SHOULD THE VATICAN GIVE UP ITS' WORLDLY ASSETS?

Great Debates
81

jmullaney, you are still misstating most of your snipped history.

The Spirituals were not condemned for their poverty.

The Spirituals and the Conventuals had an internal battle within the Franciscan community when the Conventuals chose to take their ministry into the universities. I would accept the argument that the Spirituals were closer to the ideals of Francis. However, the issue came to a head when the internal political battles of the Franciscans erupted into physical battles, with the Spirituals physically evicting Conventuals from various monasteries. When the church superiors got involved, the Spirituals denied the authority of the various bishops, abbots, and popes to mediate the dispute. THEY WERE NOT CONDEMNED FOR THEIR POVERTY. They were condemned for numerous differences of theology, especially after they declared that the RCC had no authority at all, that the Sacraments could not be administered by a priest who had sinned, and that they were the only correct interpreters of the Gospels. “Poverty” does not even enter into the actual condemnation.

To claim that this rather complex series of battles and issues, (extending over 70 years with as many religious/political victories by the Spirituals as the Conventuals–although not the last victory, of course), can be stated that the RCC condemned poverty outside a religious order is dishonest.

The same is true of the Beguines and Beghards of the Netherlands (whence Marguerite Porète). In their earliest formation, which often embraced poverty, but never included forming religious orders, they were embraced by the RCC. Later, as they began to deny the validity of the Sacraments and the authority of the church, different groups among them were condemned. Poverty, however, was not the issue. The theological differences between the Beguines/Beghards and the RCC only touched on poverty as one aspect of their differences.

The claim that the RCC condemned any of these people because of their adherence to poverty is simply false.
Your also continue to twist your references to Joseph of Arimathea. Not one of the authors of the Gospels condemns (or evens clucks their tongue at) Joesph, yet you feel free to claim that he was violating the Word of God based on your personal interpretation of the Gospels written by those same people. You are welcome to that interpretation, of course, but it makes no sense in context.

82

Can you give me a cite on this? I mean, this is what the encyclopedia says:

“the Spirituals firmly espoused the austerity and poverty prescribed in the original Rule of St. Francis. Called the
Fraticelli, they were opposed, to some extent, by St. Bonaventure, a leading Franciscan theologian, and some were condemned and executed as heretics.”

All I know is:

1) The espoused poverty
2) They were condemned as heretics.

I’m sure with the witch trial nature of the Council of Vienne they were accused of all sorts of terrible things, but it seems espousing poverty is the only thing that made them unique according to the references I’ve seen.

83

jmullaney wrote:

Now who’s struggling to rationalize his way around the words of Jesus? :wink: Here’s the quote:

It seems pretty clear that among “these things” was the return of Jesus:

jmullaney also wrote:

[quote]
Mark 9:1 is a little bit easier – as the Kingdom of God was established and came into power, and is still so to this day.

[quote]

I gather that you believe the “Kingdom of God” to be a reference to the church. I’m not so sure Jesus meant it that way. Certainly, his disciples seemed to understand him to mean that he would be establishing a worldly kingdom. They even bickered over which apostle would rank highest in his court.

Now when Jesus didn’t actually return within a generation to set up a worldly kingdom, those who were still waiting had to spin his words to fit the changed circumstances. Thus, “kingdom of God” came to be understood to mean “church”. My view, anyway.

84

I know, I know.

Well, a generation is something which is generated, right? :smiley: OK, just kidding. This word is also translated race. I’ll admit it is a stretch. Perhaps in someway he is talking about death itself as he does elsewhere when he speaks of the destruction of the temple, metaphorically, as his own death? But I’m not much of an apologist.

Well, Jesus does seem to return in the form of the Holy Spirit as told in the beginning of Acts.

The phrase appears 51 times in the Gospels, and with very few exceptions that seems to be what Jesus means. Do a search on the phrase here and you will see what I mean. But, yes, Jesus does seem to be of two minds about it once in a while.

