We have finally reached the part of Christendom history that the fog begins to lift and history becomes more clear. Pagan Rome will now be defeated by Constantine, and in my opinion with the help of his mother Helena. Helena was a woman of low birth and she was probably born around 248 AD. Living through three great persecutions of Christians by emperors: Decius (249 AD–251 AD) Gallus (251 AD–253 AD) Valerian (253 AD–260 AD). HELENA MOTHER OF CONSTANTINE St. Ambrose said she was a daughter of an innkeeper, and a Greek speaker in Turkey; she was probably a "stable-maid." Her husband, Constantine’s father, Constantius Chlorus, was Serbian by birth. They met while Chlorus was still a soldier with no political rank. Helena and Chlorus may have been married (about 270 AD), but it isn’t clear. Some refer to her as a concubine, with no legal marriage but also his wife. If Hellena were a secret Christian, they could have been married secretly by a Catholic priest, and never ratified by a pagan ceremony. This would clear up her being both. Chlorus divorced her in 294, as a political move, most saying her humble origins were a liability, but more likely for political reasons.. They were married for more than 20 years. Constantine was born in 272 AD. Helena was banished, as a “concubine,” after the divorce and left to live alone near the court of Diocletian. She suffered like that for many years, but she was close to her son who also lived at the court. Whether Helena was born to a Christian family and kept it secret, or whether she converted later in life, we don’t know. Church Historian Eusibius says she was converted by her son Constantine, after he became Emperor.
Plymouth, Massachusetts, is thought to be the site of America’s first Thanksgiving meal.
Plymouth, where the Mayflower Pilgrims landed and founded the first colony in 1620 also became the first town to hold “Pope Night,” (Nov.5) three years later. It was far from a celebration of the Bishop of Rome, it was to mock the Pope and Catholics. Pope Night was a vehicle for expressing anti-Catholic sentiment even more than Guy Fawkes Day, which was its inspiration. Guy Fawkes Day was commemorated every 5th of November in England, recalling the supposed failed attempt of Catholic plotters, including Guy Fawkes, to blow up the House of Lords in London.
By the 1770s, just before the American Revolution, Pope Night had taken on so many traditions that it was difficult for participants, especially in Boston, to give it up. Eventually, this tradition changed into a more benign celebration on Oct. 31st that we now know as Halloween.
Did members of a government faction set up the plot themselves? So they could crack down on Catholics?
The Gunpowder Plot (Nov. 5, 1605) was supposedly a conspiracy by a number of Catholics. The best known of these was Guy Fawkes, but Robert Catesby was allegedly the mastermind, second only to the Jesuit superior named Henry Garnet. The gunpowder laid in a cellar under Parliament for about 6 months, before it was even discovered.
The real history of the plot may never be known. But the evidence lies heavily that Lord Cecil and his minions were the real plotters.
It was an elaborate misadventure. The conspirators were supposed to have rented a house and from within this house they dug a tunnel to Parliament. But before completing the tunnel and just reaching the foundations of Parliament-- they stopped. They discovered a cellar under parliament. Thus instead of tunneling, they snuck huge barrels of gunpowder into the cellar, where the barrels remained waiting for 6 months, until Parliament's first day of opening.
The government claimed to have discovered the plot 10 days before Parliament was to meet.
Lord Monteagle, a Catholic, got an anonymous letter delivered by an unknown man. The letter, couched in incoherent language, warned him that it would be wise to be absent for the opening ceremony of Parliament.
Monteagle took the letter at once to Lord Cecil, the king being out of town on a hunt, and Cecil figured out its meaning and gave it to the king five days later.
The myth persists of Catholics approving slavery, because there were individual Catholics who supported slavery or owned slaves or some nations, even Catholic Portugal promoted it.
If you ever see the movie "The Mission" the controversy of ownership of the land of the Mission was whether it was Spanish or Portuguese rule. Although it isn't the main part of the story, it involved slavery, which was illegal under Spanish law but not under Portuguese. Slavery was similar to today's issue of abortion, some Catholic countries outlaw abortion, while some so called Catholic countries allow it. Both slavery and abortion are human rights issues.
Scholars, with an axe to grind, use bad Catholics or wayward Catholic countries as “proof” that the Church accepted slavery, without drawing the necessary distinction that what individual Catholics, or "Catholic" countries may do, does not necessarily reflect the official teaching of the Catholic Church.
