The testimony of a lost soul who was found by his Father through the Lord Jesus Christ.
‘His father saw him and had compassion on him, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him.’
Luke 15 v 19.
Words that I did not know and never heard would ultimately wake me from a living nightmare of fear and self-loathing. I did not yet know that the weak could become strong, that the lost could be found and the broken put together again. And yet I was born into a Catholic family, devout up to a point, but not of the type that would attend Mass at every opportunity. But the Word of God I knew not at all, nor the love of God.
‘For I know the plans I have for you’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’
Jeremiah 29 v 11
But I knew nothing of this. Religion was all I knew and I grew to accept that Roman Catholicism was God's religion, and that all others were not only false, but also foolishly so, why could they not see and bend the knee to a Church so obviously bigger and superior and more self-confident than any other? No other Church it seemed to me could claim to be the One, True, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. A Church that could trace its roots back through every century and prove its origins within the apostolic Church.
I went to a Catholic school that was run by Jesuits. It was there that the terror began. Utter failure academically, the growing sense that I was failure even beyond an inability to grasp basic concepts, a sinner who was bound for purgatory if not hell. There was a rhythm beating in me like a drum, the certain sense that I was never going to get better and deserved everything I got by way of low marks for poor performance and whatever sentence awaited me when my life was through. I became so quiet that I saw myself as I non person, a non-entity, of little importance to anyone outside my family, who were oblivious of these feelings which I kept very much to myself. I was beaten regularly throughout my time at this first school, I did not, could not do my homework, no one could help me understand and so I waited day after day outside the headmasters study, a Jesuit priest, for the punishment that fitted the offence. It was my lot and I accepted it without malice.
Much later my father informed me that a teacher had said:
“ This boy will amount to nothing.”
I knew nothing of what God might actually think of me. I assumed he was as indifferent as the rest. He concerned himself with the good, the misery of purgatory awaited sinners. Whether the sins had been forgiven or not there still remained punishment due on them, like a bad debt that would not go away, nothing it seemed could deal adequately with that, other than devotions than seemed beyond me. The scriptures were a closed book. If anyone had opened them I may have heard some good news: the story of a father’s failed son for example, who said to himself:
‘I have sinned against heaven and before you and am no longer worthy to be called your son… he rose and came to his father, but when he was still a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion on him, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him.’ Luke 15 v 18-19
The parable of the prodigal son was the first biblical word that really reached me. For decades it remained my one great hope. It was balanced on the negative side by feelings that I was a betrayer, and that when push came to shove I would deny him and run. It never occurred to me at that time that Peter following his denial of Jesus must have felt just the same, only worse since he had actually done it.
I recall little of my early life. But there is one event that indicates the degree of frustration I caused to those trying to educate me. A female teacher, one I rather liked, she had a kiss curl that intrigued me, called me to the front of the class. I had failed to do something and it had engendered in this teacher a considerable rage. She took me by the hair and threw me to the floor. Once stood up again she made her point by stabbing me a number of times in the forehead with a propelling pencil. Blood dripped to the floor, and my recollections go no further. The incident ended, as far as I know with no repercussions for the school or myself. At my next Catholic school these failures continued. One of the priests who taught me had a nice line in sarcasm, I do remember that. The only good on my reports related to my conduct.
‘But when the kindness and love of God our Saviour appeared he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done but because of His mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.’
Titus 3 v 4-5.
I got by, I learned parts of my Catechism, I stayed at the back of the class and was mostly ignored. I had friends, I was good at running, not fast, but evasive. But I avoided team sports, I knew I would let people down and embarrass anyone who watched me. My two elder brothers were both bright and good at sport. My self-esteem however was low, my expectations lower, and my fears considerable and disabling. These feelings were compounded when through craven fear of showing yet another non return of homework, I played truant. For two consecutive terms I did that, cheating, lying, rewriting an old report, in those days this private school failed to follow up on its missing pupils, and my parents must have assumed everything was going on as before. I also thieved off my parents, anything to finance and survive long periods of being a shy young boy, walking the streets, trying to keep warm in winter, fill empty days and avoid detection.
During all this period I continued to live as a regular Catholic. But I was lying in the confessional before receiving communion. I could do nothing else, I belonged to a good Catholic family. I realised I was heading for a lost eternity, I was committing mortal sins, deceiving priests, receiving absolutions that were not merited and yet still taking the consecrated host, the body of Jesus into me.
