10th Century Obscenities
Vile Princes of the Papacy
"Popes maimed & were maimed, killed & were killed... Without question, these pontiffs constitute the most despicable body of leaders, clerical or lay, in history. They were, frankly, barbarians. Ancient Rome had nothing to rival them in rottenness."
– Peter de Rosa (Vicars of Christ, p48)
John XII (955-964).
Born from an incestuous relationship between Pope Sergio III and his 13-year-old daughter Marozie. John, in turn, took his mother as his own mistress.
Pope at 18, he turned the Lateran into a brothel. He was accused by a synod of "sacrilege, simony, perjury, murder, adultery and incest" and was temporarily deposed.
He took his revenge on opponents by hacking off limbs. He was murdered by an enraged husband who caught him having sex with his wife.
11th Century Horror
Church lords over ignorant squalor of millions
1095 - Pope Urban II calls upon the Franks to invade the more civilized Muslim world. Begins five centuries of warfare.
"Let those who have hitherto been robbers now become soldiers."
– Urban II addresses his gangsters.
1009: Rivalry from Islam prompts eastern churches to break with idolatry. This 'iconoclasm' begins breach with idol-worshipping Catholic west. Centuries of bloodshed ensue.
1079: The Council of Rome: Persecution of Berengarius & his followers who cannot stomach the dogma of 'transmutation of bread & wine into Christ.'
Svyatoslav's Miscellany, 1076. God's work – a serious business.
12th Century Criminality
Christian Church ally of murderous kings & rogue princes
"Warrior Monks" - Muslim heads catapulted into the besieged city of Antioch by Christian Knights (Illumination from Les Histoires d'Outremer by William of Tyre 12th century, Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris).
1118: Christian fanatics captured Saragossa; the beginning of the decline of Muslim civilization in Spain.
1184 Council of Verona condemns Waldensians for witchcraft. The charge is later extended to condemn heretics.
13th Century Wickedness
Vile Crusaders Plunder & Murder for God
1204 Christian crusaders sack & ruin greatest Christian city, Constantinople.
1209 Pope Innocent III launches Albigensian Crusade against Christian Cathars of southern France. 7000 massacred in La Madeleine Church alone.
1211 Burning of Waldenses heretics at Strasbourg begins several centuries of persecution.
German Teutonic Knights butcher their way through the Baltic lands, savage Catholic Poles & Orthodox Russians.
1231: Pope Gregory IX authorizes Inquisition for dealing with heretics.
1277 Pope John XXI, alarmed by rumors of pagan heresy among “scholars of arts in the faculty of theology" pressurizes Stephen Tempier, Bishop of Paris, to prohibit 219 philosophical and theological theses. The "Condemnations of Paris" is the first of 16 lists of censorship.
14th Century Catastrophe
Church hostility to medicine allows plague to decimate Europe
Burning of the Jews of Cologne – blamed by Christians for the Black Death (Liber Chronicarum Mundi).
World Domination?
"We declare, say, define, and pronounce that it is absolutely necessary for the salvation of every human creature to be subject to the Roman pontiff."
– Pope Boniface VIII, Bull Unun Sanctum, 1302
1311-12: Ecumenical Council of Vienne. It authorises the brutal suppression of the Knights Templar (mercenaries of the church who have outlived their usefulness).
1316-1334: Pope John XXII, world's richest man and first pontiff to promote theory of witchcraft. Sanctions bull allowing heresy charges to be brought against dead people. In 1320 he instructs French Inquisition to confiscate all property belonging to blasphemers or dabblers in black arts.
1300s. Glowing eyes and nocturnal behaviour of the cat interpreted by the Church as clear proof of the hapless moggy's diabolic affinity. Wholesale trapping and burning of cats allowed free rein to the spread of the flee-carrying rat. Subsequently, Europe's population was decimated by the plague.
1347-50: The Black Death sweeps across Europe, killing one-third of the population.
"Jews were burnt all the way from the Mediterranean into Germany... under torture confessing to have spread the plague by poisoning wells... the poison made from the skin of a basilisk (a kind of mythical serpent)..."
– N. Cantor (In the Wake of the Plague)
15th Century Malevolence
Tortured Bodies by Sadists of the Lord
16th Century Mayhem
Pogroms & civil wars in the name of Jesus
"My advice... is: First, that their synagogues be burned down, and that all who are able toss sulphur and pitch; it would be good if someone could also throw in some hellfire.."
Martin Luther ("On the Jews and their lies" 1543)
1517: Martin Luther posts 95 theses at Wittenberg. The Reformation will turn Europe into a battleground.
1517 A Dominican monk Johann Tetzel swells papal coffers by selling indulgences ('souls freed from purgatory'!)
1524: Luther – no friend of the downtrodden – encourages savagery of German princes in putting down the two-year Peasants’ Revolt.
Book Burners for Christ–
Dominican monks in the service of Ferdinand proudly consign the wisdom of Moorish Spain to the flames (Berruguete, Prado Museum, Madrid)
1553 John Calvin, the "Protestant Pope" of Geneva proves his Christian credentials by having Michael Servetus, the Spanish physician, burned at the stake for heresy. Servetus had opposed Trinitarianism and infant baptism.
