Sunday, April 5, 2015

HISTORY LESSON: WHEN "THE WHOLE WORLD GROANED TO FIND ITSELF ARIAN"

Several times on this blog I have restated the quote from St. Jerome: "The whole world groaned to find itself Arian." 

I used the quote in response to the many times we have heard from the Kiko's about how many bishops or cardinals support them, etc., etc, etc. For at the height of the Arian heresy, there were more bishops who sided with the heretic Arius than sided with the successor of Peter. 

But I've used the quote from St. Jerome for another reason. As Kiko's theology leaks out, it suspiciously sounds like Arianism, specifically the extremely troublesome teaching of a certain neo-priest who was recorded teaching local diaconate candidates that "Jesus was a sinner". This is Arianism. 

It is also interesting to note how Kiko rejects Constantine and the church after Constantine until, in Kiko's mind, the Church was restored at Vatican II. This is evidenced in his drawing of his version of the timeline of church history:

As you can see, nothing happens in the history of the Catholic Church worth documenting on Kiko's timeline between Constantine and 1962, when Vatican II (and Kiko) arrive on the scene. Read more about this on Chuck White's blog


There's a reason for this. Constantine, while often a cruel ruler (as you shall read about below), was instrumental in stamping out Arianism and preserving the Church, specifically by calling the Council of Nicea, from which we get the Nicene Creed, and which Kiko also apparently rejects.

For at least two years now, many of us in the Archdiocese of Agana have been horrified at the blatant and flagrant actions taken against our church, our liturgy, our priests, our properties, our culture, and our very sense of decency by the very people we have been brought up to believe were there to guard all this. It has been a shock and many of us are still trying to stomach it. 

This is why at every opportunity I have encouraged readers and listeners to get to know the history of the Church so that we might arm ourselves against the errors that have brought so much destruction to our church in the past. 

Following is an excerpt form a book I constantly promote: Triumph: The Power and the Glory of the Catholic Church, a 2,000-Year History by H. W. Crocker, which you can purchase at Amazon or Barnes and Noble.  Copies of the book will also be available at our upcoming village meetings along with copies of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. 

Let's continue on with the story about Constantine and Arius. I will have some comments [in red.]

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But Constantine found that he had less trouble from paganism than he had from a turbulent Libyan presbyter. His name was Arius, and he hammered a fissure into Christianity that would not be equaled until the Protestant Revolution, more than a thousand years later.

THE ARIAN HERESY

Arius taught what had been speculated for more than fifty years among Easter thinkers - that Jesus could not have been fully God, for there was only one eternal God, and that was God the Father. For the faith, this idea had horrific consequences. If Jesus were of a different substance from God, he was like all creation, subject to change and decay, capable of committing sin, [see the above referenced teaching "Jesus is a sinner"] and perhaps better described as a prophet than as God. If Christ was not eternally divine, He was what Constantine took himself to be - God's tool.

Arius defended his position as scriptural and logical in a way that Catholic belief in the Holy Trinity was not. As Arius argued, how could a father not exist before his son? God, the Father, is eternal, with no beginning and no end, but Jesus, the Son, was obviously subordinate, created, and therefore different in kind from God. Arius had more than the presumption of logic on his side. He was an inspiring preacher, and the Arian heresy soon began packing the churches, sweeping up believers, and giving Catholicism its greatest heretical challenge yet - a Christian schism that denied the divinity of Christ on the basis of reason and the Bible. 

The bishop of Alexandria tried to convince Arius - through private, personal appeals - to cease preaching what was obviously heresy. Arius refused, and at a regional council of North African bishops, he was excommunicated. But Arius did not go quietly into the night. With so much popularity at his back, not only among laypeople - including seven hundred women, self-proclaimed holy virgins, who campaigned on his behalf - but among Easter clerics, he knew that he could successfully mount a rhetorical army to challenge the supremacy of the Catholic Church. He was a clerical Caesar raising legions to overthrow the papal Augustus in Rome.

