Vicars of Christ: the Dark Side of the Papacy
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Vicars of Christ: The Dark Side of the Papacy PETER DE ROSA, a graduate of Gregorian University in Rome, was professor of Metaphysics and Ethics at Westminster Seminary and Dean of Theology at Corpus Christi College in London. He is the author of many books, including Bless Me, Father; Christ and Original Sin; and Jesus Who Became Christ. He left the priesthood in 1970 and now lives in Ireland with his wife and two sons. FRONTISPIECES / BLURB In a book that is startling, informative, and highly controversial, a former Jesuit narrates the story of the popes - from Saint Peter to John Paul II. Vicars of Christ provides a historical perspective on the Catholic Church in crisis today. The Holy Fathers have always paid a price for power on earth. The problems of the contemporary Catholic Church - its rigid attitudes toward politics and religious freedom, the declining number of priests and nuns, its refusal to broaden the rights of women, and the fierce opposition to Vatican policies on birth control, divorce, and celibacy -are the products of two millennia of powerful, political, and fallible popes. Peter De Rosa, who says he is a “patriotic Catholic,” shows how the popes have created the papacy from scratch - with more than a measure of scandal, murder, genocide, and doctrinal confusion. Only by understanding what the church was can we understand what it is today. Pope Gregory VII, for example, in the eleventh century, instituted an entire document-forgery factory in the Vatican-to prove that the pope could not make a mistake, that he could depose kings and princes at will, and that he was necessarily a saint. Other popes were certainly not saints, The Borgia pope, Alexander VI, in the 1400s, had a stable of mistresses, a litter of illegitimate children, and a penchant for murdering cardinals for their money. Borgia popes bred Borgia popes: Alexander’s son and grandson both ascended to the papacy. The grandson was such a libertine that women pilgrims were warned away from the Holy See, lest they be raped by the pope. The Church has a long record of anti-Semitism. Popes in the Borgia era created a ghetto for the Jews, required them to wear distinctive yellow hats whenever they ventured out, and even forced them to pay for the wall surrounding the ghetto. The Holy Fathers could be more vicious toward those among its own who opt posed the power of the church. Innocent III murdered far more Christians in one afternoon - 12,000-than any Roman emperor did in his entire reign. Popes reintroduced torture into the judicial system. And more recently, within the last century, popes have called religious freedom madness, free elections godless, and a free press tantamount to atheism. Popes make mistakes, says Peter De Rosa. They have erred tragically not only in their personal lives but in setting forth Catholic doctrine on faith and morals. In more than a century there have been only two exercises of “papal infallibility”: the immaculate conception and the Assumption of Mary. when Pope Paul VI banned contraceptives in 1968, he was not speaking in-fallibly. And more than ninety percent of American Catholics felt he was mistaken. In Vicars of Christ, Peter De Rosa dispels the myths about the papacy in favour of hard facts, and provides everyone, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, with the true, alarming story of the Church in crisis. PETER DE ROSA, a graduate of Gregorian University in Rome, was professor of Metaphysics and Ethics at Westminster Seminary and Dean of Theology at Corpus Christi College in London. He is the author of many books, including Bless Me, Father; Christ and Original Sin; and Jesus Who Became Christ. He left the priesthood in 1970 and now lives in Ireland with his wife and two sons. Jacket design by June Marie Bennett by the same author Christ In Our World, God Our Saviour Come, Holy Spirit Christ And Original Sin Jesus Who Became Christ PUBLISHING DETAILS CROWN PUBLISHERS, INC. 225 PARK AVENUE SOUTH NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10003 Copyright © 1988 by Peter De Rosa All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher Published in the United States of America by Crown Publishers, Inc., 225 Park Avenue South, New York,. New York 10003. Originally published in Great Britain by Bantam Press, a division of Transworld Publishers Ltd CROWN is a trademark of Crown Publishers, Inc.. Manufactured in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data De Rosa, Peter Vicars of Christ: