Theobald had been forced to clean up the mess caused by papal interference in the election of the Archbishop of York, and the Pope had also recognised the Irish Church in , much to Theobald's chagrin. Knowing the way Henry went about these things he once ordered Winchester to 'hold free and fair elections and elect my man Robert into the post' , he undoubtedly caused bad blood.
It is in this context that we must see Becket's elevation to the archbishopric. Everyone, Henry included, expected Becket to be a yes-man for the King. What no one realised was that Becket would take his new role quite so seriously. He had thrown himself into the job as Henry's chancellor with gusto, now he would do the same thing with the Church. He gave notice of this by resigning the chancellorship, much to everyone's surprise. The crunch came with Henry's attempts to deal with the problem of 'criminous clerks'. About one in six of the population of England were clergymen, many of whom were not ordained to the priesthood.
These lay clergy could claim the right to be tried in ecclesiastical courts like their ordained brethren, where they would invariably receive a more lenient sentence than if tried in the criminal courts of the land. For Henry, the problem was part and parcel of the need to restore order after the chaos of the tempus werre a term coined by the medieval chroniclers to describe the time of war and anarchy which marked the civil war between Stephen and Matilda , but for Becket, the King's concern over criminous clerks was a question of clerical immunity from secular jurisdiction.
The problem was brought to a head by cases such as that of Philip de Brois, a canon of Bedford who was acquitted in the court of the Bishop of Lincoln of the charge of murdering a knight. The Sheriff of Bedford attempted to re-open the case in the Royal court, and was furiously abused by Philip. Henry angrily demanded justice on the charge of homicide and on an additional charge of contempt.
Becket attempted to solve the problem by banishing Philip, but the whole affair merely showed up the woeful inadequacy of canon law in punishing robbers and murderers. Henry sought to solve this by proposing that clergy convicted of such serious crimes in the ecclesiastical courts should be deprived of the protection of the Church and handed over to the secular authorities for punishment.
It was a neat compromise, but though innocuous on the face of it, it contained the central implication that a man handed over to criminal law was no longer a clerk, undermining the whole basis of clerical immunity. This was why Becket could not accept it, and in this he was unanimously supported by his bishops.
In fact, it is highly likely that Theobald would not have agreed to this either. The letters of his clerk, John of Salisbury, tell of a case involving the murder of the Archbishop of York which Theobald dragged back from the criminal courts into ecclesiastical jurisdiction against Henry's will. After several months of wrangling, both sides met at the Council of Clarendon in January to discuss the issue.
There, Henry presented the bishops with the infamous Constitutions of Clarendon, a list of 16 clauses defining the relationship between secular and canon law of which clause 3 explicitly outlines the criminous clerks proposal. It was a closely worded document drawn up by Henry's legal hot-shots and was a deliberate attempt to wrong-foot the bishops into committing to something they had not previously agreed. For three days, the bishops refused to sign as Henry ranted and railed at them. Then, out of the blue, Becket told the bishops they had no choice but to give in.
He prevailed upon them to sign the document with him, then in a deliberate piece of theatre, he donned the garb of a penitent, imposed a fast upon himself and publicly repented of his oath. Why he chose this option is unclear. Becket's own letters say that he opposed the Constitutions in his name only in order to divert the King's wrath from the bishops. This is as good an explanation as any. The king was incandescent. This, in his eyes, was the ultimate act of treachery and he was determined to exact revenge.
He tried to forestall Becket's action by getting the Constitutions ratified by the pope, but the pope prevaricated. Now the dispute entered a malevolent stage in which Henry was out to get Becket any way he could. In October , he had Becket condemned on trumped-up charges of contempt of court over a land dispute in Pagham, and ruled that the archbishop should forfeit all his goods. Henry exploded and is said to have uttered the words: This group says that the current Pope as well, perhaps, as some of his immediate predecessors were not legitimate.
Sedeprivationists say that the post-conciliar Popes were or are defective Popes in that, due to their supposed espousal of the "modernist heresy", their consent to become Pope was faulty or defective, so that they became potentially Pope, but did not attain to the papacy. Another tiny, extreme group of Vatican II opponents, known as conclavists , have appointed papal replacements: These groups were estimated to comprise not more than a few hundred followers worldwide.