After the death of Emperor Carus (282 - 283 AD), who was struck by lightning on a campaign in Persia, Diocletian became the new Roman emperor from 284 AD to 305 AD. Like many Emperors before him, he left Christians alone in the beginning of his rule. He mainly wanted Rome to return to stability. For over a hundred years there had been a constant stream of emperors, usually tragically overthrown. This led to economic hardships and weakened borders with barbarians and Persians constantly hammering at the outlining territories. He reformed the taxation and economy, as well as restructured the Empire. Although not fully successful, his reforms slowed down the decline of the Empire. He feared the civil wars of the past returning. His insight was that the succession of power was unstable, The senate’s power had been diminished and the Emperor’s power increased. He was the sole ruler of Rome. But he wanted help ruling. He arranged for the Empire to be divided into the Western Empire and the Eastern Empire. Diocletian would still be the ultimate ruler, but he appointed men to rule different districts. Diocletian ruled the Eastern Empire, and set up co-emperors, called “Augustus,” one of the West– Maximian and one of the East himself. Maximian was a good friend of Diocletian in the army, a man he could trust. Both were soldiers. Maximian was more a man of action, and military commander, while Diocletian was more political. It seems that Diocletian wanted an able man to be his head of the army.
Each Augustus (eastern and western emperors) had a subordinate, called a Caesar, to share in the rule, and theoretically to succeed the Augustus, if he should die, or resign. The rule of four was called a “tetrarchy''. Two generals, Galerius and Constantius, became Caesars– Galerius under Diocletian in the east, and Constantius (father of Constantine – liberator of Christianity) under Maximian in the west.
Here is an excellent discussion on history and theology from a Protestant convert Dr. David Anders with one of the few orthodox Jesuits, Fr. Mitch Pacwa.
Actor Shia LaBeouf converted to Catholicism. I hope he is sincere.
In a sit down interview with “Bishop Barron Presents” (below). Bishop Barron talks to the actor about his upcoming acting role in “Padre Pio,” which put him on the path to conversion.
I feel I need to say that I have a problem with Bishop Barron's practical Universalist views. Many consider him orthodox, but he is very wrong on his ideas about salvation.
We live in troubled times. We don't have a good pope.
Pope Francis frankly is doing a very bad job as pope. He has entertained pro-abortion politicians, like Nancy Pelosi, with no correction...etc... the list is long. He has recently changed the teaching on the death penalty in the Catechism. But a catechism is not an official use of Papal Infallibility. Catechisms are summaries of the Faith that also contain theological opinions of their times, and can be inaccurate.
As pointed out in the introduction of the classic catechism of the council of Trent:
Catechism of the Council of Trent- Fifteenth printing, TAN Books, Introduction XXXVI: “Official documents have
occasionally been issued by Popes to explain certain points of Catholic
teaching to individuals, or to local Christian communities; whereas the
Roman Catechism comprises practically the whole body of Christian
doctrine, and is addressed to the whole Church. Its teaching is not infallible; but it holds a place between approved catechisms and what is de fide.”
Catechism can be corrected.
Sometimes the corrections are to clarify in support Sacred Tradition, but in the case of Pope Francis, he is seems to obfuscate the issues. In any case, he has changed the new Catechism to make the death penalty "inadmissible" . This has opened a can of worms.
Is he saying that the Old Testament's use of the death penalty was immoral? I don't think so. But we have yet to have a full clarification of what he exactly means, and its connotations to the history of the issue.
The Catechism is not some kind of Super Dogma. It is to be taken as a whole, as a sure norm, but there may be some room for improvement.
In his book Introduction to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Cardinal Ratzinger ( later Pope Benedict XVI) wrote on the authority of the Catechism :
"This brings us to the question already mentioned before, regarding the
authority of the Catechism. In order to find the answer, let us first
consider a bit more closely its juridical character. We could express
it in this way: analogously to the new Code of Canon Law, the Catechism
is de facto a collegial work; canonically, it falls under the special
jurisdiction of the Pope, inasmuch as it was authorized for the whole
Christian world by the Holy Father in virtue of the supreme teaching
authority invested in him. . . .
This does not mean that the catechism is a sort of super-dogma,
as its opponents would like to insinuate in order to cast suspicion on
its as a danger to the liberty of theology. What significance the
Catechism really holds for the common exercise of teaching in the
Church may be learned by reading the Apostolic Constitution Fidei depositum,
with which the Pope promulgated it on October 11, 1992--exactly thirty
years after the opening of the Second Vatican Council: "I acknowledge
it [the Catechism] as a valid and legitimate tool in the service of
ecclesiastical communion, as a sure norm for instruction in the faith."
The individual doctrine which the
Catechism presents receive no other weight than that which they already
possess. The weight of the Catechism itself lies in the whole. Since it transmits what the Church teaches, whoever rejects it as a whole separates himself beyond question from the faith and teaching of the Church" [pp. 25-27].
