Fact checking Protestant claim about indulgences

Started by GiftOfGod, January 07, 2021, 06:22:22 PM

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GiftOfGod

Quote from: Gardener on October 19, 2021, 09:02:03 AM
I feel like robbery could be a good investment if it's inflation adjusted.
This is where considerations of temporal punishment comes in. Most robbers don't do the math. I would assume that in 1500s Europe the temporal punishment was death. That's quite a risk. Nowadays many criminals don't take the risk due to the few years in prison they will serve and the likelihood that they will be caught well before they can spend the loot.
Quote from: Maximilian on December 30, 2021, 11:15:48 AM
Quote from: Goldfinch on December 30, 2021, 10:36:10 AM
Quote from: Innocent Smith on December 30, 2021, 10:25:55 AM
If attending Mass, the ordinary form as celebrated everyday around the world be sinful, then the Church no longer exists. Period.
Rather, if the NOM were the lex credendi of the Church, then the Church would no longer exist. However, the true mass and the true sacraments still exist and will hold the candle of faith until Our Lord steps in to restore His Bride to her glory.
We could compare ourselves to the Catholics in England at the time of the Reformation. Was it sinful for them to attend Cranmer's service?
We have to remind ourselves that all the machinery of the "Church" continued in place. They had priests, bishops, churches, cathedrals. But all of them were using the new "Book of Common Prayer" instead of the Catholic Mass. Ordinary lay people could see with their own eyes an enormous entity that called itself the "Church," but did the true Church still exist in that situation? Meanwhile, in small hiding places in certain homes were a handful of true priests offering the true Mass at the risk of imprisonment, torture and death.


Prayerful

Serious criminals tends to hire or rent almost everything, and hide their money. Driving to the dole office in an S Class Merc will likely see the car taken by the Criminal Assets Bureau (who take proceeds of crime above a mere 5000 Euro), but if it was hired, it matters little.
Padre Pio: Pray, hope, and don't worry. Worry is useless. God is merciful and will hear your prayer.

AlNg

Quote from: LausTibiChriste on October 19, 2021, 03:34:26 PM

Crusaders were "allowed" to have prostitutes?
I don't know about "allowed" but I read that during the fourth Crusade, Catholics  set up prostitutes in the church and near the altar of the Greek Orthodox  Hagia Sophia and that Roman Catholic Crusaders availed themselves of their services while in the Greek Church. 

ChairmanJoeAintMyPrez

Quote from: AlNg on November 14, 2021, 04:37:28 PM
Quote from: LausTibiChriste on October 19, 2021, 03:34:26 PM

Crusaders were "allowed" to have prostitutes?
I don't know about "allowed" but I read that during the fourth Crusade, Catholics  set up prostitutes in the church and near the altar of the Greek Orthodox  Hagia Sophia and that Roman Catholic Crusaders availed themselves of their services while in the Greek Church.

