Wednesday, October 18, 2023
Tuesday, November 19, 2019
Religious fundamentalism is a ‘plague,’ pope says
Junno Arocho Esteves
Nov 19, 2019
Pope Francis greets Father Guillermo Marco, Muslim leader Omar Abboud and Rabbi Daniel Goldman, co-presidents of the Argentine Institute for Interreligious Dialogue, Nov. 18, 2019, in the apostolic palace of the Vatican. (Credit: CNS photo/Vatican Media.)
ROME - Interreligious dialogue is an important way to counter fundamentalist groups as well as the unjust accusation that religions sow division, Pope Francis said.
Meeting with members of the Argentine Institute for Interreligious Dialogue Nov. 18, the pope said that in “today’s precarious world, dialogue among religions is not a weakness. It finds its reason for being in the dialogue of God with humanity.”
Recalling a scene from the 11th-century poem, “The Song of Roland,” in which Christians threatened Muslims “to choose between baptism or death,” the pope denounced the fundamentalist mentality which “we cannot accept nor understand and cannot function anymore.”
“We must beware of fundamentalist groups; each (religion) has their own. In Argentina, there are some fundamentalist corners there,” he said. “Fundamentalism is a plague and all religions have some fundamentalist first cousin.”
According to its website, the Institute for Interreligious Dialogue was founded in Buenos Aires in 2002 and was inspired by then-Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio as a way “to promote understanding among men and women of different religious traditions in our city and the world.”
The pope welcomed the members of the institute who are in Rome to reflect on the document on “human fraternity” and improving Christian-Muslim relations, which was signed Feb. 4 by Francis and Sheikh Ahmad el-Tayeb, the grand imam of al-Azhar and a leading religious authority for many Sunni Muslims.
Saturday, August 06, 2011
France Before the Revolution...
The gospel would have brought to France the solution of those political and social problems that baffled the skill of her clergy, her king, and her legislators, and finally plunged the nation into anarchy and ruin. But under the domination of Rome the people had lost the Saviour's blessed lessons of self-sacrifice and unselfish love. They had been led away from the practice of self-denial for the good of others. The rich had found no rebuke for their oppression of the poor, the poor no help for their servitude and degradation. The selfishness of the wealthy and powerful grew more and more apparent and oppressive. For centuries the greed and profligacy of the noble resulted in grinding extortion toward the peasant. The rich wronged the poor, and the poor hated the rich.
The Great Controversy, p.279.
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As we examine the conditions that prevailed in France back then;
Can anyone see a parallel with what happened then and what is taking place now?
Are there any similarities between France then, and the U.S., now? Or, the European Union's current economic turmoil?
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Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Aug 24, 1572: Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre
Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre
Previous Day August 24 Calendar Next Day .
King Charles IX of France, under the sway of his mother, Catherine de Medici, orders the assassination of Huguenot Protestant leaders in Paris, setting off an orgy of killing that results in the massacre of tens of thousands of Huguenots all across France.
Two days earlier, Catherine had ordered the murder of Admiral Gaspard de Coligny, a Huguenot leader whom she felt was leading her son into war with Spain. However, Coligny was only wounded, and Charles promised to investigate the assassination in order to placate the angry Huguenots. Catherine then convinced the young king that the Huguenots were on the brink of rebellion, and he authorized the murder of their leaders by the Catholic authorities. Most of these Huguenots were in Paris at the time, celebrating the marriage of their leader, Henry of Navarre, to the king's sister, Margaret.
A list of those to be killed was drawn up, headed by Coligny, who was brutally beaten and thrown out of his bedroom window just before dawn on August 24. Once the killing started, mobs of Catholic Parisians, apparently overcome with bloodlust, began a general massacre of Huguenots. Charles issued a royal order on August 25 to halt the killing, but his pleas went unheeded as the massacres spread. Mass slaughters continued into October, reaching the provinces of Rouen, Lyon, Bourges, Bourdeaux, and Orleans. An estimated 3,000 French Protestants were killed in Paris, and as many as 70,000 in all of France. The massacre of Saint Bartholomew's Day marked the resumption of religious civil war in France.
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Source: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/saint-bartholomews-day-massacre
Saturday, May 10, 2008
THE HISTORY 'UNFIT' TO PRINT
In Love With the History Our Teachers Never Told Us
French Huguenots murdered by Spanish Roman Catholics.
Much like the inability of it and other newspapers, notably the Washington [a]Post[ate], regarding Roman Catholic terrorist Guy Fawkes, who attempted to blow up the British Parliament in 1605, the New York Times fails to mention the religion and hence the religious motives of the Spanish murderers of French Protestants.
(excerpt)
CUTTYHUNK ISLAND, Mass. — Tony Horwitz’s new book, “A Voyage Long and Strange,” is about the American history most Americans never learned, including the story of the short-lived, early-17th-century colony established on this windswept island eight miles west of Martha’s Vineyard.
The book starts with the Viking discovery of North America, dispels a number of myths about Columbus (a much lousier navigator than we were taught) and then traces the various Spanish and French explorations of America before turning to the English settlements at Jamestown and Plymouth.
