Interesting Book Review on Catholic Council

[Lucky]

The book itself may not interest you, but the book review does such a good job of summarizing what sounds like an interesting book that I recommend it to all who have any interest in religious history.

It's a book by a Jesuit historian on the Council of Trent, which established back in the 1500's much of the doctrine I was taught in Catholic school. Many of the things we think came from Christ were actually political decisions made at this council of warring interests. Rather than a group of holy men accepting wisdom from God, these guys were interested much more in their finances and girlfriends.

It's an interesting read: http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/trent-what-happened-at-the-council-by-john-w-omalley/2013/01/23/85f29658-618f-11e2-a389-ee565c81c565_story.html?hpid=z11

[Lucky]

I really did think this might be of interest to someone here. The Council of Trent determined so much of what we were taught as young Catholics. Now we get to learn how that came about. There are those of us who think our Catholic education, while good in so many ways, was also an abuse of innocent young minds on such topics as sex. And yet these very guys weren't so innocent themselves.

The reviewer writes:

On the humbler clerical level, the council debated, and eventually
tabled, the issue of whether priests should be allowed to marry. In many
places, they already lived openly with a mistress or wife. But what
about the popes? During the 16th century, forceful Italian aristocrats
connived to be elected to the chair of Peter, made cardinals out of
teenage nephews, and fathered children by concubines before and during
their papacies.

He prefaces the entire review with a very good question on the value of history today. Is he right?

Please discuss!

"History overflows with conflicts, treaties, personalities, religious
and political ­controversies and all sorts of paradigm-shifting events
that are, for many of us, just names. What happened at the Battle of
Manzikert? Why do we care about the Edict of Nantes — and its
Revocation? How does a Whig differ from a Tory? What is Pelagianism? Who
was Michael Bakunin?

Yes, we can now type in these names and Wikipedia will supply
us with quick answers. Yet once, people worked hard to possess the past,
to absorb the main currents and facts of history: Such knowledge
provided a ground to understanding the present. No more. These days we
don’t bother to remember that “old stuff,” i.e., everything that took
place before our own birth: Our search engines will do that for us."

[Guest hitoallusa]

I can't talk about the book since I haven't read it. But it seems very interesting.

I don't think it was wrong for the apostle Paul to say that it is better to remain single. It was a simple good hearted recommendation but his followers took his word too seriously. It happens a lot in Christianity. People worship other religious figures and take their words as flawless and perfect... The very same people that needs God's redemption and forgiveness. The same sinful people that Jesus had to die on the cross to be saved.. What a irony and nonsense that is!

No one is perfect and everyone makes mistakes. Even Melanie in Gone With the Wind.. Yet people put on this pretentious attitude that they are better, more ethical, and more humble than other people. Worshipping Jesus's mother and worshipping the Apostle Matthew who fought even in front of Jesus about who was higher among the disciples. It's all about power and to maintain that power you need something that people will pay respect.. Some mental and physical feat that other people will look upon you so that you can have power and influence...

I personally believe that all the bad teachings started way before the council of Trent. It started when religious figures were revered as sinless and thought different from commoners or laymen.... When this irrationality is promoted you can only expect irrational teachings such as you can pay to get your sins resolved. I bet Wall Street bankers will be happy.

I believe many of the wrong catholic teachings started when people started to worshipping other sinful men and thinking they are better because they are priest, bishop, and pope. If they are that holy then they didn't need Jesus in the first place. And they can invent whatever teachings they want. That's exactly what they have been doing.

[MsGuy]

Says Hito: "I personally believe that all the bad teachings started way before the council of Trent. It started when religious figures were revered as sinless and thought different from commoners or laymen.... When this irrationality is promoted you can only expect irrational teachings such as you can pay to get your sins resolved. I bet Wall Street bankers will be happy.

"I believe many of the wrong catholic teachings started when people started to worshipping other sinful men and thinking they are better because they are priest, bishop, and pope. If they are that holy then they didn't need Jesus in the first place. And they can invent whatever teachings they want. That's exactly what they have been doing."

LOL, raised Presbyterian, were you Hito?

Personally I have to be careful about reading books like this. They bring out all the old papist hating bigotry I inherited from my Calvinist forebears. Down with pagan popery and the Whore of Babylon and all that. Father O'Malley needs to tread carefully, lol.

But then given the devilish snake-like cunning of those Jesuits, it's probably aimed more at persuading his fellow Catholics to support whatever theology he's selling, rather than at lapsed Calvinists like me.

Or maybe he just wants to get married. ahahahahahah

[Lucky]

Good points, MsGuy. I am tempted to read the book, but my library doesn't have it. Let's see how much it is on Amazon...that $27.95 price tag drops to $16,10 with free shipping since I am Amazon Prime. Maybe later.

[Guest hitoallusa]

Who's talking about marriage??? Is someone getting married...? Anyways, I don't think I belong in any denomination... I absolutely refuse that. I got excommunicated because I was for women's right to pray and lead in the church.

