Catholic Church Behaviour
Page One 200-999 AD  ::  Page Two 1000-2011 AD

The Council of Pavia decrees that all children of clerics (priests), even those born to free women, shall be permanent slaves of the Church.

Rome inserts the creed into its form of the mass at the insistence of German emperor Henry II (including the filioque clause).

The Pope writes to the Patriarch of Constantinople calling for his submission to Rome as mother of the Church and spouse of God. The Orthodox Church is described as –

Pope Alexander II insists the new Archbishops present themselves in person in Rome to receive the pallium, the symbol of their office, thus increasing the influence of the papacy.

William the Conqueror, after becoming king of England, writes to the Pope (Hildebrand) in response to a demand for the resumption of payments to Rome –
'I have not consented to pay fealty, nor will I now, because I never promised it, nor do I find that my predecessors ever paid it to your predecessors.'

Pope Gregory VII excommunicates Emperor Henry (IV) and releases his subjects from their oath of allegiance.

Pope Gregory rescinds Henry's excommunication after he abases himself to the Pope at Canossa.
Pope Gregory re-imposes Henry's excommunication in support of his political rival, Rudolf of Swabia.

Pope Urban II preaches at Clermont calling for the First Crusade –

Catholic troops from Genoa conquer Tripoli and destroy the Banu Ammar library, the finest in the Muslim world.

Ecclesiasticae religionis inimici etiam bellis sunt cohercendi (the enemies of the church and religion are coerced by war), of Gratian, becomes part of canon law (Corpus Iuris Canonici), justifying war for religious purposes.

Pope Hadrian IV (Adrian), the only English pope, burns church reformer Arnolf of Brescia at the stake in Rome and has his ashes cast into the Tiber.
Pope Hadrian IV issues the bull Laudabiliter giving king Henry II of England rule over Ireland.

A group of twenty non-conformist evangelists arrive in England from the Continent. They are publicly branded and chained by the Church and left to die, for the sin of denying infant baptism and the Mass.

The third General Council of the Lateran decrees enslavement as the punishment of any Christian caught helping with the repair of Saracen galleys or providing them piloting service. (These galleys conducted slave-raids along the coast). (This decree is later affirmed by three General Councils and included in the canons of the Western Church).

The followers of evangelist Peter Waldo are excommunicated.
The Church begins to practice the legal fiction that its heretics are merely

so that the civil power is thus free to burn them without committing mortal sin. Although the formality of a plea for mercy is routinely made to the civil authority, any authorities who do not burn a heretic are denounced as a 'defender of heretics' and liable to the same fate.

Peter Waldo is excommunicated for teaching the priesthood of all believers, for teaching the Bible to lay people in their own language, and for rejecting holy water, vestments, saints days, pilgrimages, relics, and the doctrine of purgatory.

Pope Innocent III writes to his French legates to warn the clergy to not personally abuse the "laudable custom" of exacting the bedding and clothing of the deceased as a tax on the bereaved.
Latin troops attack and conquer 'Christian' Constantinople –

"to the honour of God, the Pope and the empire"

– by pillaging, raping and destroying.

Pope Innocent III writes to the newly installed Frankish archbishop of Athens (Greece), who deposed its Orthodox bishop and imposed the customs of the church of Paris:
'The renewal of the divine grace suffers not the ancient glory of the city of Athens to grow old. The citadel of the most famous Pallas has been humbled to become the seat of the most glorious Mother of God."

Arnold Aimery exults to the Pope that the capture of Beziers (France) has  been 'miraculous' and that they (Catholic crusaders) had killed 15,000

"showing mercy neither to order, nor age, nor sex".

Prisoners are mutilated, blinded, and dragged behind horses to provide target practice.
Peter Cantor asks –

Pope Innocent III becomes feudal overlord of England, and in his papal bull declares Mohammed to be the False Prophet and the Saracens to be the Beast of the Apocalypse, and that Muslim power would last 666 years (from the Hegira of 622 AD)..

The Fourth Lateran Council (12th Ecumenical Council) under Pope Innocent (III) decrees that Jews are –

Peasant farmers on church estates are forbidden from deducting production expenses before paying the tithe on their produce to the rector of the parish.
June 15: In England – King John accepts the Magna Carta limiting his powers and promises that he will not use a third party to revoke its contents. He immediately sends envoys to the pope asking for its revocation.
August 24: Pope Innocent (III) issues a bull declaring the Magna Carta –

'as unlawful and unjust as it is base and shameful'

Civil war breaks out in England as a consequence of the papal bull's arrival.

Pope Innocent (III), at the Lateran Council, makes auricular confession (to a priest) compulsory for all adult Christians.

