Murder and Persectuion Disproves the Idea of a “One True Church”

Note this post is not to claim that Roman Catholics are not Christians or to claim that Protestantism or Eastern Orthodoxy are innocent of mistakes and errors due to human behavior.

The Roman Catholic Church claims to be the one, true Church that was founded by Christ.  However, history shows that the Catholic Church did not emerge around the 4th century at which time Christianity took on different ways of worship, such as the use of incense, vestments and adorning sanctuaries.  During this time the Church also began killing heretics contrary to the behavior of earlier Christians – see the Ante-Nicene Fathers .

Galatians 5:19–21: 19 Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, 20 Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, 21 envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.

James 3:16–18: 16 For where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work. 17 But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy. 18 And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace of them that make peace.

We have no examples from the Bible of the Apostles killing anyone because of their beliefs or over differences in Doctrine. Christ simply told them to “shake off the dust of [their] feet” (Matthew 10:14). The Church Fathers rebuked heretics and wrote against their heresies, and this was the norm of the Church for the first three centuries.

After the reign of Emperor Constantine, the Church resorted to murder as a means of rebuking heretics. The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches are both responsible for murder from the 4th to 11th century at which time the East split from the West. In the 13th century what is know as the Roman Catholic Inquisition began and this is what we will be focusing on here.

The Inquisition lasted about  600 years and is when the Catholic Church produced the majority of its murder of other Christians. It has been estimated that the Catholic Church murdered at least 50 million people during the Inquisition. Other figures put the number all the way up to 120 million. Heretics were to be tortured, burned at the stake, and suffer other harsh and cruel punishments if they rejected the authority of the Roman Catholic Church:

She (Rome) has maintained her blasphemous reign as the so-called “church” by force and deception–not by the truth of the Bible (which she publicly railed against). The Bible reveals who Rome is and is therefore dangerous to her. Why is she posing as the Christian church? False religion is a money maker. Her doctrines/teachings have enabled her to collect wealth, delicacies, adoration, and power for centuries on end. -The Martyrs of Jesus

The principal accusation against those who are subject to this tribunal is heresy, which comprises all that is spoken, or written, against any of the articles of the creed, or the traditions of the Roman Church. The inquisition likewise takes cognizance of such as are accused of being magicians, and of such who read the Bible in the common language, the Talmud of the Jews, or the Alcoran of the Mahometans. Upon all occasions the inquisitors carry on their processes with the utmost severity, and punish those who offend them with the most unparalleled cruelty. A Protestant has seldom any mercy shown him, and a Jew, who turns Christian, is far from being secure. A defence in the Inquisition is of little use to the prisoner, for a suspicion only is deemed sufficient cause of condemnation, and the greater his wealth the greater his danger. The principal part of the inquisitors’ cruelties is owing to their rapacity: they destroy the life to possess the property; and, under the pretence of zeal, plunder each obnoxious individual. -Foxes Book of the Martyrs

The American Textbook of Popery which quotes from the Directory for the Inquisitors shows the Roman Catholic view in their dealings with those who did not conform to the Catholic Church:

All sects of heretics are condemned and various punishments are appointed for them and their accomplices. -Pope Alexander IV, p. 135

He is a heretic who does not believe what the Roman hierarchy teaches. –A heretic merits the pains of fire.–By the Gospel, the canons, civil law, and custom, heretics must be burned. p. 379

Below are several examples of people who were needlessly murdered during the Inquisition by the Roman Catholic Church showing that this church is not infallible and certainly not guided by God:

John Wycliffe was one of many forerunners of the reformation. He declared that the Roman Catholic Church had no right in asserting itself over people and higher than Kings. Wycliffe also stated that the Church was not the visible Roman Catholic Church,  but instead  the “invisible church of the elect”. Wycliffe also translated the Bible into English. The Catholic Church never caught up with Wycliffe during his life, however, forty-four years after his death, the Council of Constance condemned him as a heretic. Catholic officials had his remains exhumed and burned, the normal punishment for heresy:

At the ecumenical Council of Constance, in 1415, Wycliffe was posthumously condemned by Arundel, the archbishop of Canterbury, as “that pestilent wretch of damnable heresy who invented a new translation of the scriptures in his mother tongue.” By the decree of the Council, more that 40 years after his death, Wycliffe’s bones were exhumed and publicly burned and the ashes were thrown into the Swift river.