Ultimately my parents found out about the truancy, my father was kind to me and I was moved to a non Catholic school, my last, from which I also truanted. By this time I was old enough to leave the school system and my parents realised that it would better to let me pursue the only thing I appeared to be gifted at, art. My father was an artist as had been my grandfather. He had thought it best to discourage this line of work as it was an unreliable and difficult way to make a living. Nevertheless, desperation made this decision necessary, and so I entered Art School.
It was there that I met the girl I would marry.
How well God knows how to meet our needs.
‘ It is not good for man to be alone.’ Genesis 2 v 18
It was through her, a lovely non-Catholic Christian that I experienced what I still believe to be the first real touch of the love of God. She was a gift, she had a beauty of spirit and a kindness of nature that caused me to begin to grow and open up. Jennie told me that she had a picture of me, God placed a small stone in her hand and closed her fingers over it and then she believed God to say, “That is what you do. Love him and I will do the rest.” She opened her hand and she saw a clear cut, sparkling gem. It was this conviction that caused her to say yes when I asked her if she would consider marrying me. Now I do not claim to be any sparkling gem, far from it, but what I can say is that she has faithfully done all that God asked of her. Change has and is still occurring but it has taken a very long time for the Lord to penetrate the mists of a past that had no focus other than nameless fears.
We decided to marry, Jennie received instruction in the Catholic faith, and as a consequence traded her beautiful simple gospel faith for the sacramental ritual and dogmas of Rome. I was still a moderately devout R.C. In fact I became increasingly convinced by the claims of Rome. We had children, eventually six of them, all brought up as staunch little Catholics. A parish priest once called me, “a great protagonist for orthodoxy”, such was the growing vehemence and conviction of my writing and beliefs. Gradually I found I had some character, even though at home I was given to terrible bouts of anger, mood swings depression, shouting and swearing and occasionally a consuming rage that led to acts of violence, usually towards some inanimate object, but I was hard on the children. They deserved better, and I have spent much of my life since regretting the things I said and did. Only very recently have I come to a place where I have been able to forgive myself. The result of that has been a wonderful reconciliation with each of my children.
Despite my personal failings I still prayed, attended Mass, took the sacraments, became regular at various Church meetings, helped with a youth club and the St. Vincent de Paul Society; our sons became altar boys, we met with fellow Catholics to discuss matters relating to our faith and so on. I began to feel that I had made it. Respectability at last! People actually listened to me and my confidence grew and probably self-righteousness with it. I had found a place of equilibrium. My religion was strong and secure, I could safely look down on the simpler gospel that seemed to guide my wife. I was becoming the man of the house. A Pharisee? Maybe. It has taken me a long time to realise that apart from God I am nothing. All I have has come from His hands.
'If anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing he deceives himself.'
Galatians 6 v 3.
At one of these meetings a woman suggested we just allow the Holy Spirit to lead us into prayer. Jennie and I were the only people that responded well to this suggestion. To this day I have no idea why I took to it, God’s ways are not ours and sometimes He acts in order to move us, and move we do.
'The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone born of the Spirit.'
John 3 v 8
We were drawn into the burgeoning Catholic Charismatic Renewal Movement. This involved going to a inter-denominational prayer group. It was there that I was convicted of being the utterly empty vessel that I had become. That first moment of meeting with God made me feel like the hard little stone that had been put into my wife’s palm. But this was different, the people around me were praying to a God I did not know, had never heard of, a Father who cared for His children, a God who was present. A God of Love.
‘For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named that He would grant you according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Holy Spirit in the inner man. That Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love may be able to comprehend, with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height, to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.’
Ephesians 3 v 14- 18
It was the beginning of a long road, which still leads on, but now I try to walk with my Lord, knowing I am his son, that He has forgiven me and saved me and nothing of this is due to anything I have done. It is by grace and by His sacrifice. The Lord Jesus did it all on the Cross at Calvary, once and forever. He said “It is finished” and it is. But sadly not in Roman Catholicism. It is characteristic of this religion that nothing is ever complete or finished. As a Catholic you will never be done with sacramental cleansing or with ritual or with works. For in Catholic theology there is always something new, some fresh initiative like the recently introduced Feast of Divine Mercy which gives yet another assurance of deliverance from the horrors of divine punishment, a new and superior type of plenary indulgence.