[AdamSmith]

LOL, raised Presbyterian, were you Hito?

In honor of our hito...

Mr. Eliot's Sunday Morning Service

T.S. Eliot

Look, look, master, here comes two religious caterpillars. -- Jew of Malta

Polyphiloprogenitive

The sapient sutlers of the Lord

Drift across the window-panes.

In the beginning was the Word.

In the beginning was the Word,

Superfetation of ,

And at the mensual turn of time

Produced enervate Origen.

A painter of the Umbrian school

Designed upon a gesso ground

The nimbus of the Baptized God.

The wilderness is cracked and browned

But through the water pale and thin

Still shine the unoffending feet

And there above the painter set

The Father and the Paraclete.

. . . . .

The sable presbyters approach

The avenue of penitence;

The young are red and pustular

Clutching piaculative pence

Under the penitential gates

Sustained by staring Seraphim

Where the souls of the devout

Burn invisible and dim.

Along the garden-wall the bees

With hairy bellies pass between

The staminate and pistilate,

Blest office of the epicene.

Sweeney shifts from ham to ham

Stirring the water in his bath.

The masters of the subtle schools

Are controversial, polymath.

Personally I have to be careful about reading books like this. They bring out all the old papist hating bigotry I inherited from my Calvinist forebears. Down with pagan popery and the Whore of Babylon and all that. Father O'Malley needs to tread carefully, lol.

Likewise. And when I start to go all soft on Rome, I need merely glance through a page or two of the ever-lovin' Catholic Encyclopedia for some bracing Protestant-vilifying vitriol.

But then given the devilish snake-like cunning of those Jesuits, it's probably aimed more at persuading his fellow Catholics to support whatever theology he's selling, rather than at lapsed Calvinists like me.

As in Society of Jesus founder Ignatius of Loyola's Rules for Thinking with the Church, Rule 13:

"That we may be altogether of the same mind and in conformity[...], if [the Church] shall have defined anything to be black which to our eyes appears to be white, we ought in like manner to pronounce it to be black."

[Lucky]

For me, reading the book might help me understand better some of the things I was taught in school, and why. The sexual repression that Catholics get came from these very guys who were having wives and mistresses, yet did not allow it for future generations. Such a horrible mistake, but why? It was good enough for them.And so on.

[Lucky]

And yet another book, this one by a Jesuit-educated Pulitzer Prize winner named Garry Wills, and it's called Why Priests? A Failed Tradition. The book is written up in today's Sunday Times column by Frank Bruni, who goes on a rant about Los Ageles Cardinal Mahoney for covering up so much crime committed by priests against young boys:

"...the new book by Wills, a Pulitzer Prize winner
who has written extensively about Christianity and the church, says
that at the start, Christianity not only didn’t have priests but opposed
them. The priesthood was a subsequent tweak, and the same goes for the
all-male, celibate nature of the Roman Catholic clergy and the
autocratic hierarchy that this clergy inhabits, an unresponsive
government whose subjects — the laity — have limited say.

“It can’t admit to error, the church hierarchy,” Wills told me on the
phone on Thursday. “Any challenge to their prerogative is, in their
eyes, a challenge to God. You can’t be any more arrogant than that.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/27/opinion/sunday/bruni-catholicisms-curse.html?ref=opinion

[MsGuy]

My understanding is that the office of 'priest' in the episcopal churches is one and the same as the Early Church 'presbyter' (Greek 'presbuteros' signifying older man).

Even the derivation of the English word 'priest' is from presbuteros. Middle English preost, from Old English prost, from Vulgar Latin *prester (from Late Latin presbyter; see presbyter)

Interestingly enough the qualifications for priest/presbyter are stated quite clearly in 1st Timothy 3 2-7:

.² Now the (priest/presbyter) is to be above reproach, faithful to his wife, temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, ³ not given to drunkenness, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. ⁴ He must manage his own family well and see that his children obey him, and he must do so in a manner worthy of full^[a] respect. ⁵ (If anyone does not know how to manage his own family, how can he take care of God’s church?) ⁶ He must not be a recent convert, or he may become conceited and fall under the same judgment as the devil. ⁷ He must also have a good reputation with outsiders, so that he will not fall into disgrace and into the devil’s trap.

LOL, Now how those folks in Trent got around the requirement that a priest be married, faithful and have well behaved children defies explanation except...maybe............wait for it...

DEMONIC POSSESSION BY THE WHORE OF ROME!!!

[Guest hitoallusa]

What I want to focus is that out of all this nonsense, Jesus's teachings have survived and changed people and the world. I think that is the take home message. Somehow it comforts me. No matter how evil the world seems, God will prevail.

[AdamSmith]

hito, you may have put your finger on it without realizing it. I revere Jesus; I don't believe in God.

The confusion of one with the other has been the root of measureless damage and destruction adown the ages since.