So, the Catechism contains teachings of the Church without elevating
them to a doctrinal status nor above what they already have. So, other authoritative sources are needed to establish the
doctrinal weight of any particular teaching in the Catechism.
This brings us to Fr. Schmitz' new project. I think this podcast can do a lot of good. I don't mean to denigrate in my above comments the new Catechism, but we must put it in its truthful place. While important and extremely useful, it is not infallible nor Holy Scripture.
Fr. Mike Schmitz is famous for his "Bible in a Year" podcast. It was number one podcast in the world last year.
I'm looking forward to is a new podcast called "Catechism in a Year." It will start in January 2023.
Emperor Decius, was the emperor of the Roman Empire from 249 to 251 AD–not a long reign. But he did a lot of damage and something new. He launched an empire-wide persecution of the Church. Not since Nero was there such a universal persecution, before this, it was usually just local and sporadic. Nero outlawed Christianity and the law stayed on the books, but was only enforced when politically convenient, usually by regional authorities
During his reign, Decius attempted to revitalize the Roman Empire, in January 250, which led to persecution, because he blamed the slow decline of the empire on Christians. He began by killing Pope Fabian, and other bishops. In the past, Nero and Domitian had killed popes, but it was more by chance, than by design.
I recently saw a post on FB mocking Christian miracles.
I believe miracles happen, but some "Christians" make it into a superstition or a business. They DEMAND a healing from God. Magic is when one claims power over the world according to one's own will, not God's.
Why does God allow bad things to happen ? I don't know.
But when we pray we ASK not demand a miracle. Prayer is always submissive to God's will. That is not to say that one can not keep praying, but it is pleading and asking not demanding. Jesus even said to persevere in asking.
Luke 18:1 : "Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray at all times and not lose heart"
Here is an example of a miracle below. A woman was healed from being blind here in Phoenix, about 5 years ago.
There are millions of miracles all over the world. But in the Catholic Church it needs to be documented to classified a miracle. Meaning -- if it is an illness, the illness needs to be well documented by medical science, and it needs to be documented as an unexplainable healing, again by scientific investigation.
On the Journey with Matt and Ken and Kenny, Episode 99:
Matt Swaim and former Baptist pastor Ken Hensley are joined by Kenny Burchard, a former Foursquare Church pastor, to begin a series discussing what led each of them to embrace Catholic teaching on Mary.
Ken and Kenny share how they used to preach about Mary as Protestant pastors, why they used to think about her as unimportant, and what it was that began to open their hearts to start thinking of Mary as more than just a background character in the Bible.
Fr. Chris Alar explains the incredible life, miracles, and incorruptibility of St. Charbel (or Sharbel) Makhlouf of the Maronite Rite in Lebanon. His feast day is July 24.
Since 1950, the year the monastery began to formally record the
miraculous healings, they have archived more than 29,000 miracles, Matar
said. Prior to 1950, miracles were verified only through the witness of
a priest. Now, with more advanced medical technology available, alleged
miracles require medical documents demonstrating the person's initial
illness and later, their unexplainable good health.
Astrophysicist Hugh Ross, the founder of Reasons To Believe, talks to The Babylon Bee about extraterrestrial alien life, UFOs, and the reasons from science to believe in the God of the Bible. They also talk about how faster than light travel would completely kill you dead.
Pope Fabian reigned from 236 AD to 250 AD as captain of the Bark of Peter, while a relative calm descend on the Church. He tended to the Church with a missionary spirit, appointing 7 missionary bishops to go throughout France, bringing them the Good News. Most of them were martyred, however not by Rome this time, but by pagan barbarians.
Origen of Alexandria. (185 AD – 253 AD) became famous for a debate he had with a pagan philosopher, at this time. Christianity had grown to the point that pagan philosophers felt the need to address this movement. Origen is still considered to be one of the greatest Bible scholars of all time. He was a teacher at, The Catechetical School of Alexandria, which was the oldest catechetical school in the world. It functioned similarly to a college of today. St. Jerome records that The Catechetical School of Alexandria was founded by St. Mark – the writer of the second Gospel.
Under the leadership of the scholar Pantaenus, the school of Alexandria became an important institution of religious learning, where students were taught by scholars such as Athenagoras, Clement of Alexandria , Didymus, and the great Origen, who was considered the father of theology, and a leader in the field of commentary and comparative Biblical studies. Many scholars visited the school of Alexandria to exchange ideas and to communicate directly with its scholars.
The culture shock between pharmacy school and the real world is mind-boggling.
