The Pilgrim Church by E. H. Broadbent

Candy has at long last found a chronological history of the REAL Christian Church, which is written in accordance to her preferred version of history.

I've read of the Waldnses, the Vaudois, and a bit of the Anabaptists, but I want to read all the way back to Christ's time Himself, up until the present day. Thanks to many of the wonderful readers of this blog, and their suggesting some great books to me, I've settled on one that I think will be quite accurate.

Note: The Waldenses and Vaudois are the same group of people. Vaudois is the French version. Waldo/Vaudo to Waldensian/Vaudois.

Like any good revised history, this one is difficult to find, not because it is inaccurate, but because certain religions (i.e. the Catholic Church) want to keep it hidden:

Why was/is this book so hard to obtain? I did a bit of research on this, and have found that this book - which seems to teach the true history of Christ's church, has been squelched and pushed down by certain large religions that don't like what the book has to say.

Other people have similar accusations for the unpopularity of the book. For example:

How is that Broadbent’s account differs from many others then? He travelled extensively gathering what he could from various sources and directly from those who were descendants of ‘the pilgrim church’. He reads between the lines of the accounts given by ‘their enemies’, which of course would not paint them in any favourable light. There were some preserved, written records, which clearly expose the tyrannical behaviour of much of the ‘official’ Church. Interestingly, I recall reading somewhere that many of these have since ‘disappeared’ since Broadbent’s days. The recently (1999) reissued edition of The Pilgrim Church has an excellent foreword by Dave Hunt. He also makes mention there of records no longer being in circulation. What makes this account so valuable is that it drew upon sources that were available in the Author’s day (he lived from 1861 – 1945), much of which does not seem to be now in circulation.

I added the bold to highlight the vague nature of Broadbent's sources. His evidence is apparently drawn from creatively editing sources and non-existent manuscripts. At least, that is my "reading between the lines" of this review.

According to this review, the true faithful Christians include the following groups:

I’ve learnt through this that many of the ‘unknowns’ not included in ‘popular’ Church histories were actually the true and faithful ones in Christ. As I understand, these people such as, the Waldenses, Albigenses, Lollards and Bogomils (some of their names were given to them by their oppressors) and numerous others are often either overlooked in many Church history books or are painted in a bad light.

The Elusive Vaudois are not an early Christian group, as Candy believes, because by their own history, they only date back to the 1100's. I do not know if Broadbent shares her view or not.

The Albigensians are clearly a group which would appeal to Candy. I believe that Ellen White also asserted that they were true believers. From Raynaldus' On the Accusations Against the Albigensians:

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. 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.

Well, if you believe that, then surely you must be part of Christ's true Church! Only, that wasn't all that they believed:

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 the eating the forbidden fruit they were subjected to the misery of death. They also call him 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, as 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....

This document dates from the 13th century. How would Broadbent have access to a more accurate version in the 1940's? How can he read through the lines to know that the first paragraph I quoted is all the truth, and everything in the second paragraph is a lie constructed by the Catholic Church in order to kill all of the Albigensians (also known as Cathars) as heretics? He couldn't. He can only guess, and edit to make things fit what he believed was history.

The Lollards are a group of people who were influenced by Wycliffe, and date from the late 1300's. Candy would agree with many of their doctrines, although some still held to the sacraments, and they felt that the virtue of the priest could effect the validity of the sacrament.

The Bogomils are also a later group, dating from the 10th century. While they did reject much of the Orthodox church, including the sacraments, they believed in a dualism similar to the Cathars. Everything created was evil, created by Satan. They rejected the Incarnation because God would never stoop to take part in the evil that was the material world.

So while I agree with Broadbent and Candy that there have always been groups of people who called themselves Christian but broke away from the established church, I do not feel that you can in any way make the argument that these groups were born again Christians, because they did not share the same theology. Broadbent asserts that groups of people have followed the pattern of the church as recorded in the Book of Acts, but these groups are all completely different, and some are not in keeping with the most generally held Christian beliefs (i.e. that God created the world).

In a comment posted on Candy's article, a reader asks Candy why she doesn't read some of the Early Church Fathers if she is interested in church history. Candy's reply, "because I am not interested in man's church, I'm interested in God's church. . . I'm not so much interested in mainstream historicy teachings of the beginnings of the Roman Catholic church, I'm looking for the history of the New Testament Christian church."

First, the translators of the King James Version had the utmost respect for the Fathers of the Church. Many of the early creeds of the Reformers mention the doctrines held by the Fathers of the Church. Calvin's Confession of Faith of 1559 states "And we confess that which has been established by the ancient councils, and we detest all sects and heresies which were rejected by the holy doctors, such as St. Hilary, St. Athanasius, St. Ambrose and St. Cyril." Many respected non-Catholics do not see the writings of the Early Church Fathers as reflecting only the Roman Catholic church.

Secondly, where does she think that Broadbent found his information on the early Christians? I suppose from these secret sources which are now destroyed. But while Broadbent may hesitate to accept an account of beliefs of these groups from the Catholic Church, which persecuted them, it is still his source of information. By comparing the account of Raynaldus with what Broadbent writes, Candy can critically compare the two and draw her own conclusions.

The Pilgrim Church

I see that Candy has a new favorite source in keeping with her version of history. We don't have a write up of this one yet, so I'm looking forward to digging into it. Look for a new post by the end of the weekend. Feel free to discuss in the comments, especially if any of you are familiar with the book.

Blessed James Duckett

Today is the feast day of Blessed James Duckett. Who was he?

James Duckett was an Englishman who lived during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. As a young man he became an apprentice printer in London. This is how he came across a book called The Firm Foundation of the Catholic Religion. He studied it carefully and believed that the Catholic Church was the true Church. In those days, Catholics were persecuted in England. James decided that he wanted to be a Catholic anyway and would face the consequences. The clergyman at his former church came to look for him because James had been a steady church goer. He would not come back. Twice he served short prison terms for his stubbornness. Both times his employer interceded and got him freed. But then the employer asked James to find a job elsewhere.

James Duckett knew there was no turning back. He sought out a disguised Catholic priest in the Gatehouse prison. The old priest, "Mr. Weekes," instructed him. Duckett was received into the Catholic Church. He married a Catholic widow and their son became a Carthusian monk. He recorded much of what we know about his father.

Blessed Duckett never forgot that it was a book that had started him on the road to the Church. He considered it his responsibility to provide his neighbors with Catholic books. He knew these books encouraged and instructed them. So dangerous was this "occupation" that he was in prison for nine out of twelve years of his married life. He was finally brought to trial and condemned to death on the testimony of one man, Peter Bullock, a book binder. He testified that he had bound Catholic books for Blessed Duckett, a "grave offense." Bullock turned traitor because he was in prison for unrelated matters and hoped to be freed.

Both men were condemned to die on the same day. On the scaffold at Tyburn, Blessed Duckett assured Bullock of his forgiveness. He kept encouraging the man as they were dying to accept the Catholic faith. Then the ropes were placed around their necks. Blessed Duckett was martyred in 1602.

Martyrs such as James Duckett go against everything we've learned from the Candy version of history. Good model Christians such as Elizabeth persecuted Catholics? Even killed them?

The printing press was used for something besides printing Reformation literature? I would point out that there must have been literate Catholics, despite the Catholic Church's famous attempts to keep people illiterate, but one could make the argument that Bl. Duckett could read because he not Catholic, and used the books to try and convert other people who weren't Catholic.

Our Debt to the Monks

I guess not everybody knows what happened to the bible between the time of St. Paul and his correspondence and the time of the Reformation. So this is a little bit of info of what happened before the age of the printing press.

From Henry Graham's Where We Got the Bible:

Our Debt To the Monks, page 74.