Well, you know, in this world, not of this world.

I don’t know spoke. Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of god, right? If you expect the kingdom to own anything that you can point to and say – look, there it is, you are mistaken. That doesn’t mean that they have no power – the church draws its power from its righteousness. So since it has power, united under the head of Jesus, it is still a kingdom even though you can’t find it on a map. As Jesus said when he and his disciples were among the Pharisees, don’t ask where the kingdom is for the kingdom is among you.

85

The following sites provide narratives regarding the development of the Franciscans along with the Spiritualists and the Fraticelli. The Catholic Encyclopedia sites are more snide than I feel is legitimate regarding the beliefs of the Spiritualists and the Fraticelli, but there is no indication that any information has been suppressed.

What strikes me about the issue is that the followers of Francis came to two different conclusions regarding the best way to carry forth his message. However, rather than working together, they chose to feud over their issues. Politics seems to have permeated both groups pretty thoroughly.

In the end, however, I find no evidence that the Spirituals were suppressed simply for embracing poverty. They were suppressed when they allowed their views to become political issues (and from those views, took other views in contradiction to the RCC). At no time were they persecuted for “not joining a religious order.”

Catholic Encyclopedia, History of the Franciscans

Catholic Encyclopedia, History of the Spirituals

Catholic Encyclopedia, History of the Fraticelli

This hardly counts as being persecuted for “not joining an order.”

In addition, the claims of the last two statements are not merely differences of opinion, they are specific declarations of heresy–theological points that have nothing to do with poverty, that are in conflict with RCC teachings.

So, in this family feud, the RCC authorities come down (at one point) on the side of the Spirituals and, in typical Christian brotherhood, both sides resume fighting.

(Yeah, I know you support them, completely, on point 3.) However, points 2 and 4 are theological points unassociated with poverty and point 5 is the height of arrogance–again not specific to their battles regarding poverty.

A History of the Franciscans by the Franciscans. (It is pretty sympathetic to the Spirituals, noting only that they "fell into (undescribed) heresy.)

Effects of Joachim on Franciscans

A brief synopsis of the Franciscans

86

I’m taking the links from the Catholic Encyclopedia with a grain of salt myself. The victors write the history books. But thanks for your efforts – you are actually helping my case.

But, who started it?

Do you honestly think the Catholic Encyclodia would have such evidence?

This quote is meaningless to our discussion. The Spirituals were condemned for heresy in 1312. You are describing events that occured nearly 6 full years later, and I fail to see how they are relevant.

The Spirituals were persecuted for keeping the Rule of Saint Francis. They were persecuted for not joining an allowed Rule.

I’ve heard the theory that Francis melded his Order with the Catholic Church because he felt if the RCC took in an Order which actually believed in poverty he could change the Church from within. But, it seems to me, eighty or so years after Francis of Assissi’s death, the Catholic Church changed his Rule to one with communal property and started burning his followers at the stake. Francis, apparently, was foolish to have sold out. This is a brilliant historical lesson that you can’t change the system from within.

I have no doubt that the Franciscan Controversy lasted many many years and all kinds of bad things happened. If I had been a Franciscan back then, a real follower of the teachings of Francis (although, I know we disagree about the teachings of Christ on this point), and some guy from Rome shows up and says if I don’t repent and agree to follow a new Rule that holds property after all I’m going to be declared a heretic, I’d probably have had some strong feelings about that myself. Just because some of the Spirituals didn’t happily turn the other cheek after the fact does not make them a priori herectics.

Of course, it is possible my source which said they were declared heretics in 1312 is in error. But I trust the good people at the Encyclopedia Brittanica.

Here is a link which says the Spirituals were declared heretics in 1312, from the entry on Pope Clement V. Gee, funny how the Catholic Encyclopedia forgets to mention this.

