Filum Romanum - A Thread for the Catholic Church

Well, the book that I rely upon is out of publication, but you can still find copies online- Will Durant's "The Story of Civilization", esp. Volume 4 "The Age of Faith", but also volumes 5 and 6. Durant isnt writing from a religious perspective, but his history volumes focus largely on European history and cover the rise in power and influence of the Catholic Church rather well.

I'm interested in the episcopal states and in the early history of Christianity, back when 'the Church' hadn't split between Rome and Constantinople. I want to know about both branches' relationship with nestorians, assyrians, gnonstics, etc. Basically I want to take a long hard look at 'the Church's claims of continuity and legitimacy.

I also want to know who exactly is responsible for the many, many atrocities associated with' the Church'. We already have had this conversation on this thread, and it devolved into ad hominems about whether I would hold myself to the same moral standards I was demanding of the current church. Never mind that I am a private individual, not a massive institution claiming moral authority and the upholding of the legacy of the Verb Made Flesh himself.

Anyway, I left that conversation thoroughly unsatisfied. My questions remain unanswered: what is the church, and what is it responsible for?

...that's a good question.

Okay. "The Church," in the broadest sense, is the community of all Christians. It's not really something you can call an organization; every baptized individual is a part of it.

The priesthood consists of all ordained priests and bishops, each of which has been ordained by a bishop who was ordained by a bishop, back to Jesus and the Apostles. This is also not an organization, but a sort of Master-Apprentice Chain. Orthodox, Nestorian, Coptic, et cetera priests are generally accepted as part of the same priesthood, but Protestant priests (even those who claim apostolic succession, such as the Anglicans) are not. (In my opinion, this is essentially because the Reformation was a far uglier and more acrimonious divorce than the Great Schism, and there's simply a lot more butthurt going around between Catholics and Protestants than between Catholics, Orthodoxy, and the pre-Schism independent churches.)

Now, then you get into the organizations of the priesthood; parishes, dioceses, monasteries and the Holy See; this is also conveniently referred to as "the Church," and it is...sort of...an organization. The best way to describe it is as a feudal elective monarchy. Starting from the top.

The Pope is the head of the whole thing. He is the heir to Saint Peter, and the personal representative of Christ on Earth; he is also the secular ruler of Vatican City (The Remnant of the Papal States), though he doesn't really get up to much "being a secular prince" anymore. He is essentially the monarch to whom all sub-units of the Church owe fealty, and the Holy See is the demesne of the Pope. Furthermore, while it would be an oversimplification to say that the Pope has authority over who goes to Heaven or not, he does have a great deal of latitude to set the conditions under which sin can be forgiven - keep this in mind when we talk about the Crusades.

Dioceses are separate organizations from the Holy See, and their bishops are "lords" in their own right who owe "fealty" to the Pope - same with parishes to bishops. I'm using the term fealty as an approximation, here. In the Middle Ages, it was more literal and included each parish kicking up part of the tithe to the bishop, who kicked up part of the whack to the Pope; I don't think that such a strict tithing system is used anymore, but I confess ignorance as to exactly how the Church's bank works. Regardless, each bishop owes loyalty to the Pope, but has authority over his own flock and their priests.

In the Middle Ages, because of a lot of reasons, bishoprics also often included secular rulership, and the Pope controlled central Italy as the Papal States. Essentially, this means that the Pope is an Italian monarch, as is the Archbishop of Milan, and the Archbishop of Cologne (for example) is a prince within the Holy Roman Empire, but the Pope is also the Pope and the Archbishop of Cologne is also an archbishop (which basically means "important bishop").

Now, the Crusades. Essentially, when the First Crusade happened, it went as follows. The Seljuk Turks were hassling pilgrims in Palestine and causing way too much damage to Byzantium, so Pope Urban capitalized on this and got the idea of a Crusade. He essentially called for volunteers to go to the Holy Land and kick the infidel out, and he issued a decree that anyone who died on Crusade would be given full remission of sins and a free pass to Heaven. You may recognize this as similar to the Islamic position on martyrdom, and in particular, the version of that position taken by certain individuals in explosive vests who are not real Muslims by any stretch of the word. So the Pope is responsible for initiating the call for the Crusade and authorizing the Crusade indulgence, though afterwards the call was taken up by volunteers - generally led by secular noblemen.