Day by day, year after yer, the monks would persevere in their holy labors, copying with loving care every letter of the sacred text from some old manuscript of the Bible, adorning and illuminating the pages of vellum with pictures and illustrations in purple and gold and silver colouring, and so producing real works of art that excite the envy and admiration of modern generations. Some Bishops and Abbots wrote out with their own hands the whole of both the Old and New Testaments for the use of their churches and monasteries. Even nuns, and this point I would bring under special notice- nuns took their share in this pious and highly skilled labour. We read of one who copied with her own hands two whole Bibles, and besides made six copies of several large portions of the Gospels and Epistles. Every monastery and church possessed at least one, and some possessed many copies of the Bible and the Gospels. In those ages it was a common thing to copy out particular parts of the Bible (as well as the whole Bible); for example, the Gospels or the Psalms or Epistles so that many who could not afford to purchase a complete Bible were able to possess themselves of at least some part which was specially interesting or popular. This custom is truly Catholic, as it flourishes amongst us today. At the end of our prayer books, for instance, we have Gospels and Epistles for the Sundays and various publishers, too, have issued the four Gospels separately each by itself and the practice seems to me to harmonise entirely with the very idea and structure of the Bible, which was originally composed of separate and independent portions, in use in different Churches throughout Christendom. And so we find that the monks and clergy often confined their work to copying out certain special portions of Sacred Scripture, and naturally the Gospels were the favourite part.

The work, we must remember was very slow, and expensive as well. Dr. Maitland reckons that it would require ten months for a scribe of those days to copy out a Bible; and that L 60 or L 70 would have been required if he had been paid at the rate that lawstationers pay their writers. Of course, with the monks it was a labour of love,and not for money; but this calculation of Dr. Maitland only refers to teh work of copying; it leaves out of account the materials that had to be used, pen and ink and parchment. Another authority (Buckingham) has made a more detailed calculation, and assuming that 427 skins of parchment would have been needed for the 35,000 verses, running into 127,000 folios, he reckons that a complete copy of Old and New Testaments could not have been purchased for less than L 218. Yet Protestants stare in astonishment when you tell them that not everybody could sit by the fireside in those days with a bible on his knees!

A Rebuttal of Hislop's The Two Babylons

Candy's reading list now has her reading one of her favorite books, The Two Babylons. She references it often enough in her posts that I thought we had already written about it, but I found that we don't have anything in a single post. Here are some resources on this important book, which is the foundation for many anti-Catholic claims.

Many Bible Christians consider The Two Babylons as very authoritative on the pagan roots of Catholicism. Christians such as Ralph Woodrow, who has his own evangelistic association. Mr. Woodrow found The Two Babylons so compelling, he wrote his own book about the pagan origins of Cathoicism. But then, he started actually checking Hislop's citations, and they were not what they were purported to be. So Mr. Woodrow recanted his book, and wrote a different book called The Babylon Connection? debunking The Two Babylons. You can read a summary of his arguments in The Two Babylons: A Case Study in Poor Research Methodology.

Does Catholicism mix in pagan practices? Perhaps, but I think Candy can defend Catholicism in her own words here, from a blog post in November 2007, which is no longer available:

Moving on to the decorating of the evergreen or other green deciduous trees, we do find in history pagans celebrating winter solstice, long before Christ was born. This tree decorating was also done by other heathen and pagan peoples in the past. Does this mean that a Christian having a Christmas tree is pagan? Not at all.

The pagans had feasts. Does this mean then, that Christians should not eat? The pagans sang and danced unto their false gods. Does this mean then that it was pagan of King David to dance unto the Lord when he was celebrating the returning of the ark of the covenant?

Janice Moore writes a review from the non-Catholic perspective pointing out some of the many errors in The Two Babylons:

Before going further, let me state clearly now that I am not about to repudiate all of The Two Babylons as fruitless. However, as this website has grown it has come to my attention, that perhaps this book has been put on an undeserved pedestal. There are questions that should be and need to be answered. Again to clarify myself, I feel strongly that many of the formal doctrines and practices of the Catholic Church are not Biblical. But, the question addressed here; was Hislop right about every point he so vehemently argued?

More and more it is coming to my attention that it is time for the subject of the origins of religions and beliefs as they have come down to the present to be reexamined from a more Biblical perspective. The Two Babylons is not the exhaustive work on the subject that many have for decades been so willing to believe. At best it is but the starting ground. At worst, because Hislop's language and the press his book has received over the years have given it more influence than it merits, it has served as a stumbling block to those who found comfort in its authoritarian air and looked no further.

One of the points that Candy makes in most of her articles on Catholicism is that when Catholics allegedly worship Mary, they are really worshiping the Babylonian goddess Semaris. Janice Moore has this to say on that claim:

Also, the author of The Babylon Connection?, points out that the identity of a woman named Semiramis being the wife of Nimrod is questionable; as I have found out in my own research of ancient history and legend to develop the story lines of my own fictional stories. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia (Knight), Sammuramat was the wife of Adad-nirari III (812 to 783 B.C) who reigned during the time Jehoahaz was king of Israel. According to The Oxford Classical Dictionary:

"Semiramis in history was Sammu-ramat, wife of Shamshi-Adad V of *Assyria, mother of Adad-nirari III, with whom she campaigned against *Commagene in 805 BC. Her inscribed stelae of kings and high officials in Assur. In Greek legend, she was the daughter of the Syrian goddess Derceto at Ascalon, wife of Onnes (probably the first Sumerian sage Oannes) and then of Ninos, eponymous king of *Nineveh; she conquered '*Bactria' and built' '*Babylon' ( *Berossus denied this). In Armenian legend, she conquered *Armenia (ancient *Uratu), built a palace and waterworks, and left inscriptions."

W. Schramm. Historia 1972, 513-21; F.W. Konig, Die Persika des Ktesias von Knidos, Archiv fur Orientforschung Beiheft 18 (1972), 37-40; V. Donbaz, Annual Review of the Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia Project (1990), 5-10; Moses Khorenats'I, History of the Armenians, ed, R.W. Thomson (1978), 93-104; (Hornblower, 1383)

In this entry Sammuramat is named as the wife of the father of Adad-nirari III, the earlier reference claims her as the wife of his son. Either way the dates involved are much too late for her to have been the wife of the Biblical Nimrod. And here lies the crux of the problem, for much of Hislop's notions on ancient Babel hinges on this one point, as witnessed by the full title of the book, The Two Babylons Or The Papal Worship: Proved To Be The Worship Of Nimrod and His Wife.

There is speculation that perhaps there was an earlier Semiramis, but at this point I have not been able to even establish if Sammuramat and Semiramis are indeed the same name, one being the Assyrian form and the latter being the Greek equivalent. The truth seems to be that the name Sammuramat "…is the only Assyrian or Babylonian name discovered so far having any phonetic resemblance to that of the famous legendary queen, Semiramis." Therefore, though the two names are often cited as being interchangeable (Ann, 347; Foryan; Self), that would not seem to constitute solid proof.

For a Catholic rebuttal of The Two Babylons, try Catholicism and Paganism:

I came across a review of Hislop's book, written by a non-Catholic author shortly after the second edition was published, and I think it provides a good summary of things. It is from The Saturday Review, September 17, 1859:

"In the first place, his whole superstructure is raised upon nothing. Our earliest authority for the history of Semiramis wrote about the commencement of the Christian era, and the historian from whom he drew his information lived from fifteen hundred to two thousand years after the date which Mr. Hislop assigns to the great Assyrian Queen. The most lying legend which the Vatican has ever endorsed stands on better authority than the history which is now made the ground of a charge against it.
"Secondly, the whole argument proceeds upon the assumption that all heathenism has a common origin. Accidental resemblance in mythological details are taken as evidence of this, and nothing is allowed for the natural working of the human mind.
"Thirdly, Mr. Hislop's reasoning would make anything of anything. By the aid of obscure passages in third-rate historians, groundless assumptions of identity, and etymological torturing of roots, all that we know, and all that we believe, may be converted ... into something totally different.
"Fourthly, Mr. Hislop's argument proves too much. He finds not only the corruptions of Popery, but the fundamental articles of the Christian Faith, in his hypothetical Babylonian system...
"We take leave of Mr. Hislop and his work with the remark that we never before quite knew the folly of which ignorant or half-learned bigotry is capable."

