What just happened in TOULOUSE this week has everything to do with what is happening with the Roman Catholic Church as well as what is happening with the mechanization of humanity. Today we are going to look at the Roman Catholic Churches connection.
Get ready folks because what happened before will be happening again here very soon. ROME is positioning itself to once again rule with an iron hand.
TOULOUSE, FRANCE suffered much persecution by the Roman Catholic Church. The Church declared it illegal to print, distribute or read the Scriptures without their express permission. They sent representatives door to door to search out people’s homes and make determinations as to whether those people were herectics.
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February 1229 A.D. Council of Toulouse–“We prohibit laymen possessing copies of the Old and New Testament
February 1229 A.D. Council of Toulouse–“We prohibit laymen possessing copies of the Old and New Testament”
Wohlberg, Steve. “Papal Rome Against the Bible.” White Horse Media. N.d. http://www.whitehorsemedia.com/articles/?d=99#.VJGcA8J0xjo. Accessed 16 Dec 2014.
From the 1200s to the 1800s, Papal leaders openly condemned the reading of the Bible in the vernacular (the language of the common people) and even persecuted those caught with copies of the Scriptures in their possession. Because Bible Societies (beginning in the 1800’s) won the war and have spread God’s Word around the world, Rome has backed off of its previously public position. Yet the Vatican has not changed. Papal Rome’s opposition to pure Bible truth remains to this day. Note these historical statements:
At the Council of Toulouse (1229 A.D), papal church leaders ruled: “We prohibit laymen possessing copies of the Old and New Testament ... We forbid them most severely to have the above books in the popular vernacular.” “‘The lords of the districts shall carefully seek out the heretics in dwellings, hovels, and forests, and even their underground retreats shall be entirely wiped out.” Pope Gregory IX, Council Tolosanum, 1229 A.D.
The Roman Catholic Council of Tarragona also ruled that: “No one may possess the books of the Old and New Testaments in the Romance language, and if anyone possesses them he must turn them over to the local bishop within eight days after the promulgation of this decree, so that they may be burned.” D. Lortsch, Histoire de la Bible en France, 1910, p. 14.
The Council of Trent (1545-1564) placed the Bible on its list of prohibited books, and forbade any person to read the Bible without a license from a Roman Catholic bishop or inquisitor. The Council added these words: “That if any one shall dare to read or keep in his possession that book, without such a license, he shall not receive absolution till he has given it up to his ordinary.”
“Since it is clear from experience that if the Sacred Books are permitted everywhere and without discrimination in the vernacular (in the common language of the people, D.R.) there will by reasons of the boldness of men arise therefrom more harm than good…” Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, p. 274.
J.A. Wylie, an authority on Romanism in the Reformation era, dedicated two chapters of his book The Papacy; Its History, Dogmas, Genius, and Prospects (London: Hamilton Adams, 1888) to Rome’s attitude toward the Bible. Wylie states: “The Latin Vulgate is the authorized standard in the Church of Rome, and that to the disparagement of the original Hebrew and Greek Scriptures. These are omitted in the decree [by the Council of Trent], and a translation is substituted. All Protestant translations, such as our authorized English version, Luther’s translation, &c. are prohibited” The Papacy; Its History, Dogmas, Genius, and Prospects, p. 181.
Rome’s attempt to keep the Bible from men has continued to recent times. Pope Pius VII (1800-1823) denounced Bible Societies and expressed shock at the circulation of the Scriptures. This Pope declared, “It is evidence from experience, that the holy Scriptures, when circulated in the vulgar tongue, have, through the temerity of men, produced more harm than benefit.”
Pope Gregory XVI (1831-1846) railed: “against the publication, distribution, reading, and possession of books of the holy Scriptures translated into the vulgar tongue.”
Pope Leo XII called the Protestant Bible the “Gospel of the Devil” in an encyclical letter of 1824. In January 1850, he also condemned Bible Societies and admitted the fact that the distribution of Scripture has “long been condemned by the holy chair.”
Pope Leo XIII declared, “As it has been clearly shown by experience that, if the holy Bible in the vernacular is generally permitted without any distinction, more harm than utility is thereby caused…” Great Encyclical Letters of Leo XIII, pp. 412-413.