(Could Pope Francis issue a bull calling for a crusade, and saying that any Christian who dies fighting ISIS is given full remission of their sins? Legalistically, I think so - he also knows exactly how terrible that would look to every Muslim on the planet, so he's not going to.)

edited 29th Jul '15 10:38:08 AM by Ramidel

That is indeed fascinating and confusing. I'm guessing that the whole thing emerged organically throughout the centuries and that nobody bothered to standardize and clarify everything? Or have there been several Tribonians clarifying messes into Corpus Juris Civilis-style syntheses?

How does the Catholic Church work, money-wise, and how powerful is it exactly in the world of finance? I've heard some vague but very awesome rumours.

My question, many pages ago, was something like "For which of these actions can the Church be expected to apologize? Or, at least, which would it acknowledge as its own?" I am aware that it already apologized for a few of those, notably through John Paul II. Also, a technical corollary: does it have to be the Pope apologizing?

edited 29th Jul '15 10:53:35 AM by TheHandle

Actually, the Catholic Church (as Gabrael pointed out) has lots of records and historical documents. You are right that there's not a lot of stuff about the very early centuries (first to third/fourth centuries), but I think we can also chalk that up to the damage caused by the barbarian invasions that wiped out the Roman Empire.

Rumours such as? It's best for me to address them one by one. Though the answer to the question as a whole requires tons of books, which usually either fully praise or fully demonize the administration of the stuff. Also, keep in mind that there's been recent work towards structural reforms.

In an obligatory, legalistic sense? Not really. Apologies are usually done after lots of studying and consideration by the Pope and, on special ocasions, by certain members of the Curia (though they're under his authority and supervision). IIRC. In other words: it's not obligatory, but it's highly necessary to do in order to mend wounds and do some reconciliation (as well as working to improve relations - which includes things such as inter-faith dialogue).

edited 29th Jul '15 11:17:26 AM by Quag15

To the first part, I don't mean "there weren't records", but rather, "there were lots of laws, structures, and systems in place, developed by people who may well not have been consulting with each other or need for consensus, and thus resulting in a, well, byzantine bureaucratic mess".

I'm aware of the recent reforms, if only in thde vaguest of terms ("Francis is cleaning up the mess! Yay! He assigned an Insufferable Genius to the task. Sigh!")

The rumors on the power of the bank, in short, go like this: "the Church has massive collateral, se they can pretty much ask for any kind of loan, no matter how big, and it will be given. They use this as leverage to intervene in markets at key points. They seldom do so publicly, usually preferring to work through a myriad of proxies. When they do blatantly intervene, it tends to be massive, decisive. So, whatever you do, for your own sake, do not piss off the Church. At best, you'll never know what hit you. At worst, you will know, and it will hurt."

Ecumencial Encounters FTW. We've come a long may since the days of inter-faith disputations.

(If you liked that joke, there's more where that came from.)

edited 29th Jul '15 11:39:37 AM by TheHandle

Yup. A lot of stuff was written down, but standardizations tended to come after a mess had built up already, and often just added one more competing standard to the existing mess. For example, clerical celibacy was sorta understood from early on, but agreement on the issue and obedience to the rule were sporadic. A lot of Popes and Councils issued decrees that said "cut that shit out," but it wasn't until the Second Lateran Council in 1139 that the Church finally said "only unmarried men may be ordained, and ordination is an impediment to marriage, full stop."

Was there a pragmatic reason for that, or only Pauline prudishness?

Short answer: Yes.

Long answer:

This as well.

edited 29th Jul '15 1:56:38 PM by Quag15

Christian celibacy started before Paul (actually, Paul was the reasonable one there). I think that if you look straight at Jesus' teaching on the subject and forget theology for a second, he's saying that if you can manage continence, you'll be better off doing so and not marrying. Which is a reasonable statement even if it's open to dispute.

There's also monastic celibacy, which operates that way for a very simple reason: the brothers chose to separate themselves from the world and devote themselves exclusively to prayer and faith and live ascetic lives.

Anyway, the rest has to be chalked up to "the development of the Church." The idea in the Latin-speaking Church became that celibacy and a bit of renunciation of the world were holier than full participation in the world, and that the guys who facilitate the transubstantiation of the Host and the confession of sins should be just a bit monkish in character.