Jimmy Akin also wrote an article about The Two Babylons in This Rock magazine:

Recently one of my coworkers asked me how to respond to a couple of panels from a Hislop-influenced tract by vehement anti-Catholic Jack Chick. The tract is titled Are Roman Catholics Christians? (You can guess his answer.) The first panel bears the image of a grim-faced Egyptian with a mascara problem (see above left). The text reads, "In ancient Babylon, they worshipped the sun god, 'Baal.' Then this religion moved into Egypt using different names."

I couldn't keep from grinning as I explained the problems with this panel. In ancient Babylon, the sun god they worshiped was Shamash. Baal was neither a Babylonian deity nor the sun god. In fact, he was the Canaanite storm god. Further, the idea that the religion of Babylon started off in Mesopotamia, crossed the Levant, where Palestine is, and then became the Egyptian religion is simply absurd. Egypt, like Mesopotamia, was one of the cradles of civilization, with its own history and its own religion.

Another of Candy's favorite characters from The Two Babylons is Dagon, the fish god. Take The Long Way Home wrote about him a while back:

Here’s the main problem with researching Dagon. There’s just not much out there! Not much is known. I couldn’t find anything, nothing at all, that described the worship of Dagon. The reason for this is that his worship died out so long ago. The very latest dates I could find for anyone worshiping Dagon was in 402 AD (and this is only if you buy the idea that the Greeks were worshiping Dagon as Marnas. And did you notice who sent the worshipers of Marnas packing? It was the Christians who destroyed the last vestiges of Marnas worship. It’s hard for me to believe they destroyed the temple, then incorporated the religion into Christianity, without any historical evidence to back it up!). Most of his followers were gone by the advent of Jesus!

Sooooo. Essentially, what I learned was, nobody (at least nobody in the historical world) knows much about Dagon. Historians can’t even decide what he was the god of, much less how he was depicted. Depending on which city you lived in, you probably worshiped him differently. His religion died out in the BC years for the most part, although it’s possible there were a few hangers on as late as 402 AD. But the mitre doesn’t appear until the mid 10^th century. And then there’s the problem that the mitre itself has gone through many stages, most of which don’t look anything like the representation that the anti Catholics claim to be identical to the fish head of Dagon’s priests. And then there is the fact that an entire sect of Catholicism (the Eastern Rite Catholics) don’t wear the Western style mitre to this day. So to believe what the anti Catholics have to say you have to believe that Western Christians resurrected a long dead religion (one that they themselves helped to stamp out the last vestiges of) sometime in the 15^th century (that’s when the mitre most closely resembles the one today). This would be after the Protestant Reformation, by the way. Who would believe this???

Hislop's Two Babylons was a big influence on Jack Chick and Dave Hunt, two more of Candy's favorite authors. We have already written about both of them. Just click on their names to see those articles.

Catholic Literacy

Jennie raised an interesting point in the comments section, and as we haven't had a new post in a bit, I thought I would explore it in a new post.

Jennie wrote:
my understanding is that, in general, protestants, or Bible-only christians, have, especially in the past, placed much more emphasis on memorizing and reading scripture than catholics have and therefore have placed more emphasis on teaching reading and scripture to their children and converts. . .

Catholics seem to have placed more value on songs and images to learn, and not on the written word, and not on preaching so much either. But God's word is the most important thing, whether you hear it or read it; it must be stressed and valued above all other teaching.

What I think when I read this is that you have an image of Middle Ages Catholicism here, as the Catholic model. Stained glass windows depicting Bible stories were certainly the norm of at that time, but that also predated the printing press.

Most of my non-Catholic friends send their children to Sunday School while they attend church services. There, their children sing songs and color pictures of Bible stories. My children sit through Mass with me. They listen to readings from the Bible, and recite prayers from Scripture. In this time period, the roles seem reversed to me.

Jennie then provides some examples:

By the mid-18th century, the ability to read and comprehend translated scripture led to Wales having one of the highest literacy rates. This was the result of a Griffith Jones's system of circulating schools, which aimed to enable everyone to read the Bible in Welsh. Similarly, at least half the population of 18th century New England was literate, perhaps as a consequence of the Puritan belief in the importance of Bible reading. . .

Interestingly, in 1893, a company of Vaudois migrated to the United States and founded the town of Valdeses, Burke County, North Carolina. At the time, a local newspaper wrote:

"All the little Waldensian children are taught to read and write at a very early age, and their knowledge of the scriptures would put to shame many of our church people of maturer years. They speak both French and Italian very fluently, and are all apparently very bright and intelligent and very anxious to learn the language of this new country."
(cited in a review of Wylies book History of the Waldenses, on Amazon.com)


Those are both around the same time period. Let me give some Catholic examples from that time period.

St. Katherine Drexel

In 1891, with a few companions, Mother Katharine founded the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament for Indians and Colored People. The title of the community summed up the two great driving forces in her life—devotion to the Blessed Sacrament and love for the most deprived people in her country.

Requests for help reached Mother Katharine from various parts of the United States. During her lifetime, approximately 60 schools were opened by her congregation. The most famous foundation was made in 1915; it was Xavier University, New Orleans, the first such institution for Black people in the United States.

Sisters of Loretto

In 1811, Mary Rhodes came from Maryland to visit relatives and saw the lack of educational opportunities for pioneer children. Settling in Kentucky, Rhodes began teaching her own relatives basic skills and catechism. Soon neighbors asked her to teach their children, and as the number of pupils increased, Rhodes welcomed the assistance of Christina Stuart and Ann Havern. These three pioneer women, with Father Nerinckx as their spiritual guide, formed the Little Society of the Friends of Mary Under the Cross of Jesus in 1812.

After the Mexican War, the United States gained possession of the vast Southwest with a mostly Catholic population. In 1852, Bishop Jean Baptiste Lamy of Santa Fe requested the help of the Sisters of Loretto to work with the Spanish-speaking children of Santa Fe. Six sisters traveled by river boat to Independence, Missouri, and then followed the dangerous Missouri Trail 900 miles overland to Santa Fe. In Indian country, they came across others of their order who had been teaching Osage children in Kansas since 1847. One sister died of cholera on a river boat and another of exhaustion and terror after an Indian attack on their wagons.

In November 1852, they opened their first school, the Academy of Our Lady of the Light, an all-girls school in Santa Fe, which flourished until the late 1960s. Moving south to Las Cruces, the Sisters of Loretto founded Loretto Academy in 1870, another all-girls school offering classes in reading, spelling, algebra, modern and ancient geography, lace work and piano. This school played an integral part in the educational growth of the Mesilla Valley until it closed in June 1944.

St. Elizabeth Ann Seton

Elizabeth opened Saint Joseph's Free School February 22, 1810. It educated needy girls of the area and was the first free Catholic school for girls staffed by sisters in the country. Saint Joseph's Academy began May 14, 1810, with the addition of boarding pupils who paid tuition which enabled the Sisters of Charity to subsidize their charitable mission. Saint Joseph's Academy and Free School formed the cradle of Catholic education in the United States.

Mary Elizabeth Lange

It did not take Elizabeth long to recognize that the children of her fellow refugees needed an education. She responded to that need in spite of being a Black woman living in a slave state before the Emancipation Proclamation, where the education of slaves was against the law. She used her own money and home to teach Black children.

For ten years, Elizabeth and her friend Marie Magdaleine Balas, offered free education until, inevitably, finances became a problem. Providence intervened through the person of Reverend James Hector Joubert, S.S., who, with encouragement from Monsignor James Whitfield, Archbishop of Baltimore, challenged Elizabeth to establish a religious congregation for the education of Black children. Reverend Joubert would provide direction, solicit financial assistance, and encourage other "women of color" to become members of the first order of African American nuns in the history of the Catholic Church. On July 2, 1829, Elizabeth and three other women pronounced promises of obedience to the Archbishop of Baltimore.

I would also say that this Catholic literacy was not new to that time period. Consider the case of St. Francis de Sales.

Francis decided that he should lead an expedition to convert the 60,000 Calvinists back to Catholicism. But by the time he left his expedition consisted of himself and his cousin. His father refused to give him any aid for this crazy plan and the diocese was too poor to support him.