Pope Gregory (IX) excommunicates Emperor Frederick II for lack of enthusiasm toward his crusade.

Leading theologian Thomas Aquinas teaches 'Sancti de poenis impiorum gaudebunt'; that witnessing the sufferings of the damned is one of the pleasures of Heaven.
Aquinas also teaches that, although slavery was not God's "first intention" it is a "second intention" as a punishment for personal sin, yet, in self-contradiction, teaches that slavery based on birth from a slave-mother is just.
Bonaventure teaches the same inconsistency in support of slavery.

Pope Innocent IV issues a papal bull authorizing the use of torture to force confessions from heretics during the Inquisition and executing relapsed heretics by burning them alive.

February 25: Pope Boniface VIII issues the bull Clericis Laicos excommunicating all members of the clergy who, without authorization from the Holy See, pay to laymen any part of their income or the revenue of the Church, and all rulers who receive such payments.

Pope Boniface VIII issues a papal bull forbidding the dismembering and boiling of human bodies so that the bones, without the flesh, may be safely carried for burial in their own countries, in a time before the invention of refrigeration.

September 7: Pope Boniface is arrested by William of Nogaret at Anagni at the request of king Philip of France on authority of the court of the Louvre, for – illegal election, simony, immorality, violence, irreligion, and heresy.

February 3: Cesena, Italy - Cardinal Robert swears "a solemn oath on his cardinals hat" that the citizens, in rebellion against papal mercenaries stealing supplies from the people, will not be punished. After the citizens surrender to the Cardinal, he orders them to be massacred. Five thousand people are butchered, some by drowning when they try to escape via a moat and are forced to stay under water at sword point. Eight thousand refugees flee the sacked city. An English mercenary asking if he should continue killing unarmed citizens is told by the Cardinal, "Blood and more blood".

The French Cardinals elect Pope Clement (VII), while, in Rome, its Cardinals elect Pope Urban (VI).
The Church in Scotland, France, Savoy, Naples, Sicily and Spain support Clement.
The Church in England, Hungary, the Holy Roman Empire, much of Italy and Scandinavia support Urban.

The period for a plenary indulgence for visiting Rome's churches of the Holy Apostles is reduced to every third of a century. (See 1343).

February 19: William Sawtree is burnt at the stake at Smithfield, London, for heresy.

The Roman Curie place the city of Prague under interdict because John Hus (Rector of Prague University) preaches, with King Wenceslas' support, against the sale of forgiveness of sin (indulgences). John Hus is consequently exiled from Prague.

The General Council of Constance is called by Pope John (XXIII) (who was ordained to the priesthood the day before his papal coronation), while nearly ninety-year-old Pope Gregory XII still clings to office (pawning his papal tiara to pay his gambling debts), and at the same time Pope Benedict (XIII) endures imprisonment in the papal castle at Avignon, France, rather than abdicate. (Three popes at one time).
John Hus is lured to the Church Council of Constance with a promise of safe conduct and is immediately imprisoned in the Dominican monastery. He refuses to recant of views ascribed to him that he did not believe in (among other: denying Transubstantiation, and that he was the fourth person of the Trinity), on the grounds that it would be perjury, and he is consequently burnt at the stake as a heretic.

Pope John (XXIII) is deposed by the Council of Constance which elects Martin (V) as Pope.
The Council damns John Wycliffe (deceased December 1384) to a heretic's death by public burning. (See 1427).

The Pope (Eugenius IV) obtains the submission of the eastern emperor at Florence, and consequently the Orthodox Church is forced to admit that –

Pope Nicholas V issues the papal bull Dum Diversas, granting Afonso V of Portugal the right to reduce any "Saracens, pagans and any other unbelievers" to hereditary slavery, thus legitimising the salve trade under Catholic belief.

January 8: Pope Nicholas V issues the papal bull Romanus Pontifex sanctifying the seizure of non-Christian lands discovered during the Age of Discovery and encouraging the enslavement of natives.

Pope Sixtus IV gives plenary indulgences to the Franciscan nuns of Foligno every time they confess sin. (Machiavelli writes of him –
'He was the first [pope] who began to show how far a pope might go, and how much which was previously regarded as sinful lost its iniquity when committed by a pontiff.')
He makes seven of his nephews cardinals.

April 18: Birth of Lucrezia Borgia (illegitimate daughter of Rodrigo Borgia who becomes Pope Alexander VI in 1492).

The Pope decrees the exposure of the Venetians to capture and enslavement as punishment.