Before Protestants made schism and religious subjectivism acceptable, defining orthodoxy fired Christian passions. The Arian heresy ripped through the empire and tore individual families between fidelity to the Catholic Church and the attractions of a new, supposedly more rational doctrine. Soon there were riots among contending mobs - mobs that became gang armies. Penalties of exile and excommunication were inflicted on rival clerics. Under the Arian emperor Constantius II, ecclesiastical murder was sanctioned. The most famous case involved the Catholic bishop of Constantinople, Paul, who was repeatedly deposed and finally exiled, tortured, and then strangled to death, so that his Arian rival Macedonius could supersede him.

In resolving the Arian dispute, ecclesiastical councils were of no use because they could not agree. Some synods confirmed Arianism and others repudiated it. The only institution that stood firmly against Arianism was the papacy. Even after Arius's death in 336, and after the final defeat of his doctrine with the Roman Empire in 381 at the Second General Council of the Church, it returned in degraded form, because the barbarian tribes overrunning the Western Empire had been converted to Arian Christianity. Its heretical embers continued to glow for the next three hundred years, until completely quenched by the Church of the Middle Ages [a period Kiko rejects].

The great hero in the fight against Arianism was St. Athanasius, the doughtiest Catholic fides defensor of the age, gaining the title "Father of Orthodoxy". Even the historian Edward Gibbon, through himself a mocking skeptic, wrote that "Athanasius displayed a superiority of character and abilities which would have qualified him, far better than the degenerate sons of Constantine, for the government of a great monarchy." 

Well educated in the most philosophically sophisticated of cities, Alexandria, Athanasius was a prodigy, ordained (according to his critics) before he was legally entitled ot the honor. His liberal education and natural gifts made him confident, quick in argument, brilliant in rebuttal. Unlike so many of his contemporaries, he found Catholic dogma more intellectually compelling than Arian speculation

But this wasn't an issue of mere intellectual preference; if the deposit of faith were true, defending it was a sacred duty - a duty Athansius freely accepted. The Arians diligently courted patrons to punish their enemies, and Athanasius suffered exile five times - one under sentence of death. But he never wavered. 

He began his career as secretary to the bishop of Alexandria and wrote many books during the course of his life, including a biography of St. Anthony (of Egypt), whom he apparently met. Throughout his exceedingly active career in combatting Arianism, he dreamt of pursuing a monastic vocation. For one short period of exile, when he was under threat of execution, he temporarily achieved it. But his life was fulfilled not in the peace of the cloister, but in the battle against Arian heresy. [Some say that we should just pray and do nothing. Here is the example of a saint who prayed...and did battle.]

Constantine and Athanasius made natural early allies. Constantine, like the Church in Rome, scorned lucubrations that challenged Catholic unity. To a practical soldier like Constantine, the Arian controversy was the product of "misused leisure." He condemned "those who dared with the senseless levity to rend the worship of the people into separate sects." Such sectarianism was the temptation of the Devil, who knew as well as any soldier the strategy of "divide and conquer." 

Politically, Constantine had only just forcibly united his empire. In 320, Licinius, the Augustus of the East, began stripping the Church of its rights. He purged believers from his government, demanded sacrifice to pagan gods, burned churches, and sent Christians to slave labor, torture, and death. Like so many rulers to come, Licinius saw the Church as a barrier to his absolute power. 

In 323, he found a more difficult barrier. Constantine's legions, flying their Christian battle standard, marched against Licinius, hurling back his soldiers, then crushing his fleet. Constantine advance to the strategic point of Byzantium (Istanbul), while his son Crispus brought Rome's navy from the Aegean through the Dardanelles, which divides modern Turkey. Together, they seized the city. At the final show-down, in the battle of Chrsopolis, tens of thousands of Licinius's men fell before he surrendered to promises of mercy. 

Constantine held him for a year before ordering his execution, the execution of his wife (Constantine's half sister), and one of his sons; another son was eventually reduced to slavery. When it suited him in matters of state, Constantine could act without Christian compassion. He proved that most notoriously when he ordered the execution of  his own golden son Crispus and his second wife, Fausta, in circumstances that remain unclear. 

So Arius had no reason to expect mercy from Constantine. But in this case, the emperor acted through the Church, not via the legions. In 325 he called the Council at Nicea, over which he would preside, paying the costs of every representative coming to do the Lord's and Constantine's work. The task was to find agreement on Christian truth. Such agreement would prove elusive. 