That also sounds like a reason. The consolidation of papal power was also probably a factor in this.

edited 29th Jul '15 1:55:51 PM by Ramidel

Good News from China: Bishop Ordained with Pope’s Approval (bold emphasis mine).

Re histories of the Church, I had started browsing through John Julius Norwich's Absolute Monarchs (which doesn't have the negative tone that its title might suggest). It's a popular history that goes through the Popes from Peter to Benedict and has the kind of slightly deadpan tone you'd expect of an English scholar.

I'd recommend it, but would note that as Norwhich himself admits, it's a history of the Church written by an outsider. Here's a detailed review from the New York Times.

Yes, at many points during Church history, you'd have cesspools of nepotism where bishops' and priests' illegitimate sons would end up with all sorts of sinecures and goodies. Imagine multiplying that severalfold with legitimate offspring everywhere, and maybe the Church was onto something.

Also ... I say this as a born & raised Protestant, and (currently) a Protestant still. To be a good priest/preacher/pastor/whatever is to be a father to one's flock in nearly all but name. A parish priest is a father to an enormous family, with massive spiritual and material responsibilities. Shouldering that responsibility while also having a family of one's own is more than nearly anyone can be successful at. In all my years of life, I've never met a Protestant preacher who was able to decently and effectively lead one of those families without disastrously neglecting the other. All the pastors I've ever had were men who would've done much better either to a) leave the pulpit and spend time with their families, or b) never to have had a family in the first place. So here, too, the Catholics might be wiser than we think.

To be fair nepotism (in it's original form of looking out for your nephews) wasn't actually seen as a bad thing back then. They were seen as a way of supporting and helping your family which was to be expected.

Nephew in that case was euphemism for bastard.

Not the kind that killed Kenny, the other kind.

Unless you're Cartman, who's both kinds.

If a pastor needs to choose completely between flock and family, how is he supposed to feed said family? Being a House Husband?

By the way, I find the whole flock/sheep/sheperd metaphor complex extremeley disturbing. The Unfortunate Implications of it, if one thinks about it even just a little, are tremendous, and so many that it's hard to know where to even begin.

Yes and no actually. In some cases "nephew" was an Unusual Euphemism for a bastard son, but a lot of Cardinal-nephews were actually nephews or other relatives.

RE the sheep terminology, I suspect that the modern negative connotation derives from 1984. The Tanakh (especially the Psalms) uses that metaphor a lot because it was written by people where that was the basis for the Culture, and I guess the Church adopted it from there.

I think part of it also is that sheep-herding lacks the connotations of farming in terms of the animals being raised for slaughter. Even though sheep are obviously eaten, the relationship is more mutalistic.

You're thinking about cults and indoctrination, right?

Also, keep in mind that the Good Shepherd/flock/sheep thing can be understood as either a metaphor or a parable.

Also, this.

edited 7th Aug '15 1:02:11 PM by Quag15

Back then a lot of sheep would be kept for wool farming more than meat, it's only as we've developed a more meat heavy diet and a greater use of non-wool clothing that things have changed.

edited 7th Aug '15 1:03:32 PM by Silasw

You're still dumb cattle. The shepherd decides every aspect of your life, especially your family life. He systematically, methodically, and coldly breeds out any independent spirit, any self-awareness, any power that you may have. You spend your life in obedience, you get regularly fleeced (after being bred to have way too much wool), and, sometimes, eaten.

I don't think of 'indoctrination' or '1984'; it's more like exploitative infantilization.

You're thinking of cults and, since this is the Catholic Church people in general we're talking about, the Vocal Minority that is composed of ultra-traditionalists^note some of them are even excommunicated, though for reasons unrelated to the current discussion.. Got it.

edited 7th Aug '15 2:15:48 PM by Quag15

For the record, just hit me I meant to say Animal Farm and not 1984, as the former has actual sheep.

Still, I think my general point stands.

No, I'm just thinking of shepherds and flocks.

The most terrifying horror story I ever read.

edited 7th Aug '15 3:26:49 PM by TheHandle

http://globalnation.inquirer.net/127633/filipino-priest-flees-u-s-wanted-for-hidden-camera-in-rest-room

Truly a slap in the face for my fellow countrymen.

Why? He's just one foolish, slovenly individual.

Never mind considering the Philippines is one of the biggest RC countries in SEA.

Anyway, LE Os are on the lookout for him.