The doctrine of Papal Infalliblity

 

"The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weakness, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still purely primitive, legends which are nevertheless pretty childish." -- Albert Einstein

 

Part 3: Infallibility and mass censorship:

By now Christianity had deteriorated from the hope and joy present in some of the earliest Gnostic Gospels to a hard, callous, petty, and above all, very wealthy political institution. This Church - so very far from its founder's teachings - carried on the fine tradition of censorship and restriction of learning.

For an educated citizenry as the Church founders well knew, will seldom accede to religious authority.

And so Saul of Tarsus aided and abetted the "voluntary" burning of an enormous number of papyrus books in Ephesus. Bishop Macedonius oversaw the burning of all books which he declared to be 'heretical' to 3rd CE Church teachings. In 398 CE  Arcadius ordered the burning of all works by Eunomious. In 435 Theodosious oversaw house-to-house searches confiscating and later burning all books of the Nestorians (who wrote on the  absurdity of declaring Jesus' mother as the literal 'mother of God'). In spring of 415 a lovely group of Christian monks under Cyril, the Bishop of Alexandria, seized Hypatia and dragged her off. Hypatia was arguably the greatest scientist of her time and mathematician of note. As an aside here, some modern writers have claimed she was more a logician than empiricist. This is IMHO incorrect and an attempt to underscore a particular dogmatism of their own.  At any rate back to the devout and very holy Christian monks who at Cyril's behest attact Hypatia, pulled out her eyes, cut off her tongue, and slooowly one by one cut out her internal organs. They burnt what was left after leaving her to bleed to death in agony. And oh yes, they also burned her scientific works. A script to be followed by similarly holy Christians over the coming millenia vis a vis science and scientists.

In his "Life of Isidore" Damascius states that the Bishop Cyril and his monks were afraid that Hypatia's scientific work - stored in the Library of Alexandria - was so profound that it would become more accepted over Church dogma. That is to say, it would have threatened their worldly power should the faithfull learn to think rather than blindly obey. Hence they tortured and murdered poor Hypatia in the most brutal manner. Of course everyone knows what happened to the Library itself - twenty years later Christians under Theophilus destroyed everything, filled the library with crosses, and demolished everything remaining. About 363 CE Christian priests under Jovianus burned to the ground the Library of Antioch because it contained works the Christians deemed frivolous and immoral. What works were these? The greatest selection of Greek theatrical works, lyric poetry, works of Sappho, and so on to have survived to that point. All destroyed, nothing remaining - thousands of works. The wise canons of the Council of Trullo in Canon LXII completed this attack on the theatre in 691 CE, forbidding any Christian from representing comedy. (This was code - Greek 'comedies' and similar works were often a means for exploring spirituality, politics, and human thought in general. Banning 'comedies' was akin to banning this larger meaning.) But this was insufficient for the Church. Around 725 Leo III in his perfect wisdom proscribed images, including those of ecclesiastical subjects.  The result? Virtually every book which could be found - most of which carried images in one form or another, particularly those of science and medicine, was to be seized and destroyed. Even those sans images but with fantastic caligraphy or containing beautifully illuminated manuscripts were burned. Between 550 and 750 CE essentially no more books were copied, original texts handed down for centuries were destroyed,. Works by Plautus, Cicero, Livy, Pliny the Elder, Virgil, Lucan, Juvenal, Fronto, and many others were overwritten with religious writings (the originals erased, but the valuable velum, goat skin, etc. on which they were written were kept for transcription of Church dogma). This happy ignorance continued - in 1204 the Fourth Christian Crusade reached Constantinople. The libraries were sacked and burned... and on and on through the centuries to our own time, where book censorship quoting religious authority has become so commonplace as to be hardly recognized as such. (Please also see my page on bibliocaust.)

Ages of book burnings, censorship of thought, murder of scientists, attacks upon freedom of thought, burning of hundreds of thousands of irreplaceable manuscripts by the Church - all of course well known and well documented. Those who saught to translate the Christian holy book - the "Bible" - so that the masses could bypass priests and read the words for themselves were burnt alive. Wycliffe, Coverdale, Tyndale, and others were sent to the flame for the sin of attepting to translate the Bible. Their works were tossed into the same flames that consummed them. ... It would not be amiss to suggest that that Christianity has always been run by bibliocausts. Not alone amongst religions for wanton destruction of books and the ideas represented therein, but certainly one of the most consistent and widespread in its efforts to erase writings perceived as inimical to its political power.