For three years, he trudged through the countryside, had doors slammed in his face and rocks thrown at him. In the bitter winters, his feet froze so badly they bled as he tramped through the snow. He slept in haylofts if he could, but once he slept in a tree to avoid wolves. He tied himself to a branch to keep from falling out and was so frozen the next morning he had to be cut down. And after three years, his cousin had left him alone and he had not made one convert.

Francis' unusual patience kept him working. No one would listen to him, no one would even open their door. So Francis found a way to get under the door. He wrote out his sermons, copied them by hand, and slipped them under the doors. This is the first record we have of religious tracts being used to communicate with people.

The parents wouldn't come to him out of fear. So Francis went to the children. When the parents saw how kind he was as he played with the children, they began to talk to him.

By the time, Francis left to go home he is said to have converted 40,000 people back to Catholicism.

Clearly, the people in this area had to be literate for tracts to have been effective. The tracts are in print today, and available as The Catholic Controversy, published by Tan books. I have a copy, and Francis is extremely familiar with Scripture, and makes almost all of his arguments based on Scripture.

Invincible Ignorance Exhibit A

The Catholic church, for years, tried its best to keep the Bible from getting into the common people's hands. They even killed people who tried to get the Word of God to the common man. However, the Word of God has always been available to anyone who seeks for it, as Christ promised. 


Sometimes Candy's lack of world history knowledge astounds me. None of it surprises me however.  Her perspective of the Church and the Bible is directly influenced by Samuel Gipp whom I wrote an entire series on here.

Contrary to what Candy thinks, it was the Catholic church that got the scriptures into the hands of the common man.  First of all the Catholic Church determined which books should be preserved and in the canon and then under the authority of the pope, the canon of the bible was closed.  That canon remained intact until Martin Luther and the Reformation.  So the Protestant bible is only 500 years or so old.  Prior to that, it was the Catholic version used by Christendom.

Secondly, the church preserved the written word with great perseverance. Before the printing press, scripture had to be COPIED BY HAND. The volumes were HUGE.  And although anti-Catholics like Candy will bash the church for having copies of the bible chained in the church, it wasn't to prevent the people from having access to them, but rather to make sure everyone could have access to them! Much like important volumes in the public library available to all but not available for check out and circulation.

Thirdly, the church kept the word of God alive ORALLY and in art and music because the great majority of people COULD NOT READ! The beautiful art in the great churches and cathedrals wasn't just there for atmosphere - it's there to help the people learn the bible stories and to inspire them.

Fourthly, I would point out that prior to the printing press, and a mass distribution system, producing cheap, easy to produce and distribute copies of the bible, owning a bible would have been prohibitive anyway, which is another reason I think sola scriptura is erroneous.

Here is an excerpt from How We Got the Bible - Henry Graham:
Now one could go on at any length accumulating evidence as to the fact of monks and priests reproducing and transmitting copies of the Bible from century to century, before the days of Wycliff and Luther; but there is no need, because I am not writing a treatise on the subject, but merely adducing a few proofs of my assertions, and trying to show how utterly absurd is the contention that Rome hates the Bible, and did her best to keep it a locked and sealed book and even to destroy it throughout the Middle Ages. Surely nothing but the crassest ignorance or the blindest prejudice could support a theory so flatly contradicted by the simplest facts of history. The real truth of the matter is that it is the Middle Ages which have been a closed and sealed book to Protestants, and that only now, owing to the honest and patient researches of impartial scholars amongst them, are the treasures of those grand centuries being unlocked and brought to their view. It is this ignorance or prejudice which explains to me a feature that would be otherwise unaccountable in the histories of the Bible written by non-Catholics. I have consulted many of them, and they all, with hardly an exception, either skip over this period of the Bible's existence altogether or dismiss it with a few off-hand references. They jump right over from the inspired writers themselves, or perhaps from the fourth century, when the Canon was fixed, to John Wycliff, 'The Morning Star of the Reformation', leaving blank the intermediate centuries, plunged, as they imagine, in worse than Egyptian darkness. But I ask—Is this fair or honest? Is it consistent with a love of truth thus to suppress the fact, which is now happily beginning to dawn on the more enlightened minds, that it was the monks and clergy of the Catholic Church who, during all these ages, preserved, multiplied, and perpetuated the Sacred Scriptures? The Bible on its human side is a perishable article. Inspired by God though it be, it was yet, by the Providence of God, written on perishable parchment with pen and ink; liable to be lost or destroyed by fire, by natural decay and corruption, or by the enemies, whether civilised or pagan, that wasted and ravaged Christendom by the sword, and gave its churches and monasteries and libraries to the flames. Who, I ask, but the men and women, consecrated to God by their vows and devoted to a life of prayer and study in monasteries and convents, remote from worldly strife and ambition—who but they saved the written Word of God from total extinction, and with loving and reverent care reproduced its sacred pages, to be known and read of all, and to be handed down to our own generation, which grudges to acknowledge the debt it owes to their pious and unremitting labours?

When was the Old Testament compiled? Some would decide for about the year 430 B.C., under Esdras and Nehemiah, resting upon the authority of the famous Jew, Josephus, who lived immediately after Our Lord, and who declares that since the death of Ataxerxes, B.C. 424, 'no one had dared to add anything to the Jewish Scriptures, to take anything from them, or to make any change in them.' Other authorities, again, contend that it was not till near 100 B.C. that the Old Testament volume was finally closed by the inclusion of the 'Writings'. But whichever contention is correct, one thing at least is certain, that by this last date—that is, for 100 years before the birth of Our Blessed Lord—the Old Testament existed precisely as we have it now.

Of course, I have been speaking so far of the Old Testament, in Hebrew, because it was written by Jewish authority in the Jewish language, namely, Hebrew, for Jews, God's chosen people. But after what is called the 'Dispersion' of the Jews, when that people was scattered abroad and settled in many other lands outside Palestine, and began to lose their Hebrew tongue and gradually became familiar with Greek, which was then a universal language, it was necessary to furnish them with a copy of their Sacred Scriptures in the Greek language. Hence arose that translation of the Hebrew Old Testament into Greek known as the Septuagint. This word means in Latin 70, and is so named because it is supposed to have been the work of 70 translators, who performed their task at Alexandria, where there was a large Greek-speaking colony of Jews. Begun about 280 or 250 years before Christ, we may safely say that it was finished in the next century; it was the acknowledged Bible of all the 'Jews of the Dispersion' in Asia, as well as in Egypt, and was the Version used by Our Lord, His Apostles and Evangelists, and by Jews and Gentiles and Christians in the early days of Christianity. It is from this Version that Jesus Christ and the New Testament writers and speakers quote when referring to the Old Testament.

But what about the Christians in other lands who could not understand Greek? When the Gospel had been spread abroad, and many people embraced Christianity through the labours of Apostles and missionaries in the first two centuries of our era, naturally they had to be supplied with copies of the Scriptures of the Old Testament (which was the inspired Word of God) in their own tongue; and this gave rise to translations of the Bible into Armenian and Syriac and Coptic and Arabic and Ethiopic for the benefit of the Christians in these lands. For the Christians in Africa, where Latin was best understood, there was a translation of the Bible made into Latin about 150 A.D., and, later, another and better for the Christians in Italy; but all these were finally superseded by the grand and most important version made by St Jerome in Latin called the 'Vulgate'—that is, the common, or current or accepted Version. This was in the fourth century of our era. By this time St Jerome was born, there was great need of securing a correct and uniform text in Latin of Holy Scripture, for there was danger, through the variety and corrupt conditions of many translations then existing, lest the pure scripture should be lost. So Jerome, who was a monk, and perhaps the most learned scholar of his day, at the command of Pope St Damascus in 382 A.D., made a fresh Latin Version of the New Testament (which was by this time practically settled) correcting the existing versions by the earliest Greek MSS. he could find. Then in his cell at Bethlehem, between (approximately) the years 392-404, he also translated the Old Testament into Latin directly from the Hebrew (and not from the Greek Septuagint)—except the Psalter, which he had previously revised from existing Latin Versions. This Bible was the celebrated Vulgate, the official text in the Catholic Church, the value of which all scholars admit to be simply inestimable, and which continued to influence all other versions, and to hold the chief place among Christians down to the Reformation

Queen Isabella of Spain

In keeping with her Jr. High readability, Candy writes:

The RC king and queen of Spain were interested, because they were interested in cha-ching and power, so they decided to send Columbus, so that they could be the top dudes in spices and such from India.
I found this article on the spiritual life of Queen Isabella - it's written by a nun (Candy's favorite) so I'm sure she'll take it for what it's worth.  The rest of us might be humbled to read more about the life of this holy woman.