Gradually, and I do not really know the genesis of the thought process, I began to question The Faith that had moulded my life and crushed my spirit. I recall reading Hans Kung‘s book: On Being a Christian. He was at the time, a renowned Catholic theologian thinking and writing in ways that were to lead him into trouble, heading inexorably towards a meeting with his one time friend, Cardinal Ratzinger, the then future Pope Benedict XVI. The head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith: the former Holy Office and Inquisition. This confrontation that would effectively end Kung’s reputation and career as one the foremost theologians in the Roman Church. Kung faced his Inquisitor and his cause was lost, but then again who has ever won such a confrontation?
Kung opened my eyes to the falsehood of the Catholic Priesthood. There was nothing in scripture that permitted or led towards the creation of a ministerial priesthood that operated as a go-between, the catalyst which fused a spiritual union between God and his people. There was no ‘Difference in essence and degree’ (2nd Vatican Council) between the priesthood and the laity. The book of Hebrews made it abundantly clear that the Old Testament Levitical Priesthood was no longer necessary. This priesthood, that acted as an intermediary between God and man was based on the inevitable God-Sinner, separation that existed prior to the perfect sacrifice of Jesus. Once Jesus, the perfect High Priest had offered himself up to His Father, the perfect Sacrifice, the entire sacrificial system was made useless. The requirements of the Law were completed and the ancient priestly regime rendered obsolete by the ‘offering of the body of Jesus Christ once and for all’ Heb. 10 v 10.
‘For by one offering He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified.’
Hebrews 10 v 14.
The priesthood of Jesus is one of the ‘brotherhood, of all believers.’ But the Roman Catholic Church, to its eternal shame, re-established the whole Levitical system with pagan additions, different names, different appearance, a so called better priesthood, but an invention, a restitution of what was proclaimed by scripture dead. There was no oppressive, demanding, hierarchical, sacrificial priesthood to be found within the gospels and epistles of the New Testament, but through Roman Catholicism it rose again.
Without an altar and a sacrifice to offer, a priesthood such as that envisaged and practised by Rome simply falls apart, it is without a function. Maintaining the concept of the Roman Catholic priesthood compels the introduction of a false gospel. The fact of the Mass which continues to offer sacrifice is of itself an abomination. It creates the idea that a man, a sinner like you or I, but ordained and in clerical dress, can through a form of words consecrate and command the Son of God to appear on his altar, and in a way that beggars belief. A man made circular piece of bread becomes the body, blood soul and divinity of Jesus. This in order to be consumed by his people or placed within a monstrance at Benediction and worshipped as God. It is a high point of idolatry that even the excesses of paganism could not match.
All of this dawned on me, sometimes like a cloud, at others like a revelation, a release. It was the first domino to fall, others followed apace. This was at a time when Humanae Vitae and the birth control issue were making waves among Catholics. Many were leaving the Church because of this encyclical by Paul VI. By this time we had four children, and eventually, as the tight grip of the Church on my life loosened we too began to use birth control, but not very efficiently, we had two more beautiful children. However if I was to leave the Church and bring my family with me, then I felt it important to do so having searched both Catholic doctrine and the scriptures. To be certain any decisions made, were made on good evidence and not just a whim driven by a desire to be free of all restraint. A search for the Truth began.
‘The Bereans… they received the word with all readiness and searched the scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so.’
Acts 17 v 10-11.
So I studied, and I did so largely from Catholic sources. The history of the papacy was completely new to me, all I knew at that time was the greatness and holiness of the extraordinary institution that seemed to dominate the religious world. The actual history astounded me, even if you only looked at the best of the popes, the power seeking, the wealth, the self- aggrandisement, the arrogance, the worldliness, the political ambitions, the use of almost any means whatsoever to achieve an end, leaves an observer opened mouthed in wonder. More so when you put that knowledge next to the Holy Scriptures. If you investigated the worst then you peered into the bowels of the devil himself. The call of God to his leaders were:
‘That you may become blameless and harmless children of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine like stars.’
Philippians 2 v 15
Papal claims to Holiness were impossible to maintain against the body of evidence that history provides. It is in this regard similar to the life of the Islam’s prophet Muhammad. From a glance he may seem a great man. Examine him closely, and you will discover a very different one, a violent warlord, greedy, a sexual predator, self deluded and a hypocrite who produced a work of literature so muddled that it can be presented as both a gospel of peace and a call to Jihad, and beyond that, the establishment of a Caliphate based on Sharia Law.
