Roman Catholicism , cult or not?

How do you know it? By hearing from Inquisitors? or from Adolf Hitler the devout Roman Catholic? or from Mussolini and Franco, devout Catholics? may be from Buddhists or Muslims?

Do you have any literature written by themselves?

 

Cathar Texts

Cathar.net

If the modern Cathars bear any resemblance to the ancient Cathars, they definitely have some odd beliefs. Some of these teachings are not consistant with orthodoxy, primary of which is the insistance of the Kingdom of Satan and the Kingdom of Heaven. In fact, this particular teaching sounds quite simalar to the dualism of the material kingdom and spiritual kingdom of the Gnostics.

 

How do you know it? By hearing from Inquisitors? or from Adolf Hitler the devout Roman Catholic? or from Mussolini and Franco, devout Catholics? may be from Buddhists or Muslims?

Do you have any literature written by themselves? </font>[/QUOTE]What the heck have Hitler and Mussolini got to do with it? They didn't exactly have a good relationship with the Catholic Church.

And you want literature - read Montaillou as I suggested. Or follow Chemnitz' link

 

They didn't forbid his books until after his death and it is actual fact that Erasmus was corresponding with a friend I believe a Cardinal in the Vatican. That Cardinal would send him readings from B. Erasmus only affiliation while alive was that of an RCC though they condemned him later. Yes but Erasmus wasn't translating the Bible into the language of the People but rather producing a Greek text. The RCC never prohibited the Bible they just made it illegal for the layperson to read suggesting that they should trust the church to interpet Scripture for them.

 

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I disagree with you.

Erasmus had much more fellowship with the reformers.

 

Erasmus did have more fellowship with the reformers than with RCC but the fact remains he was a former Catholic priest and while working on and compiling the TR he was in correspondence with an RCC Cardinal in the Vatican.

 

Not that pretty much anyone outside of the clergy or ruling classes could read anyway...

 

Now that's a real compliment to all the English and European people of the day. I guess it was the Catholics that invented language as well. Can the Catholics trace their lines back to the tower of Babel, where the different languages came from?

 

This statement is quite ridiculous. I was a Catholic for twenty years. Your statement is akin to saying that 100 years from now people will look down the annals of history and say that DHK was a Catholic, and that somehow has a bearing on my writings and work. This is pure hogwash. Erasmus was not a Catholic in the light that you are painting him. He was a scholar in search of the truth, one of the most brilliant scholars of his time. His obsession for collecting manuscripts of the New Testament led him on travels far and wide. He was no devout Catholic. Catholicism had nothing to do with his research. The fact that he knew a cardinal gave him access to the Vaticanus. But he didn't use it because he knew it was flawed.

 

Now that's a real compliment to all the English and European people of the day.</font>[/QUOTE]Yeah, but it's true! I have absolutely no idea what your point is here?

 

Why doesn't RC use TR as text for NT today?
Ciniquy was a former Catholic and therefore is he accepted by Rc today?

Martin Luther was a former Catholic too.

 

Is Martin Luther known as a Catholic or a Lutheran (follower of the teachings of Luther--his own teachings)?

 

Now that's a real compliment to all the English and European people of the day.</font>[/QUOTE]Yeah, but it's true! I have absolutely no idea what your point is here? </font>[/QUOTE]I don't believe your point is valid.
Tyndale was one of Erasmus's students. To one of the Bishops of that time he proclaimed his the ambition of his life that drove him in his work for the Lord. Here is what he said:

The fact of the matter is, it is not just the clergy and the leaders of the country that could read and write. It was the goal of Tyndale to put the Bible into the hands of the common person. Notice that Tyndale himself mentions "the plowman." There were dozens of sects outsided the Catholic Church that already had the Bible and were vigoroulsy preaching it with little or no seminary training. There were anabaptists and other groups that had a heritage stemming from the Waldenses which according to the Catholics own historians existed for the first 1200 years of early church history. All of these people were not illiterate. This is what your post infers. To infer that only the so-called clergy were literate is highly arrogant.
DHK

 

Martin Luther never gave up his priesthood of RC until he died, as far as I know.

 

Martin Luther was ordained a priest and a priest he died.

He was/is a heretic in the eyes of the RCC.

 

Luther was neither as the RCC didnot exist until Trent and he despised the name "Lutheran." Instead, he considered himself an Evangelical Catholic.

 

That is why the surface denomination doesn't mean very much even in the case of Erasmus.

 

Yes! It fits all of the definitions and it is a cult!

 

Care to elaborate?

DHK, I was referring to the bulk of the European population in the Dark and Middle Ages, who were illiterate. Being able to 'read the Bible for themselves' would have been irrelevant to them since they were wholly unable to read anything for themselves.

 

Cult

A religion or religious sect generally considered to be extremist or false, with its followers often living in an unconventional manner under the guidance of an authoritarian, charismatic leader.

A system or community of religious worship and ritual.

The formal means of expressing religious reverence; religious ceremony and ritual.

A usually nonscientific method or regimen claimed by its originator to have exclusive or exceptional power in curing a particular disease.

Obsessive, especially faddish, devotion to or veneration for a person, principle, or thing.
The object of such devotion.