holy Matrimony was meretricious, and that none could be saved in it, if they should beget children.

Denying also the Resurrection of the flesh, they invented some unheard of notions, saying, that our souls are those of angelic spirits who, being cast down from heaven by the apostasy of pride, left their glorified bodies in the air; and that these souls themselves, after successively inhabiting seven terrestrial bodies, of one sort or another, having at length fulfilled their penance, return to those deserted bodies.

It is also to be known that some among the heretics were called ‘perfect’ or ‘good men’, others just ‘believers’.

Those who were called ‘perfect’, wore a black dress, falsely pretended to chastity, abhorred the eating of flesh, eggs and cheese, and wished to appear not liars, when they were continually telling lies, chiefly respecting God. They said also that they ought not on any account to swear oaths…

Those who were called ‘believers’ were given to usury, rapine, homicide, lust, perjury and every vice; and they, in fact, sinned with more security, and less restraint, because they believed that without restitution, without confession and penance, they should be saved, if only, when on the point of death, they could say a Paternoster, and received imposition of hands from their teachers.”

Unlike Bertran, Reynaldus was a contemporary of the Cathars and knew them.

The Cathars believed in the old Eastern pagan idea of Reincarnation. They believed that humans and other mammals were hybrid creatures belonging to two realms: a good, potentially immortal, spirit, trapped inside a bad and corruptible body. This was one reason why Cathars refused to kill animals.

In some ways, the idea reflected certain Buddhist beliefs. A person who led a relatively good life might be re-incarnated with a better and easier life the next time round. One who lived a bad life would be reincarnated further down the scale, possibly as an animal. By their beliefs even animals could live good or bad lives, because it was possible for an animal to be reincarnated as a human being. A popular Cathar story tells of a man who is overcome with emotion on recognising in the grass an iron shoe he had thrown in his previous life as a horse.

Those who eventually managed to lead a good enough life would be released from the cycle of rebirth. On their death the Bad God would lose his power over the angel trapped within. Released from their imprisonment, such angels would return to heaven, the realm of light to join the other angels there. The Cathars believed that they are there in the night sky for all to see i.e. as stars.

Whilst there were differences between Manichaeism and Catharism, there were far more similarities, the greatest of which was their mutual belief in Dualism and refusal to accept that there was an omnipotent, good God. For them, the Devil was equally powerful.

Others will have noticed that Betran speaks of a “125 years” Crusade against the Occitan Cathars “exactly between 1209 and 1231”. This is 22 years not 125 years, Bertran. Your maths is somewhat awry, Bertran.

Bertran thinks that these utterly bizarre beliefs of the Cathars are Christian and follow the commandment of Christ to love one another. Yes, really!

The Cathars were at first tolerated but when missionaries and legates sent to them were murdered, steps began to be taken to require them to hand over the wrong-doers. This they resisted with more murders of Catholics and they committed persistent acts of terrorism and destruction which eventually provoked a counter-terrorist war against them.

Pope Innocent III declared a Crusade but there were not enough volunteers to fight and only a small crusading army could be raised against the massive forces of the Cathars. However, this little force, supported by the prayers of St Dominic and his new Order of Preachers (Dominicans), had a near-miraculous success at the Battle of Muret on 12 September 1213 under Count Simon de Montfort (father of the founder of the English Parliament).

Well, folks. You make up your own mind.

Were the Cathars really Christians?

Or were they a crazy sect whose bizarre ideas are making something of a come-back in our troubled and confused times?

The Holy Dominican Rosary, used by St Dominic and the Dominicans to defeat the power of the Cathars, is still one of the greatest spiritual weapons against the Enemy of human nature, Satan.


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Who decided which books form the Bible? Answer: a Council of the Roman Catholic Church. True Fact!

Many people simply do not know where the Bible came from.

They think it was “always there”.

Some even think that only the King James Version (KJV) is the real, authentic version, the ONLY one to be inspired by the Holy Ghost.

Some even seem to think that the Evangelists and Apostles actually produced the KJV (presumably in English!).

I have been sent this useful summary of the origins of the Bible by someone engaged in a correspondence with a Protestant scientist who thinks that the KJV is the ONLY inspired text of the Bible.

The KJV was authorised by King James I of England, Scotland and Ireland, who rejected the Protestant Geneva Bible but also the Catholic Bible. He ordered Anglican scholars to translate the original texts into English. This became the KJV. It is not a bad translation but it was chiefly designed to suit Anglican doctrines.

Here is a message to our Protestant Evangelical brothers:

It was the Roman Catholic Church which decided which books would make up the Bible.

Yes. True fact.

In fact, the final canon of Scripture, thereafter recognised by all Christians for over 1,000 years, was settled on 28 August 397 AD by the Council of Carthage after the example set by St Cyril of Jerusalem in 350.