The papacy is no different. It purports to grace the world with a gospel of peace. But in reality it has been a violent warlord, greedy, corrupt, self-deluded and deceiving, a sexual predator through its priests, hypocrites, binding laws on its oppressed peoples while acting as it likes both morally and legally. It has established whenever it has been powerful enough a version of an Islamic Caliphate ruled under Sharia Law. A brutal repressive, destructive institution that denies all human rights, including the right to live to those who cannot and will not conform to its orthodoxy. This history did much to loosen the bolts that had held me faithful to Rome. Other things were to follow, most particularly the doctrines surrounding the veneration of the Blessed Virgin: Mariology.
Catholic devotion to Mary never really captured my heart, even though once, I did seek her and I came close to some kind of spiritual experience. I took fright however and never again sought her presence. For all this I thank and praise God, for the spirit and the devotions that surround her veneration are both seductive and engrossing.
Much could be said, and a huge amount quoted but I will speak of just one: Ad Diem Illum Laetissumum, a document written in 1904 by Pope Pius X to his patriarchs, archbishops, bishops and other ordinaries. His subject is the Immaculate Conception and it was written as an exhortation to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of this infallible dogma relating to Mary. A doctrine that states Mary was sinless, conceived without the least stain of original sin.
A direct contradiction of the scripture that says,‘All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.’ Romans 3 v 23.
This letter is a wonderful illustration of a certain type of theological development. It is doctrine building by placing one coloured brick upon another until you have a tower as high as Babel. It is a method that rolls from one doubtful assumption to a further presumption and ever onwards until a fantastic fiction is established among those who follow the rationale. Pope Pius demonstrates all the arrogance of his papal office which thinks itself beyond judgement and infallible. It also gives a glimpse of how Catholics regard their Mother Of God.
Quote: ‘But since Divine Providence has been pleased that we should have the Man-God through Mary… it only remains for us to receive Christ from the hands of Mary. Hence whenever the scriptures speak prophetically of the grace which was to appear among us, the Redeemer of mankind is almost invariably presented to us as united with His Mother… Adam, the father of mankind, looked to Mary crushing the serpent’s head… Noah thought of her when shut up in the ark of safety. Abraham when prevented from slaying his son. Jacob at the sight of the ladder on which angels ascended and descended. Moses… at the burning bush. David escorting the arc of God. Elijah as he looked at the little cloud that rose out of the sea. In fine, after Christ, we find in Mary the end of the Law and the fulfilment of the figures and oracles.’
By any definition, an astounding statement and nothing to validate it other than papal authority and Sacred Tradition.
Further on in his letter the pope states the following. It is one of the few examples of the actual word worship being used in relation to Mary.
‘Let then crowds fill the churches, let solemn feasts be celebrated and public rejoicings be made… but unless heart and will be added they will be empty forms, mere appearances of piety. At such a spectacle the Virgin, borrowing words from Jesus Christ would address us with this just reproach. “This people honour me with their lips, their heart is far from me.” (Matt 15 v 8) For to be right and good, worship of the Mother of God ought to spring from the heart, acts of the body have here neither utility or value if the acts of the soul have no part in him.’
Pope Pius is here instructing us to worship Mary in terms that are appropriate only to God. ‘You shall love your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.’ Deut. 6 v 5.
Love God like that, but not Mary or any other created being...
There is something else that ought to be noted. The pope quotes verse 8 of chapter 15 in Matthews’s gospel. It is a shame he neglected the following verse which Jesus also quoted from Isaiah. ‘And in vain they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’ Matt. 15 v 9. Jesus had nothing good to say about the traditions of men. He condemned it utterly. Rome honours its Tradition and holds it co-equal with Holy Scripture.
Paul puts it as plain as anyone could wish to see.
‘I am surprised at you, in no time at all you are deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are accepting another gospel. Actually there is no other gospel, but I say this because there are some who are upsetting you and trying to change the gospel of Christ. But even if we, or an angel of heaven should preach you a gospel different from the one we preached to you, may he be condemned to hell. We have said it before and now I say it again: if anyone preaches to you a different gospel to the one you accepted may he condemned to hell.’