A Humble Daughter of the Church
A Model for Contemporary Catholics
By Sister Joan Gormley

Queen Isabel of Castile is ranked among the greatest and most influential figures in history. Even her critics agree on that. She supported Columbus in his voyages of discovery and evangelization, and together with her husband, Ferdinand, began the unification of modern Spain and completed the reconquest of the peninsula from Muslim domination.

This article, commemorating the fifth centenary of Isabel’s death (Nov. 26, 1504), will consider the queen as a Servant of God whose cause for beatification has been introduced. Having lived her Catholic faith with heroic fidelity at a time when that faith was under assault, Isabel is a model for contemporary Catholics in the depth of her faith, her sense of personal vocation to live her faith and her zeal to spread it to the ends of the earth.

Isabel begins her final testament by solemnly professing her faith. She declares herself a faithful Catholic, “believing and confessing firmly all that the Holy Catholic Church of Rome holds, believes and confesses, and preaches.” She mentions her faith in the Apostles’ and Nicene creeds, specifically the articles on the humanity and divinity of Christ and the seven sacraments.

In a personal addition to the formal profession, she declares that she is ready and willing to die for the Catholic faith and would consider martyrdom a great favor. In a time when the Church was weakened by corruption and heresy, Isabel’s faith never wavered. She professed it in its entirety from her childhood to the day of her death.

One of Isabel’s first teachers, Father Martin de Cordoba, wrote a handbook for her entitled Garden of Noble Maidens. In it, he instructed the princess that her noble birth was a vocation from God that required from her the greatest possible response of love. “Since God, who in her mother’s womb gave and predestined this one to be queen of such a noble kingdom as Spain,” he wrote, “she is more obligated to love him than any other woman.”

Isabel took this advice seriously. As queen, she led a devout Christian life and regularly sought the advice of a carefully chosen spiritual director. Her day included the Divine Office and Mass as well as reading and contemplation. Her obligations as wife and mother and her duties as queen were fused in such a way that she kept in view the good of her kingdom and of the Church. At a time when in other kingdoms offices and favors were for sale in Church and court, Isabel’s favor could not be bought. If a man was made a royal herald, it was because he had the best voice for the task. If a bishop was appointed to reform the monasteries, it was because he was living a holy life in accord with his vocation.

Contemporary chroniclers note the queen’s fortitude amid the great sufferings of her later life, especially the death of her oldest daughter, Isabel, and that of her son Juan, the heir to the throne. Another terrible blow was the “madness” of her daughter, Juana, the next in line to the throne. These sorrows, as well as the sufferings of her last illness, she accepted as coming from God.

In the codicil to her testament, Isabel declares that her principal intention in the discovery of the islands and lands in the “West Indies” was “the evangelization and conversion of the natives of those places to the Catholic Faith.” When many Europeans were debating whether indigenous peoples were full human beings, Isabel insisted that the natives of those lands were her subjects and should be treated justly. Certain of their humanity, she was eager to send missionaries to evangelize them. In a real sense, she anticipated the emphasis of the Second Vatican Council on the dignity of every human person. The extent of her contribution to carrying the Gospel to the ends of the earth must be measured in terms of the vibrant Christian faith and culture that sprang up in the lands evangelized by Spain.

Isabel’s last will and testament sums up her dispositions at the end of her life. She is aware of the judgment that awaits her as one who has wielded power: “If no one can be justified in his sight, how much less can those of us of great kingdoms and high estate.” But in humble faith, she recognizes her dependence on God’s mercy and begs that Christ’s passion stand between her soul and judgment. In short, this Catholic queen died as she had lived, a humble daughter of the Church.

Sister Joan Gormley is a professor of Scripture and homiletics at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg, Md.

Christopher Columbus- a Practicing Catholic

No, I don't see how Columbus could have been Catholic. Columbus wanted to get to India to spread the Gospel message, and find a shorter route to India. This is gathered from his own writings.

From what I've read in Columbus' writings, he never mentioned Catholicism, Roman Catholic traditions or rites, Mary, or the patron saints.


Let me start by pointing out the obvious.  Columbus's boats were the Nina, the Pinta and THE SANTA MARIA!!  (St. Mary - named in honor of Mary!)

Well she apparently also missed this!

Letter from Christopher Columbus:

"I informed your Highnesses the Great Khan and its predecessors had sent to Rome many times to beg for men learned in our Holy Faith, so that his people might be instructed therein, and that the Holy Father had never furnished them, and therefore, many peoples believing in idolatries and receiving among themselves sects of perdition were lost.

Your highnesses, as Catholic Christians and Princes devoted to the Holy Christian faith and to the spreading of this faith, and as enemies of the Muslim sect and of all idolatries and heresies, ordered that I should go east, but not by land as is customary. I was to go by way of the west, whence until today we do not know with certainty that anyone has ever gone there. He sent me that I might bring the true faith to the Indians."

October 12, 1492

"The people here …are friendly and well-dispositioned… who bear no arms except for small spears and they have no iron.

I want the natives to develop a friendly attitude towards us because I know they are a people who can be made free and converted to our Holy Catholic Faith more by love than by force. I therefore gave red caps to some and glass beads to others. They hung the beads around their necks …And they took great pleasure in this and became so friendly that it was a marvel. They traded and gave everything they had with good will, but it seems to me they have very little and are poor in everything. I warned my men to take nothing from the people without giving something in exchange."

Case closed

Catholic Columbus

Hey, at least she mentioned the Anglicans this time. Usually Catholics gets all the credit. I'm not sure how this fits in with wonderful Queen Elizabeth.

Years ago, the Separatist Puritans set off to find a land where they could escape Roman Catholic and Anglican persecution.

I'm not sure Columbus was really spreading the Gospel message to the unsaved. At least, I didn't think Candy thought Catholics did that.

(Christopher Columbus' driving force for getting to India was to spread the Gospel message to the unsaved. When Christopher Columbus instead discovered America, he said that he was led of God to find this new land - A Christian nation dedicated unto the Lord.

Christopher Columbus was a Catholic. Martin Luther nailed his theses to the door in 1517, making Columbus' voyage prior to the Reformation. Columbus started the Spanish colonization movement, spreading the Catholic faith to the islands on which he landed, such as Cuba, Puerto Rico, and many lesser known islands.

Many years after Columbus, the Puritan Christian Pilgrims arrived, and created beautiful Christian settlements.

Even in mainland America, the oldest continuing settlement is the Catholic settlement of St. Augustine Florida. In California, the Catholic missions are preserved as the earliest European settlements. Thus, beautiful Christian settlements were already created by the Catholic Church.

A Catholic Thanksgiving

While holidays are usually a time when Candy begins to post on the pagan-Catholic origins of various feasts, Thanksgiving is a time normally free of this sort of thing. After all, Thanksgiving is a Puritan as you get, right?

When on September 8, 1565 Pedro Menéndez de Avilés and his 800 Spanish settlers founded the settlement of St. Augustine in La Florida, the landing party celebrated a Mass of Thanksgiving, and, afterward, Menéndez laid out a meal to which he invited as guests the native Seloy tribe who occupied the site.

The celebrant of the Mass was St. Augustine’s first pastor, Father Francisco Lopez de Mendoza Grajales, and the feast day in the church calendar was that of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. What exactly the Seloy natives thought of those strange liturgical proceedings we do not know, except that, in his personal chronicle, Father Lopez wrote that “the Indians imitated all they saw done.”