It would seem, of course, they were then excommunicated, basically condemned again, six years later, but that would seem to be on different points. There does seem to be some one-up-manship going on – you’re heretics, no you’re heretics, ok well then you are excommunicated, etc. But your argument is confusing cause and effect.

87

Yes. Why? Don’t you? If your mindset is that everyone who has an opposing viewpoint must be lying, then you have no business engaging in an actual discussion, because you are going to be as closed-minded as you accuse your opponent of being.

The Catholic Encyclopedia will present both sides, claiming that one side’s arguments were “obviously” superior. It will clearly present every article from the perspective of a Catholic scholar of the second decade of the Twentieth century. I have not, however, found any suppression of information, there.

Your focus on the 1312 and 1318 dates indicates that you are not actually reading the history. The battle was not a one-time-victory-for-all-time thing. Each side won and lost a number of political and theological battles over the course of 70 years, or so. (The actual friction went on for over 200 years as demonstrated in the Catholic Encyclopedia–that, of course, hides all internal conflict.) For example, you claim:

Which demonstrates only that the EB’s shorthand references can be misread by those who don’t look further (or don’t want to).

The Catholic Encyclopedia does mention the heresy charge, but it was (more accurately and explicitly than indicated by the EB) three specific statements attributed to Peter Olivi that were condemned as heresy, not the entire movement. Read the link on the Spirituals that I provided, looking for Clement V and then look up Vienne, Council of in the Catholic Encyclopedia. Those references discuss the actual actions taken and cite the actual documents produced. Note that the EB calls the Spiritualists “extremists” while the Catholic Encyclopedia never does.

If the entire movement was condemned in 1312, why was Clement calling for reconciliation that year?

Where your EB citation summarizes “Clement approved the council’s decision to charge heresy against the Spirituals, Franciscan extremists who observed absolute material poverty.” the Catholic Encyclopedia says:

italics mine, See the Vienne article for more information
Note that it is the Conventuals (the Community) that are identified as continuing to “discredit their opponents by insisting on the real or pretended errors.” The Catholic Encyclopedia has not glossed that over or tried to blame the Spirituals for all the problems.

You originally made a couple of unsupported assertions:

  1. Francis chose to seek out the pope’s blessing for his group within two years of founding it. At no time in his life did he speak or act against any teaching of the RCC, even being ordained a deacon, himself.
  2. Francis later tried to reform his own movement when it had gotten so large that his simple “three rules” were not enough to govern the huge number of people who had joined.
  3. Francis was clearly reluctant to write either his second or third rules, but he found that he needed to in order to govern the fast-growing order. There is no evidence that the rules were imposed by the pope, rather, the pope encouraged him to enlist the aid of scholars to help him write his third rule when his second rule had clearly failed after only two years.

Then:

Given that the most significant group that you have pointed to as having been persecuted for poverty were and chose to remain a religious order, this sentence is simply untrue. Similarly, the Beguines/Beghards were noted for their poverty, but they were suppressed for their heresies.

You are now continuing that trend:

You are seriously misrepresenting the events as they occurred. Everything that I will now lay out can be found in the links I have provided or in outside histories that go deeper than the EB synopses.