That the Pilgrims were very tardy latecomers is one of the themes of “A Voyage Long and Strange,” just published by Macmillan. Another is that much of what we think of as heroic exploration was bumbling and misguided. And a third is that large chunks of our past are preserved these days less by scholars than by passionate amateurs. Who knew, for example, that some evangelicals in Jacksonville, Fla., were keeping alive the memory of the French Huguenots who settled there and were massacred by the Spanish?
The author Tony Horwitz on windswept Cuttyhunk Island(photo and caption from The New York Times)
Posted by Douglas A. Willinger
Source: http://continuingcounterreformation.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2008-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-08%3A00&updated-max=2009-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-08%3A00&max-results=50
Thursday, March 27, 2008
THE EDICT OF NANTES
The Edict of Nantes (1598) |
Henry, by the grace of God king of France and of Navarre, to all to whom these presents come, greeting: Source: http://www.historyguide.org/earlymod/nantes.html ************ EDICT OF NANTES, the law promulgated in April 1598 by which the French king, Henry IV., gave religious liberty to his Protestant subjects, the Huguenots. The story of the struggle for the edict is part of the history of France, and during the thirty-five years of civil war which preceded its grant, many treaties and other arrangements had been made between the contending religious parties, but none of these had been satisfactory or lasting. The elation of the Protestants at the accession of Henry IV. in 1589 was followed by deep depression, when it was found that not only did he adopt the Roman Catholic faith, but that his efforts to redress their grievances were singularly ineffectual. In 1594 they took determined measures to protect themselves; in 1597, the war with Spain being practically over, long negotiations took place between the king and their representatives, prominent among whom was the historian J. A. de Thou, and at last the edict was drawn up. It consisted of 95 general articles, which were signed by Henry at Nantes on the 13th of April 1598, and of 56 particular ones, signed on the 2nd of May. There was also some supplementary matter. The main provisions of the edict of Nantes may be briefly summarized under six heads: (r) It gave liberty of conscience to the Protestants throughout the whole of France. (2) It gave to the Protestants the right of holding public worship in those places where they had held it in the year 1576 and in the earlier part of 1577; also in places where this freedom had been granted by the edict of Poitiers (1577) and the treaties of Nerac (1579) and of Felix (1580).(1580). The Protestants could also worship in two towns in each bailliage and senechausee. The greater nobles could hold Protestant services in their houses; the lesser nobles could do the same, but only for gatherings of not more than thirty people. Regarding Paris, the Protestants could conduct worship within five leagues of the city; previously this prohibition had extended to a distance of ten leagues. (3) Full civil rights were grantedto the Protestants. They could trade freely, inherit property and enter the universities, colleges and schools. All official positions were open to them. (4) To deal with disputes arising out of the edict a chamber was established in the parlement of Paris (le chambre de l'edit). This was to be composed of ten Roman Catholic, and of six Protestant members. Chambers for the same purpose, but consisting of Protestants and Roman Catholics in equal numbers, were established in connexion with the provincial parlements. (5) The Protestant pastors were to be paid by the state and to be freed from certain burdens, their position being made practically equal to that of the Roman Catholic clergy. (6) A hundred places of safety were given to the Protestants for eight years, the expenses of garrisoning them being undertaken by the king. In many ways the terms of the edict were very generous to the Protestants, but it must be remembered that the liberty to hold public worship was made the exception and not the rule; this was prohibited except in certain specified cases, and in this respect they were less favourably treated than they were under the arrangement made in 1576. The edict was greatly disliked by the Roman Catholic clergy and their friends, and a. few changes were made to conciliate them. The parlement of Paris shared this dislike, and succeeded in reducing the number of Protestant members of the chambre de l'edit from six to one. Then cajoled and threatened by Henry, the parlement registered the edict on the 25th of February 1 599. After similar trouble it was also registered by the provincial parlements, the last to take this step being the parlement of Rouen, which delayed the registration until 1609. The strong political position secured to the French Protestants by the edict of Nantes was very objectionable, not only to the ardent Roman Catholics, but also to more moderate persons, and the payments made to their ministers by the state were viewed with increasing dislike. Thus about 1660 a strong movement began for its repeal, and this had great influence with the king. One after another proclamations and declarations were issued which deprived the Protestants of their rights under the edict; their position was rendered intolerable by a series of persecutions which culminated in the dragonnades, and at length on the 18th of October 1685 Louis revoked the edict, thus depriving the Protestants in France of all civil and religious liberty. This gave a new impetus to the emigration of the Huguenots, which had been going on for some years, and England, Holland and Brandenburg received numbers of thrifty and industrious French families. The history of the French Protestants, to which the edict of Nantes belongs, is dealt with in the articles France: History,and Huguenots. For further details about the edict see the papers and documents published. as Le Troisieme centenaire de l'edit de Nantes (1898); N. A. F. Puaux, Histoire du Protestantisme francais (Paris, 18 94); H. M. Baird, The Huguenots and the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (London, 1895); C. Benoist, La Condition des Protestants sous le regime de l'edit de Nantes et apres sa revocation (Paris, 1900); A. Lods, L'Edit de Nantes devant le parlement de Paris (1899); and the Bulletin historique et litteraire of the Societe de l'Histoire du Protestantisme Francais. |