The Cathar's and Inquisition

During the 12th century particularly in the South of France the church had become overtaken with corruption. The church fathers were more concerned with taking care of their real estate and increasing their income than administering to their flock. They had mistresses, they gambled, they were involved in money-lending, charging fees for eccentric offices, permitting illegal marriages and acting as lawyers.

Finally Pope Innocent III, in 1198, condemned these practices. According to the Pope the arch Bishop of the Landudec, was worshiping at only one alter, the alter of money! He charged large fees for consecrating Bishops, let monks marry, condoned other practices not acceptable to church dogma.

The Pope dismissed him, another Arch bishop and also seven Bishops. Several of the bishop’s families were turning away from Rome. The nobles were constantly in dispute with Rome over matters of property, and income.

Staunchly loyal to their regions, they formed alliances with groups of Cathars. Some even became full members of the Cathar Faith. The wife of the Count of Foix in the 12th century, became a “perfect” as did the Counts sister Escomande.

The Cathars were a group of Holy Men and Women who lived a life of Simplicity, renunciation, and spirituality. They refer to themselves as the ”good men” or good Christians. They served a group of people whose needs weren’t being met by the church. The Church of Rome left to its spiritual role to one of materialism.

The Cathars rejected worldly materialism, they lived a life of simplicity, prayer and teaching. They were vegetarians, they traveled in pairs and gave spiritual comfort for those who wished to know more. They represented truth and honesty to those who have had enough lies and decent from Rome.

All could partake both men and women it was not a male dominated society, unlike the Church of Rome! At first there wasn’t a hierarchy or organizational chart.

Bernard of Clairveaux of the Cisterarian monastery was dedicated to simple living. Bernard traveled extensively in the South of France, in 1145, debating with other “perfects” in village squares. He recognized their simplicity and piety but condemned their heresy.

Many of the Noble's supported the Cathars because they saw it as a movement centered in the Languedoc and not in Rome.

The church was not happy and in 1209 it launched a crusade to wipe out the Cathars. Northern armies of knights descended upon the Languedoc destroying many of the cities and towns. Burning thousands of Cathars, alive sometimes hundreds at once, in huge arenas. By this time the dilapidated castle at Montsequeur, perched upon an impregnable rocky hill top, had been rebuilt as a base for the Cathar Church.

After destruction of the lower valleys in 1232, it became center of the faith, and the seat of a Bishop of the Cathars. A small village for Cathar “perfects” was built between the castle and the nearby cliffs, the remains can be seen to this day.

Accompanying the northern armies was a cleric Dominic de Guzman, who formed the Order of Dominicans which later became known as the Inquisition.

A cold horror swept the land as the inquisition tortured and burned its way through the South of France. The Inquisition was feared and hated everywhere. Many were beaten or murdered as the order continued its pursuit of the heresies.

For the Cathar’s it was a war they could not win. Their ways were simple, those suspected of heresy were put to the question! A process of pain centered information extraction that even the notorious Gestapo would have admired for its cold and ruthless efficiency.

The suspect was arrested after a confession, the Dominicans had a firm grasp of psychology and knew that incarceration and fear would do most of the work for them..

They moved on to a torture, but they had a sensitivity to blood, the torturers tended to use instruments that were blunt, red hot and restrictive. Bones could be broken, limbs dislocated, so that any blood spilled was by accident and not on purpose. And thus acceptable to the church rules. Once a victim was in a mind to confess—to anything probably—Dominican Lawyers would copy everything, record their testimony and often detailed the events they witnessed, then the victim was asked to confirm that the confession was free and spontaneous. Then they were turned over to the state for execution.

The church as a Christian organization didn’t execute or so they claimed, unconcerned with the level of hyprocacy involved. Through these testimonies they created a vast archive that held data on all they encountered. Although they burned thousands they came into contact with they usually did it only after extensive interrogation.

They wished always to maintain and augment this collective memory that formed the heart of their power. They believed that a convert who would betray his friends was worth more than a roasted corpse.

The Inquisition was the intelligence agency of the thirteenth century. It maintained an extensive sophisticated data base for its time. It investigated suspected heretics recorded testimonies, denunciations, and confessions in intricate and legal detail and maintained archives of these records so that information could be retrieved long afterwards.

The Inquisition became the churches KILLERS. Their family of secret informers, ruthless interrogators and cold judges all acting in the name of Christ.

The historical Messiah had long been forgotten what mattered now was the VATICAN CHRIST.

In 1244 the Inquisition won its first Crusade against heresy with the fall of the Cathar Castle at Monteseure. Two hundred or more Cathars were burnt alive.

The Inquisition saw this not as the end but the beginning of phase II In their quest against heresy. By this time they monitored the whole of the south of France through a network of informants.

The Inquisition was there to stay to support the power of the Catholic church of Rome. And it has stayed until the present day.

It has tried to sanitize itself. In 1908, the Inquisition was renamed “ The Sacred Congregation of The Holy Office!’ Then in a further change it became the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1965. The Inquisitions softened image is to maintain the Orthodoxy of the church.

The currant head of the Congregation called the "prefect” is the Grand Inquisitor. Appointed on May 15, 2005  California born Monsignor William Levada. Formerly Arch –Bishop of San Francisco, his immediate predecessor Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger elected Pope in 2005. Ratzinger is quite clear about the churches doctrine.

There is no flexibility with regards to its precepts. “Revelation terminated with Jesus Christ” Ratzinger has stated throwing out a direct challenge to those who might think that TRUTH is there to be discovered even today.

Conveniently forgetting the vote at the Council of Nicea that defiled Jesus. He is dismissive to those who think that the church is anything but divine. The church appears to be a human constraint”. “One cannot establish the truth by resolution but can only recognize and accept it”. “ Truth cannot be created through ballots”. "The church bearer of Faith does not sin.”

The Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith clearly maintains the stance of its ancestor the Inquisition. In shoring up the boundaries of belief and placing limits on the discovery of truth, it serves in effect as the Vatican’s command and control center.

This department’s only reason for existing is to keep at bay the Vatican’s greatest and most secret fear. That evidence might emerge that would prove that Jesus was not a God which the council of Nicea proclaimed but a man. 

 Perhaps that is what Pope Leo the X meant when he stated that this “myth of Christ has served the Church well”. Or “ How much we and our family have profited by this legend of Christ."  As reported by John Bale the apostate English Carmelite to Queen Elizabeth I in 1560. 

 If this is true it would be a crushing blow for all of Christendom for it would mean that the entire christen faith was based on fraud !