To keep the peace between the Catholic empires of Portugal and Spain, Pope Alexander VI draws a line on a map down the Atlantic at 45 degrees longitude, and rules that everything West is for Spain and everything East is for Portugal. He intends the Americas for Spain, and Africa and the Orient for Portugal (confirmed by Portugal and Spain's Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494), not knowing that his line cuts across the bulge of Brazil, so Brazil becomes Portuguese.

Pope Julius (one of the nephews whom Sixtus made cardinals) conquers Bologna with his personal army of 6,000 Swiss mercenaries.

The Pope decrees the exposure of the Venetians to capture and enslavement as punishment.

A Council orders that priests should at least refrain from being present at the marriages of their sons and daughters (Gascoigne 1977:144).

Pope Leo X issues the papal bull Supernae declaring that the cardinals in a body should come immediately after the pope and precede all others in the church.

In Germany – Friar Johann Tetzel markets forgiveness of sins under licence from prelate Albert of Mainz (50% of revenue to St. Peter's, 50% to Albert of Mainz). (Albert had borrowed money from the Fugger bank to bribe Pope Leo X for him to be simultaneously archbishop of two dioceses and bishop of a third and needed to repay the bank loan). Prince Frederick the Wise bans Tetzel as a competitor to his own collection of relics which offered 'forgiveness of sins' (indulgence). His collection consisted of (among other) –

The Pope decrees the exposure of the Colonna family to capture and enslavement as punishment.

Thomas Bilney, respected Cambridge preacher and Lutheran sympathizer, is dragged from his pulpit. (He is burned in 1531.)

Within the Low Countries, the possession of any vernacular Bibles or any book proscribed by the theologians of Louvain, attendance at any meeting of heretics, 'disputing about Holy Scripture', lack of 'due respect to the images of God and the Saints' brings capital punishment –

Les hommes par l'épée, les femmes par la fosse, les relaps par le feu.
'the men beheaded by the sword, women buried alive in a ditch, the relapsed burnt'.

January: Anabaptist rebellion in Münster results in their leaders, Bockelson and some of his more prominent followers, after being tortured, being executed in the marketplace. Their dead bodies are exhibited in cages hung from the steeple of St. Lambert's Church. These cages still hang there, though the bones were later removed.
April: Ambassador Chapuys writes from England to inform his Catholic emperor, Charles V, of a plot to destroy Queen Anne (Boleyn) of England –

August: Three canons from Louvain University (Tapper, Latomus, Doye) sit on the Commission which eventually condemns Tyndale's views and finds him guilty of heresy.
August 5: William Tyndale is publicly defrocked from the priesthood ('unhallowing of Guillem Tindal') and submitted to the secular power for public burning at the stake.
October 6: Tyndale, first translator of the New Testament into English, is burnt alive at the stake in the town square between church and castle of Vilvoorde, in the presence of the Commission. His ashes are poured into the river Zenne.

July 21: Pope PAUL (III) establishes the Inquisition.

February 9: Bishop of Gloucester and Worcester, John Hooper, is burnt at the stake for heresy.
July 14: Pope Paul IV issues the papal bull Cum nimis absurdum which places religious and economic restrictions on Jews in the Papal States

February 25: Pope Pius (V) excommunicates Queen Elizabeth I of England calling her a usurper of the throne.

In India – The Synod of Diamper orders the destruction of all books and literary records of the Thomas Christians, and their conformity to Catholic practice.

June 22: Scientist Galileo Galilei is forced by the Inquisition to renounce his theory that the Earth revolves around the Sun.

In Ireland – About 25,000 Protestants are massacred for their opposition to Catholic practices (Legal testimonies collected by a government inquiry are kept in the archives of Trinity College, Dublin)..

September 8: Pope Clement XI issues a bull, Unigenitus, which among other things condemns the idea that reading of the bible is for everyone.

The theme ('Who is the Pope? He is Christ on earth') of the Catholic paper of French parish-priest Jeanne-Marie Vianney, L'Universe is defended by Pope Pius IX in an encyclical Inter Multiplices, in which the episcopate and its priests are commanded to be –

The Council of Bishops (First Vatican Council) under Pope Pius IX decides that papal infallibility in matters of faith and morals is now an essential dogma of the Church.
In Uditore, near Palermo, Sicily – the Sicilian Mafia (Cosa Nostra) is formed as a charity 'Tertiaries of Saint Francis' under Antonino Giammona, with the assistance of Father Rosario (a prison chaplain), running protection rackets among the lemon groves, with the complicity of police and judiciary, and an initiation ritual (probably borrowed from the Masons) involving blood of the novice and burning of a saint's image. (Dickie, 2004, p.30-8).