  1. Francis started his order with a call to complete poverty.
  2. His message and his group caught on like wildfire and grew enormously, quickly.
  3. The mendicants survived on the generosity of those to whom they preached. Many of those to whom they preached were wealthy enough that they were motivated to give more than food and cloth, and they began bestowing money and even offering land to the group.
  4. As the group increased in size (and long before Francis had died) it became clear that they would need to shelter their “overflow” members, so they began to build rude convents to house them. This presented a problem, because they could not own anything as individuals and the rule of Francis required that they not own anything as a group. The issue was unresolved for several years. (If you have aged and sick brothers who need a place to live and someone offers you shelter, do you walk away from the gift and leave your brother lying in the ditch to die? I am not claiming that there were no other options, but this is the sort of choice with which they were wrestling.) Eventually, the titles to the properties were transferred to the pope so that the Franciscans would not “own” them. At this time, some Franciscans sought to spread their message by teaching at universities while others insisted that they should strictly follow the original guidelines of Francis. (Note that at this point, no one from Rome had come and interferred with them.)
  5. As the conflicts between the zelanti/Spiritualists and the relaxti/Conventuals grew, each side appealed to Rome to make the “other guy” act properly. Note that the Spiritualists were not simply out wandering around preaching in poverty and ignoring their “fallen” Conventual brethren. They were actively seeking control of some of the very convents that they decried. In the midst of this, some of the Spiritualists latched onto the musings of Joachim of Fiore and began re-interpreting some of his thoughts in ways that were considered heresy by the RCC. When the Spiritualists and Conventuals would both show up in Rome and begin calling for the suppression of the other group, (always on theological grounds), any idea that could be identified as heresy was a tool to be used.
    (Look at those Christians; see how they love one another.)
  6. Having been dragged into this internal battle, Rome now looked around and saw that one side had heretical beliefs mixed in with their nobler goals. When the decisions came down, they tended to fall in favor of the Conventuals.
    There is no evidence that the pope ever sent out a delegate to order the Spiritualists to become wealthy.
    It may be fun to boil all facts down to simple slogans and one-line judgements, but there is enough history out there to indicate that neither the issues nor the decisions were as cut-and-dried as you would like to make them.
88

Well, it reminds me of the old joke with the guy walking up to Augustine with a bag of money saying, “Um, excuse, but there are a few things I’m hoping you could leave out of your Confessions.” I have a hard time believing that any organization would not gloss over things which might portray them in a bad light in their own publications no matter how perfect and holy they might claim to be.

I merely found your attempt to explain why the Spirituals were condemned for heresy in 1312 by citing things some of their members did in 1318 illogical.

I remain open to enlightenment.

Olivi’s teachings were condemned after many many years because of errors in the following areas:

  1. the moment Our Lord’s body was transfixed by the lance,
  2. the manner in which the soul is united to the body,
  3. the baptism of infants.

Although I don’t know what exactly the nature of those errors were. But if all his teachings were condemned as heretical and ordered to be burned because of something it said as to when “Our Lord’s body was transfixed by the lance,” that sounds like a “witch trial” to me.

If you are going to insist that his teachings about poverty are a total coincidence, we are just going to have to agree to disagree.

The Catholic Encyclopedia backs me up:

You continue:

Well, obviously if they gave up their heresy, they could be reconciled to the church.

Which Rule? The original one or the new one, which the Spirituals opposed?

Awww. What a nice guy.

Yeah, but you have to dig pretty deep to get there. As I said previously, real reconciliation did occur circa 1415, and members of the religious order of the Franciscans were allowed to be poor again; however, after 1325 this wing of the order had basically lost all power.

Fine. I said If I Recall Correctly. I hadn’t. My bad.

Look. I only had ten minutes before the library closed, and will not have an opportunity to return there during open hours any time soon. I know I do not have enough information to satisfy you that there might be a correlation between the heresy that the Spiritual Franciscans were condemned for and the Free Spirits were condemned for just because these condemnations happened to occur at the same time. Even if I could find evidence that the Free Spirits were condemned for not owning property just as the Spiritual Franciscans were, I’m sure that would not be the “official” reason given by the Catholic Church and we would remain at a standstill.

A witch trial is a witch trial is a witch trial. Do you really expect me to believe that they same people who falsely condemned the Spirituals as heretics because of their poverty, suddenly turned around and became good upstanding jurors when the issue of the Free Spirits came up? The only difference I can see is the church has admitted its error in judgement in regards to the Spirituals.

I am willing to concede that even Francis himself might have corrupted his own teachings before his death, and that there were ongoing political battles.

Even the Catholic Encyclopedia admits that the Coucil basically trumped up some charges in order to condemn those that adhered to poverty. They could have just as easily trumped up charges the other way had they believed that a commitment to poverty was a noble cause.

