The Catholic Church was corrupt and in need of serious reform

26 edgey 8 me

>the Church wasn't corrupt
>the Church had a serious reformation

You're a big monk

>>Avignon was by now a great deal larger—and richer—than on the arrival of Clement V. After a quarter of a century as the home of the Papacy, it was no longer a stinking village. It had now become a city, to which the fiscal system created by Popes Clement and John together had brought untold wealth. Whole districts had been swept away, fine palaces and mansions built for the cardinals and ambassadors, the bankers and merchants, the architects, painters, and craftsmen who came from all over Europe to make their fortunes.3 Papal Avignon was rapidly becoming the first great financial power of Europe. Petrarch, writing in 1340, was profoundly shocked:

>>Here reign the successors of the poor fishermen of Galilee; they have strangely forgotten their origin. I am astounded, as I recall their ancestors, to see these men loaded with gold and clad in purple, boasting of the spoils of princes and nations; to see luxurious palaces and heights crowned with fortifications, instead of a boat turned downward for shelter…Instead of holy solitude we find a criminal host with crowds of infamous cronies; instead of soberness, licentious banquets; instead of pious pilgrimages, foul and preternatural sloth; instead of the bare feet of the Apostles, the snowy coursers of brigands fly past us, the horses decked with gold and fed on gold, soon to be shod with gold, if the Lord does not check this slavish luxury.

The Church is still fucking corrupt.

>The fact that so many reformist groups - Hussites, Lollards, Waldensians, Adamites, Beghards - sprung up as a direct reaction to the Church's perceived scandals and abuses is very telling,
Agreed.
>as is the fact that all these movements were quashed with extreme force
Well no. That's a pretty typical reaction to ideological opposition in general actually, and the catholic church pretty much did it from day one.

>>In all this vapid display, John was happy to take the lead. He it was who founded the vineyards of Châteauneuf-du-Pape, and a record has survived of the provisions laid in for the banquet he gave in November 1324 on the occasion of the marriage of his great-niece. They included 9 oxen, 55 sheep, 8 pigs, 4 wild boars, 200 capons, 690 chickens, 3,000 eggs, 580 partridges, 270 rabbits, 40 plovers, 37 ducks, 59 pigeons, 4 cranes, 2 pheasants, 2 peacocks, 292 small birds, 3 hundredweight of cheese, 2,000 apples and other fruit, and 11 barrels of wine. Perhaps the Spirituals had a point after all.

>>POPE JOHN XXII died on December 4, 1334. This time, for once, the cardinals acted reasonably quickly. The new pope was inducted on the twentieth: the Bishop of Pamiers, a baker’s son and former Cistercian monk named Jacques Fournier, who took the name of Benedict XII. He was not an attractive figure. Tall and heavily built, with an exceptionally loud voice, he had made his name as an inquisitor and had taken it upon himself to eliminate the last vestiges of Catharism from the southwest of France. In this he had been entirely successful: in the presence of five bishops and the King of Navarre, 183 men and women were burned at the stake—a spectacle described by a contemporary as “a holocaust, very great and pleasing to God.”4 Pope John had then made him a cardinal, as a reward for a job well done.

>Postmodernists on MY Veeky Forums
I won't go easy on you this time

>indulgences are ok
The eternal salvation of one man is no matter compared to the gold he donates since they will feed many children and erect many churches
>popes having orgies is ok
Sexual intercourse is one of the great gifts of God, among the holy men only the Pope is ordianed with the power to commit sexual acts without sinful lust
>transubstantiation is real
The Lord doth work in mysterious ways
>not allowing vernacular bibles is ok
Men of no learning do not posses the finesse to distinguish the truth behind the word of God

>>Yet, dour and unbending as he may have been, Benedict had his good qualities. He possessed none of John’s arrogance; despising all luxury, he continued to dress in the Cistercian habit. Nepotism he detested—none of his relatives achieved advancement—and he declared war on all the countless abuses which had grown up during the pontificates of his two predecessors. All the clerical hangers-on and vagabond monks who had no good reason for staying at Avignon were dismissed; fees payable for documents issued were fixed for the first time; strict new constitutions were drawn up for the Cistercians, Franciscans, and Benedictines. In the diplomatic field, however, his touch was less sure. He failed miserably in his attempts to prevent the outbreak of the Hundred Years’ War between France and England—which put an end to any prospect of a joint Crusade—and his efforts to mend fences with the Emperor Louis were easily frustrated by the French King Philip VI and the King of Naples.

