Quotes About Ecclesiastical

it was the first time a pope had ever come north of the Alps),

The Celtic churches therefore received a form of ecclesiastical government which was supported by the loosely knit communities of monks and preachers, and was not in these early decisive periods associated with the universal organisation of the Papacy.

According to Article XIV of the Augustana, it matters greatly who exercises the preaching office, namely, whether the person in question is legitimately called (rite vocatus) according to correct ecclesiastical order. Luther also knew that the call (vocatio) causes the devil a great deal of woe.

It was under a solemn consciousness of the dangers from ecclesiastical ambition, the bigotry of spiritual pride, and the intolerance of sects... that is was deemed advisable to exclude from the national government all power to act upon the subject.

In 1076 he decreed that none of the English clergy would be allowed to marry.

Union of religious sentiments begets a surprising confidence, and ecclesiastical establishments tend to great ignorance and corruption; all of which facilitate the execution of mischievous projects.

In the name of rejecting ecclesiastical authority as "hierarchy" or "tradition" as theological manipulation and bondage, we have instead created a hermeneutic of suspicion and have invested every biblically informed conscience (instead of a pope) to speak ex cathedra. It is a Pyrrhic victory for Free church Protestantism when the net effect of its teaching results in the replacing of the tyranny of the magisterium with the tyranny of individualism.

In short, doctrinally, Puritanism was a kind of vigorous Calvinism; experientially, it was warm and contagious; evangelistically, it was aggressive, yet tender; ecclesiastically, it was theocentric and worshipful; and politically, it aimed to be scriptural and balanced.

A crucial instance was the question of the treatment of clergymen who had committed crimes such as murder and robbery, or at least were accused of such deeds. The ecclesiastical courts would not shed blood and were apt to let such "criminous clerks" off with a light sentence, if they found them guilty at all.

This case of Laon suggests several points that are true of the French communes in general. They were created especially at the expense of bishops and ecclesiastical lords, and the Church in consequence made a great outcry against them. "Commune is a new and detestable word," wrote an abbot of the time.

another cogent reason for prohibiting clerical marriage. Married priests were too liable to transmit to their sons their ecclesiastical offices and the church property under their care.

nos enfrentamos a un eclipse de nuestra vida católica tradicional como fuerza visible con algún nivel de eficacia. También opino, eminencia, que el papa debe considerar la estructura tradicional de su Iglesia como algo inútil y pasado de moda, puesto que permite su decadencia. Si ésa no es su idea, no hay otra forma de comprenderlo que como totalmente aberrante y negligente de su responsabilidad pontificia como papa.

As Bede explains in his book The Reckoning of Time,

Cluny was created with the intention that it should be free from lay control, and was answerable only to the pope.

the bishop was indeed conducting himself like a second king.

The result was that Wilfrid was deposed, and his huge diocese was divided between three new appointees:

Wilfrid did not go quietly. He protested to the bishops of other kingdoms

Scripture would not only solve the individual and family divisions, but it would also solve the ecclesiastical confusion.

Never in all history," pronounced one ecclesiastical historian, "had a Pope engaged so delicately in a conspiracy to overthrow a tyrant by force." A wartime US intelligence officer would term the pope's quick consent to act as a conspirational intermediary "one of the most astounding events in the modern history of the Papacy.

For hardly any of the ecclesiastical writers have handled the Divine Scriptures more ineptly and absurdly than Origen and Jerome.

For it is in this way that our adversaries, the bishops and the pope, talk with us in our day, while they pretend a desire for concord, and seek to bring about doctrinal harmony.

In the thirteenth century, Bishop Henry of Liege had sixty-one children, fourteen of them within twenty-two months, setting perhaps a record of clerical philoprogenitiveness.

He railed at ecclesiastical bureaucracy, particularly the theological hairsplitting and heresy-hunting that had come to characterize Presbyterian conclaves: "These things in the Presbyterian church, their contentions and janglings are so ridiculous, so wicked, so outrageous, that no doubt there is a jubilee in hell every year, about the time of the meeting of the General Assembly."8

Eller nodded while staring into the flames, then said, 'Have you heard of the Occam Heresy?' 'I have. The heresy is that only verifiable facts can be assumed as truth, while ecclesiastical thought is only speculation. It is denial of God. It negates the idea that the Fall was due to the sin of pride.' 'Very dangerous in religious circles,' said Eller. 'We wouldn't want facts to get in the way now would we?