What is important historically about that liturgy and meal was stated by me in a 1965 book entitled The Cross in the Sand: “It was the first community act of religion and thanksgiving in the first permanent [European] settlement in the land.” The keyword in that sentence was “permanent.” Numerous thanksgivings for a safe voyage and landing had been made before in Florida, by such explorers as Juan Ponce de León, in 1513 and 1521, Pánfilo de Narváez in 1528, Hernando de Soto in 1529, Father Luis Cáncer de Barbastro in 1549, and Tristán de Luna in 1559. Indeed French Calvinists (Huguenots) who came to the St. Johns River with Jean Ribault in 1562 and René de Laudonnière in 1564 similarly offered prayers of thanksgiving for their safe arrivals. But all of those ventures, Catholic and Calvinist, failed to put down permanent roots.

St. Augustine’s ceremonies were important historically in that they took place in what would develop into a permanently occupied European city, North America’s first. They were important culturally as well in that the religious observance was accompanied by a communal meal, to which Spaniards and natives alike were invited. The thanksgiving at St. Augustine, celebrated 56 years before the Puritan-Pilgrim thanksgiving at Plymouth Plantation (Massachusetts), did not, however, become the origin of a national annual tradition, as Plymouth would. The reason is that, as the maxim holds, it is the victors who write the histories.

You can read more about it here, or for a something on a non-Catholic site, here.

Perhaps Candy will catch on next year . . .

The Elusive Vaudois

I see that Candy has given more information on the Vaudois:

The Vaudois lived in the Piedmont Valleys in the Alps of the northwest corner of Italy. Some of them got saved in around 120AD, and then went to Antioch, Syria, to make a copy of the Bible into Latin. By 157AD they had a full translation of the whole Bible, and were copying and spreading it all over the known world.

The Vaudois continued being missionaries, getting the Bible out to the common man, up through the dark ages. It was during this time that they hid the Bibles in the lining of their cloaks.

During this time, born again Christians were either killed by the RC church, or in hiding. Meahwhile, the Vaudois continued to secretly get Bibles out there, and spread the Gospel. They started in 120AD when some of the got saved, and continued on for YEARS, up to and through the Dark Ages.
Candy

She seems to have conceded the jacket/cloak issue.

First, Vaudois is the French form of Waldenses, the followers of Peter Waldo (Vaudo). If they existed in the apostolic age, I would guess that they had a different name, because Peter Waldo dates to the 1100s.

There is no historic evidence that this group of people existed prior to the 1100's, and most of the evidence which is still in existence dates to the 1400's. I think we are back to the Baptist Trail of Tears version of history, here. There was a secret faithful church, but all evidence of it was destroyed by Those Killer Catholics. Candy can not prove that they existed, nor can I disprove her belief. There is simply nothing there. Perhaps she is now considering oral tradition acceptable?

However, Candy did turn out to be correct about the small Bibles. I was able to track down Waldenses Bibles which are in the Cambridge University Library. I didn't find a picture, but this book gives accounts of small, partial Bibles which were around 3 by 4 inches.

However, it also says some of the books included were 2 Maccabees and Tobit, both of which Candy considers "false." Which brings me back to what I have written previously, which is that the Waldenses are really not a group of people which had a lot in common with born again Christians. They do share some similarities, but they have significant differences.

Phil Porvaznik has an article discussing the Waldenses and the idea that they were born again Christians. He say that this is found in A Woman Rides the Beast, as well, which is probably why Candy feels it is in keeping with her other "research."

The book by the Baptist historian McGoldrick that demolishes the above statements is titled Baptist Successionism: A Crucial Question in Baptist History (The American Theological Library Association and The Scarecrow Press, 1994). McGoldrick examines many groups claimed as "early Baptists" (or early Evangelicals who are "baptistic") such as the Montanists, Novatians, Paulicians, Bogomils, Albigenses, Waldenses and other groups and individuals. None of these groups were in fact "early Evangelicals" but were either explicitly Catholic in doctrine or grossly heretical (such as the later Albigenses who denied the Incarnation). Baptists originate in the early 17th century in Holland and England.

"Although no reputable Church historians have ever affirmed the belief that Baptists can trace their lineage through medieval and ancient sects ultimately to the New Testament, that point of view enjoys a large following nevertheless. It appears that scholars aware of this claim have deemed it unworthy of their attention, which may account for the persistence and popularity of Baptist successionism as a doctrine as well as an interpretation of church history. Aside from occasional articles and booklets that reject this teaching, no one has published a refutation in a systematic, documented format. The present work is an effort to supply this need so that Baptists may have a thorough analysis of successionism, together with a reliable account of their origins as a Protestant religious body." (McGoldrick, preface page iv)

"It is the purpose of this book to show that, although free church groups in ancient and medieval times sometimes promoted doctrines and practices agreeable to modern Baptists, when judged by standards now acknowledged as baptistic, not one of them merits recognition as a Baptist church. Baptists arose in the seventeenth century in Holland and England. They are Protestants, heirs of the Reformers." (ibid, page 2, emphasis mine)

Early Bibles

I had planned to write about the virtue of hope today, but it looks as if that might be put on the back burner. I had time to post a few comments at lunch, but now I need to get back to real life. Hopefully, I can write more this evening.

I'm putting my comments and Candy's here for reference, as comments are not archived on her site. Although Candy did not post all of my comments, she was very polite about it.

They hid their Bibles inside of the lining of their jackets.

They might have smuggled Bibles in wooden barrels, but the manuscripts for that time period were huge! It would be impossible to fit more than Philemon, Jude, or other short letters inside a cloak (jackets weren't worn at that time).

The common language of that time would have been either Latin or Greek, for those who could read. --Kelly


I also submitted this comment separately, because I was pretty sure she wouldn't post it:

The Catholic church didn't come into existence until about 300 years later.

I'm curious, if you don't think the Catholic Church came into existence until close to the year 400, then how do you explain the writings of the early Christians which had so many Catholic elements?

For example, Ignatius of Antioch and Polycarp both mention being part of the Catholic church, and they wrote in the 100s. They also write about Jesus being physically present in the Eucharist, actually using the word Eucharist, as well as priests and bishops, and other elements that you would consider Catholic.

It is easy to find these writings online. They are usually referred to as the Apostolic Fathers or Early Church Fathers.

I'm not actually aware of any early Christian writings which don't contain at least some Catholic elements, but if you have run across some references to them in your research, then please let me know so I can look them up. --Kelly


Candy replies to the first comment, and declines the second:

Kelly, they weren't carring around scrolls and stone tablets. They were carrying around the Bible, translated into Latin (NOT Jeromes' Vulgate, which came years later, and is seriously corrupted). Bibles were very small - the Latin was handwritten, and was in VERY small print.

Many of the common pre-wycliffe Bibles were so small, that once could almost fit it in the back pocket of a pair of Jeans.

The Bibles were made small, partially for the purpose of hiding them from those who wished to burn the Bibles.

pre-wycliffite Bibles are in several museums - some of those Bibles were TINY. Many Wycliffite Bibles were very small as well.

BTW, they didn't necessariy have both old and new testaments on these missionary journeys. Sometimes it was the Gospels and some of the writings of Paul. The O.T. was always available in the major Synagoges. Meanwhile, all of the Bible could be read from people who had it, and shared it, like the Vaudois and others.

Bible memorization was a major theme then as well. Whole books of the Bible were commited to heart, recited to crowds, and then those crowds commited it to heart.


I responded:

Kelly, they weren't carring around scrolls and stone tablets. . .Bibles were very small - the Latin was handwritten, and was in VERY small print.

I'm not sure what you mean by stone tablets, because that is an entirely different time period. But the Bible wasn't put into bound book form (called a codex) until the 400s. If the Bible was spread prior to that time, then it would have been in scrolls, and made of parchment or vellum.

The print may be small, and without spaces between words, but it still took up a lot of space. Vellum doesn't fold into a small book very easily, either.

pre-wycliffite Bibles are in several museums - some of those Bibles were TINY. Many Wycliffite Bibles were very small as well.

What exactly do you mean by pre-wycliffite Bible? Anything before the 14th century? Do you remember any of the museums offhand, because a lot of museums have their collections online now. I've just never seen anything from that time period, Bible or not, that wasn't enormous.