The next village meeting will be Thursday, April 9, 6pm at the Mongmong-Toto-Maite Community Center. Books and documents will be made available. 




18 comments:

  1. In the end, our local Church leader, the archbishop will stand before our God, Creator and Lord, and will answer for all the souls from our Catholic Church he assisted kiko in manipulating away from the authentic Church and into the ncw. Kiko will himself, have to stand and face the same God and answer for all the souls he brainwashed and lured away from the authentic Church.

    The neo members not willing to question or probe into the abnormalities, oppositions and differences taught and practiced in the ncw will also have to stand before our God and answer for their refusal to seek the Truth, or for their complacency and slothfulness in seeking The Truth. The Fullness of The Truth exists and can be found only in the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church and the only one who holds the Apostolic lineage and Authority is the Pope. Not kiko

    Neo members, think back. Haven’t you noticed or even known individuals or families who’ve had the mind and courage (by the Grace of God) to question and probe the ncw ways but then, were eventually requested to leave the ncw -- by your ncw hierarchy -- telling these individuals or families the very absurd excuse that “the ncw was not for them”?

    Jesus welcomed every sinner and made sure everyone understood that He came for the sinner and for everyone who wanted to follow Him! The ncw-elitist attitude and ncw-elitist practices should have raised the red flag, immediately in this cultish movement of the ncw.

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  2. Fr.Matthew Blockley.April 6, 2015 at 2:38 PM

    Excellent article Tim. Unfortunately Archbishop Apuron continues to divide the Catholic Church on Guam with his constant abuse of Catholic theology and Liturgy. His constant disrespect for priests and people. His disrespect for Pope Francis. Only thing that matters to Apuron is himself serving his own ego. impossible for anyone to now respect such a failed spiritual leader.

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  3. Did you know that the word "trinity" only appears once in the body* of the 427-page English version Volume I of the Neocatechumenal Catechetical Directory?

    "All of this he has fulfilled in Jesus, since he, brothers and sisters, really entered with human nature into the divinity, into the Trinity. He has achieved transcendence, he has been resurrected by God and he has entered into the Promised Land." pp. 217-218, 10th Day

    What do you think?

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    * for those that quibble, the word "Trinity" appears only one more time, in a quotation from the Catechism of the Catholic Church in a footnote on page 152. But only once in the body of the text.

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    1. Chuck! Where dis you get that coveted volume? Watch out, you fingers may wither.

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    2. He entered into the trinity?

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    3. Yes, it says "he...entered with human nature into the divinity, into the Trinity."

      It's a classic Kiko half-truth. Jesus did ascend to the Father in His resurrected human body, but where's the other half of the truth to be found in Kiko's catechism? That Jesus was Second Person of the Holy Trinity and was so prior to His incarnation?

      Answer: Nowhere in Vol. I.

      But we do see this on page 11 of that tome:

      "Jesus was truly man: his divinity eclipsed itself (see Phil 2:5-8). For the people, Jesus knew everything and had the power of divination. He was a kind of wizard because since he was God ...He was a man like us and God was acting in him, performing signs so that it may be manifest that he was the Sent One of God, the Chosen One of God, for every prophet in Israel had to prove that he came from God, otherwise he was a false prophet. And he proves it with facts, performing miracles and uttering words that are fulfilled. The Father had to act in him to confirm that he was his envoy, anointed by God with the Holy Spirit to fulfill his mission."

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    4. Chuck,
      In this phrase, "Entered with human nature into the divinity, into the Trinity", is clearly heretical as the Church has always taught that Christ always posessed Divinity, and assumed human nature in ithe fullness of time, the mystery of the incarnation. CCC461, In other words, he became truly man, while remaininng truly God. CCC464 God taking on human nature. Not the other way around. No doubt Kiko's doctrines are heretical, and AAA, Adrian, David, Clarios, Kim, accept and defend this teaching? And AAA has the nerve to try and force this down our throats by planing to make all parishes NCW ? God help us all...

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    5. THIS IS SERIOUS STUFF. did the Vatican miss something???? A child would know it is incorrect. Makes me more nervous than I already am.

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    6. Let's see those Catechetical Volumes. No more clandestine secrets. We better steal them if we have to. This is war!

