Vicars of Christ: the Dark Side of the Papacy

373 Pages·1988·1.73 MB·English

by  Peter De Rosa

Vicars of Christ: The Dark Side of the Papacy
PETER DE ROSA,
a graduate of Gregorian University in Rome, was professor of Metaphysics and
Ethics at Westminster Seminary and Dean of Theology at Corpus Christi College in
London.
He is the author of many books, including Bless Me, Father; Christ and Original Sin; and
Jesus Who Became Christ. He left the priesthood in 1970 and now lives in Ireland with
his wife and two sons.
FRONTISPIECES / BLURB
In a book that is startling, informative, and highly controversial, a former Jesuit narrates the story of the
popes - from Saint Peter to John Paul II. Vicars of Christ provides a historical perspective on the
Catholic Church in crisis today.
The Holy Fathers have always paid a price for power on earth. The problems of the
contemporary Catholic Church - its rigid attitudes toward politics and religious freedom, the declining
number of priests and nuns, its refusal to broaden the rights of women, and the fierce opposition to
Vatican policies on birth control, divorce, and celibacy -are the products of two millennia of powerful,
political, and fallible popes. Peter De Rosa, who says he is a “patriotic Catholic,” shows how the popes
have created the papacy from scratch - with more than a measure of scandal, murder, genocide, and
doctrinal confusion.
Only by understanding what the church was can we understand what it is today. Pope Gregory
VII, for example, in the eleventh century, instituted an entire document-forgery factory in the Vatican-to
prove that the pope could not make a mistake, that he could depose kings and princes at will, and that he
was necessarily a saint.
Other popes were certainly not saints, The Borgia pope, Alexander VI, in the 1400s, had a stable
of mistresses, a litter of illegitimate children, and a penchant for murdering cardinals for their money.
Borgia popes bred Borgia popes: Alexander’s son and grandson both ascended to the papacy. The
grandson was such a libertine that women pilgrims were warned away from the Holy See, lest they be
raped by the pope.
The Church has a long record of anti-Semitism. Popes in the Borgia era created a ghetto for the
Jews, required them to wear distinctive yellow hats whenever they ventured out, and even forced them to
pay for the wall surrounding the ghetto. The Holy Fathers could be more vicious toward those among its
own who opt posed the power of the church. Innocent III murdered far more Christians in one afternoon
- 12,000-than any Roman emperor did in his entire reign. Popes reintroduced torture into the judicial
system. And more recently, within the last century, popes have called religious freedom madness, free
elections godless, and a free press tantamount to atheism.
Popes make mistakes, says Peter De Rosa. They have erred tragically not only in their personal
lives but in setting forth Catholic doctrine on faith and morals. In more than a century there have been
only two exercises of “papal infallibility”: the immaculate conception and the Assumption of Mary.
when Pope Paul VI banned contraceptives in 1968, he was not speaking in-fallibly. And more than
ninety percent of American Catholics felt he was mistaken.
In Vicars of Christ, Peter De Rosa dispels the myths about the papacy in favour of hard facts, and
provides everyone, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, with the true, alarming story of the Church in crisis.
PETER DE ROSA, a graduate of Gregorian University in Rome, was professor of Metaphysics and Ethics at
Westminster Seminary and Dean of Theology at Corpus Christi College in London. He is the author of many books,
including Bless Me, Father; Christ and Original Sin; and Jesus Who Became Christ. He left the priesthood in 1970
and now lives in Ireland with his wife and two sons.
Jacket design by June Marie Bennett
by the same author
Christ In Our World,
God Our Saviour
Come, Holy Spirit
Christ And Original Sin
Jesus Who Became Christ
PUBLISHING DETAILS
CROWN PUBLISHERS, INC.
225 PARK AVENUE SOUTH
NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10003
Copyright © 1988 by Peter De Rosa
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or
by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any
information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher
Published in the United States of America by Crown Publishers, Inc., 225 Park Avenue
South, New York,. New York 10003.
Originally published in Great Britain by Bantam Press, a division of Transworld
Publishers Ltd
CROWN is a trademark of Crown Publishers, Inc..
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
De Rosa, Peter
Vicars of Christ: the dark side of the papacy/p. cm.
Bibliography: p.