Pope Leo XIII issues his encyclical, Immortale Dei, stating that freedom of thought and publication are "...the fountain-head of many evils" and that it is –

"not lawful for the state ...to hold in equal favour different kinds of religion"

Pope Leo XIII issues the bull Apostolicae Curae in which the Anglican orders (ordained priesthood) are declared "absolutely null and utterly void".

In France – The Jesuit La Civita Catholica comments:
"If a judicial error has indeed been committed (concerning the Dreyfus Affair), the Assembly of 1791 was responsible when it accorded French nationality to Jews."

Pope Pius X declares in support of the cuius regio, eius religio principle (that a region's religion must be the religion of its ruler) –

June 7: The Lateran Treaty is signed between Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Gasparri (for Pope Pius XI) and dictator Mussolini (on behalf of King Victor Emmanuel III), which is described by the Pope as having "given Italy back to God". Mussolini presents the pope with a car.
A concordat is signed between the Vatican and Prussia.

Summer: A concordat is signed between Adolf Hitler and the Catholic Church which requires German Catholics to follow their führer.
June 15: The two practicing Catholics in Hitler's cabinet (Vice Chancellor von Papen and von Rübenach) lead the Corpus Christi procession.

Archbishop Konrad Gröber publishes a pastoral letter full of antisemitism, blaming the Jews for Christ's death with the implication that this justifies what Germany is doing to them –

May: In Germany – Catholic Cardinal Bertram (fully aware of the Holocaust slaughters) orders that in all churches of his archdiocese

"a solemn requiem mass be held in commemoration of the Führer..."

so that his and Hitler's flock can pray to the Almighty, in accord with the requiem's liturgy, that the Almighty's son, Hitler, be admitted to paradise.

March 16: Pope John XXIII issues an instruction (prepared by Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani)

that sexual abuse by the Clergy is to be handled with utmost 'secrecy' under pain of 'excommunication', thereby actively suppressing investigations of the crime and repudiating the claims of its victims:

The Encyclical Humanae Vitae reiterates the Church's opposition to artificial contraception.

American canon lawyer at the Vatican Embassy in Washington, Rev. Thomas Doyle, begins an informal survey of bishops dealing with pedophilic Catholic priests. He compiles his findings in a 100-page report, recommending a policy to –

Rev. Doyle gives a speech in New Jersey, US, and calls pedophilia "the greatest problem that we in the church have faced in centuries."

July 3: Cardinal Ratzinger (future pope Benedict XVI) writes in rejection of a Bishop's request that Father Campbell, a convicted self-confessed multiple child-molesting priest be defrocked that – "The petition in question cannot be admitted in as much as it lacks the request of Father Campbell himself". New rules of the Vatican in 1980 had removed a bishops' option of requesting laicizations of abusive priests without holding a church trial. These rules are ultimately eased two decades later amid an explosion of child-abuse cases in the United States.

Pope John Paul (II) supports Galileo's view of the sun and solar system, formally withdrawing the Church's condemnation of Galileo Galilei nearly 360 years earlier.

Roman catholic priest Gabriele Amorth of Rome and Jeremy Davies of Old Hall Green, England, found the International Association of Exorcists.

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (then Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and later Pope Benedict XVI) issues a doctrinal commentary to accompany Pope John Paul II’s apostolic letter Ad Tuendam Fidem, which establishes penalties in Canon law for failure to accept “definitive teaching”.
Despite the ecumenical Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC), Ratzinger lists Leo XIII’s declaration, in Apostolicae Curae (see 1896) that Anglican ordination is “absolutely null and utterly void”, as a teaching to which Catholics must give “firm and definitive assent”. Those (such Evangelical Anglicans) who fail to give “firm and definitive assent” would “no longer be in full communion with the Catholic Church”.
November 27: Pope John Paul issues a papal bull, "Incarnationis Mysterium" (The Mystery of the Incarnation) which proclaims the year 2000 a special Holy Year. Special indulgences are offered for making pilgrimages, doing good deeds or fasting.

April 15: Ex-nun and author from the UK, Dr Lavinia Byrne, interviewed on Australia's Radio National says, in answer to the question 'Do you see Mary as a co-redemptrix of the church, on a par with Jesus?' –

An American diplomat to the Vatican states in a cable to the US: "The Holy See will continue to seek to play a role in the Middle East peace process while denying this intention." (cable 1792, leaked in December 2010).