For example, the Codex Sinaiticus is available for online viewing here:
http://www.codex-sinaiticus.net/en/manuscript.aspx

I realize you feel that it is a corrupt manuscript, but other manuscripts would have used the same materials, and taken up approximately the same amount of space. --Kelly


Kelly, I don't have the time to get into a full discussion of Bible history here on my blog with you - as that would require that I answer you fairly quickly, instead of when I have time.

Therefore, I extend this invitation to you... If you truly with to discuss this, then let me know, and I'll email you, and we can discuss it via email, where we don't have to answer each other right away, but answer when we have the time.

My final response:
I really appreciate that Candy! Thank you so much for the answer. Please e-mail at your convenience. --Kelly

(Saint) Columba

I find Doug Phillips over at the Vision Forum blog fun to read. This post recently caught my eye:

It was here that Columba built a Christian religious center and missionary outpost in 563 AD from which the light of the Gospel would shine throughout the world. Here the Bible was preserved, the famous Book of Kells penned, and missionaries were trained. . .And all of this came to pass through the work of a dragon-confronting, former warrior-turned preacher named Columba.

This "preacher" Columba, was the Catholic priest and missionary now known as St. Columba. The Bible was preserved through the same Celtic monks working in monasteries as the ones who actually penned the Book of Kells. Yet, reading Doug Phillips' article, you would get the distinct impression that Isle of Iona was an early bastion of Protestantism.

Phillips quotes from a church history:

It was the Holy Ghost, Columba maintained, that made a servant of God. When the youth of Caledonia assembled around the elders on these savage shores, or in their humble chapel, these ministers of the Lord would say to them: “The Holy Scriptures are the only rule of faith. Throw aside all merit of works, and look for salvation to the grace of God alone. Beware of a religion which consists of outward observances: it is better to keep your heart pure before God than to abstain from meats. One alone is your head, Jesus Christ. Bishops and presbyters are equal; they should be the husbands of one wife, and have their children in subjection.”

Then he comments, "God used Columba’s passion to fan the flames of evangelism and Gospel reformation."

Columba may have believed that it was the Holy Spirit who makes a servant of God, but I would guess that the latter part of the paragraph refers to a later time period.

What we know about St. Columba comes from an ancient writing called the Life of Columba, by Adamnan. It is full of miracles, prophesies, priests, and sacraments. He was clearly no early reformer. St. Columba's final words to his followers were:

"These, O my children, are the last words I address to you that ye be at peace, and have unfeigned charity among yourselves; and if you thus follow the example of the holy fathers, God, the Comforter of the good, will be your Helper and I, abiding with Him, will intercede for you; and He will not only give you sufficient to supply the wants of this present life, but will also bestow on you the good and eternal rewards which are laid up for those that keep His commandments."

Bible History

Sometime commenter at our blog, Mile Hi Mama unexpectedly dives into some Bible history, when a seemingly innocent homeschooling book promotes the King James Only version of history.

While there is a case to be made for the Majority Text (Masoretic Text), it is also a witness, not the original manuscript of the Hebrew Scriptures, just as the Sinaiticus and Vaticanus texts are witnesses to the Septuagint, and not the original texts.

Dr. Beechick claims to avoid the Vaticanus manuscript because it was written by Origen, but Origen lived in the second and third century AD and the Vaticanus is dated to the fourth century. Scholars believe that the Bible by Origen and the Vaticanus probably come from the same source manuscript.

She claims the Codex Vaticanus/Eusebian bible based on them disappeared until the 1800's, when it was rediscovered. Also not true; it was well known throughout the world that the Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus were housed at the Vatican library. It was used to produce a Roman version of the Septuagint in the 16th century.

I think she hates it because it is probably Alexandrian in origin, and contains the Septuagint - the Old Testament canon used at the time of Christ by Greek Jews - and therefore contains the deuterocanonical books.

Dr. Beechick claims the Septuagint was written in the third century (She leaves off the "B.C." part, leaving readers to assume that the Septuagint was a manuscript written while the church leaders were trying to nail down the canon. The Septuagint was written and used by the Jews hundred of years before Christ's birth, a very important point.)

This is a version of the sort of argument Candy posts frequently, so I thought it was relevant.

The Know-Nothings

And before you get all excited, no, this isn't a post where I call Candy names. While I think the discussion has moved on, I had one last topic to write about on the subject of religiously affiliated violence.

Here in America, with our recent history, we really do not have much of a history of wide-spread violence against a particular religious group. The early days of Mormonism are one instance. However, I believe the most widespread and longest lasting persecution was of Catholicism.

Most American Catholics are aware that the spirit of New England's North American settlements was hostile to Catholicism. But few are aware of the vigor and persistence with which that spirit was cultivated throughout the entire colonial period. Few Catholics realize that in all but three of the 13 original colonies, Catholics were the subject of penal measures of one kind or another during the colonial period. In most cases, the Catholic Church had been proscribed at an early date, as in Virginia where the act of 1642 proscribing Catholics and their priests set the tone for the remainder of the colonial period.

Even in the supposedly tolerant Maryland, the tables had turned against Catholics by the 1700s. By this time the penal code against Catholics included test oaths administered to keep Catholics out of office, legislation that barred Catholics from entering certain professions (such as Law), and measures had been enacted to make them incapable of inheriting or purchasing land. By 1718 the ballot had been denied to Catholics in Maryland, following the example of the other colonies, and parents could even be fined for sending children abroad to be educated as Catholics.

In the decade before the American Revolution, most inhabitants of the English colonies would have agreed with Samuel Adams when he said (in 1768): "I did verily believe, as I do still, that much more is to be dreaded from the growth of popery in America, than from the Stamp Act, or any other acts destructive of civil rights."

These early sentiments continued, and only worsened as large amount of Catholic emigrated from Ireland, Germany, and Italy. This grew into what is known as the Nativist Movement.

Immigration grew sharply in the 1830s-40s with the arrival of many Irish and Germans, who were largely Roman Catholic. Simultaneously, a Protestant revival flourished in a climate of economic change and insecurity. Evangelists demonized Catholics as immoral "Papists" who followed authoritarian leaders, imported crime and disease, and stole native jobs. Protestant workingmen burned the Ursuline Convent near Boston and rioted in several cities. Thirty people were killed and hundreds injured in Philadelphia in 1844. By the mid-1850s, the nativist American Party won six governorships and controlled legislatures in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and California. They enacted numerous laws that penalized immigrants (as well as newly annexed Mexicans), including the first literacy tests for voting, which disfranchised the Irish in particular. Attacking the "un-American" foreigner served as a diversion for those unwilling to acknowledge America's irreconcilable difference of slavery versus abolition, an issue that split nativists. As sectional conflict sharpened, the American Party virtually collapsed by 1860.

The largest group which grew out of Nativism was called the Know-Nothings.

The Know-Nothings wanted to use government power to preserve their vision of a particular kind of Anglo-Saxon Protestant society. Their state and national platforms demanded that immigration be limited, that politics be "purified" by limiting officeholding to native-born Americans, and that a 21-year wait be imposed before an immigrant could become a citizen and vote. They also sought to limit the sale of liquor, to restrict public-school teaching to Protestants, and to have the Protestant version of the Bible read daily in classrooms.

Among the acts of violence which were stirred up by anti-Catholic sentiments was the burning of an Ursuline convent. The catalyst for this event, was the circulation of stories which were very similar to the Sister Charlotte story which Candy has posted previously, and which was on her sidebar for several months.

From the actual article in the Boston newspaper:

The subject of universal interest in the city today has been the work of destruction accomplished by a mob, last night and this morning, at and about the Ursuline Convent, on Mount Benedict, in Charlestown—resulting in the complete sacking of the principal building itself—a four-story handsome brick edifice, with wings, and front about eighty feet—together with the farm house, cottage, and every other building upon the premises, and also with the demolition or consumption by fire of all the furniture and chattels of every description, appurtant to the whole.

In 1844, there were a series of riots in Philadelphia which originated over the issue of religion in public schools. Catholics had asked to be able to read their own Bibles during the morning devotional reading, but this was not permitted.