>>There is evidence to suggest that at the very beginning of his pontificate Benedict may have seriously contemplated a return to Italy, though probably—since the situation in Rome showed no improvement—only as far as Bologna in the first instance. Almost immediately on his accession he had ordered the restoration and reroofing of St. Peter’s, and for some years he continued to spend large sums on both it and the Lateran. Before long, however, he seems to have been dissuaded from the idea by the cardinals, nearly all of whom were French, and by King Philip; and by the end of 1335 his subjects were no longer in any doubt that the Papacy was to remain for the foreseeable future—perhaps even in perpetuity—on the banks of the Rhône. Work had begun on the Palais des Papes.

>>The chosen site was immediately to the south of the cathedral. The first building to rise was a 150–foot tower, the lower part designed to house the papal treasury, the upper to contain the pope’s personal apartments. To this Benedict added a two-story chapel and what is now the whole of the northern section of the palace; he left his successor to contribute the rather more elaborate west and south wings, thus forming a spacious cloister—later to become the cour d’honneur—to the south of which is the huge vaulted audience chamber. A somewhat awkward combination of palace, monastery, and fortress, the Palais des Papes can hardly be counted an architectural success; nowadays, too, it suffers from an almost embarrassing lack of furniture. But it remains an undeniably impressive monument to the exiled Papacy.

>>Pope Benedict died on April 25, 1342. Petrarch claimed that he was “weighed down by age and wine”; in fact, he was only in his early sixties, but there may be something in the accusation: despite his otherwise rigorous austerity, he was known for his prodigious appetite. His successor could hardly have provided more of a contrast. Pierre Roger, though not of illustrious birth—he was the son of a landed squire in the Corrèze—had already had an astonishing career. Possessor of a double doctorate in theology and canon law, Archbishop of Sens at twenty-eight and of Rouen at twenty-nine, he had shortly afterward been appointed chancellor and chief minister of France by Philip VI. The king had actually been so anxious for him to succeed Benedict that he had sent his son to Avignon in the hope that he could sway the election, but the prince arrived to find that there was no need: the cardinals had already elected Roger as Pope Clement VI.

lel

>implying von ranke would disagree

>>“My predecessors,” announced Clement, “did not know how to be pope.” He set out to show them, though in fact he lived less like a pope than an oriental potentate. Sumptuously dressed, surrounded by a vast entourage of attendants, showering wealth and favors on all who approached him—“a pope,” he also declared, “should make his subjects happy”—in his extravagance and outward display he easily outclassed all the crowned heads of Europe; the cost of his court is said to have been ten times that of King Philip’s in Paris. Three thousand guests sat down to his coronation banquet, at which 1,023 sheep, 118 head of cattle, 101 calves, 914 kids, 60 pigs, 10,471 hens, 1,440 geese, 300 pike, 46,856 cheeses, 50,000 tarts, and 200 casks of wine were consumed. Yet it was not just his surroundings that dazzled; it was the man himself. He was formidably intelligent, the finest orator and preacher of his day; his charm was irresistible. But all the old abuses returned. Back, with a vengeance, came the bad old days of nepotism. Of the twenty-five cardinals whom Clement appointed during his ten-year pontificate, twenty-one were French and at least ten his close relatives; one of them, who was later to become Gregory XI, the last of the seven Avignon popes, was widely believed to be his son. There were other rumors, too, where women were concerned, many of them tending to center on the lovely Cécile, Countess of Turenne, the sister-in-law of the pope’s nephew, who regularly acted as hostess at the palace. Petrarch, as usual, became almost hysterical with indignation:

>>I will not speak of adultery, seduction, rape, incest; these are only the prelude to their orgies. I will not count the number of wives stolen or young girls deflowered. I will not tell of the means employed to force into silence the outraged husbands and fathers, nor of the dastardliness of those who sell their womenfolk for gold.