I assumed that pharmacy school would largely reflect the real world. How wrong I was! The culture shock between pharmacy school and the real world is mind-boggling. figure image
Dennis Miller, RPhStudents graduate with egos that professors have built to stratospheric levels and with a belief that they are God’s gift to our healthcare system. Then, in the real world, they are immediately confronted with the realization that the only thing that matters is how fast they fill prescriptions.
What about you? Did you graduate from pharmacy school with noble ideas about promoting health? Did you find yourself becoming more skeptical, the more you experienced the real world?
Here’s my list of what shocked me the most. What would yours look like? (This is not a rhetorical question. Please write and tell me.) Pills rather than prevention
1. I was shocked to see that our healthcare system prefers to throw pills at people with elevated blood pressure, elevated blood sugar (type 2 diabetes), elevated cholesterol, and other diseases of modern civilization rather than aggressively focus on a diet of whole, nonprocessed foods, lifestyle change, and weight loss.
The Merck Manual (16th edition, p. 984) says that most cases of hypertension and type 2 diabetes are preventable: “Thus weight reduction will lower the BP [blood pressure] of most hypertensives, often to normal levels, and will allow 75% of type 2 diabetics to discontinue medication.” Ninety percent of diabetics have diagnoses that fall under the heading of type 2.
I was recently visiting a friend. He was just finishing the movie “Back to the Future.” I asked if I was disturbing him? He said “ No, I already watched it yesterday. I was just re-watching it.” He turned the sound off as it continued to visually play in the background. We had a conversation as the movie played. Just random stuff. He is a pretty strong Protestant, and religious topics come up a lot between us, but this time, not so much. As we continued to talk, he noticed a part of the movie– now the TV was playing “Back to the Future, part II”, which followed right after the first one. I remembered the first one pretty well, seeing it a few times in the cinema, in my youth. But the second movie, I think, I watched once on TV, and remembered hardly anything. He filled me in what had happened because it was nearing the end and approaching the climax. We both started to watch together with sound as Doc explains the TIMELINE.
Here is part of a correspondence I had recently. People like to throw out a lot of accusations, if you are Catholic. Some may have a half truth, others are just wrong. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I think I answered your point on "Petra" and "Petros," but regardless, it isn't so necessary to prove Peter to be head of the Apostles.
Let's look at the passage again.
Mathew 16:17-19 "…17 Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by My Father in heaven.
18 And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.
19 I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven."..."
To follow up on my point of lineage, ie. tracing your church back to Jesus through history, the verse "and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it." By saying the Catholic Church fell away until, whenever your church started, then you are saying "Hades" "Hell" or "death" have prevailed until the 20th century.
Here is part of a correspondence I had recently. The person was using the typical argument that Protestants like to use drawing a distinction in Greek between "Petros" and "Petra,"
If you have never heard the Protestant claim, it's basically that when Jesus says "You are Peter [Petros] and upon this Rock [petra] I will build my Church" the Greek word Petros means "little pebble" while petra means "big rock". The Protestant is arguing that Jesus was not identifying Peter with "Rock," but rather contrasting Peter's littleness with the bigness of the Rock (i.e. Jesus). Therefore Jesus was not founding His Church on Peter.
In the Greek New Testament "Petros" is always used for Peter.(162 times).
Where did the notion that Peter means "little pebble" even come from?
Some Protestant apparently dug up this distinction from a long outdated form of Greek that wasn't even in use at the time of the Apostles (i.e. not Biblical Greek). This detail alone makes the Protestant argument invalid.
There are two types of Greek: Attic Greek, and Koine Greek. In Attic Greek, there was a slight difference in meaning between "Petros" and "Petra," but in Koine Greek (the dialect used in the New Testament) they were synonyms. A place to look this up is D. A. Carson’s commentary on Matthew 16 in the Expositors Bible Commentary. He makes this point very well, and he is a highly-respected Evangelical Bible scholar.
Most Protestant scholars have rightly rejected this theory as well. But it always comes up with Evangelical friends. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If I understand you correctly, are you saying Peter is not the person Jesus will buildHis Church on?
Below is part of an email exchange I've had with a member of an Adventist group. Particularly a member of The World Wide Church of God . (Seventh Day Adventist fall with in this category too.)
Adventists,
as most Protestants, tend to read the Bible without the context of history. They have
very little, if any, knowledge of the ancient Church and early Christian
history. They may know a lot about Jewish/Hebrew history but not Christian. There is over 2000 years of Christian history. But I am talking mainly about what is called the Apostolic Fathers-- the first 200 years of Christianity. Detached from history, it is hard to have correct doctrine.
One
thing I noticed about Adventist Protestants is they stress communal
worship on Saturday--the Sabbath, and not Sunday as most Christians do.