The supremacy of the Pope, the usage of the term 'Holy Father' to refer to the Pope, and belief that he can make infallible pronouncements have been subject to criticism by other Christian denominations. In Catholic theology, papal infallibility is the dogma that the Pope is preserved from error when he solemnly promulgated, or declared, to the Church solely on faith or morals. This doctrine has a long history, [ citation needed ] but was not defined dogmatically until the First Vatican Council of In Catholic theology, papal infallibility was one of the channels of the Infallibility of the Church.
The Church teaches that the Papal infallibility on limited theological matters does not signify that the Pope was a man specially exempt from liability to sin. Critics say that this statement is self-contradictory. Adherents of the Church believe that only the Church can interpret the scriptures in the Bible ; the pope may be the final arbiter if there are differences. But according to the church's interpretation of 2 Peter , [] anyone can interpret the word of God by His guidance.
Mandatory priestly celibacy first appeared for the Spanish clergy at the Synod of Elvira in This was reinforced by the pope in the Directa Decretal in , which stated that it was derived from the Apostles. Mandatory celibacy was written into law for the entire clergy as a result of the Second Lateran Council in While requiring celibacy for bishops and priestmonks and excluding marriage by priests after ordination, the latter churches allow married men to be ordained to the priesthood and diaconate. The Latin Church also permits married men to be ordained as deacons.
The Latin Church has also been accepting married priests from specific religions into the priesthood in the 20th and 21st centuries. In the wake of the clergy sexual abuse scandals , some critics have charged that priestly celibacy was a contributing factor. Protestant apologists further argue that clerical celibacy violates the Biblical teaching in the First Epistle to Timothy: Such teachings come through hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron.
They forbid people to marry and order them to abstain from certain foods, which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and who know the truth. For everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving.
However, the Church's tradition of celibacy traces its beginnings to both Jesus, who encouraged his apostles to be celibate if they were able to do so, [ citation needed ] and to St. Paul , who wrote of the advantages celibacy allowed a man in serving the Lord. Clerical celibacy began to be enforced in papal decretals beginning with Pope Siricius d.
They [Jesus and Paul] glory in faith alone. They praise celibacy not because the chaste are more perfect than others because they are chaste, and not because they do not lust contrary to the command, but because they are free from the cares and tribulation of the flesh which Paul attributes to marriage [1 Corinthians 7: Confessional Lutherans, claiming the Bible as the only authority in all matters of Christian doctrine, [] [] [] [] [] criticize the tradition of forced celibacy:.
It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I am. But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion' verses The Bible says forbidding marriage and commanding people to abstain from certain foods are doctrines of demons 1 Timothy 4: Generally, Protestantism holds that celibacy is not a scriptural requirement for the ministry.
The Catholic Church has always ordained men in the clergy. Internal dissenters and dissidents, such as Call to Disobedience , have criticised the church's opposition to female ordination. As a result of feminism and other social and political movements that have removed barriers to the entry of women into professions that were traditionally male strongholds, since the fourth quarter of the 20th century, some women in a handful of countries have sought ordination into the Catholic priesthood: There is at least one organization that calls itself "Roman Catholic" that ordains women at the present time, Roman Catholic Womenpriests.
Official Catholic theology refers to the gender of Jesus as a reason for the purported discrimination against women. According to Roman Catholic thinking, the Priest is acting 'in persona Christi' that is, in the Person of Christ , and Christ took the body of a man, and therefore the priest must be a man: The Lord Jesus chose men viri to form the college of the twelve apostles, and the apostles did the same when they chose collaborators to succeed them in their ministry. The college of bishops, with whom the priests are united in the priesthood, makes the college of the twelve an ever-present and ever-active reality until Christ's return.
The Church recognises herself to be bound by this choice made by the Lord himself. For this reason the ordination of women is not possible []. Roman Catholic Womenpriests criticises the Church's teaching that women, by virtue of their sex, cannot image Christ, saying:. In February , German-speaking academic theologians submitted a document styled as Church calling for, among a long list of actions, "women in the ordained ministry".