Servetus, the discoverer of pulmonary blood circulation (an advance on Galen) had fled the Inquisition and had thought himself safe among Protestants. Oh dear.
1559 Introduction of Index of Forbidden Books (lasts until 1966)
1563 Following the Council of Trent, Jesuit Order becomes 'Defender of the Faith'. Huguenots are persecuted in France.
17th Century Barbarity
Burning Witches for Christ
Urbain Grandier, burned in Loudun, 1634. Cardinal Richelieu orchestrated his murder.
1600 After a seven year trail before the Inquisition, Giordano Bruno, who had the audacity to suggest that space was boundless and that the sun and its planets were not unique, is condemned and burned at the stake.
1605: The Gunpowder Plot. Catholic fanatics attempt to blow up James I of England.
1633 Galileo is brought before the Inquisition. Under threat of torture and death, he is forced from his knees to renounce all belief in Copernican theories. He is sentenced to life imprisonment. He dies in 1642 and the charges against him stand for another 350 years.
1618-1648 Central Europe devastated by Thirty Years' War between Catholics and Protestants
1411 Dominican Vincente Ferrer revives anti-Jewish hysteria in Spain: "cohorts of the Devil and Anti-Christ, clever, warped and doomed."
1415 John Huss of Bohemia, critic of papal corruption but guaranteed personal safety, burned at the stake. "When dealing with heretics, one is not obligated to keep his word." – Pope Gregory XII.
1415 Pope John XXIII deposed: "The most scandalous charges were suppressed; the Vicar of Christ was only accused of piracy, murder, rape, sodomy and incest."
– Gibbon (Decline & Fall)
1478: Pope Sixtus IV, in alliance with King Ferdinand of Spain, establishes the Spanish Inquisition. Jews, Moors and heretics will be imprisoned, tortured and murdered for centuries.
The bisexual Sixtus, though suffering from syphilis, fathers children from his elder sister.
1484 Pope Innocent VIII decrees that cats are unholy creatures, to be burned along with the witches that own them.
1486 Taking a break from book-burning, two Dominican monks, Henrich Kramer & James Sprenger, write a best-seller – Malleus Maleficarum ('The Witches Hammer') – 'the most blood thirsty book ever written.' (Peter de Rosa, Vicars of Christ, p184)
This unsurpassed nonsense rests on the bench of every magistrate and judge in Europe for three centuries and leads to tens of thousands of judicial murders.
1498 Dominican reformer, Savonarola – burner of books & ornaments of 'pagan immorality' – is himself burned for criticising the degenerate Pope Alexander VI.
18th Century Scandal
Christian Church endorses Slavery, Racism & subordination of women
"And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him. And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. And he said, Blessed be the LORD God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant."
Genesis 9.24-26
"As for your male and female slaves whom you may have: you may buy male and female slaves from the nations that are round about you. You may also buy from among the strangers who sojourn with you and their families that are with you, who have been born in your land; and they may be your property."
Leviticus 25:44
1738: Freemasonry is condemned by Clement XII and Catholics are forbidden to join.
1793: Last 'witch' burning at Poznen in Germany
19th Century Evil
Christian Church Rejects Science & social reform; Christian 'missions' go hand-in-hand with colonialism.
1814: Society of Jesus, suppressed since 1773, is restored. The Inquisition continues until 1834, Church-sanctioned torture until 1917.
1844: 'Protection of Children Act' allows Church missionaries in Australia to kidnap aboriginal children.
1854: Pius IX proclaims the dogma of the Immaculate Conception in the bull Ineffabilis Deus. Lourdes shrine introduced.
1864: Pius IX issues the encyclical Quanta cura and the Syllabus of Errors. It condemns some 80 propositions derived from scientific method and rationalism. Liberalism & socialism are denounced.
1870: Vatican Council declares the Pope "infallible".
'Bible Societies' & 'Missions' in European colonies destroy indigenous cultures
20th Century Iniquity
Christian Church allies itself with Fascism; opposes advances of science & personal freedom
1907 Pius X condemns Modernism in the decree Lamentabili and the encyclical Pascendi.
Hitler's Pope - Pius XII (1939-1958)
Hitler, a Roman Catholic, is never excommunicated for causing the death of millions; whereas Martin Luther was excommunicated for criticism of the papal system.
Friends of Fascists Everywhere:
Germany
Spain
Croatia
21st Century Menace
Churches the Stalking Ground of Paedophiles & Sex Offenders
On March 12, 2000 Pope John Paul II attempted to purify the soul of the Catholic Church by apologising for 2000 years of "sins" committed by the church – quite some compensation for twenty centuries of terrorism, extortion and murder!
And yet – September 2000 – the same John Paul II issues "Dominus Jesus (Lord Jesus)", reaffirming intolerance: "Only one path to God – the Roman Catholic Church."
And the story does not end:
Still the evil continues...
Child sex abuse scandal rocks the US Catholic Church
"The Roman Catholic Church has removed 218 priests from their positions this year because of child sexual abuse allegations, but at least 34 known offenders remain in church jobs"- Reuters (June 9 2002)
Anti-abortion
Anti-birth control
Creator of "saints"
31 July, 2003 "Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith" condemns same sex deviants who seek marriage. In contrast, no Vatican condemnation of priestly paedophiles.