This Council met under the supervision of the Bishop of Carthage, North Africa, and the Western Roman Emperor, Flavius Honorius, the decrees being later approved by the Bishop of Rome, the Pope, who later also approved the definitive translation of St Jerome called the Vulgate.

Biblical texts in original Hebrew

The original texts in Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic are the directly inspired texts of the Bible. They were written by the hands, and through the directly and Divinely-inspired understanding and language of the Holy Prophets, Priests and Patriarchs of old, and by the Apostles and Evangelists who are their successors in the New Covenant of Jesus Christ, the Messiah, true God and true man, the Second Person of the Trinity and the son of God (ho huios tou anthropou - as the Biblical Greek has it) and the Saviour of all who believe in Him.

Jews and Christians were loath to translate these texts for the simple reason that meaning can easily be changed in translation. Thus translations required some sort of authorization from the community of believers (usually the leading Jewish/Christian emperor/king or bishop/elder) lest promiscuous translations be spread among Jews and Christians to deceive them and lead them away from the truth.

After the Babylonish captivity, when Aramaic became the common language tending to replace classical Hebrew, the Targums were created to allow the people to understand the Torah when read in the Synagogues. However, the most well-known movement to translate the Bible came in the 3rd century BC when over a third of the population of the great Greek-speaking city of Alexandria, founded by Alexander the Great, were Jews.

With the approval of King Ptolemy II Philadelphus, a group of Hebrew scholars who spoke Koine (or spoken) Greek made what is perhaps the first universally accepted authorised translation thereafter called the Septuagint whereby the original Hebrew and Aramaic Old Testament was translated into Koine Greek.



Printed version of the beginning of Genesis in the Greek Septuagint

The next major translations came after the death of our Saviour and include the most sacred of all texts, those written by the Evangelists and Apostles under the direct inspiration of the Holy Ghost providing the Euangelion, "Glad Tidings" or "Good News" of Jesus Christ.
 

This was rendered as Gospel (originally God-spell) in Anglo-Saxon, the language of the early English who had originated in Fryslan or North Germany (whose inhabitants in turn spoke the original of what is now Frieslandisch, the language of Ost-Friesland in North-West Germany).

Origen's Hexapla placed side by side six versions of the Old Testament, including the 2nd century Greek translations of Aquila of Sinope and Symmachus the Ebionite.

The canonical Christian Bible was formally established by Bishop St Cyril of Jerusalem in 350 (although it had been generally accepted on an informal basis by the Christian community previously), confirmed by the Council of Laodicea in 363 (both lacked the book of Revelation), and later established by St Athanasius of Alexandria, Doctor of the Church, in 367 (with Revelation added).

The Council of Carthage, held on 28 August 397 under the tutelage of the Bishop of Carthage but with imperial and papal approval, issued a definitive canon (legal decree) of Scripture setting out all the texts that form what is now universally called "The Bible". This canon remained unchallenged for over 1,000 years until not long before the Protestant Reformation when the inclusion of the Deutero-Canonical texts was, among other things, repudiated. These texts were thereafter called "Apocryphal" by Calvinists, Lutherans, Anglicans and others but are often included in some Protestant translations.

Co-extensive with Carthage came the magisterial translation of the Vulgate of St Jerome and it was widely received and recognised as authorised by the Christian authorities, princes, governors and spiritual leaders. It has remained so ever since and has stood the test of time clearly under the guidance and indirect inspiration of the Holy Ghost.

 

St Jerome, Cardinal and Doctor of the Western Church, the fiery Illyrian penitent who translated the Bible from the original texts to give us the Vulgate

Jerome's Vulgate Latin translation dates to between AD 382 and 420. Latin translations pre-dating Jerome are collectively known as Vetus Latina texts. Jerome began by revising the earlier Latin translations, but ended by going back to the original Greek, by-passing all translations, and going back to the original Hebrew, wherever he could, instead of the Septuagint (as, later, did the translators of the King James Version).

The New Testament was translated into Gothic in the 4th century by Ulfilas. In the 5th century, Mesrob translated the Bible into Armenian. Also dating from the same period are the Syriac, Coptic, Ethiopic and Georgian translations.

However, important though the Vulgate was, it nevertheless was only indirectly inspired through the scholarship of the Christian doctor, St Jerome. The original texts remained - and still remain - the only DIRECTLY INSPIRED texts written in the hand and language of those authors who were DIRECTLY INSPIRED by the Holy Ghost.

On the other hand, it was important that Scripture be available to the people in their own language since only scholars tended to know Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic and the Latin of the Vulgate. This resulted in various authorised translations.

From the Middle Ages we still have some fragmentary Anglo-Saxon Bible translations, notably a lost translation of the Gospel of John into Old English (Anglo-Saxon) by the Venerable Bede, which he is said to have prepared shortly before his death around the year 735.

