“And there came one of the seven angels which had the seven vials, and talked with me, saying unto me, Come hither; I will shew unto thee the judgment of the great whore that sitteth upon many waters: With whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication…
and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy [claiming God’s names / attributes] having seven heads…The seven heads are seven mountains [Rome], on which the woman sitteth.” (Revelation 17:1-9)
The Pontifex Maximus (which literally means “Greatest Pontiff”) was the high priestof the Ancient Roman College of Pontiffs. This was the most important position in the ancient Roman religion…A distinctly religious office under the early Roman Republic, it gradually became politicized until, beginning with Emperor Augustus, it was subsumed into the Imperial office. Its last use with reference to the emperors is found in 383 C.E.
This timing is significant as the formation of the Roman Catholic Church when this religious function was once again split from the political function of Emperor.
the term pontifex literally means “bridge-builder” (pons+ facere)…This was perhaps originally meant in a literal sense: the position of bridge-builder was indeed an important one in Rome, where the major bridges were over the Tiber, the sacred river (and a deity): only prestigious authorities with sacral functions could be allowed to “disturb” it with mechanical additions. However, it was always understood in its symbolic sense as well: the pontifices were the ones who smoothed the bridge between gods and men (Van Haeperen)…
His real power lay in the administration of jus divinum or divine law;[10] the information collected by the pontifices related to the Roman religious tradition was bound in a corpus which summarized dogma and other concepts. The chief departments of jus divinum may be described as follows:
- The regulation of all expiatory ceremonials needed as a result of pestilence, lightning, etc.
- The consecration of all temples and other sacred places and objects dedicated to the gods by the state through its magistracies.
- The regulation of the calendar; both astronomically and in detailed application to the public life of the state.
- The administration of the law relating to burials and burying-places, and the worship of the Manes or dead ancestors.
- The superintendence of all marriages by conferratio, i.e. originally of all legal patrician marriages.
- The administration of the law of adoption and of testamentary succession…
The Catholic Church has a unique status in international law and relations. Through the international person of the Holy See, the Church exercises sovereignty—authority—with nation-states, international organizations, and other participants. The concept of the “Holy See” is used to describe the Catholic Church—with the Pope and the Roman Curia—as an international personality that has the competence to engage other international persons including sovereign states. The Holy See is not the Vatican City State, which is the territorial body…The Holy See…participates in the realm of international organizations, such as the United Nations (UN), as either a permanent observer or as a full member.
The pope is an utterly unique actor in international relations (IR)…Pope Francis currently enjoys formal diplomatic relations with over 180 individual countries across the globe, from Albania to Zimbabwe. At the same time, the pope is the spiritual leader of the Catholic Church, a religious community numbering more than a billion souls. As a result of that institutional status, the pope is also…the “first citizen of global civil society,”…
Braaake!
Do you understand what this Professor of Political Science at Colgate University just said?
Princeps civitatis (“First Citizen”) was an official title of a Roman Emperor...
This usage of “princeps” derived from the position of Princeps senatus, the “first among equals” of the Senate…the first member by precedence of the Roman Senate, and his opinion would usually be asked first in senatorial debates.
It was first given as a special title to Caesar Augustus in 27 BC, who saw that use of the titles rex (king) or dictator would create resentment amongst senators and other influential men, who had earlier demonstrated their disapproval by supporting the assassination of Julius Caesar. While Augustus had political and military supremacy, he needed the assistance of his fellow Romans to manage the Empire.
“With the consent of the Senate, Augustus slowly assumed the sole leadership of the Empire.” And the pope has sole leadership of the Roman Catholic Empire.
But he also needs assistance to manage the religious aspect of the world empire.
Pope St. John Paul II was a towering figure in Christian-Muslim relations. He is known in the Muslim world as somebody who was unprecedented in his outreach to the Muslim world. He visited many Muslim countries; said very positive things about the Muslim tradition; famously kissed the Quran. It was an important moment, and he attracted a huge amount of criticism from the Catholic world for having done this. But he was a real pioneer of interreligious relations and especially in the worlds of Islam and Judaism…
Francis has right from the beginning struck a very different tone. The agenda before Pope Francis was above all focused on religious freedom; what the Vatican calls reciprocity. In other words, “We Christians allow you Muslims to come to our countries and worship freely. Why don’t you do the same for us?”
