Are Anti-Popes Real?

I’ve always been rather dismayed at the idea of the Catholic Pope. I don’t know how Catholics can take it seriously. God speaks directly to the pope, and only to the pope… except when he dies, in which case God suddenly starts speaking to a committee, telling them who the next pope should be. No one can possibly take such a stupid idea seriously. Yet even non-Catholics treat the Pope as if he’s somehow special, regardless of how much of a degenerate weasel he may have shown himself to be.

Yet not only are there popes, but also antipopes too! Out of chaos, antipopes are born. Here is a historical example of two antipopes being created at pretty much the same time.

In the 14th Century, the Church was in turmoil and popery was so unpopular in Italy that the seat of the pope had been moved to France. The French and Roman factions of the College of Cardinals (the committee that elects the pope) couldn’t agree on anything. Upon the death of Pope Gregory XI, the committee was too busy squabbling to hear God’s orders clearly. Each faction wound up electing a pope of their own.

So now there were two popes, Pope Urban VI (elected by the Roman cardinals), and Pope Clement VII (elected by the French). This state of affairs continued for about 40 years until a French theologian hit upon the theory of conciliarism. This holds that yet another committee can be formed which is higher than the popes and the College of Cardinals. This council would be empowered to finally clear up which pope is really the one and only mouthpiece of God on earth. (So God, it turns out, is also prepared to speak directly to this alternative council, if everyone else has been fooling about too much.)

Bertrand Russell takes up the story:

At last in 1409 a council was summoned and met in Pisa. It failed, however, in a ridiculous manner. It declared both popes deposed for heresy and schism, and elected a third, who promptly died; but his cardinals elected as his successor an ex-pirate named Baldassare Cossa, who took the name John XXIII. Thus the net result was that there were three popes instead of two, the conciliar pope being a notorious ruffian.

It is exactly for problems like this that the church invented the concept of the antipope. This is a pope who dresses like a pope, acts like a pope, and is believed by many during his lifetime to be a pope, but who in fact isn’t a pope at all, because someone else is and it’s theologically impossible for two popes to exist at once.

Thus, at some later point, poor Clement VII and John XXIII were declared not really to have been popes after all, but rather, antipopes.

Things really start to get complicated when you get down to the sub–antipopery level. Here we hit some of the higher functions of advanced theology. A pope is allowed to appoint cardinals, but if it is later discovered that this pope was in fact an antipope, then all the cardinals he appointed suddenly — through a spooky “action-at-a-distance” — simultaneously turn into pseudo–cardinals. And of course, if such a cardinal has appointed cardinal nephews (a cardinal related to the pope), these instantaneously become quasi–cardinal nephews.

The last of the antipopes was Antipope Felix V, who fulfilled the role from 1439 to 1449.

Thanks to the advent of quantum physics, however, we now know that two popes can indeed appear to exist simultaneously. This has been spectacularly proven in our own time by the “retired” ex-pope Ratzinger and Pope Ingracious XV or what ever his name is.

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Footnote: A commenter, “John”, has clarified/corrected the statement in the first paragraph about God talking to the committee. The correction is most welcome, though I would suggest that the clarifications underscore rather than refute the point I was attempting to make!

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Posted by Yakaru

Church worker reinstated after being sacked for inappropriate sexual activities

The European Court of Human Rights has judged that the Catholic Church in Germany wrongfully dismissed one of its employees.

Papal Bull

The pope is trying to get the Brits on side by reminding them that they “won the war”. (Admittedly they did it by changing sides and joining forces with Stalin, abandoning the whole of eastern Europe to that killer of 50 million, but let’s not bring that up at this time.)

The pope, CEO of one of the biggest businesses on earth, needs to distract attention from his complicity in running a global pedophile ring, so what better way than to assert that his only detractors are atheists, and that the Nazis were atheists. Therefore, anyone who is against him is a Nazi, and the British defeated the Nazis, so the British defeated atheism, therefore any poms who don’t like him are committing treason.

Not only the tawdry manoeuvre of a desperate villain, but it’s also factually wronger than wrong. He speaks of:

….Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God from society…

Maybe the former Hitler Youth member has forgotten exactly what was going back then.

Fairly close to where I live, here in Berlin, there’s a church which was being completed just as the Nazis seized power. Here’s a picture of one of the releifs that has been preserved from 1936.

German soldier as disciple of Jesus, church in Alt-Mariendorf, Berlin

Care to explain, Mr Pope, just why a Nazi soldier is depicted as one of Christ’s disciples?

Why also did they immediately close down the athiestic Free Thought Society, with more than half a million members, and eventually have the chairman, Max Sievers, beheaded?

I also recall the regime’s attitude to Christian pastors and religious who spoke the truth in love, opposed the Nazis and paid for that opposition with their lives.

And who the hell are you, Ratzi protector of pedophiles, to invoke the memory of those Christians who died resisting the Nazis? You apologist for creeps who don’t even resist their own urges to defile children.

And before you go casting Nazis as atheists and Christians as resisters, please discuss the photos below the fold.

Catholic Priests: Not Just Child Rapists

Pope Pedophile XVI, God’s infallible mouthpiece

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The Catholic Church isn’t just an international pedophile ring.

It’s also a haven for rapists.

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This report from The Independent:

Vatican confirms report of sexual abuse and rape of nuns by priests in 23 countries

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“The Vatican reports cited countless cases of nuns forced to have sex with priests. Some were obliged to take the pill, others became pregnant and were encouraged to have abortions. In one case in which an African sister was forced to have an abortion, she died during the operation and her aggressor led the funeral mass. Another case involved 29 sisters from the same congregation who all became pregnant to priests in the diocese.”