An Old High German version of the Gospel of Matthew dates to 748. Charlemagne in ca. 800 charged Alcuin with a revision of the Latin Vulgate. The translation into Old Church Slavonic dates to the late 9th century.

Alfred the Great had a number of passages of the Bible circulated in the vernacular in around 900. These included passages from the Ten Commandments and the Pentateuch, which he prefixed to a code of laws he promulgated around this time. In approximately 990, a full and free-standing version of the four Gospels in idiomatic Anglo-Saxon appeared, in the West Saxon dialect; these are called the Wessex Gospels.

King Alfred the Great who translated parts of the Bible into Anglo-Saxon

In 1199, Pope Innocent III banned unauthorized versions of the Bible as a reaction to the Cathar/Waldensian heresies.

The Cathars manipulated Scripture in accordance with their real beliefs which were not Christian but rather those of the Chinese philosopher and theologian, Mani, who believed in Dualism (the existence of two equal forces one good, God, and one evil, the Devil, but each of equal strength and standing, a view entirely opposed to orthodox Christianity). They believed that flesh was evil, thus child-birth was evil, and marriage was evil but sodomy, which produced no children, and euthanasia, which eliminated flesh, were good.

They believed in a "sacrament" called the consolamentum which included euthanasia by suffocation or starvation.

They also included many terrorists who regularly murdered orthodox Christians so that the Church was therefore obliged to launch a defensive counter-terrorist war against them, eventually won, at Muret in 1213, by Count Simon de Montfort (whose son founded the English Parliament) when his 700 Knights miraculously defeated a vast Cathar army of 50,000 under King Peter of Aragon.

Count Simon de Monfort led 700 Christian knights against a huge army of 50,000 or more Albigensian Cathars under King Pedro II of Aragon in the Battle of Muret 1213. St Dominic was praying the Rosary for victory in the Church of Muret. The tiny army of Christian knights defeated the brutal and bloody Cathars who fled away, defeated.

The synods of Toulouse and Tarragona (1234) outlawed possession of Cathar renderings of the Bible. There is evidence of some vernacular translations permitted while others were being scrutinized for Catharist influences.

The most notable Middle English Bible translation, Wyclif's Bible (1383), based on the Vulgate, was banned by the Oxford Synod in 1408 because of its alterations to the text. A Hungarian Hussite Bible appeared in the mid 15th century, and in 1478, a Catalan translation in the dialect of Valencia.

In 1521, Martin Luther was placed under the Ban of the Empire, and he retired to Wartburg Castle. During his time there, he translated the New Testament from Greek into German. This was printed in September 1522.

Tyndale's Bible (1526) was met with heavy sanctions given the widespread belief that Tyndale had changed the Bible as he attempted to translate it. William Tyndale was first jailed in 1535 for translating the Old Testament without permission, and, a year later, after refusing to recant or retract, was executed by order of the English King Henry VIII and Parliament.

There was also the 1530 translation of Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples. The Froschauer Bible of 1531 and the Luther Bible of 1534 (both appearing in portions throughout the 1520s) were an important part of the Protestant Reformation.

The vast international missionary activity of the Jesuit order led to a large number of 17th century translations into the languages of the New World, to enable the indigenous Indian natives to understand the Bible.

Each translation of the Bible tends to put its own "spin" on the text and this can give rise to controversy. Thus the translators of the KJV were authorised by King James I of England to undertake their translation work because of the very clear "spin" put upon the texts by the Geneva Bible which both King James and the Fathers of the KJV translation famously rejected.

For example, the Geneva Bible translated episkopoi as "elders" rather than as "bishops". This the KJV translators rejected and returned to the more traditional rendering of "bishop". King James famously said "No bishop, no king" and so would not tolerate the Presbyterian rendering of "elder" which he knew spelt the end of the bishops and thus of himself as king.

So it proved under his son, King Charles I when the even more extreme and revolutionary Congregationalists or Independents, under Oliver Cromwell, banned all bishops and executed the King setting up a military dictatorship of Army generals under Cromwell as the Dictator.

To the extent that any translation of the Bible is faithful to the original texts, it is an INDIRECTLY INSPIRED text and therefore, to a greater or lesser degree (depending upon the faithfulness of the translation), suitable to nourish the faith of Christians and suitable for them to rely upon.

However, the texts of the Bible DIRECTLY inspired by the Holy Ghost are the Old Testament (called the Tanakh by the Jews) in the classical Hebrew of the masoretic texts mostly, but with some (e.g. the Talmud and the Book of Daniel) in Aramaic, and the New Testament in the original Koine Greek with smatterings of Aramaic (the language spoken by Jesus) and various semitisms typical of Greek-speaking Jews.

However, the decision as to which inspired books would make up the Bible was decided by a Council of the Roman Catholic Church in 397.

The Bible is, thus, a Catholic book, not a Protestant one...

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