Since he had long been dead I suppose the Catholics, being denied the pleasure of persecuting Wycliffe while he was alive, still needed to expel their wrath upon his bones; possibly to make a statement and promote fear among others. However, this act shows how completely morbid, sadistic and satanic the acts of the Catholic Church have been. No church guided by Christ would take part in such hatred and evil.

Jan Hus (John Huss), founder of the Hussites and friend of John Wycliffe, was burned at the stake by the Roman Catholic Church on July 6, 1415 despite the promise of “safe-conduct”, or the promise of immunity from persecution, if he would give an account of himself at the Council of Constance. Jan Hus was one of the first to allow the laity to partake of the cup during the Lord’s Supper, something that the Roman Catholic Church withholds from its own laity. Of course the Catholic Church had lied only to lure Hus so that they could murder him.

Joan of Arc was burned alive by Bishops of the Roman Catholic Church at the age of 19 on May 30, 1431. Having  failed to bring various charges against her in which she could be executed, the Catholic Bishops finally charged her with relapsing into heresy for wearing men’s attire in prison which was a heresy punishable by death.

Before her death she was asked what she wanted for her last meal in which she asked for the Eucharist. They denied the request and burned her alive. Twenty five years later, the Catholic Church recanted and stated that Joan of Arc never committed any crimes, thus exonerating her from the charges which had been conspired against her. The charges had been nothing more than heresy for wearing military clothing on the battlefield and in prison. However, she wore this type of dress, not because she liked men’s clothes but rather to detour rape as the male military outfit was very difficult to remove.

The Catholic Bishops knew this fact but still proceeded to lie and put to death Joan of Arc. The Church then had the audacity to canonize her as a Saint despite their part in her death. Some Catholic Scholars have claimed that since it was the British portion of the Catholic Church that condemned Joan of Arc to death, the Church of England technically killed her. However, the Church of England was not officially born until a hundred years later in 1531.

For the Catholic Church to have concocted lies out of hatred, which seems to have been the norm, to condemn and murder Joan of Arc shows that this church will resort to extremes that are not in line with the fruits of the Spirit. In fact Jesus said that murder and lies were of the devil and not God:

John  8:44 Ye are of your father the Devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.

If the Roman Catholic Church was the one, true Church, why would it have murdered a young woman only to later admit it was wrong and canonize her as a Saint?  The Roman Catholic Church claims to be infallible, but its actions prove this to be a lie that sadly many Catholics buy into. Infallibility means that the Catholic Church would have never falsely persecuted anyone in the first place.

William Tyndale hid in Germany and finished his translation of the Bible into English in 1525. Copies that were caught circulating were quickly burned by the Roman Catholic Church. Tyndale was eventually caught and condenmed as a heretic. The Catholic Church martyred him on October 6, 1536, in Vilvoorde, during the reign of King Henry VIII. Tyndale was first strangled and then burned at the stake. His crime was nothing more than translating the Bible into English. If it had not been for Tyndale, many people would possibly not have a Bible today. If it were instead up to the Catholic Church, lay people would still be ignorant to the Scriptures and under her rule.

