On the contrary, I am not the one screaming "bullshit" in as many languages as possible. - Edit 1
Before modification by Joel at 13/03/2012 12:26:13 AM
You really need to educate yourself better before trying to make unfounded suppositions into fact. Tom's pretty much laid out why your positions are wrong and all you do is dig yourself a deeper hole. There was nothing "rountine" about syncretic practices; those were rooted out when detected. Santería and Vodoun are not Christian/Catholic practices and the Church purged of its list of saints sometime back anyone suspected of being tied to such practices, in accordance with long-standing policy. To claim otherwise is to engage in fallacy.
How does a 20th Century purge of canonized pagan deities refute the notion pagan deities had been canonized in the 8th-11th Centuries? It never happened, in 2000 years of church history, because (some) cases where it did were expunged <50 years ago?That was the latest of a series of efforts to root out popular corruptions of official doctrine. It goes back much further than that, but I didn't (and don't) have the time to spell it out.
Apparently, any argument that takes more than a day indicates desperation, or so I am told.
Regardless, expunging fictional and/or pagan deities from the canon is not exactly evidence it contained none. Their presence in CANON is likewise not a "popular corruption of official doctrine," it IS official doctrine. Or does the laity, rather than the Bishop of Rome, set canon now?So Irish St. Brigid and Celtic deity Brigid sharing the name, feast day and center of veneration (for the former) and worship (for the latter) is just coincidence?
To a degree, yes.
Are they distinct, or not? If not, we are only discussing the "degree" of syncretism, not its reality.
It is mere happenstance St. George slew a marauding fantastic beast to which a North African princess was offered as sacrifice, just as Perseus with Andromeda?
You really are grasping at straws to keep your tangent floating, aren't you?
Not really; as I said, I deliberately skipped other, more tenuous examples, because I did not want to be forced to defend questionable links.
Virginal St. Columba pursued by a suitor to a location where a spring arose at the site of her demise only superficially reflects the myth of Arethusa?
How many hours of internet searching did you do in an attempt to try and turn a tangent of your discredited original statement into something worth arguing, at least in your own mind?
About 2 or 3, mainly because, as I said, I did not want to rely on anything that was not pretty firm and unbiased. That meant skipping all the "Catholicism is the devil" and "Christianity is perverted gnosticism" conspiracy sites and examples that seemed mostly conjecture.
Those are only the strongest examples I found in the past day, leaving out things like purported connections between Kali and St. Sarah.
Oh, the past day. Sounds like several hours of work to try and refute someone who stated that the Church's official stance is to root out syncretic practices among its populace, including the removal from the official list of saints those proven to be altered forms of pagan deities. Having popular custom try to carry over aspects of older beliefs onto historical people is frowned upon and has been for a long, long time, but it still persists. So what the fuck does it have to do with your ridiculous statements on iconoclasm and the Great Schism? Not a damn thing.
Obviously it is related to iconoclasms role in the Great Schism by the existence of icons (and relics) associated with saints that were, in some cases, originally pagan deities. The official stance is all well and good, but the need to expunge the official list of some saints tells us 1) the official stance has been far from perfectly observed and 2) deviations from it are far from limited to "popular custom."
I spent most of the last day asleep, to the extent THAT has any relevance, clearly a better use of my time than defending myself rather than my arguments.
Iconoclasm was not a serious matter for the West (the Western churches being more or less indifferent to ikons compared to statuaries) and the matter was more or less resolved centuries before the Great Schism. That split was, as Tom said, due to a host of other factors much, much more significant (I suspect iconoclasm wasn't on the agenda then) than how ikons were to be venerated/not displayed. It might behoove you to just for once shut up and listen to someone who has more knowledge than something half-(mis)remembered in some high school history text (for the record, none of the texts I've used over the years taught anything of the sort when it came to the Great Schism. Must be a Texas state board insertion somewhere ).
).Then the TEA gets around, corrupting not only Wikipedias article on the Great Schism to state
Emperor Leo III the Isaurian outlawed the veneration of icons in the 8th century. This policy, which came to be called Iconoclasm, was rejected by the West with the exception of Emperor Charlemagne, who commissioned the Libri Carolini which affirmed a condemnation of the veneration of icons http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East%E2%80%93West_Schism#Other_points_of_conflict
but also its article on Pope Stephen II to claim
Relations were very strained in the mid-8th century between the papacy and the Eastern Roman emperors over the support of the Isaurian Dynasty for iconoclasm. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Stephen_II#Allegiance_to_Constantinople
Apparently the TEA insidious falsehood even corrupted the Catholic Encyclopedia, or at least its online transcription, because its article on Iconoclasm begins,
Iconoclasm (Eikonoklasmos, "Image-breaking" is the name of the heresy that in the eighth and ninth centuries disturbed the peace of the Eastern Church, caused the last of the many breaches with Rome that prepared the way for the schism of Photius, and was echoed on a smaller scale in the Frankish kingdom in the West. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07620a.htm
is the name of the heresy that in the eighth and ninth centuries disturbed the peace of the Eastern Church, caused the last of the many breaches with Rome that prepared the way for the schism of Photius, and was echoed on a smaller scale in the Frankish kingdom in the West. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07620a.htmNote the claim iconoclasm "prepared the way" for the Photian schism, despite ending before that schism began. The Photian schism was, of course, not the 1054 schism, but its disagreements are integral to the final formal schism. Again, the Great Schism developed over centuries of disagreement between Rome and Constantinople, only culminating in the final 1054 declaration. Iconoclasm was very much part of the preceding centuries of difference. Consider the third paragraph of the Catholic Encyclopedias article on iconoclasm:
The pope at that time was Gregory II (713-31). Even before he had received the appeal of Germanus a letter came from the emperor commanding him to accept the edict, destroy images at Rome, and summon a general council to forbid their use. Gregory answered, in 727, by a long defence of the pictures. He explains the difference between them and idols, with some surprise that Leo does not already understand it. He describes the lawful use of, and reverence paid to, pictures by Christians. He blames the emperor's interference in ecclesiastical matters and his persecution of image-worshippers. A council is not wanted; all Leo has to do is to stop disturbing the peace of the Church. As for Leo's threat that he will come to Rome, break the statue of St. Peter (apparently the famous bronze statue in St. Peter's), and take the pope prisoner, Gregory answers it by pointing out that he can easily escape into the Campagna, and reminding the emperor how futile and now abhorrent to all Christians was Constans's persecution of Martin I. He also says that all people in the West detest the emperor's action and will never consent to destroy their images at his command (Greg. II, "Ep. I ad Leonem"). The emperor answered, continuing his argument by saying that no general council had yet said a word in favour of images that he himself is emperor and priest (basileus kai lereus) in one and therefore has the right to make decrees about such matters. Gregory writes back regretting that Leo does not yet see the error of his ways. As for the former general Councils, they did not pretend to discuss every point of the faith; it was unnecessary in those days to defend what no one attacked. The title Emperor and Priest had been conceded as a compliment to some sovereigns because of their zeal in defending the very faith that Leo now attacked. The pope declares himself determined to withstand the emperor's tyranny at any cost, though he has no defence but to pray that Christ will send a demon to torture the emperor's body that his soul be saved, according to 1 Corinthians 5:5.
That sure SOUNDS like the Great Schisms jurisdictional disputes. The imperial threat to march on Rome, destroy a prominent icon of Peter and imprison the Pope also sounds like "a serious matter for the West." Enough so that the Pope declared "all people in the West detest the emperor's action."
It sounds like nothing but resurrecting a dead corpse to make an argument. That issue was settled nearly two centuries prior to 1054 (and even that was not the final break between the two main branches of the Church, as there were temporary reconciliations through the Council of Florence in the 14th century and promises even up to the years immediately preceding the fall of Constantinople in 1453). You might as well have argued that the Pelagian heresy led to an irreparable split that caused the Protestant Reformation for as much sense as your linking of an irrelevant event to something that transpired around a host of other issues. There are theological differences between the Orthodox and Catholic churches, but nothing to do with the veneration of ikons/statuaries. That you want to persist and bring up Photius when that issue was settled definitively centuries before is just ridiculous. Do you live to have people berate you for not having a full grasp of what you are trying to argue?
No, but some seem to live to berate me just for the sake of doing it; ironically, I am the one worried about being uncivil.
Yes, I realize iconoclasm was a settled matter well before the formal Great Schism of 1054; I have never contended otherwise. HOWEVER, iconoclasm was one of the jurisdictional divisions between East and West culminating in the Great Schism, deepening and widening a breach that existed both before and after iconoclasm. I brought up Photius simply because the Catholic Encyclopedia states iconoclasm "caused the last of the many breaches with Rome that prepared the way for" THAT schism; if you disagree, take it up with the reference quoted rather than the person quoting.
At the risk of excoriation for citing documented common knowledge, the Great Schism developed over centuries, not months, as Byzantine and Roman policy became so increasingly disparate reconciliation was impossible. Iconoclasm is widely cited AMONG factors leading to the Great Schism, though obviously not the only factor. It contributed to growing separation continuing even after the iconoclasm dispute was resolved (though I doubt Popes just forgave and forgot imperial threats to march on and imprison them for venerating icons, considering a Patriarch of Constantinople was publicly flogged and blinded for opposing iconoclasm.) The separation found its formal, final and permanent expression in the Great Schism but, although iconoclasm had long since ended by then, the documented record does not support claims iconoclasm was distinct from or trivial to the separation.
Joel, just shut the fuck up. You've demonstrated that you don't know the material, that you cite extraneous information that serves no point other than to permit you to repeat ad nauseam bits that were already stated a long, long, long time ago to be insignificant detritus to a host of issues that persist today.
How is it "extraneous"? The East and Western churches disagreed over iconoclasm to the point of the emperor threatening to destroy icons in Rome and imprison the Pope, hardly the trivial matter you declare it. That was exactly the sort of disagreement over papal vs. imperial doctrinal jurisdiction critical to the Great Schism. Yes, that particular instance of jurisdictional conflict was long ended before the Photian dispute, just as Photius was dead well over a century before the formal Great Schism, but calling them all independent of each other is a rather fragmented view of history. That is like saying, "the Stamp Act was repealed a full decade before the American Revolution, and thus had no effect on it."
The jurisdictional dispute was well underway before iconoclasm, but iconoclasm continued and exacerbated it in a doctrine the Eastern church at times violently embraced but consistently rejected by the Western (with the single exception of Charlemagnes misinformed treatise, which the Pope rejected anyway.) Iconoclasm ultimately ended in the East as well, but that did not reverse the significant damage to the already weakened unity between East and West.
None of that is novel or original in my arguments, and the documented record supports all of it. The Catholic Encyclopedia stated the connection with Photius a century ago; what makes it so outlandish now? If the only answer is "the fact Joel quoted it," it is a very poor one.
EDIT: Oh, and you might want to let Tom know "Horus slaying Set" is NOT "a prototype for St. George and the Dragon;" while aware of that one as well, I stopped at Perseus to avoid fighting on too many fronts at once.