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The Development of the Inquisition
Martha Carlin | Department of History, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee
Extracts from Father Terry Fulton’s Verbal Conscience website
(originally at http://www.frterryfulton.org/History/Table%20of%20Contents/Table%20of%20Contents.htm; now archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20130823055605/http://www.frterryfulton.org/History/Table%20of%20Contents/Table%20of%20Contents.htm), Chapter 9: Handouts 124, 125, 119, 120:
1. The birth of the episcopal Inquisition: decisions of the Council of Toulouse (1229 A.D.)
In every parish in the city and outside the city the bishops shall designate a priest and two or three laymen, or even more if necessary, of unsullied reputation, who shall be committed on oath to search out assiduously and faithfully the heretics living in the parish. They shall be assiduous in visiting suspected houses, rooms and cellars and the most hidden nooks of places which are about to be demolished. If they discover heretics or people giving credence or favor, sanctuary or protection to heretics, they shall take steps to prevent their flight and denounce them as soon as possible to the bishop and to the lord of the place or his bailiff. The temporal lords shall carefully search out the heretics in the villas, the houses and the forests where they meet and destroy their lairs.
2. Letter of Pope Gregory IX to the Bishops of France, 13 April, 1233 A.D.
Seeing that you are caught up in the whirlwind of your many occupations, and have hardly time to breathe because of the difficulty of having too much work to do, and therefore thinking it reasonable that you should share your activities with others, we are sending you the aforesaid Friars Preachers [i.e., Dominican friars] to the kingdom of France and neighboring regions. Their mission is to combat the heretics. We ask you to receive them with kindness and to give them their due, to offer them your advice, help and goodwill, in these matters and in others, so that they can fulfill the mission that has been entrusted to them.
3. The Waldenses, or the Poor Men of Lyons
[Editor’s note: A large number of internal documents from dissident groups were destroyed by the inquisitors charged with repressing these groups. We often have to resort to the inquisitors to get to know their victims. Clearly their presentation is always malicious.]
The sect or heresy of the Waldenses or Poor Men of Lyons emerged about the year of Our Lord 1170 A.D. The person responsible for it was an inhabitant of Lyons, Valdes or Waldo, hence the name of these sectarians. He was rich but having given away all his possessions, he planned to observe poverty and gospel perfection, in imitation of the apostles. He had the Gospels and some other books of the Bible translated into the vernacular for his use along with some sayings of Saint Augustine, Saint Jerome, Saint Ambrose and Saint Gregory, arranged under titles, which he and his supporters called Sentences. They read them very often, but did not have much understanding of them; however, in their infatuation, although they were barely literate, they usurped the function of the apostles and dared to teach the gospel on the streets and in public places. The aforesaid Valdes or Waldo drew into this presumptuous way of behaving numerous accomplices of both sexes whom he sent out to preach as disciples.
Sent word by the Archbishop of Lyons, Lord John of the Fair Hands, who forbade them to be so presumptuous, they refused to obey him, arguing in mitigation of their folly that they had to obey God rather than men. God ordained that the apostles should preach the gospel to every creature, they repeated, applying to [themselves] what had been said of the apostles. They even rashly declared themselves to be the imitators and successors to the apostles, by a false profession of poverty and under the veiled image of sanctity. In fact they scorned prelates and clergy because they said that these had abundant riches and lived in luxury.
Called on to give up speaking publicly, they disobeyed and were declared contumacious, subsequently being excommunicated and expelled from their city and homeland.
Contempt of ecclesiastical power had been and still is the main heresy of the Waldenses…they argue that all oaths, whether in law or elsewhere, are forbidden by God without exception or explanation.
Source: Bernard Gui (1260-1331), Inquisitor’s Manual, II.1f
4. The New Manichaeans or Cathari
[Editor’s note: The same comments can be made here as on the previous text. The doctrines of those who were called Cathari were not always so extreme.]
The sect, the heresy and the deluded adherents of the Manichaeans acknowledge and confess two Gods or two Lords, namely a good God and an evil God. They affirm that the creation of all things visible and material is not the work of God the heavenly Father–whom they call a good God – but the work of the devil and Satan, the evil God. They thus distinguish two creators, God and the devil, and two creations, one of invisible and immaterial beings, and the other of visible and material things.
Likewise, they imagine two churches: one, the good church, which they say is their sect; this they claim to be the church of Jesus Christ. In their view the other, the evil church, is the Roman church; they impudently call it the mother of fornications, great Babylon, harlot and basilica of the devil, synagogue of Satan.