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AlNg

I see that there is someone here who is skeptical but he presents nothing to support his POV except a cartoon of sorts. I read that a whore was set up on the Patriarchal throne at the Hagia Sophia.  Instead of posting cartoons, please read:
1. Speros Vryonis in Byzantium and Europe, Harcourt, Brace & World, New York, c1967.
"The Latin soldiery subjected the greatest city in Europe to an indescribable sack. For three days they murdered, raped, looted and destroyed on a scale which even the ancient Vandals and Goths would have found unbelievable. Constantinople had become a veritable museum of ancient and Byzantine art, an emporium of such incredible wealth that the Latins were astounded at the riches they found. Though the Venetians had an appreciation for the art which they discovered (they were themselves semi-Byzantines) and saved much of it, the French and others destroyed indiscriminately, halting to refresh themselves with wine, violation of nuns, and murder of Orthodox clerics. The Crusaders vented their hatred for the Greeks most spectacularly in the desecration of the greatest Church in Christendom. They smashed the silver iconostasis, the icons and the holy books of Hagia Sophia, and seated upon the patriarchal throne a whore who sang coarse songs as they drank wine from the Church's holy vessels. The estrangement of East and West, which had proceeded over the centuries, culminated in the horrible massacre that accompanied the conquest of Constantinople. The Greeks were convinced that even the Turks, had they taken the city, would not have been as cruel as the Latin Christians. The defeat of Byzantium, already in a state of decline, accelerated political degeneration so that the Byzantines eventually became an easy prey to the Turks. The Crusading movement thus resulted, ultimately, in the victory of Islam, a result which was of course the exact opposite of its original intention."
2. Also please see:
Niketas Choniates. O City of Byzantium, Annals of Niketas Choniates. Detroit 1984.
which is a primary source and mentions this also.
3. There is an excerpt of the Medieval sourcebook of Nicetas Choniates posted at the library of the Roman Catholic school: Fordham University.
". . . How shall I begin to tell of the deeds wrought by these nefarious men! Alas, the images, which ought to have been adored, were trodden under foot! Alas, the relics of the holy martyrs were thrown into unclean places! Then was se en what one shudders to hear, namely, the divine body and blood of Christ was spilled upon the ground or thrown about. They snatched the precious reliquaries, thrust into their bosoms the ornaments which these contained, and used the broken remnants for pans and drinking cups,-precursors of Anti-Christ, authors and heralds of his nefarious deeds which we momentarily expect. Manifestly, indeed, by that race then, just as formerly, Christ was robbed and insulted and His garments were divided by lot; only one thing was lacking, that His side, pierced bv a spear, should pour rivers of divine blood on the ground.

Nor can the violation of the Great Church [note: Hagia Sophia] be listened to with equanimity. For the sacred altar, formed of all kinds of precious materials and admired by the whole world, was broken into bits and distributed among the soldiers, as was all the other sacred wealth of so great and infinite splendor.

When the sacred vases and utensils of unsurpassable art and grace and rare material, and the fine silver, wrought with gold, which encircled the screen of the tribunal and the ambo, of admirable workmanship, and the door and many other ornaments, were to be borne away as booty, mules and saddled horses were led to the very sanctuary of the temple. Some of these which were unable to keep their footing on the splendid and slippery pavement, were stabbed when they fell, so that the sacred pavement was polluted with blood and filth.

Nay more, a certain harlot, a sharer in their guilt, a minister of the furies, a servant of the demons, a worker of incantations and poisonings, insulting Christ, sat in the patriarch's seat, singing an obscene song and dancing frequently. Nor, indeed, were these crimes committed and others left undone, on the ground that these were of lesser guilt, the others of greater. But with one consent all the most heinous sins and crimes were committed by all with equal zeal. Could those, who showed so great madness against God Himself, have spared the honorable matrons and maidens or the virgins consecrated to God?

Nothing was more difficult and laborious than to soften by prayers, to render benevolent, these wrathful barbarians, vomiting forth bile at every unpleasing word, so that nothing failed to inflame their fury. Whoever attempted it was derided as insane and a man of intemperate language. Often they drew their daggers against any one who opposed them at all or hindered their demands.

No one was without a share in the grief. In the alleys, in the streets, in the temples, complaints, weeping, lamentations, grief, the groaning of men, the shrieks of women, wounds, rape, captivity, the separation of those most closely united. Nobles wandered about ignominiously, those of venerable age in tears, the rich in poverty. Thus it was in the streets, on the corners, in the temple, in the dens, for no place remained unassailed or defended the suppliants. All places everywhere were filled full of all kinds of crime. Oh, immortal God, how great the afflictions of the men, bow great the distress!"
https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/source/choniates1.asp