This section, organized chronologically, covers some of the historical actions for which the Western church and the Catholic Church have been criticised. Before the 12th century, the Great Church [] gradually suppressed what it saw as heresy usually through a system of ecclesiastical proscription, excommunication , anathema , and imprisonment. During this time in history, an accusation of heresy could be construed as treason against lawful civil rule, and therefore punishable by death, though this penalty was not frequently imposed, as this form of punishment had many ecclesiastical opponents.
The Crusades were a series of military conflicts of a religious character waged by much of Christian Europe against external and internal threats. Crusades were fought against Muslims , pagan Slavs , Orthodox Christians , Mongols , Cathars , Hussites and political enemies of the popes. Elements of the Crusades were criticized by some from the time of their inception in For example, Roger Bacon felt the Crusades were not effective because, "those who survive, together with their children, are more and more embittered against the Christian faith.
From that time forward, the Crusades to recover Jerusalem and the Christian East were largely lost. Later, 18th century rationalists judged the Crusaders harshly. As recently as the s, Sir Steven Runciman published a highly critical account of the Crusades which referred to Holy War as "a sin against the Holy Ghost". During the Fourth Crusade Latin Crusaders murdered, raped and destroyed churches, and innocent Byzantine citizens. Medieval Europe consisted of hundreds of small states and principalities.
The Catholic Church, representing all of Western Christendom, encouraged crusades against Islamic controlled territories in Europe and in the Holy Land from through after Islam had conquered most of the Byzantine empire , including the Holy Land. The Inquisitions of Medieval Europe were partially born out of the effort to drive Muslims out of Europe, an effort which was partly successful. Recent popes, such as John Paul II and Benedict XVI, have worked for improved relations with other churches and religions by holding ecumenical and interfaith discussions trying to find common ground on certain issues.
During the Inquisition , the governments of Spain and Italy , and sometimes France prosecuted Protestant Christians who publicly dissented from key doctrines of the Catholic Faith. Believing that the souls of those deemed to be heretics were in danger of being consigned to hell, the authorities used whatever means they considered necessary to bring about a recantation to stop the spread of reformation. Although the Church originally condoned these proceedings, they were difficult to regulate, and abuses eventually caused the Pope to call for an end to them.
In the Middle Ages , religion played a major role in driving antisemitism. John Chrysostom published material that attacked Jewish Christians for participating in their old faith's rituals and traditions. Frequent uses of hyperbole and other rhetorical devices painted a harsh and negative picture of the Jews. This was largely ignored until the Jewish anti-Christian teachings began to surface in Muslim Andalusia in the 11th and 12th centuries. The Church responded by reviving, among others, " Adversus Judaeos "—Against the Jewish People, ultimately justifying their ejection from conquered Spanish lands.
Anthony Julius quotes the phrase, "Rejecter of Christ, their land has rejected them. Their dispersion is proof of their wickedness. For years of Christian-Jewish history, the charge of deicide has led to hatred, violence against and murder of Jews in Europe and America. It required Jews and Muslims to wear special dress or badges to enable them to be distinguished from Christians. They were also forbidden to hold any public offices.
The Protestant Reformation 16th century in Europe came about in no small part due to abuses of church practices by corrupt clergy in addition to these same theological disputes. Because Protestantism emerged from within the Catholic Church, and began as a protest against Catholic worldly practice and religious doctrine, the Papacy and Catholic rulers felt compelled to deal with Protestantism as a dangerous, destabilising influence in politics and society, as well as characterising Protestants as heretical and schismatic.
Within a few decades after the Reformation, governments in most of Europe sought to impose a particular religion, whether Catholicism or a variety of Protestantism, on all the population they ruled. Apart from outright war, members of the "wrong" church were often persecuted or driven into exile. In Catholic countries, the Spanish Inquisition and the Council of Troubles in the Habsburg Netherlands were among the bodies pursuing persecution by judicial means. Bartholomew's Day massacre of After a long peace following the Edict of Nantes in , Louis XIV reopened the issue in the late 17th century, and the persecution known as the Dragonnades was followed in by the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes and the expulsion of all French Protestants.