1. Papacy - Controversial literature. I. Title.
BX1765.2.B69 1988
262’.13 --- dc19 88-7126
ISBN 0-517-57027-0 CIP
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
First American Edition
Dedication
Humbly and with Penitence
to All the Victims of the Holocaust
NOTE TO THE READER
This book is not a work of theology, still less a textbook on the papacy. It is an
investigation of the role of the popes in the light of history, culture, ethics and the
personalities of the pontiffs themselves. Though, like Dante, I stress here the dark side of
the papacy, it is the work of a friend not an enemy.
ORIGINAL (First American Edition) CONTENTS PAGE
Prologue: The Great Cover-Up 3
Part One: Power
1 From Calvary to the Vatican 11
2 The Quest for Absolute Power 29
3 Papal Pornocracy 47
4 The Papacy at Its Height 57
5 Power in Decline 75
6 The Papacy’s Descent into Hell 89
7 The Inevitable Reformation 111
8 The Twilight of Absolute Power 123
Part Two: Truth
9 The Crushing of Dissent 139
10 The Imposition of Truth 152
11 Persecuting Witches and Jews 181
12 Papal Heretics 204
13 The First Infallible Pope 237
14 The Great Purge 255
Part Three: Love
15 The Pope Who Loved the World 273
16 The New Galileo Affair 287
17 An Unloving View of Sex 318
18 The Popes, Pioneers of Divorce 334
19 The Silent Holocaust 365
20 Unchaste Celibates 390
Epilogue 435
Chronology 439
The Popes 449
Ecumenical Councils 453
General Councils of the Roman Church 454
A Note on Sources 455
Select Bibliography 460
Index 469
PRE-PROLOGUE
On hearing that Ludwig Pastor had begun his great work, The History of the Popes, the
Dominican Cardinal de Lai remarked: ‘Prima la carità e poi la verità anche nella storia’,
‘Charity precedes truth even in the writing of history’. On hearing this, Pastor replied: ‘If
that were so, all history would be impossible. Fortunately, Christ said, “I am the Truth”.’
PROLOGUE
The Great Cover-Up
IT IS EASILY THE BIGGEST COVER-UP IN HISTORY. It has gone on for centuries, claiming first
thousands, then millions of lives. Though it is highly visible, no one seems to have noticed it.
Unknowingly, many artists, great and not so great, have contributed to it. And the camouflage is nothing
more alarming than a little piece of cloth - the cloth that covers the loins of Jesus on the cross.
In the beginning, the cross was never represented in art or sculpture. While Jesus was adored for
his self-emptying and the cross was the centre of the faith, no one dared depict him in his utter
humiliation.
It is said that Constantine’s armies bore the cross on their insignia This was not so. On shield and
banner they had the first two letters of Christ’s Greek name [GRAPHIC1] fused like this [GRAPHIC2] .
Graphic 1 Graphic 2
Only when the memory of the thousands who had died on crosses all over the Roman world dimmed did
Christians feel free to depict the cross as the symbol of Christ’s suffering love. It was an empty cross.
Who would dare to recrucify Christ?
Later, this bare symbol of his conquest of the dark forces seemed too austere. Fifth century artists
began to paint a cross with a lamb next to it, for Jesus was ‘the Lamb of God’ slain for the sin of the
world. Then, with mounting courage, a lamb-white Jesus was himself depicted next to the cross. With
only two known exceptions, not till the end of the sixth century was he shown on his cross. Still the
artist dared not paint in the pain and humiliation. Jesus was in a long tunic, with only hands and feet bare
to show in stylized fashion the nails that pinned him to the wood. This was an image of triumph; he was
not suffering and dying but reigning, open-eyed and sometimes crowned, on the throne of the cross. The
first tenth-century Greek representation of Jesus suffering on the cross was condemned by Rome as
blasphemy. Soon the Church of Rome itself yielded to its fascination.
With Jesus ever more remote and with medieval theology becoming drier and more scholastic,
piety demanded a more human Christ: a man they could see and almost feel, a man with the trials and
tribulations they themselves met with every day of their short and suffering lives. Artists now freely
depicted Christ in agony on his cross; deep wounds and blood, agony in every limb, dereliction in
[ep003] his eyes. His garments shrank to impress on the faithful the extent of the Lord’s abasement.
There it stopped: at a loin-cloth. Had the artist gone further, who would have been brave enough
to look on Christ the way he was: naked like a slave?
What stayed the artist’s hand was not propriety but theology. The artists were not to be blamed.
