This is an historic day to say the least. Never, in the 239 years of our great country, has the “Holy” See addressed a joint session of Congress. There is a reason for that. The Roman Catholic Church has centuries of indisputable history that flies in the face of everything that America represents: Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Religion, Separation of Church and State, Freedom of Conscience, and just freedom in general. It is not by accident that the first Catholic to become president of these United States was John F. Kennedy. That is because Americans were suspicious, and rightly so, of the idea called Catholicism. It is the antithesis of freedom. A quick read of centuries of history will verify this without question.
Before the “Infallible” Pope Francis comes to the United States of America and lectures us on matters of which he and his religion know nothing about, Religious Freedom, and issues that are nothing but absolute fantasy, “climate-change”, he would do well to return home and tend to the mote in his own religious eye. The pontiffs of days gone by and the general leadership of the Roman Catholic Church are anti-Bible, corrupt to the core, and will someday answer to the only one who can be rightly called “Holy” and “Father.” Consider the following:
Pope Paul’s Predecessors
By Evangelist Robert Sumner
Comments by the Author: In the early 1960s I prepared an article with the above title for the The Sword of the Lord. Later it was printed in the Temple Baptist Church paper, The Baptist Bible Broadcaster, when I pastored at Portsmouth, OH. Eventually, because of all the requests we had for it, I reprinted it in The Biblical Evangelist, adding some helpful documentation. While Pope Paul VI has been long gone, the facts of the article remain.
Pope Paul VI is now the duly elected supreme head of over a half-billion devout Roman Catholics around the world. Francis Cardinal Spellman, an American who helped in his exaltation, had a word to say to the press when he arrived home on good old USA soil.
Said he: “I think he’s terrific…I think he’ll follow very closely in Pope John’s footsteps as well as those of his 261 predecessors!”
Let’s hope not!
Methinks the good Cardinal got momentarily carried away with his enthusiasm and said what he would not have dared to say apart from the white-heat of passionate emotion. More serious reflection would have caused the prelate to have simply predicted Pope Paul VI would follow closely the footsteps of the late Pope John XXIII. But to include the entire list of 261 predecessors…never!
For example, does Mr. Spellman want Pope Paul VI to follow closely the footsteps of Pope Honorius, whom the Ecumenical Church in 680 anathematized as “the Heritic?”
Would he have him “follow very closely” the footsteps of Pope John VIII, who ruled from 854 – 857, then was discovered to be a female when “he” gave birth to an illegitimate daughter, then was stoned to death by an angry mob?
Or would he have him follow the admitted sex maniac, Pope John XII, who raised the ire of the people for turning the Lateran Palace into a “public whore house,” and who was described by the Liber Pontificalis with the words: “He spent his entire life in adultery”?
How about following “very closely” Pope John XV, who split the church’s finances among his kinfolk and earned for himself the reputation of being “covetous of filthy lucre and corrupt in all his acts” (emphasis added)?
Should he follow “very closely” Pope Boniface VII who murdered, by strangling, Pope Benedict VI? This is the pope that Pope Sylvester II called “a horrid monster surpassing all other mortals in wickedness.” Yet it might not even be wise for Pope Paul VI to follow “very closely” in the footsteps of the indignant Sylvester, since the Catholic Encyclopedia says of him: “The common people regarded him as a magician in league with the devil.”
Would the next Boniface, VIII, be a good one to follow “very closely”? Hardly! He called Christ a “hypocrite, “ professed to be an atheist, denied life after death, was a murderer, a sex pervert and is officially recorded as having said, “to enjoy oneself and to lie carnally with women or with boys is no more a sin than rubbing one’s hands together.” The immoral profane Boniface, by the way, was the author of the infamous Bull “Unam Sanctam” which declared the Roman Catholic Church to be the one and only “true” church! That utterance would be hard to support, wouldn’t you say?
Actually, how could Cardinal Spellman have Pope Paul VI follow “very closely” in the footsteps of the “first” Pope John XXXIII [the one who recently died was the second to bear the same title]? If that John’s personal biographer, Theodoric a Niem, is any authority, he “raped” 200 women. The official Vatican records offer this “light” on his immoral reign:
“His Lordship, Pope John, committed perversity with the wife of his brother,
incest with Holy Nuns, intercourse with Virgins, adultery with the married,
and all sorts of sex crimes…wholly given to sleep and other carnal desires,
totally adverse to the lie and teachings of Christ…among the faithful of Christ,
who knew his life and character, he was publicly called the DEVIL INCARNATE.”
Should Pope Paul VI follow Pope Alexander VI, who had five illegitimate children and who conducted the sex orgy in the Vatican on October 31, 1501, the equal of which for sheer horror has never been duplicated – to say nothing of surpassed – in the annals of human history?
Should he follow “very closely” Pope Julias II, who had three known illegitimate children; Pope Alexander VI, who had six known illegitimate children; or Pope Sixtus IV, who lived with his mistress Thersia and made his two illegitimate children Cardinals?
Or should he foolow closely Pope John XI, who was the illegitimate offspring of Pope Sergius and the “whore” Marozia with whom he lived?
Should he follow Pope Innocent III, who not so innocently murdered in excess of one million “heretics” during his regime?
Actually, how could Cardinal Spellman suggest that Pope Paul VI even follow “very closely” the footsteps of his fellow “Pauls” in the Roman hierocracy? Even pro-Catholic Life magazine frankly stated:
“In choosing the name of Paul, the new Pope took on the name of the Pauline
Popes of an era when worldliness, violence and nepotism were not considered inconsistent
with holiness.
Paul I (757-767) succeeded his own brother as Pope. Paul II (1464-1471),
Pietro Barbo, is remembered for extravagant carnivals, horse races, public games and
lavish banquets… Paul III (1534-1539). Alessandro Farnesse…as a cardinal fathered
three sons and a daughter and on the very day of his papal coronation celebrated
the baptism of his two great-grandchildren. He made cardinals of two nephews, aged
14 and 16, sponsored festivals with singers, dancers and jesters, sought advice of
astrologers. Paul IV (1555-1559), Giovanni Pietro Caraffa, was a fanatic inquisitor who
sent hundreds of clergy, including a cardinal, to prison or gallows for heresy. At his death
mobs rioted in celebration…”
Do you see what I mean when I say that undoubtedly Mr. Spellman “got momentarily carried away with his enthusiasm” when he volunteered the hopeful opinion that Pope Paul VI would “follow very closely” in the footsteps “of his 261 predecessors”?
Again I say, “Let’s hope not!”
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Truly, Pope Francis, as well as every Roman Catholic, along with each person reading this post, needs to turn from their unbelief and “believe on the Lord Jesus Christ” for salvation. For there is “none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).
Evangelist Dwight Smith
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