Religious refugees from both sides were common in many parts of Europe. The Vatican long remained opposed to the limited religious toleration that gradually became accepted in many parts of Europe.
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With the consolidation of Protestantism, the extirpation of 'heretics' became a much broader and more complex enterprise, complicated by the politics of territorial Protestant powers, especially in northern Europe. Persecution of Protestant groups ended only as Europe's rulers tired of fighting each other, despite the objections of the Pope, especially at the end of the Thirty Years' War.
German Catholics met the Nazi takeover with apprehension, as leading clergymen had been warning against Nazism for years. Adolf Hitler became chancellor on January 30, On March 23, his government was given legislative powers through the Enabling Act of , which was passed by all Reichstag except the Social Democrats and Communists the latter had already been banned. Before the Enabling Act was voted on, Hitler addressed the Reichstag , promising the Weimar Parliament that he would not interfere with the rights of the churches and stating that he attached the highest importance to cultivating and maintaining the friendliest relations with the Holy See.
With power secured in Germany, Hitler quickly broke this promise. The bishops' decision opened the way for a concordat between the Holy See and the nominally functioning Weimar Republic. The concordat was finally signed, by Pacelli for the Vatican and von Papen for Germany, on July 20 and ratified on September The Centre Party had been dissolved on July 6. The concordat gave the Catholic Church what it wanted in order to preserve the autonomy of ecclesiastical institutions and their religious activities, with full freedom of communication with Catholics in Germany for the Holy See and the bishops in all matters of their pastoral office article 4 , guarantees for the right to pastoral care in hospitals, prisons and similar institutions article 20 , and for the Catholic educational system articles ; it assured Hitler that the Church would end so-called political Catholicism.
It required newly appointed bishops to take an oath of loyalty to the German Reich and to the Land article 16 , excluded clergy and religious from membership of political parties article 32 , and required priests and religious superiors whose headquarters were within Germany to be German citizens articles Article 31 acknowledged the Church would not support political causes.
The war against Pope Francis
Nevertheless, Hitler routinely disregarded the concordat and permitted a persecution of the Catholic Church in Germany. The German bishops issued a collective pastoral on 19 August to endorse Hitler's support for Franco. Non abbiamo bisogno in and Mit brennender Sorge in , respectively. Mit brennender Sorge included criticisms of Nazism and racism. Joachim Fest , a biographer of Adolf Hitler, wrote that; "At first the Church was quite hostile and its bishops energetically denounced the "false doctrines" of the Nazis.
Its opposition weakened considerably in the following years [after the Concordat] [-] Cardinal Bertram developed an ineffectual protest system [-] Resistance.. In general they [both churches] attempted merely to assert their own rights and only rarely issued pastoral letters or declarations indicating any fundamental objection to Nazi ideology. The relationship between Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust has long been disputed [Note 1] , with some scholars arguing that he kept silent during the Holocaust , while others have argued that he saved thousands if not tens or hundreds of thousands of Jews.
The movement of liberation of the world from the Jews is a movement for the renewal of human dignity. Omniscient and omnipotent God stands behind this movement". On 14 March , Slovakia seceded from Czechoslovakia and allied itself, as demanded by Germany, with Hitler's coalition.
On 1 October , the priest Jozef Tiso , leader of the Slovak People's Party and until then prime minister of the new state, became its president. Tiso assumed the office in defiance of the Pope, and the Holy See immediately published a statement speaking of its grave misgivings.
She knew that what "keeps things going" in the Church is something more than the clergy
On 12 April , the Slovak bishops had a pastoral letter read in all churches, protesting against the HSLS government's deportation of Jewish fellow-citizens to German-controlled Poland. After the end of communism in Russia, the Russian Orthodox Church experienced a resurgence. The recent expansion of the Catholic population in Russia strained the Catholic-Russian Orthodox relationship. The Catholic Church holds that, "if a non-Catholic Christian, for reasons of conscience and having been convinced of Catholic truth, asks to enter into the full communion of the Catholic Church, this is to be respected as the work of the Holy Spirit and as an expression of freedom of conscience and of religion.