the dark side of the papacy/p. cm. Bibliography: p. 1. Papacy - Controversial literature. I. Title. BX1765.2.B69 1988 262’.13 --- dc19 88-7126 ISBN 0-517-57027-0 CIP 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 First American Edition Dedication Humbly and with Penitence to All the Victims of the Holocaust NOTE TO THE READER This book is not a work of theology, still less a textbook on the papacy. It is an investigation of the role of the popes in the light of history, culture, ethics and the personalities of the pontiffs themselves. Though, like Dante, I stress here the dark side of the papacy, it is the work of a friend not an enemy. ORIGINAL (First American Edition) CONTENTS PAGE Prologue: The Great Cover-Up 3 Part One: Power 1 From Calvary to the Vatican 11 2 The Quest for Absolute Power 29 3 Papal Pornocracy 47 4 The Papacy at Its Height 57 5 Power in Decline 75 6 The Papacy’s Descent into Hell 89 7 The Inevitable Reformation 111 8 The Twilight of Absolute Power 123 Part Two: Truth 9 The Crushing of Dissent 139 10 The Imposition of Truth 152 11 Persecuting Witches and Jews 181 12 Papal Heretics 204 13 The First Infallible Pope 237 14 The Great Purge 255 Part Three: Love 15 The Pope Who Loved the World 273 16 The New Galileo Affair 287 17 An Unloving View of Sex 318 18 The Popes, Pioneers of Divorce 334 19 The Silent Holocaust 365 20 Unchaste Celibates 390 Epilogue 435 Chronology 439 The Popes 449 Ecumenical Councils 453 General Councils of the Roman Church 454 A Note on Sources 455 Select Bibliography 460 Index 469 PRE-PROLOGUE On hearing that Ludwig Pastor had begun his great work, The History of the Popes, the Dominican Cardinal de Lai remarked: ‘Prima la carità e poi la verità anche nella storia’, ‘Charity precedes truth even in the writing of history’. On hearing this, Pastor replied: ‘If that were so, all history would be impossible. Fortunately, Christ said, “I am the Truth”.’ PROLOGUE The Great Cover-Up IT IS EASILY THE BIGGEST COVER-UP IN HISTORY. It has gone on for centuries, claiming first thousands, then millions of lives. Though it is highly visible, no one seems to have noticed it. Unknowingly, many artists, great and not so great, have contributed to it. And the camouflage is nothing more alarming than a little piece of cloth - the cloth that covers the loins of Jesus on the cross. In the beginning, the cross was never represented in art or sculpture. While Jesus was adored for his self-emptying and the cross was the centre of the faith, no one dared depict him in his utter humiliation. It is said that Constantine’s armies bore the cross on their insignia This was not so. On shield and banner they had the first two letters of Christ’s Greek name [GRAPHIC1] fused like this [GRAPHIC2] . Graphic 1 Graphic 2 Only when the memory of the thousands who had died on crosses all over the Roman world dimmed did Christians feel free to depict the cross as the symbol of Christ’s suffering love. It was an empty cross. Who would dare to recrucify Christ? Later, this bare symbol of his conquest of the dark forces seemed too austere. Fifth century artists began to paint a cross with a lamb next to it, for Jesus was ‘the Lamb of God’ slain for the sin of the world. Then, with mounting courage, a lamb-white Jesus was himself depicted next to the cross. With only two known exceptions, not till the end of the sixth century was he shown on his cross. Still the artist dared not paint in the pain and humiliation. Jesus was in a long tunic, with only hands and feet bare to show in stylized fashion the nails that pinned him to the wood. This was an image of triumph; he was not suffering and dying but reigning, open-eyed and sometimes crowned, on the throne of the cross. The first tenth-century Greek representation of Jesus suffering on the cross was condemned by Rome as blasphemy. Soon the Church of Rome itself yielded to its fascination. With Jesus ever more remote and with medieval theology becoming drier and more scholastic, piety demanded a more human Christ: a man they could see and almost feel, a man with the trials and tribulations they themselves met with every day of their short and suffering lives. Artists now freely depicted Christ in agony on his cross; deep wounds and blood, agony in every limb, dereliction in [ep003] his eyes. His garments shrank to impress on the faithful the extent of the Lord’s abasement. There it stopped: at a loin-cloth. Had the artist gone further, who would have been brave enough to look on Christ the way he was: naked like a slave? What stayed the artist’s hand was not propriety but theology.