Hypocritically the Roman Church today claims to have gifted mankind with the Bible by preserving it and canonizing the Bible Books.  However, as late as the latter part of the 19th century, the Roman Catholic Church was still attempting to withhold the Bible from the common man. According to John Dowling, the Roman Catholic Church even burned Bibles in the United States, “no longer ago than October 27, 1842.”  Dowling stated that this was “another instance of the intolerance of Popery, and its determined hatred to the bible in the vulgar [common] tongue,” and that the Jesuits were responsible. (See John Dowling,  The History of Romanism, From the Earliest Corruptions of Christianity to the Present Time” 1853)

Since burning Bibles, or even people, could not keep God’s word out of the hands of common people, the Roman Church decided to defame and attack Bible versions by promoting critical Bible Scholarship. It should be noted that two of the most controversial Bible texts used in making modern Bible versions came from the Roman Catholic Church. According to Dr. Frank Logsdon, who later renounced his involvement in the creation of the NASB, almost all modern Bible versions are based on two Greek manuscripts—the Vaticanus and Sinaiticus. These two texts are corruptions which contain many errors or have removed verses such as those pertaining to the Trinity. Some Scholars believe that the Sinaiticus is a late forgery.

More Murders Via the Roman Catholic Church

In 1327, Cecco d”Ascoli, an Italian scientist, was burned at the stake for having calculated the date of Jesus” birth using the stars.  However, keeping with hypocrisy within the Catholic Church, St.Dominic was canonized as a Saint. Domininc is the monk whom supposedly received the Rosary from Mary in a vision. The irony is that Dominic is called the Saint of Astronomy.

In 1393, 150 Waldensians were burned at Grenoble in one day.

In 1520 the diocese of Lincoln alone was convicting over 100 people a year for the crime of “not thinking catholickly”.

The Anabaptists were persecuted by the Roman Catholic Church as well as by some Protestants. The Roman Catholics martyred Thomas Münzer of the Anabpatists by burning at the stake in 1525. Some Anabaptist were drowned as this was a preferred way of persecuting them because of their own views on baptism. Michael Sattler had his tongue cut out, was mutilated by red-hot pincers, and was burned alive in 1527 by the Catholic Church.

Murder at the hands of the Roman Catholic Church has not ended in recent times

In Croatia during WWII the Catholics persecuted and martyred Orthodox Christians who would not convert o Catholicism:

Thirty per cent of Orthodox Serbs in the New Croatia were converted to Catholicism within a remarkably short period. …whenever resistance was encountered, Catholic clergymen ordered, and, in fact, themselves often carried out the execution of many Orthodox. …Instances of such priestly murders are many. Suffice it to mention a few. For example, Father Dr. Dragutin Kamber, a sworn Ustashi, but also a Jesuit priest. Father Dragutin ordered the killing of about 300 Orthodox Serbs in Doboj, and the court martial of 250 others, most of whom were shot. …During one of his sermons in the church of Gorica, Father Srecko Feric, of the Gorica monastery near Livno, advocated mass murders with the following words: “Kill all Serbs. First of all, kill my sister, who is married to a Serb, and then all Serbs. When you finish this work, come here to the church and I will confess you and free you from sin.” -The Vatican’s Holocaust by Avro Manhattan, p. 87, 1986

Other atrocities against humanity produced by the Roman Catholic Church include the rape and torture of women accused of witchcraft and crusades against various Christians who sought to separate from the Church.  The Catholic Church also required Jews to wear badges at various times throughout history. Clearly this is where Hitler got the idea to require all Jews to wear a cap with a yellow star, as the Roman Catholic requirement of marking Jews dates all the way back to at least the 12th century. All the way up to the 1990’s the Roman Catholic Church has murdered other Christians. This may still be happening today and surely will again later.

Conclusion

The Roman Catholic Church has from the time of its beginning in the 4th century used torture, murder, and cruelty to force its doctrines onto others and to hide the truth from Christians. The claim that this is the one true Church of Christ is proven false by its murderous past. Since the 4th century Christianity changed how heretics were handled. This is the first era where Christians persecuted other Christians through murder. Sadly the Roman Catholic Church is not the only Christian organization to use murder for “holy cleansing”.  Any Church that takes on such actions is in opposition to the Bible and the early Church therefore any claim of infallibility is proven false by the rotten fruit of murder.