Now, please keep this long history of censorship and destruction of all learning inimical to Church teachings in mind, as we consider the argument for augmenting the so-called spiritual rights of the Pope:  By the early 1400s the Church was very politically powerful, and ruled every aspect of western life. And like any large political, hierarchal, patriarchal  organization, there were rifts. In the mid-15th century one such rift saw the French and Roman Churches disagree about the power of the Pope. So in 1414 the Council the Bishops met to resolve things. In their wisdom (haha) they found that both sides could agree to work together if it was declared that the Church was more important than the chief bishop, also known as the "Pope", or "father".  (Since women are the more intelligent half of the species, they were not allowed to be Pope. Alas.)  According to the canon set forth at this meeting, Popes and their decisions were not infallible. It was acknowledged as part of Church law that Popes could make mistakes.

And so they made lots of them: Like any political organization the Papacy had its share of despots who wanted absolute power. Popes such as Alexander VI, and  Julius II thought nothing of using the office to augment their own political influence and wealth at the expense of everyone else. They and others like them used three primary threats: 1) Excommunication: In medieval times this meant no one would give the excommunicate work, food, or help of any sort. He would be driven from the land, cursed and starving. 2) The Popes also used the Avesta myths which had been incorporated into the church as a means of threating the masses with an eternity of pain from a particularly vengeful deity should they dissent from Church authority. And finally, 3) they branded as 'heretic' anyone who threatened their power in any way. Force in the form of burning 'heretics' alive, torture, hanging, flogging, and so on were all handy ways of ensuring the masses would think twice before refusing to hand over a tithe to the Church, or dare to disagree with its teachings in any way.

Time passed. Some Popes were better than others. But almost all of them and their Cardinals and Bishops, wanted ever more secular power. With changing times it came to be considered bad taste to burn people alive (at least in public), so there had to be some other means of gaining more power. Hence a mere  450 years following the 1414 ruling that Papal Ex Cathedra declarations were not infallible, there was another meeting. (Ex Cathedra incidentally means from the Chair of Jesus' Disciple Peter, whose name was not Peter at all  - some really bad Greek translations and some church historical revisionism are alone responsible for that name, and the myths which surround it). At any rate, another meeting of Bishops took place. At the First Vatican Council of 1870, for a number of complex reasons which ultimately boiled down to the Bishops' wanting justification for a  secular power grab, a new decree was issued. The Pope, was now said to be part of a "Sacred Magisterium". Henceforward under certain circumstances the Pope was to be considered a vessel for the Holy Spirit (a church defined concept - nothing to do with any of Jesus' teachings). When under the Sacred Magisterium the Pope was to be considered unable to err in certain types of his decisions. That is to say, infallible.

Now, as you may know the Church was carefully designed as a copy of ancient Roman government.  In that government the Caesars acted as sacred vessels of the supreme God Jupiter. When acting as such vessels, the Caesars' decisions were said to be infallible. The 1870 declaration therefore was part of returning the Church to its original form - that is to say, as a vessel mirroring the Roman deification dogma. Further, the declaration also stated that the Pope was, exactly like the Caesars, to have  temporal power over every secular government on the planet. Most of these of course, have always been non-Christian. Again this very closely mirrored the wording and power of Caesars formal titles. And exactly as was the case in the Rome of the Caesars, the Council of 1870 stated that anyone who dared question this dogma was  anathema.  To question the termporal and spiritual power of the Pope was to be subject to excommunication, eternal damnation, and other unpleasant things which the Church fathers seemed rather good at dreaming up. It seemed that as in all Kakistocracies, dissent was not to be tolerated.

Naturally there was considerable alarm at all of these shenanigans. Opposition came in many forms, ranging from historical argument, recourse to Jesus' teachings, and of course from non-Catholic Christians. Surprisingly too, Hindus, Buddhists, Janes, Shintoists, seemed to have trouble believing that the political head of some obviously made up religion somewhere far away was spiritually and secularly their superior. How odd. At any rate,  there were also a very large number of Christians who found this idea of elevating the decisions of the head one particular religious sect with a rather unsavory history of book-burning and violence to the level of infallibility to be, well... blasphemous. Imagine they said, what would happen if an arch conservative who cared little for freedom of thought or the loving  intellectual and personal spiritual exploration inherent in all of Jesus's  teachings, was to become Pope and misuse this new power. That would be horrible...

"How well we know what a profitable superstition this fable of Christ has been for us." -- Pope Leo X

Read on...