In such a case, it would not be a question of proselytism in the negative sense that has been attributed to this term. This perspective naturally requires the avoidance of any undue pressure: In January , allegations of priests sexually abusing children were widely reported in the news media.
It became clear that the officials of various Catholic dioceses were aware of some of the abusive priests, and shuffled them from parish to parish sometimes after psychotherapy , in some cases without removing them from contact with children. A survey of the 10 largest U.
The report does not state how many of these have been proven in court. Some of these reassignments were egregious, the worst leading to the resignation of Cardinal Bernard Law from the Boston archdiocese. Victims of such abuse filed lawsuits against a number of dioceses, resulting in multi-million dollar settlements in some cases.
Similar allegations of abuse in Ireland led to the publication of the Ferns report in , which stated that appropriate action was not taken in response to the allegations. In response, in June , the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops initiated strict new guidelines "zero tolerance" for the protection of children and youth in Catholic institutions across the country.
According to the nationalist critique, Catholicism poses a threat to sovereignty by virtue of its internationalist structure, headquartered in Rome.
Can Pope Francis clean up God’s bank?
In the history of the Catholic Church in England and Wales , when King Henry VIII established the Church of England , he chiefly objected to having to appeal to a foreign entity the papacy in order to annul his marriage, and thus sought to unite the secular and religious sources of authority within a single sovereign power while not initially make substantial changes in doctrine.
In , the imperial regent Toyotomi Hideyoshi 's banned Jesuit missionaries, and Christianity was repressed as a threat to national unity. Only after the Meiji Restoration was Christianity re-established in Japan. During the Nazi era in Germany, the Catholic Church faced persecution. The Nazi leadership disapproved of Catholicism. Nazi ideology could not accept an autonomous establishment, whose legitimacy did not spring from the government. It desired the subordination of the church to the state. Though the broader membership of the Nazi Party after came to include many Catholics, aggressive anti-Church radicals like Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels and Hitler's chosen "deputy" Martin Bormann saw the campaign against the Churches as a priority concern, and anti-church and anticlerical sentiments were strong among grassroots party activists.
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Bormann recorded in Hitler's Table Talk that Nazism was secular, scientific and anti-religious in outlook. The Nazi Party Platform had promised to support freedom of religions with the caveat: William Shirer wrote that under the leadership of Rosenberg , Bormann and Himmler —backed by Hitler—the Nazi regime intended to destroy Christianity in Germany, if it could. According to biographer Alan Bullock , Hitler, though raised a Catholic, retained some regard for the organisational power of Catholicism, but had utter contempt for its central teachings, which he said, if taken to their conclusion, "would mean the systematic cultivation of the human failure".: In Hitler's eyes, Christianity was a religion fit only for slaves; he detested its ethics in particular.
Its teaching, he declared, was a rebellion against the natural law of selection by struggle and the survival of the fittest. Though he was willing at times to restrain his anticlericalism out of political considerations, and approved the Reich concordat signed between Germany and the Holy See , Hitler's long term hope was for a de-Christianised Germany. Parallel Lives , Bullock added that, though Hitler, like Napoleon before him, frequently employed the language of " divine providence " in defence of his own myth, he ultimately shared with the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin , "the same materialist outlook, based on the nineteenth century rationalists' certainty that the progress of science would destroy all myths and had already proved Christian doctrine to be an absurdity".
In early he was declaring that 'Christianity was ripe for destruction', and that the Churches must yield to the "primacy of the state". In an 8 April entry, Goebbels wrote "He hates Christianity, because it has crippled all that is noble in humanity. It is a branch of the Jewish race. This can be seen in the similarity of their religious rites. Both Judaism and Christianity have no point of contact to the animal element, and thus, in the end they will be destroyed.