After all, how could they see that the pain of the recrucified Christ, without the ultimate truth that only
complete nakedness brings, would lead to a catastrophe? In giving Jesus the final shreds of decency, that
loin-cloth took from him his Jewishness. It literally covered his pride and turned him into an honorary
Gentile. For what it hid was not just his sex but that knife-mark in his flesh, the circumcision, that
showed he was a Jew. That is what Christians feared to see.
In crucifixions by Raphael and Rubens, even by Bosch and Grünewald, the loin-cloth becomes
ornamental; its folds hang decorously. In Grünewald’s Colmar crucifixion, says Husmans, Jesus is bent
like a bow; the tormented body glistens palely, dotted with blood, bristling with thorns like the burr of a
horse-chestnut. This, the artist seems to say, is what sin has done to... whom?
To God, is the answer of theology. This is the death of God. The more intense the agony, the
less His glory shines through, the more terrifying it is. ‘God died on Calvary.’ It sounds good theology.
It might have been but for that piece of cloth. For, the artist seems to be saying, someone is responsible
for doing that to God. But who?
A superficial reading of Matthew’s Gospel provides the answer: the Jews. They called out to
Pilate: ‘Crucify him. His blood be upon us and upon our children.’ The word of God seems to blame
Jews, Jesus’ contemporaries and their descendants, for the Death of God. Jews are, therefore, deicides.
One drop of that Blood would save a thousand worlds; the Jews shed it all. For them, the Blood is not
salvation but an undying curse. By their unbelief, Jews continue killing God. Having murdered Christ,
being guilty of the greatest imaginable crime, they were surely capable of anything. That is the calumny.
That is the great heresy. Because of it, tales of Jews ritually slaughtering and drinking the blood of little
Christian children fitted the pattern set by the Crime of killing God. Those fabrications still circulate.
Without the cover-up, without that piece of cloth, it would have stared everyone in the face that
what took place on Calvary was also Jewicide. God was a Jew. It was not so much Jews killing God as a
Jew, who was God’s Son, shedding his blood for the sin of the world. Would Christians over centuries
have instituted pogroms against Jews in the name of the Cross if on it Jesus had borne the mark of
circumcision? Would a Jew have authorized the massacre of Jews? Would it not have been plain that
Jesus was present in every pogrom saying: [ep004] ‘Why are you persecuting me; for what you do unto
these the least of my brethren, you do unto me’?
That cover-up, now nearly twenty centuries old, was not perpetrated by a deviant sect but by
main-line Christianity, by the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church. No doctrine was taught more
universally, with less qualification - in Catholic terms, more infallibly - than that ‘Jews are cursed for
killing God’, a charge still not officially withdrawn. By a bizarre twist, Jews, from whom the Saviour
came, were the only ones blamed for killing him. It was not Jesus who was recrucified but the race from
which he sprang.
In the Third and Fourth Councils of the Lateran (1179 and 1215), the church codified all previous
enactments against Jews. They had to wear a badge of shame. In England it was saffron, in the presumed
shape of the tablets of Moses. In France and Germany it was yellow and round. In Italy, the badge was a
red hat, until a short-sighted Roman prelate mistook a Jew for a cardinal and the colour was changed to
yellow. Jews were forbidden all contact with Christians, barred from administration, deprived of lands,
forbidden to own shops, herded into ghettos which were bolted at night. No system of apartheid was
more rigorously enforced. For refusing to deny their ancestral faith and convert to Christianity, Jews
were hounded from one land to another. One pope gave them a month to quit their homes in Italy,
leaving them only two places of refuge. During the Crusades, they were slaughtered in their thousands,
out of devotion to Christ. A Jew who showed his nose on Good Friday was virtually committing suicide,
even though the Man on the Cross had a Jewish nose. Thus down the ages, millions suffered and died.
Bad art and disastrous theology had prepared the way for Hitler and his ‘final solution’.
In Nazi Germany, to begin with, stars were daubed on Jewish homes and shops; it was the signal
that they could be smashed and looted. Towns boasted, as they had done in medieval times, of being
juden-rein, free from Jewish contamination. Typically, on the outskirts of the village of Obersdorf, there
was a wayside shrine with a crucifix. Over Jesus’ head was the inscription, INRI (‘Jesus of Nazareth,
King of the Jews’). In the foreground was a notice: ‘Juden sind hier nicht erwünscht’ - ‘Jews are not
welcome here.’