With Francis, there is a desire to understand religious extremism in all its forms…he refers not just to religious fundamentalism as a phenomenon you find in other religions but also in Christianity. And I think that’s been quite a helpful thing to have pointed out because it means that the enemy, if you like, is…a certain kind of extreme…you don’t find that Christianity is free of extremism either.
:And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication: And upon her forehead was a name written, Mystery, Babylon The Great, The Mother Of Harlots And Abominations Of The Earth. And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus.” (Revelation 17:4-6)
Wealth of Roman Catholic Church impossible to calculate
There is no doubt, however, that between the church’s priceless art, land, gold and investments across the globe, it is one of the wealthiest institutions on Earth…
the buildings in Vatican City….are priceless and could never be sold. They include: the Apostolic Palace, the pope’s official residence; the Sistine Chapel, best known for murals by Botticelli and Michelangelo…and St. Peter’s Basilica, the largest church in the world…
716,290 square kilometres [of properties] across the globe…
10 billions of dollars [invested] in foreign companies by the Institute of Religious Works (the Vatican bank) in the 1990s. It has holdings in such industries as banking, insurance, chemicals, steel, construction and real estate. It only invests in companies that operate according to Catholic morals [read under Catholic control].
86 millions of dollars in 2011…made up of donations from parishes across the globe. The money is spent on humanitarian projects, including disaster relief.
The Holy See is the only world-wide humanitarian aid organization that has the reach, resources, moral authority and heritage of papal infallibility to be the First Responder on the scene in the next unimaginably destructive world war.
The Holy See is the only world-wide judicial institution that can demand submission to new laws with sentence of death to heretics either by passively withholding aid in refugee camps, surreptitiously exploiting victims in concentration camps, or actively executing rebels in prison camps.
The Holy See is the only world-wide religious institution that can instantly accredit a hyper dimensional being as The Return of the King of the world by syncretizing the Messianic religions especially Christianity, Islam and Judaism.
Jesuit Brother Guy Consolmagno, head of the Vatican Observatory and sometimes called “the pope’s astronomer,”… agreed with me that the Catholic intellectual tradition would have absolutely zero problem with the idea of intelligent life — that is, substances of a rational nature (the classic definition of a “person” in my field) — on other planets…
when asked in a later, more in-depth interview on these topics if he would be willing to baptize an alien, he said, “Only if she asked…”
From Origen in the third century to Thomas Aquinas in the 13th to the Renaissance thinkers of the 15th and 16th centuries, there is already a robust set of theological reflections on a host of questions that nonhuman persons on other planets produce.
Did Jesus die for them too?…Or maybe they didn’t have a primeval original sin that disordered their nature and environment…? Are they governed by our sense of right and wrong or would it be quite different? Or would they be capable of sinning at all?…
the church’s intellectual tradition on these questions would be brought to bear in exciting and important ways.
Note, that is “intellectual” as in Greek philosophy and Platonic thought leading to an ex-cathedra pronouncement on faith and morals.
So bring it on, director of national intelligence and Pentagon. Let’s see what you got. The Catholic intellectual tradition stands ready to help humanity interpret and process the fact that we are not alone in the universe.
“be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand. Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away / apostacy first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God. Remember ye not, that, when I was yet with you, I told you these things? And now ye know what withholdeth that he might be revealed in his time.
For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he [the Holy Spirit] who now letteth [another word for withholdeth] will let , until he be taken out of the way [by such dire martyrdom of God’s people through whom the Holy Spirit works].
And then shall that Wicked be revealed…Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders.” (II Thessalonians 2:2-9)
“I have spread out my hands all the day unto a rebellious people, which walketh in a way that was not good, after their own thoughts;
- A people that provoketh me to anger continually to my face;
- that sacrificeth in gardens,
- and burneth incense upon altars of brick;
- Which remain among the graves, and lodge in the monuments,
- which eat swine’s flesh, and broth of abominable things is in their vessels;
- Which say, Stand by thyself, come not near to me; for I am holier than thou.
These are a smoke in my nose, a fire that burneth all the day. Behold, it is written before me:
This results in chastisement, tribulation, whatever you want to call it.
I will not keep silence, but will recompense, even recompense into their bosom, Your iniquities, and the iniquities of your fathers together, saith the LORD, which have burned incense upon the mountains, and blasphemed me upon the hills: therefore will I measure their former work into their bosom…ye are they that forsake the LORD.” (Isaiah 65)
Kingdom Come 