Goebbels was among the most aggressive anti-Church Nazi radicals. In , soon after his election to the Reichstag, Goebbels wrote in his diary that National Socialism was a "religion" that needed a genius to uproot "outmoded religious practices" and put new ones in their place: It transpired that he had failed to implement self-regulatory procedures agreed by the bishops of Ireland in In February , the Irish Government had referred two allegations of child sex abuse to the National Board for Child Protection, an independent supervisory body established by the Irish bishops.
When the chief executive of that body made contact with the diocese on the matter, he was met with lack of co-operation. Meetings held with him and representatives of the diocese in March failed to elicit his full co-operation with the National Board for Child Protection's investigation. Magee said that he would use the time to " devote the necessary time and energy to cooperating fully with the government Commission of Inquiry into child protection practices and procedures in the diocese of Cloyne ".
On 24 March it was announced by the Holy See that Bishop Magee had formally resigned from his duties as Bishop of Cloyne and was now bishop emeritus. Hegarty's replacement Bishop Boyce , and the Irish hierarchy, criticised a media article that claimed that "There were hundreds and hundreds of victims, and they were abused again and again while the church actively prevented investigations by the civil authorities". As well as the diocesan clergy, a number of Irish members of Roman Catholic religious institutes have been named in criminal prosecutions for abuse; some were tried outside Ireland.
These cases amplify, but were not covered by, the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse findings see above. As well the reports, many other victims of clerical abuse came forward with their own stories; including actor Gabriel Byrne [45] and Derry Morgan. Patrick Hughes was convicted on four counts of indecent assault.
Investigations continue where Irish abusers were sent abroad by the church to other countries, where they abused other children.
The spectacular conviction of Nora Wall was found to be based on evidence from unreliable witnesses who admitted to lying. Kevin Reynolds , fathering a child, was baseless, and this has caused a political scandal in Ireland since the national television network aired the allegations without arranging a DNA test.
At the time of the May broadcast, the Irish Missionary Union, representing 83 missionary groups, issued a statement deploring ".. The Irish Missionary Union, along with the Conference of Religious of Ireland and the Irish bishops, followed legal advice to refuse information to the National Board for Safeguarding Children see above , even though it is one of the Board's sponsoring bodies. While the behaviour took place abroad, we have a solemn duty to do all that is within our power to ensure that perpetrators of this predatory abuse of children are brought to justice wherever it takes place".
The program wrongly made allegations against Fr. Kevin Reynolds , who received an apology and "massive damages". Richard Anthony Burke was accused in the same program of underage sex in Nigeria. The letter was released by the Vatican on 20 March Reaction to the contents of the letter was mixed. We are heartened by the Pontiff's open acceptance that the abusive behavior of priests and religious were criminal acts.
- Becket, the Church and Henry II.
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Not all allegation made against priests have turned out to be true. Liam O'Brien, parish priest at Currow, in Killarney, Co Kerry, was subjected to claims of sexual abuse for more than four years starting in December In May his accuser, Eileen Culloty, a woman in his parish who had stalked and harassed the priest, even disrupting a funeral service he was conducting in , apologised unreservedly in a letter read to the High Court. The woman admitted fabricating the allegations and said Fr.
O'Brien was a person of the utmost integrity. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Catholic Church sexual abuse cases. Catholic teachings on sexual morality. Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse. Ecclesiastical response to Catholic sex abuse cases. Sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic archdiocese of Dublin and Murphy Report. Sexual abuse in Cloyne diocese. Sexual abuse in Raphoe diocese.
Sexual abuse in Limerick diocese. National Board for Safeguarding Children". Retrieved 21 March Retrieved 1 February Retrieved 13 January Archived from the original on 16 October Retrieved 10 June Reports into clerical sex abuse claims in Ireland". McGuinness and Gilmore critical". Retrieved 7 January Retrieved 28 April The Sunday Business Post.
Archived from the original on 2 December On the other hand, you may be put in a position where you have to answer, and there may be circumstances in which you can use an ambiguous expression realising that the person who you are talking to will accept an untrue version of whatever it may be — permitting that to happen, not willing that it happened, that would be lying. It really is a matter of trying to deal with extraordinarily difficult matters that may arise in social relations where people may ask questions that you simply cannot answer.
Everybody knows that this kind of thing is liable to happen.