In May, two Catholic churches were burned down, a convent was attacked, and a riot broke out which ended in 14 killed (between both sides) and many more injured.

In July, a riot broke out again. When a church was again attacked, the militia got involved and another 15-20 people were killed, with many more injured.

The incidents in Philadelphia are credited with ultimately creating the Catholic school system in America.

In 1853, Cincinnati saw a similar riot, but one with less tragic results. A mob of 600 men set out to burn the Cathedral to the ground, but after the police fired upon the mob and injured several, the mob disbursed. No one was killed.

In 1854, numerous churches were burned down, blown up, or simply vandalized.

The last year of violence was 1855, which saw the "Bloody Monday Massacre" in Louisville, Ky. You can read several articles from the Louisville paper here:

A remembrance on the 150th anniversary of one of the deadliest anti-immigrant riots in American history, the Bloody Monday Massacre of August 6, 1855 was held in Louisville Kentucky on Saturday, August 6th, 2005. The instigators of the massacre were the Know Nothings, a Nativist political party who were fearful of losing control of the Louisville City Council. They were driven by an anti-immigrant vitriolic press to attack and slaughter as many as 150 German and Irish immigrants who lived in the poorest sections of Louisville.

In the aftermath, more than 10,000 Catholics left Louisville for other cities, having a huge impact on the population of the city. The actual number of dead remains disputed. Most accounts leave it at "at least 22" but a letter written by the Bishop of Louisville says that 100 were killed. The Louisville paper also weighs in on the conflicting accounts:

Bloody Monday has also left a burden for Louisville historians, who continue to wrestle with the sketchy, partisan accounts of it that appeared in the city's newspapers and official records.

"We don't argue about what happened in the earthquakes of 1811-12," said historian and Metro Councilman Tom Owen. "We don't argue about what happened in the 1937 flood or the tornado of 1890. But professionals debate both the causation and the result of Bloody Monday."

Within ten years, the Know-Nothings and the Nativist movement had died down, and the violence had ceased. Clearly, the same sort of tales of murderous Catholics, and convents torturing young girls are still floating around out there, popular in some quarters.

Because this has been a persistent topic at Candy's blog, I created a "Those Killer Catholics" tag for such articles. If you click on it at the bottom of this article, you can find other entries I've written on similar lines, including the Inquisition(s) and the Sister Charlotte articles.

Catholic Atrocities

Many people accuse the Catholic Church of countless atrocities. There were the inquisitions, the Crusades, we killed Jews, we killed protestants. Some claim that Catholics are only enjoying their newfound acceptance by other Christians, and will soon rise up again to kill more multitudes.

Many of these accusations come from Jack Chick and Dave Hunt. Click on their names to learn the false nature of their claims.

What you must remember, is that the Catholic Church has been around for 2000 years. During much of that time, killing someone who disagreed with you theologically was perfectly acceptable. This was not contained to Catholicism. Let me provide some examples:

• The followers of John Hus, known as the Hussites, were quite a force in their day.As Zwingli spread protestantism in Switzerland, protestant forces declared war on the Catholic cantons.

• The factions of Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli all killed Anabaptists.

• Saintly Queen Elizabeth killed Catholics for not converting to Anglicanism.

• Witch trials encompassed all forms of Christianity, in Europe and America. Lutheran Germany had the highest execution rate.

• The Thirty Years War, one of the bloodiest in Europe, was primary one of religion. It began when Calvinists threw two Catholic members of the Bohemian royal council from a window.

• The Know-Nothings incited riots which were responsible for a number of church burnings, the burning of an Ursaline convent, and the death of dozens of Catholics.

At the same time, modern scholarship is uncovering how much of the Catholic "atrocities" in history were based on anti-Catholic bias. Read the truth about the Spanish Inquisition.

Philip Jenkins, Professor of History and Religious Studies at Pennsylvania State University (non-Catholic), writes in his book, The New Anti-Catholicism: The Last Acceptable Prejudice:

"There never was such a thing as a Church-wide inquisition, a terrifying monolith comparable to the NKVD or the Gestapo. It is more accurate to think of inquisitions that operated extensively in some areas in a highly decentralized way, although they notionally acted under papal authority. Inquisitions were important at certain times and places but never existed in other areas."

"The main problem about speaking of 'the Inquisition' is that it suggests that religious repression of this sort was a Catholic prerogative. In fact, before the Enlightenment, virtually all religious traditions on occasion acted similarly when they had the power to do so..This indictment of religious savagery and intolerance applies to.all the Protestant nations, even relatively liberal ones such as England and the Netherlands..Equally blameworthy would be Muslims, Hindus, and even Buddhists. After all, in the seventeenth century, when Catholic inquisitions were at their height, the Buddhist/Shinto nation of Japan was engaged in a ferocious attempt to stamp out the deviant faith of Christianity through torture and massacre. In just forty years, these Japanese religious persecutions killed far more victims than the Spanish Inquisition would in all the centuries of its existence."

You can easily find similar information about the Crusades and Catholic involvement, or lack of it, in World War II.

While it turns my stomach to quote it, here is what Candy wrote in a recent comment:

This makes this quite an enigma, then doesn't it? Why would someone claiming to be Christian, defend a cult that has killed MILLIONS of Christians? A cult that still says in their cannon that anyone who believes they are saved by Christ alone are anethama?

Why would you stand up for a church that in the 1940s had it's priests in Serbia take off their preist garb, and TORTURE millions of those people to death, because they were protestant. They were sick! They ripped babies from their mother's wombs while making the fathers watch. They cut nursing women's breasts off. They made keepsake necklaces out of human eyeballs, they peeled people's skin OFF. They collected human heads that they had decaptiated. They smiled for photos while they were chopping off heads.

They waved the protestant's head in the air in victory and smiled for more pictures.

Look back through history - the REAL history, not the revised history... You'll see that each time the Roman Catholic church started being ecumenical and nice nice to Christians, it was up until the large number of Christians trusted Roman Catholics, and then the slaughter began. If you didn't convert, you were tortured to death. Why torture? Because their cannon teaches that the more pain a person suffers before dying, the less time they'll have to spend in "purgatory." :-( Those priests tortured people to death out of love??? :-(

Look back in Ireland and France. The Catholics made nice nice with the protestants, and then they went in for the KILL.

After a bit of research, I found that Candy is probably referring to a Croatian death camp called Jasenovac. You can read more about it here:

From August 1941 to April 1945, hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Jews, and Romas, as well as anti-fascists of many nationalities, were murdered at the death camp known as Jasenovac. Estimates of the total numbers of men, women and children killed there range from 300,000 to 700,000. And yet, despite the scale of the crimes committed there, most of the world has never heard of Jasenovac.

Following the Nazi invasion and dismemberment of Yugoslavia in April 1941, the "Independent State of Croatia" was established as a pro-Nazi government. It was dedicated to a clerical-fascist ideology influenced both by Nazism and extreme Roman Catholic fanaticism. On coming to power, the Ustashe Party dictatorship in Croatia quickly commenced on a systematic policy of racial extermination of all Serbs, Jews and Romas living within its borders.

I suppose one might as easily point a finger at the Nazis, which were based in Lutheran Germany, and killed many, many Catholics. Dachau had a special "priest block" which held over 2500 Catholic priests. Clearly, Jasenovac was not targeted at just protestants, as Jews and Gypsies (or Roma) were killed as well.

While Catholicism is mixed in with the atrocities in Croatia, it is not the cause. The constant struggles between Croatia and Serbia are ethnic in origin, and have been in existence for centuries. If they all became born-again fundamentalists tomorrow, I think that they would still try to kill each other, because their deep-rooted hated means more to them than their religion.

As I have written before, violence in the name of religion is not restrained to Catholicism. Even protestants have, on occasion, persecuted and killed Catholics in the name of religion.

I find this one of Candy's more disturbing posts. It is very sad that she feels that one day, all Catholics will rise up and torture all non-Catholics to death. No wonder she feels we are Satanic. Truly, the church which she describes IS a Satanic one. However, it is not the Catholic Church.

Read a follow-up to this post, Non-Atrocious Catholics.

If you are new to our website, you can find links to some of our other posts about Catholicism here.