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    7. in addition to my entry of 2:31AM, We should always remember the the reality of the "Trinity" has existed for all time because it is the reality of God who is eternal, however man's grasp or understanding of the "Trinity" is what is evolving, as God continues to reveal himself to us in time, until we finally are in his presence in the beatific vision.. God Bless

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  4. Looks to me that this specific quote denies the divinity of Jesus prior to his becoming man. The wording espouses that "Jesus the human entered into divinity, into the company of God the Father and the Holy Spirit. ". It is definitely not in keeping with Catholic theology that Christ was, is, and will alway be God. It implies that Jesus has to earn "achieving transcendence" which then deemed him worthy to be called God. How erroneous and blasphemous does NCW have to be in order for Rome to sanction this quasi-Catholic sect?

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  5. There's more anti-Trinitarian stuff in that volume...check this out:


    "Was it that God, like a kind of Moloch, was placated and satisfied with the sacrifice, with the blood of his Son? If so, what sort of God have we made for ourselves? We have arrived at thinking that God, like the pagan gods, satisfies his anger with the sacrifice of his Son. This is why it is normal for the atheists to say: what kind of God is this who discharges his anger against his Son on the cross? And what could we answer? Certain juridical and clumsy rationalizations of the theology of expiation and the Eucharist have brought us to these deformations, to believing in a “God whose ruthless justice would have demanded a human sacrifice, the immolation of his own Son." Vol. I of the Catechetical Directory, p 361.

    My first objection to Kiko’s statement is that he is attempting to deny the sacrificial element of Jesus’ saving death by using a “strawman” argument. That is, he’s deliberately presenting Catholic teaching in a way that he can easily knock it down to convince his listeners of his non-sacrificial view of Jesus’ death. Kiko creates this “strawman” in two ways. First, he presents a word picture of an angry, vengeful God, one with a nasty temper like ourselves. Look at the phrases he uses, “satisfies his anger”, “discharges his anger”, and “ruthless justice”. To be sure, the Sacred Scriptures, even books in the New Testament, discuss God’s “wrath”, but this wrath should be seen as God’s passion for holiness and for making things right, and His “wrath” is not at all like a human temper tantrum.

    Secondly, this straw man presentation ignores the dynamics of the Trinity altogether by excluding the possibility that Jesus is both the priest (offerer) and the victim of the sacrifice of the passion and that His sacrifice on the cross was a self-offering, and that offering was made in the furnace of love that is the Holy Trinity.

    I argue my point in depth here.

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    1. One priest from St. Anthony has preached this not a sacrifice stuff. It is Eucharist; not a sacrifice. It was on Holy Thurday.

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    2. This would be most profitable for ALL of this CATECHISIS (so to speak) to come to light. Then we have something to work with. Excellencies Hon and KREBS, how can you turn a blind eye to this ??? When I heard about Prof saying Jesus was a sinner, I thought could have been language problem. Now that piece of the puzzle fits right in and gave me a big shock! Lay these Qumran scrolls out for all to read!!! CATECHISIS, not really. The blue Baltimore Catechism gave me my foundation. That was Catechisis.

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  6. It certainly appears that Kiko's Theology not only trys to deny the sacrificial nature of Christ's passion, but in turn also the sacrificial nature of the Eucharist which is central to our liturgy and by nature is one and the same sacrifice. The Apostle to the gentile however assures us that they are in fact the same when he tells us "For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes again." 1Cor11:26 in other words, what he started at the last supper he ended at the cross, so yes he is both high priest, and the lamb of God that indeed takes away the sins of the world. God Bless..

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    1. Hey some mockery for those of us who say Holy Sacrrifice of the Mass. Snickers and correction! THE EUCHARIST IT's aGreek word. Thanks, genius. Yes, ROME, we do have a problem. Houston, we have a problem. Let's see if that helps us!

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    2. The Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass says it all. No prayer, no singing, no ceremony comes close. The key component is that it is TRULY a EUCHARISTIC SACRIFICE as Jesus instituted at the Last Supper. Receiving the Eucharist in the state of grace assures us that Christ is in our body and soul as we go through our life's journey until we join him in His heavenly Kingdom. Anyone who doesn't believe this might as well treat hinself/herself to a delicious doughnut instead of consuming kiko bread.

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