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excesses are recorded. Official Catholic records provide presentation of their character, and in trying to portray them with extraordinary confessions of wickedness in the whole Christian a pious past the Church developed a doctrinal facade that brazenly clergy, and the implications surrounding this knowledge begin to and deceptively presents them as devout. assume major new proportions when considered in light of the With the late-20th-century model of the papacy in one's mind, it central Church claim of unquestionable piety in the clerical is difficult to imagine what it would have been like in the 16th or hierarchy. 14th centuries, let alone the 10th or the eighth. The now-called The editorial committees of the Catholic Encyclopedia claim expounders of "Christian virtue" were brutal killers, and "crimes that their volumes are "the exponent of Catholic truth" (preface), against the faith were high treason, and as such were punishable and what is presented in this overview is assembled primarily with death" (Catholic Encyclopedia, Farley ed., xiv, p. 768). from those records and without prejudice. In the same spirit, we Popes waded through rivers of blood to attain their earthly also have available several papal diaries, letters and reports from objectives and many personally led their episcopal militia into the foreign ambassadors at the Holy See to their governments, field of battle. The Church ordered its "secular arm" to force its monastic documents, senatorial Roman records as well as access dogma upon humanity by "mass murder" (The Extermination of to the official and ancient registers of the ecclesiastical courts of | the Cathars, Simonde de Sismondi, 1826), and "the clergy, London. Also of great help in this investigation was the discharging in each district the functions of local state officials, availability of an original version of seem never to have quite regained the Diderot's Encyclopédie, a tome that Pope religious spirit" (Catholic Encyclopedia, Clement XIII (1758-69) ordered destroyed Farley ed., i, p. 507). Apologetic immediately after its publication in 1759. contributors to Christian history vainly try to These documents uniformly report a portray an air of sophistry about a papal past condition of centuries of extraordinary that scandalised Europe for centuries and debasement in the papal hierarchy and, when one that is clearly unsophisticated and considered in conjunction with the The pretended primitive. circumstances of their production, their holiness and piety of As the line of popes begins obscurely, we contents can only be classed as astounding. . shall begin our assessment in the year 896 The pretended holiness and piety of popes as popes as publicly when "a body of nobles with swinish and publicly presented today is not represented in i brutal lusts, many of whom could not write the records of history, and that provides presented today is not even their own names" (Annals of Hincmar, proof of the dishonesty of the Church's own represented in the Archbishop of Reims; pub. c. 905), captured portrayal. A the papacy and drew it to a close 631 years Pious Catholic historian and author records of history, and later in 1527 when, under the Bishop Frotheringham extended this summary of Christian leaders up to his time: "Many of the popes were men of the most abandoned lives. Some were magicians (occultists); others were noted for sedition, war, slaughter and profligacy of manners, for avarice and simony. Others were not even members of Christ, but the basest of criminals and enemies of all godliness. Some were children of their father, the Devil; most were men of blood; some raised to the papal chair. In his blind were not even priests. Others were rage, Stephen not only abused the heretics. If the pope be a heretic, he is ipso facto no pope." memory of Formosus but also treated his body with indignity. (The Cradle of Christ, Bishop Frotheringham, 1877; Pope Stephen was strangled in prison in the summer of 897, and see also Catholic Encyclopedia, xii, pp. 700-703, passim, the six following popes (to 904) owed their elevation to the published under the imprimatur of Archbishop Farley) struggles of the rival political parties. Christophorus, the last of them, was overthrown by Sergius III (904-911)." And heretics they were, with many popes publicly admitting (Catholic Encyclopedia, ii, p. 147) hall caa Tha ral subterfuges of Pope Clement VII (1523-1534), Rome fell to the army of Emperor Charles V. In this brief evaluation of just a few popes of these centuries, we read: "On the death of Pope Formosus (896) there began for the papacy a time of the deepest humiliation, such as it has never been experienced before or since. After the successor of Formosus, Boniface VI, had ruled only fifteen days, Stephen VII [VI] was that provides proof of the dishonesty of the Church's own portrayal. holiness and piety of popes as publicly presented today is not represented in the records of history, and that provides proof of the dishonesty of the Church's own portrayal. And heretics they were, with many popes publicly admitting disbelief in the Gospel story, as we shall see. These facts are well known to Catholic historians who dishonestly tell their readers that the popes were virtuous and competent men with "soaring religious minds" (The Papacy, George Weidenfeld & Nicolson Ltd, London, 1964). The reality of the matter is that they were intent only upon their own interests, not those of God, and cultivated a system of papal vice more assiduously than Catholic writers of Church history dare to reveal openly. They were resented by the laity and, when better economic conditions awakened the minds of a developing European middle class, there was widespread rebellion against them. Christian records show that popes were clearly a long way removed from the modern-day Such periods of "deepest humiliation" to the papacy were quite recurrent, and have been even into the 21st century when the extent of priesthood paedophilia was publicly exposed (Apology of Pope John Paul II, March 2002). It was Pope Stephen VII (VD, "a gouty and gluttonous old priest" (Bishop Liutprand of Cremona, c. 922-972), who ordered the rotting corpse of Pope Formosus to be exhumed from its grave of eight months, tied upright in a chair and put on trial for transgressions of the canons. In front of his putrefying body and dressed in purple and gold regalia stood the pope, his bishops, the nobles of Rome and Lamberto of Tuscany. 34 = NEXUS The pretended www.nexusmagazine.com DECEMBER 2006 — JANUARY 2007