ChairmanJoeAintMyPrez

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GiftOfGod

Quote from: Maximilian on December 30, 2021, 11:15:48 AM
Quote from: Goldfinch on December 30, 2021, 10:36:10 AM
Quote from: Innocent Smith on December 30, 2021, 10:25:55 AM
If attending Mass, the ordinary form as celebrated everyday around the world be sinful, then the Church no longer exists. Period.
Rather, if the NOM were the lex credendi of the Church, then the Church would no longer exist. However, the true mass and the true sacraments still exist and will hold the candle of faith until Our Lord steps in to restore His Bride to her glory.
We could compare ourselves to the Catholics in England at the time of the Reformation. Was it sinful for them to attend Cranmer's service?
We have to remind ourselves that all the machinery of the "Church" continued in place. They had priests, bishops, churches, cathedrals. But all of them were using the new "Book of Common Prayer" instead of the Catholic Mass. Ordinary lay people could see with their own eyes an enormous entity that called itself the "Church," but did the true Church still exist in that situation? Meanwhile, in small hiding places in certain homes were a handful of true priests offering the true Mass at the risk of imprisonment, torture and death.


AlNg

#22
Quote from: GiftOfGod on November 14, 2021, 07:26:29 PM

Is "Latins" supposed to be an insult?
In the local Byzantine Eastern Catholic Church (united with Rome) i have heard people refer to Catholics of the western rite as Romans or Latins. I don't think it is an insult but is just a way of distinguishing those in the western (Roman rite)  and Eastern Catholic Churches. In the sources cited here it refers to the Roman Catholic crusaders or more generally Roman Catholics (of the Roman rite).
BTW, in his letter of July 1204, referring to the Crusaders and their sack of Constnatinople, Pope Innocent III uses the term Latins to refer to Roman Catholics or Catholics of the west. so if the Holy Father uses the term Latins, I don't see how you could say it is an insult:
"Quomodo enim Graecorum Ecclesia, quantumcunque afflictionibus et persecutionibus affligatur, ad unitatem ecclesiasticam et devotionem sedis apostolicae revertetur, quae in Latinis non nisi perditionis exemplum et opera tenebrarum aspexit, ut jam merito illos abhorreat plus quam canes?"Translation: "How, indeed, is the Greek church to be brought back into ecclesiastical union and to a devotion for the Apostolic See when she has been beset with so many afflictions and persecutions that she sees in the Latins only an example of perdition and the works of darkness, so that she now, and with reason, detests the Latins more than dogs? "

Anyway, for those who are still skeptical that during the Fourth Crusade, after the invasion by the Roman Catholic (Latin) Crusaders there was a prostitute seated on a throne in the Greek Church Hagia Sophia, there are other sources reporting this, in addition to the sources quoted above. For example:
Decline and Fall of the Roman empire by Edward Gibbon,  chapter LX: The Fourth Crusade:
"After stripping the gems and pearls, they converted the chalices into drinking-cups; their tables, on which they gamed and feasted, were covered with the pictures of Christ and the saints; and they trampled under foot the most venerable objects of the Christian worship. In the cathedral of St. Sophia, the ample veil of the sanctuary was rent asunder for the sake of the golden fringe; and the altar, a monument of art and riches, was broken in pieces and shared among the captors. Their mules and horses were laden with the wrought silver and gilt carvings, which they tore down from the doors and pulpit; and if the beasts stumbled under the burden, they were stabbed by their impatient drivers, and the holy pavement streamed with their impure blood. A prostitute was seated on the throne of the patriarch; and that daughter of Belial, as she is styled, sung and danced in the church, to ridicule the hymns and processions of the Orientals. "



james03

"But he that doth not believe, is already judged: because he believeth not in the name of the only begotten Son of God (Jn 3:18)."

"All sorrow leads to the foot of the Cross.  Weep for your sins."

"Although He should kill me, I will trust in Him"

Michael Wilson

"The World Must Conform to Our Lord and not He to it." Rev. Dennis Fahey CSSP

"My brothers, all of you, if you are condemned to see the triumph of evil, never applaud it. Never say to evil: you are good; to decadence: you are progess; to death: you are life. Sanctify yourselves in the times wherein God has placed you; bewail the evils and the disorders which God tolerates; oppose them with the energy of your works and your efforts, your life uncontaminated by error, free from being led astray, in such a way that having lived here below, united with the Spirit of the Lord, you will be admitted to be made but one with Him forever and ever: But he who is joined to the Lord is one in spirit." Cardinal Pie of Potiers