April 24: In the Vatican, Rome - In spite of rising occurrence of pedophilia among priests, the church reaffirmed the value of priestly celibacy as a gift of God to the Church.
The American bishops present declare their intention to propose a process for –

(Note: only concerning sex-crime repeated that has achieved notoriety, that is, has affected the church's reputation. The plight of the victims is not in view at all).
August 12: A statement, signed by representatives of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the National Council of Synagogues, says Catholics should no longer try to evangelise Jews because they "already dwell in a saving covenant with God."
(The Pope's personal annual salary is about $18,000 US).
December 23: Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston (US) asks a judge to dismiss all the sexual abuse lawsuits against it (more than 400) on the grounds of religious freedom.

What a betrayal of Christ!

The Church contradicts the efforts of the World Health Organisation, to reduce the spread of HIV, by insisting that –

September: Bishop Thomas L. Dupre (formerly of Roman Catholic Diocese of Springfield) indicted by a US grand jury on criminal charges of raping two children, escapes prosecution when District Attorney William M. Bennett rules the case too old under the Statute of Limitations.

September 19: United States Department of Justice (Peter Keisler, assistant United States attorney) asks the Federal District Court in Houston to dismiss a lawsuit accusing Pope Benedict XVI of conspiring to cover up the sexual molestation of three boys by a seminarian on the grounds that it would be "incompatible with the United States' foreign policy interests." (The Vatican Embassy in Washington had asked the United States government to issue the papal immunity application to the court and do everything it could to have the case dismissed).

Pope Benedict XVI is reported to have formed adjuristine-exorcism squads to be dispatched world-wide to counter the rise of Satanism in the catholic Church. The announcement is attributed to Gabriel Amorth of Rome (see 1993).

March: Pope Benedict XVI visits Africa and continues to attack the use of condoms even between married couples in which one partner is HIV positive.
November: The government of the Republic of Ireland releases a report into child sex abuse by Catholic clergy which reveals consistent obstruction of justice by its bishops, and the valuing of the Church's reputation above the welfare of its victims, in which priests were even left to continue their crimes after exposure.

February: In Germany – prosecutors open investigations into sex-abuse allegation at a Benedictine-run boarding school in Ettal, Bavaria. Barnabas Boegle, the abbot of the Ettal Monastery, which runs the school, has stepped down after eight former students said they had been abused by school priests in the 1950s, 70s and 80s. (After initial revelations centring on a Jesuit-run academy in Berlin, reports of sexual abuse committed by priests, religious and lay employees of the Catholic church have surfaced across Germany).
In the Vatican – Angelo Balducci, an Italian executive who has been a ceremonial usher of the pope – is under arrest for negotiating with a 29-year-old Nigerian Vatican choir member (St. Peter’s Basilica), Ghinedu Ehiem, for the services of male prostitutes, as part of the larger prostitution ring, involving at least two seminarians for the priesthood.
March: In the Netherlands – accusations of sex abuse have been lodged against ten priests who worked at a Salesian-run college between 1959 and 1971. Bishop Adrian van Luyn of Rotterdam, president of the Dutch bishops’ conference, has announced an investigation, as has the country’s Minister of Justice.
March: In Ireland – Cardinal Sean Brady, the Primate of All Ireland, admits that he attended meetings in 1975 when two teenage boys signed oaths of silence while testifying in a Church inquiry against notorious pedophile priest Father Brendan Smyth.
December: Secret American diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks reveal that the Vatican was so angry in 2009 at what it regarded as politically-driven attempts to draw it into the Irish child-abuse scandal involving Catholic bishops that it refused to cooperate with investigations putting the Irish government in an awkward position.
“The Murphy Commission's requests offended many in the Vatican…because they saw them as an affront to Vatican sovereignty,” one cable, published by The Guardian says, adding Vatican officials were also “angered” over being approached by the Commission directly instead of coming through diplomatic channels. Ultimately, after much behind-the-scenes diplomacy, the Irish Government gave into “pressure'' from the Vatican and granted its officials immunity from testifying.
Later, the Irish cardinal Sean Brady and the Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin went to Rome and met the Pope. After the meeting which was also attended by a group of senior cardinals, the Vatican issued a statement expressing the Pope's “outrage, betrayal and shame'' over the conduct of Irish Catholic priests who had abused children in their care.
In its report in 2009, the Murphy Commission upheld many of the allegations of abuse and cover-up by Church authorities of over three decades.

March 8: In Philadelphia, USA – The archdiocese suspends 21 Roman Catholic priests who were named as child-molestation suspects in a scathing grand jury report released last month.

October 24: In Vatican, Rome – The Vatican presents a proposal entitled –

'Towards Reforming the International Financial and Monetary Systems in the Context of a Global Public Authority',

calling for a "global public authority" and a "central world bank", by its justice and peace department, and states that –