He encouraged them to return to their convents and obey the rule of communal property.

I actually think the truth is important, but let the reader decide.

89

tomndebb

jmullaney

The point is that “the Spirituals” were not condemned for heresy in 1312.
The condemnation of 1312 was against three specific statements made by Olivi. Characterizing the condemnation as a witch trial is an opinion to which you are entitled. Mischaracterizing that condemnation as a complete condemnation of the Spirituals is not supported by the evidence except by your personal interpretation of a single line from the Britannica with no supporting information.

So do I. And I think that you could make good arguments for your theological position based on actual facts. That is why I have found it so frustrating to see you mis-read, mischaracterize, or ignore the historical record.

You have not needed to engage in this dishonesty to make your point.

A shame, really.

90

Well, goodness forbid I should have to rely on an independant encyclopedia for the fact that the Spirituals were condemned for heresy in 1312. If you believe that the Britannica is incorrect, please feel free to let them know they are in error in this:

I’ll admit it lacks detail, but this is either a fact, or it is not. I await seeing the Britannica change its entry based on your admonition.

91

From the Britannica:

Joel, I’m sure you can see that the above quotation doesn’t necessarily deal with causation at all. Heresy was charged, the people observed absolute poverty. It does not say that they were delcared heretic because of that observance.

“The State of California brought murder charges against Charles Manson, who believed himself to be Christ and listened to a shitload of Beatles songs.”

Unless the Enc. Brit. details the actual charges, that quotation demonstrates very little.

92

Andros – point taken, but again, working with what source material we have online, the Spirituals were apparently condemned as heretics because they were judged to be followers of Olivi’s teachings, about which the Catholic encyclopedia says:

If we’re also drawing too many conclusions in regards to thinking that the Spirituals were not actually condemned for other reasons not related to Olivi since the Catholic Encyclopedia fails to mention in so many words they were condemned as heretics, the fact is that the exact same “judges” condemned Olivi indirectly for his “severe” principals of poverty, also condemned the Spirituals and the Free Spirits who also just happened to believe similar principals, during the same Council.

I don’t think this makes the Catholic Church inherently bad, but it is difficult to argue that Pope Clement V wasn’t an inherently bad pope. Either he was having people condemned on dubious charges without knowing they had been trumped up which means he was an idiot, or he knew what was really going on and he was hopeless corrupt. This was the one period in Church history that a serious moral reform of the sort the OP proposed could have taken place, and it was quickly nipped in the bud. I remain hopeful that someday this Church, which professes a belief in Christ, will yet get its act together.

93

I recently read in the media (I believe it was the New York Times) that no church organization has participated in major relief efforts in the past five years. Given what has been said up to now, and the valid moral questions questions raised as well as the knowledgeable bible quotes on man’s humanity to man and the true vocation of the church, can:

  1. First of all, can the contents of this article be true?

  2. If so, why are religious leaders the world over still turning a blind economic eye on others’ plights?

  3. If it isn’t, does there exist an anti-religious lobby powerful enough to disseminte disinformation in major newspapers?

Finally, is there a way of E-mailing the contents of this thread to bona fide religious web sites?

94

Hmmm. That might come as quite a surprise to these people.

95

I don’t think, strictly speaking, that the Sally counts as a church.

No. But they are probably stretching the meanings of everything to come up with this result. The Catholic Church feeds in a lot of places. But they don’t count that. What they probably do count is only the Starvin’ Marvins of 3rd world nations. Between the UN and the various other aid agencies, there probably aren’t enough of these people to go around outside of war zones. Ya just don’t get good famines anymore, ya know?

Of course. Especially in an election year. Remember Repubs believe in cutting back support for the UN and welfare and letting churches and other charities fill in the gap. Since the NYT is a liberal paper, disseminating claims that churches have no interest in doing any such thing works in making Bush’s claims look silly. (Did they mention, by any chance, what a great job synagogues are doing?)