Good God, you're an idiot born of idiots

>"the Church can never ever do anything wrong at all, because they told me God appointed them!"

Literal slave mentality.

It's actually worse than that:
>the church can do no wrong, even tho they expressly admitted their mistakes
Basically trolling.

>Projecting words into my mouth
First off: The Catholic Church was supposedly "corrupt" because it fits the description most postmodernists describe as corrupt
Second off: HIYAA

It was called corrupt by contemporaries though, user.
It was one of the big causes of the reformation.

>Protostant Propaganda
Apologize. Go to confession. Do it now.

Anyone watching pope-kino?

>what is the council of trent

take you shitposting back to /pol/

>Believing in the three-headed pagan demon, instead of trying to purify yourself of your earthly material existence and reaching Sophia with the Creator

>They will feed many children and erect many churches
>Only the pope can commit one of the seven deadly sins because he bribed the cardinals the most
>Pagan rituals are a part of Christianity because I deflected the question
>Threatening peasants, who have never been given the opportunity to learn a fucking dead language, because they are farming for an aristocrat all day, with eternal damnation is ok because they are "men of no learning".

You really are something special.

Do the other Catholics in this thread feel embarrassed because of this guy?

>The Catholic Church was supposedly "corrupt"

Let me correct you: the Catholic Church was very explicitly corrupt, and what's more, corrupt even to the standards of its time.

Events do not occur in a vacuum: the various reformist groups - Lollards, Hussites, Adamites, etc. - I mentioned did not rise up without a cause. They were a very clear reaction to the corruption of the Church. From the Church's meddling in secular power struggles, to the Western Schism, to its partaking in the fraudulent relic trade, and even to its forging of documents to grant itself temporal power (i.e. Donation of Constantine), it was very clear the Church was corrupt and that a reaction against it was inevitable, particularly because it had tried so hard to shut out any reforms and stamp out any criticisms.

And yes, you are a mong. Stop memeing, and read a fucking book for once in your life instead of getting all your knowledge from Catholic Online and /pol/

I'm going to need to see some evidence for your claims Frogposter.

>And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. (Matthew 19:24)

What happens to a Papist when they hear this quote aloud? Do they cover their ears and shriek loudly and autistically?

Dialogue needs to be replaced with "So I can divorce my wife to fuck around with sluts and also steal all the monestaries money?" "Sure"

The men themselves aren't rich, the church is.

>i have no money, my house does

Organized religion always leads to corruption. Man simply can't be divine

Probably the same thing that happens to a Protestant when the see this.

The Holy Roman Catholic Church is an institution, not a building.

any good documentaries or stuff on cathars? I find it very fascinating.

I'm not Christian at all, so I agree with you.

The difference is that protestants (supposedly) make moral decisions based on the teachings of the bible, whereas with Catholics it is from authority figures such as saints, popes or cardinals.

Books mostly, don't know about any good-quality documentaries.

edition.cnn.com/interactive/2014/08/us/american-archbishops-lavish-homes/

spiegel.de/international/germany/financial-scandals-the-hidden-wealth-of-the-catholic-church-a-700513.html

you can find more really easily, funnily enough.

basically what said

>books
alright, can you recommend some?

To get to know the topic I recommend Stephan Hoeller's Gnosticism: New Light on the Ancient Tradition of Inner Knowing and later, if it has interested you enough - the Gnostic Bible and Gospels are a must. And then you go from there.

>put all my money in an "institution"
>i have no money, the institution does

see you in hell, papist

Cheers user. Happy new year.

TOO SLOW

The Catholic Church was corrupt and in need of serious reform

Indeed.

>You're a big monk

For thou!

I'm confused. Catholicism have adopted post-modernism to a much larger extent than protestantism, hasn't it?

>The eternal salvation of one man is no matter compared to the gold
WEW
lad

>p2w religion

It was, and is. Rome is apostate and men are saved by grace alone through faith alone.

>Holy
>Roman
>Catholic