For baptism with water they substitute another baptism, a spiritual one, called consolamentum of the Holy Spirit, when for example they receive a person, well or ill, into their sect or their order, laying of hands according to their execrable rite …They deny the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ in the womb of Mary Ever Virgin and argue that he did not take a true human body nor true human flesh like other men by virtue of human nature, that he did not suffer and die on the cross, that he was not raised from the dead, and that he did not ascend to heaven with human body and flesh. All this, they say, is figurative.
They call imperfect heretics those who have in truth the faith of heretics but do not follow them in their life-style and do not observe the rites; they are called believers in the lying language of the heretics.
By contrast, they call perfect the heretics who have professed the faith of the heretics and live their life in conformity to it, fulfilling and observing the rites involved; these are they who dogmatize the others.
Source: Bernard Gui, op.cit., I,1.
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To the editor:
In his letter responding about the use of Latin in liturgical worship (Catholic Herald, March 17), Tom Roberts wrote, “The Council of Toulouse in 1229 declared, ‘We prohibit also that the laity should be permitted to have the books of the old and new testament’; they were in Latin.”
More information is required lest false conclusions be drawn about the Church. The Council of Toulouse was a local council, held by a local church. It was not an Ecumenical Council, for the whole Church.
It addressed the problem of Albigensian heretics (aka Cathars), very active in Toulouse, who mistranslated the Latin Scriptures to support their pernicious heresies. When the Albigensianism problem was resolved, the limited edict for that local church was no longer needed.
The Church, local and universal, must always guard carefully the integrity of Holy Writ and liturgical texts, lest bad translations be circulated and screwy personal interpretations be bruited about (as attendance in Scripture reading groups can only confirm).
By the way, the Order of Preachers (who staff Blessed Sacrament in Madison) were founded by St. Dominic to combat Albigensianism. There is a jovial chestnut about the merits of the Dominicans and their perennial rivals, Jesuits. Both groups were founded to combat heresies: Dominicans against Albigensianism, Jesuits against Protestantism. Which group, you ask, was more effective? When was the last time you met an Albigensian?
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When the charge is made that the Roman Catholic Church attempted to keep the Bible out of the hands of the common people during much of its history, some deny this, claiming that Rome only forbade “unauthorized” vernacular versions, not all vernacular versions. This is one of those half-truths that are used to hide the truth. Note the following facts:1. THE COUNCIL OF TOULOUSE (1229) AND THE COUNCIL OF TARRAGONA (1234) FORBADE THE LAITY TO POSSESS OR READ THE VERNACULAR TRANSLATIONS OF THE BIBLE. NO EXCEPTIONS WERE MENTIONED.
The Council of Toulouse used these words: “We prohibit the permission of the books of the Old and New Testament to laymen, except perhaps they might desire to have the Psalter, or some Breviary for the divine service, or the Hours of the blessed Virgin Mary, for devotion; expressly forbidding their having the other parts of the Bible translated into the vulgar tongue” (Allix, Ecclesiastical History, II, p. 213). The declarations of these Councils held power for centuries thereafter.
2. THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH DID NOT GIVE THE PEOPLE BIBLES IN THE VERNACULAR TONGUES.
To argue that the Roman Catholic Church only forbade unauthorized vernacular versions is to argue a technicality that has no meaning in reality. Some odd exception that might have existed at some particular place in some point in history does not change this rule.
Consider the very important English tongue. The Roman Catholic Church did not produce a Bible in English until 1582, two full centuries after John Wycliffe provided the English people with their first Bible and more than a half century after Tyndale made his masterpiece for the English speaking world.
Even after Rome finally did produce an English Bible (the Rheims-Douai), it was not widely published and made available to the people. The New Testament was reprinted by Catholics ONLY THREE TIMES and the Douai Old Testament, ONLY ONCE, between 1582 and 1750-A PERIOD OF 168 YEARS (Marion Simms, The Bible from the Beginning, 1929, p. 187).
Wherever Rome has maintained power, the people have not had ready access to the Scriptures. Consider this testimony about conditions existing in the city of Rome in the mid 19th century: “The Bible in Rome is a strange and rare book. The only edition of it authorized to be sold here, is in fifteen large volumes, which are filled with Popish commentaries. Of course none but the rich can purchase a copy of the sacred Scriptures. Indeed very few of the common people know what we mean by the Bible” (J.A. Clark, Protestant Episcopal Church of St. Andrew, Philadelphia, in a letter to his congregation, dated from Rome, March 24, 1838; reprinted by Charles Elliott, Delineation of Roman Catholicism, 1851, p. 23).