They think it is sinful to worship on Sunday and not Saturday as the
Jews do.
How did the early Christians understand the theory of keeping communal worshiping on Saturday?
"Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day."
In
other words St. Paul is saying : ' Don't let anyone intimidate you into
following the Jewish rituals about eating and drinking...nor their
feast-days, nor their celebration of the SABBATH.
These hundred years of turmoil were punctuated with persecutions. One of the most famous of the time was Cecilia.
St. Cecilia is the patroness of musicians and Church music because during her martyrdom, she sang to God. As we have said before, not too much is clear about this early part of Church history. We have pieced together as well as we could the story of St. Cecilia.
St. Cecilia’s feast day is celebrated on November 22nd.
The Mass of Saint Cecilia prays:
“Arise, soldiers of Christ, throw away the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.”
She is one of seven women, excluding the Blessed Virgin, commemorated by name in the Canon of the Mass. She is thought to have died in the mid to late 230’s AD, since she is linked with Pope Urban, who died 230 AD. Who was succeeded by a string of martyred popes, during this persecution.
Cecilia was given in marriage to a pagan youth named Valerian. She had been a Christian since childhood, doing penances and fasting, while invoking the saints, and angels, to guard her virginity. Making a vow of virginity to Jesus before her parents had betrothed her; she begged that her parents wouldn’t marry her off. Some mistakenly say when telling her story, that she was betrothed to an angel. But this is silly. She, like all consecrated virgins in the Church, was betrothed to Jesus Christ. The angel in the story was just her protector. Angels do not marry. Mark 12:25 “For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.”
After the death of the Roman Emperor, Marcus Arealius,180 AD, his son, Cammodus, inherited the throne. Commodus was not a stable person. One good thing he did was he temporarily halted Christian persecution. While his father never ordered a direct persecution of Christians, he did allow it to happen– usually by local rulers. Commodus’ leniency resulted in the release of Christians from the mines in Sardinia, among whom was a future pope. Cassius Dio, a first-hand witness, describes Emperor Commodus as: "not naturally wicked but, on the contrary, as guileless as any man that ever lived. His great simplicity, however, together with his cowardice, made him the slave of his companions, and it was through them that he at first, out of ignorance, missed the better [virtuous] life and then was led on into lustful and cruel habits, which soon became second nature."
Technical terms were still being developed when the New Testament was being written, and defined later for precision. For example The word for priest derives from the Greek presbyteros, which means elder or senior, although in the early Christian presbyteros could refer to a bishop or a priest. The English word "priest" is a derivative of the word presbyter.
The
word ‘catholic’ itself is not found in the Bible. However “KAΘ OΛHC”
(pronounced as ‘kath oles’) is found in the of Acts
9:31.
A
three word phrase from Acts 9:31 is “EKKΛHCIAI KAΘ OΛHC” (pronounced as
“ekklesiai kath oles”) which is Koine Greek for “church all over” or
“church universal.” Swap those words around and you get “universal
church.” This is exactly what the word Catholic means, the Universal
Church, i.e The Catholic Church. We will cover this more below.
While of course this reference isn't definitive but is does circumstantially point to the origins of the term "Catholic" for the true Church.
We have already heard of St. Irenaeus. He had traveled to Rome, with St. Polycarp, to discuss the date of Easter with the pope. This has been a debate between the western Church and the eastern Church. Both have good reasons for celebrating Easter at different dates. The problem was resolved with a compromise– the western Church would continue their tradition of celebrating Easter always on a Sunday, and the eastern Church would continue their tradition of celebrating it on the date according to their calendar.
Apollonius, martyr (185 AD) and defender of the faith, produced one of the most priceless documents of the early Church. He defended Chritianity before the Roman Senate. Apollonius was a Roman senator who was denounced as a Christian by one of his servants. He was arrested and brought to trial.
The Praetorian prefect, Sextus Tigidius Perenis, arrested him, also putting the slave to death– the informer. Perennis demanded that Apollonius denounce the faith, and when he refused, the case was remanded to the Roman senate. Apollonius wrote out his defense in one of the most eloquent documents defending Chritianity. Despite his articulate defense, Apollonius was condemned and beheaded.
The account in the Roman Martyrology (feastday 21 April) is as follows:
“At Rome, commemoration of Saint Apollonius, philosopher and martyr. Under the Emperor Commodus, he defended, before the Prefect Perennius and the Senate, the cause of the Christian faith in a finely argued address, and then, after being condemned to death, confirmed it by the witness of his blood.”
Here is a good account this relatively unknown saint from ucatholic:
