Vicarius filii Dei is still making the rounds apparently.

Bob
"And thus my point EACH LETTER HAD A NUMBER and that was considered when "calculating the number of a name" "
Well no.
V=5
I=1
C=100
A=no number
R=no number
I=1
U=5
S=no number

F=no number
I=1
L=50
I=1
I=1

D=500
E=no number
I=1

 

Tragicpizza
"Thanks, by the way, for being the ONLY one to even acknowledge my post."
Well this Bob fellow has been drawing a lot of attention.

 

Bob
"Or did I miss something?"
Numerology 101 perhaps?
In numerology each letter has a number. The moment you start to have letters without numbers it is no longer numerology.

"EVEN the RCC admits that Papal Rome WAS the WORLD Power to follow Pagan Rome AND that Papal Rome covered more lands, held more political power and controlled more of secular life than Pagan Rome ever did."
Nonsense, the Byzantine empire, the Persian empire and Islam are all better candidates for the term next worldpower.
The Holy Roman empire and the Franks both claimed the title of heir to the Roman empire and both were supported in their claims by the papacy of the time. Papal Rome covered a large section of Italy at one time and it's bishops also controlled nice tracts of land across western europe, but it never came near the pagan roman empire.
The pope's political power was huge at it's height but not as huge as that of the more capable roman emperors.
The size of the pope's impact on secular life is debatable, it was significant, but a lot of the huge changes between medieval Europe and the roman empire were caused by Christianity in general not by the papacy.

 

Bob
I'm not a Calvinist, no wonder I missed all those vital clues.

 

Bill
"But I can still type a lot when I get the notion!"
You have no idea how jealous I am of you. I can barely type with 2 fingers and that makes writing books and articles a looong proces.
It feels good to know that you are still watching this thread.

 

Last night I reread a large number of my own posts across this whole board and came to the conclusion that I must seem highly peculiar to you all and probably a liar.
(I am truly in need of a graemlin that bashes something against his head right now).
When you read everything in the right order however, my life turns out to be quite boring.

Worth mentioning.
I promissed to the man who is my employer and my preacher that when on the internet I would not look at the naked 'ladies' and not reveal any concrete information about myself or my church. So the following will be purposefully vague in a number of spots. (and will not contain links to websites with naked ladies)

So without further ado: The story of my life (the mini-version)

 

Some of my ancestors were Huguenots who emigrated to the Netherlands to flee RC persecution in France (my last name is French, it is however not the one I post under. I simply pulled that one out of a travelers guide about Normandy, apparently a family Mioque runs a restaurant in Le Havre).
I was born in the 60's and if the baptist tradition hadn't been opposed to childbaptism I would have been baptised in the same (independant fundamental...you know the drill) baptist church I still visit today.
I was bored with the services in that church all throughout the 70's and was greatfull that my grades were such that I could go to university somewhere else, anywhere else.

 

There were only 2 questions. What was I going to study? And how was I going to sell that to mum and dad?
The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. So the 2 things that fascinated me most, were 2 things that we did't have in my church. A suitably lurid history and lots of kitschy art. So I decided to try to get a degree in those 2 things. My parents were not pleased....
One is after all supposed to use one's higher education to get vocational skills and not waste it on impressive but ultimately 'useless' degrees.
So naturally I did the opposite of what my parents wanted and eventually got myself 2 'useless' doctorates.
To be honest, the only reason I am not unemployed is that our church needed a new caretaker shortly after I graduated and I got the (minimum wage) post mostly to keep me out of trouble.
I may act cynical about my provincial little church at times, but these folks have proven to care strongly about me and I'm very fond of them.
So now I'm the 'verger'/librarian of my church. A job that leaves me with plenty of spare time to write the ocasional article.

 

In Dutch university cities there is always a shortage of suitable living space for students and in the early 80's many Dutch students simply claimed empty buildings for habitation (krakers, I think squatters is the English word for them).
I was living in a nice boarding house, that had a suitably Christian hospita (arranged for by one of the church elders). But I made a bunch of friends who were squatters (and communists and vegetarians and chainsmokers and political activists etc). They had regular streetbrawls with the local law enforcement and I happily participated
I learned 3 important lessons. Being hit with a club by a policeman hurts I can dirty any target I want within 40 metres with a slingshot and a tomato Leftwing political radicals generally make not good friends

 

To finish my story (YES FINALLY).
Students are always going weird places, because they can find a job there, or because they are interning overthere, or because they are researching that peculiar spot overhere.
In the 7 years of my study I have done all those things in a number of Roman Catholic institutions. My specialty in both fields of history I studied was Roman Catholicism, so it seemed the natural thing to do.

The KDC (Katholiek Documentatie Centrum= Catholic Documentation Centre). It's an archive with as purpose to preserve, collect and make accessible of documentation on catholic life in the Netherlands from the beginning of the nineteenth century up to the present day.
http://www.kdc.kun.nl/geschindex.html
and
The museum of religious art in Uden.
http://www.museumvoorreligieuzekunst.nl/
are 2 of the more glamorous locations were I dwelled.
But I also spend some time in a bishop's palace and as a cleaner in a convent/retirement home for old monks.
That's the place I met Hans Kolvenbach who is knicknamed the 'black pope', he is the head of the Jesuit order and supposedly the 2nd most powerful man in the RC church.
I helped him arrange the transfer of the contents of 2 convents that had closed to the proper destinations.
Including the earlier mentioned KDC. This was not as easy as it sounds, figuring out what is usefull for the KDC is so counter intuïtive that the standard advice usually was: "put everything you want to throw away in one box, put everything you want to give to the KDC in another box afterwards switch the boxes!".
Hans was so happy with my help that he invited me over for a behind the scenes tour of the Vatican. And to tie this all in with the thread, on that trip did I get to see 11 papal tiara's and none of those had Vicarius Filii Dei on them.