In 1907 and 1908 the Irish Church Mission made a diligent search of bookshops in Catholic Ireland to determine the availability of Catholic Bibles. Consider the result: “In the booksellers’ shops of Athlone, Balbriggan, Drogheda, Mullingar, Wexford, and Clonmel, not a Bible, or New Testament, or scrap of Scripture of the Church’s authorized version, could be found-–a shop assistant at Mullingar, saying, ‘I never saw a Catholic Bible.‘ … in Cork, with over 76,000 inhabitants, there are twenty-four Roman Catholic booksellers, of whom twenty did not keep the Scriptures, two of them asking the would-be purchaser if the Douay New Testament, of which they knew nothing, was ‘a new monthly publication.’ Lastly, in Dublin itself, out of four large Roman Catholic publishing and bookselling establishments, only one had the Scriptures, whilst the answer given to an inquiry for a New Testament at the depot of The Catholic Truth Society was, ‘We don’t keep it.’ The conclusion arrived at by the commissioners who ransacked the booksellers’ shops in Ireland for Bibles, was ‘that in nine-tenths of the cities, towns, and villages of Ireland a Roman Catholic could not procure a copy of the Roman Catholic Bible or New Testament'” (Alexander Robertson, The Papal Conquest, 1909, pp. 166,167).
These examples could be endlessly multiplied.
3. FOR ROME TO CLAIM THAT IT “ONLY” FORBADE “UNAUTHORIZED” VERNACULAR BIBLES IS TO ADMIT ITS PRESUMPTION AND WICKEDNESS.
The Council of Trent did allow reading of Scripture, but only after a license in writing was obtained from the proper ecclesiastical authority, a license which was given only in extremely rare cases. Even the Catholic clergy had to obtain a license from their bishops before they were allowed to read the Bible. Booksellers were forbidden to have Bibles in stock for sale under pain of severe punishment.
It is hard for people in our modern world to imagine how the Church of ROME could command such power, but you don’t understand that until not that long ago, just about the entire earth was divided up into PARISHES under the rule of the POPE. The Parish’s were set up before any other form of government was established in any location. Hard to believe, I KNOW |
This was a great wickedness. Rome does not have authority from God to forbid that people read the Bible or to require that men obtain her license before reading God’s Word. The Bible was given for all people, and the Lord Jesus Christ commanded his disciples to preach the Gospel unto all nations, to every creature. “The Bible is a proclamation of mercy, addressed to sinful men, in such terms as the following: ‘Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is none else’ (Isa. 45:22). The Church of Rome stands by, and presumes to decide who shall, and who shall not, hear these words of the Almighty Saviour; and if any person hear them at all, it is by her permission. This is assuming a power and authority equal to that of God, and a right to control, or at least to regulate, the manner of communicating his will to his creatures. It is arrogating an authority which belongs to no creature, nor to any assembly of creatures, to decide when and to whom the Almighty shall address his overtures of mercy and grace. This claim of an authority to permit, implies an authority to prevent or prohibit, the reading of the Scriptures, whenever it shall happen that prevention is more expedient than permission. This, in general, has been the case; and if her assumed authority of permitting proves her to be in error, much more will her preventing fix that character upon her” (Elliott, Delineation of Roman Catholicism, 1851, p. 24).
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This current Papacy has already proclaimed that no one should seek a personal relationship with Christ, that no one should share their faith or seek to convert anyone, Infact the Pope has proclaimed that people don’t even need Jesus to be saved!! This POPE is more concerned with CLIMATE CHANGE than saving the LOST! He is building a NEW RELIGION. One that can take away your rights and even your life from crimes against “Mother Nature”.
SOON, it will be illegal once again for humanity to access the Scriptures. God warned us that a famine for the WORD of GOD would come in the last days.
The Pope can’t have you getting any ideas from Scripture. If HE is to maintain CONTROL over society and enforce his New Religion, New Covenant, New COMMANDMENTS, New Mass… He is going to have crack down on rebels who think that they can know GOD, without the Church.
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The Pope of Rome just release the Fourth Encyclical “Dilexit Nos” to truly accelerate ONE WORLD RELIGION. 🛑 Become a Patron: / truthinbibleprophecy 🛑 Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/TIBPMinistries ❯❯❯ Subscribe to Truth in Bible Prophecy / truthinbibleprophecy
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