Galatians 1 v 6-10
The new Gospel of Rome permits worship of Mary. The lawyers of the Church have a definition of veneration and worship that absolves them from criticism. It says there are three degrees of worship. dulia, that offered to the saints, hyperdulia offered to Mary and latria offered to God. These are distinctions that could work in a court of law but never work in a real situation. Who could know and which one of us is qualified to discern when dulia or hyper-dulia strays over the border into latria.
Let's take on a lawyer and see what he makes of this example. A married man lusts after another woman, he thinks about her, fantasises about her, seeks out her company socially and has a secret store of photographs. Another married man has the object of his affections perform the sex act that Monica Lewinsky famously provided for President Clinton. A third married man takes his girlfriend on a weekend in Paris, wines, dines and beds her. How many of these three men has committed adultery? Lawyers may argue, they may even get the first and second off the charge, but the Word of God is perfectly clear, all three have committed adultery.
Jesus said: ‘Anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.’ (Matthew 5:28) With God legal loopholes do not work.
The Second Commandment is plainly written. It states:
‘You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image-any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water underneath; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them.’ Exodus 20 v 3-5.
Roman Catholicism is replete with such imagery, and there are connected to these are a veritable abundance of devotional works, lurid pious writings and hymns overblown with excessive manifestations of veneration. All of it sanctioned at the highest levels by both canonised saints and the Magesterium, which permits nothing of which it disapproves.
I did many things as a Roman Catholic that I am ashamed of, but God knows our hearts. Most Catholics I know, and the many of whom I love, are good decent sincere people. I would not want to upset anyone of them, but the issues are too great to push aside. The Church of Rome is, I believe, in grave error and it has substituted for the Gospel of Jesus another version, a cruel corruption, that demeans God and distorts His Holy Word.
Please, if you read this testimony do what the Bereans were commended for, studying the Word of God and testing everything that was set before them.
By the time we were in our thirties and more than a decade into our marriage. Around this time we became deeply involved in the Catholic Charismatic Movement. This seemed to us to be something of the Holy Spirit that to an extent by-passed the strictures of the Church hierarchy. This came to a shuddering halt when it was put under the patronage of Mary. Officialdom had arrived, a movement that may have challenged some of the old certainties fell under a stifling bureaucracy. Rome will permit some of the strangest things on earth but it will never tolerate a movement that appeals to our hearts and minds over the heads of the papacy and Magesterium of the Church.
This was a difficult time, our children were absorbing a religious teaching we no longer believed to be true. We were attending church services that were becoming a problem. I remember vividly the Good Friday afternoon mass at which we were ushered forward to kiss the feet of a statue of Jesus. It became a repugnant act that for a number a years before we left I avoided, refusing to attend. Questions followed questions. The day came when we said our goodbyes, shocked our family and abandoned the One True Church. This day had not come cheaply, it had cost us in various ways, breaking with people we loved, explaining the near impossible in a few inadequate words. Seeing the hurt and incomprehension in Catholic members of our family. It was not the glorious departure that an outsider might have expected. It was an uncertain, gut wrenching decision that had large question marks hanging over it. Was it right? it seemed right, I had a thousand reasons and as many arguments that looked good, but was I right? Had I listened to God or had I just followed instinct, listened to and obeyed my own inner voice? I can say, with hand on heart, that I have not for one moment over a period of twenty-three years had a flicker of regret. That, I think, says something.
My life since has been marked by progress and set backs. At the present moment I feel more clear in my mind, more at peace in my spirit and closer to my God and Father and the Lord Jesus Christ than I have ever been. This has, I am convinced been the work of the true Vicar of Christ, The Holy Spirit.
I am aware that it was God, who while He was extracting me from the Catholic faith was simultaneously building me up in the evangelical faith. Looking back it is a miracle that I remained a believer. Nothing to do with me, much more to do with the faith of my wife Jennie, to whom I owe an un-repayable debt, but most of all to my God who has fathered me, guided me, redeemed me, saved me and loved me all the days of my life.
I know that most ex-Catholics fall away into a life of spiritual shadows. The rejected faith remains like a ghost in the background of their lives, never quite forgotten. I hope and pray that if you should ever read these words that you will come to know Him, the one who made you and has called you to Himself, not to judge, not to accuse but to save and love. He is yours as much as He is mine. God does not have favourites.
‘The Lord your God is with you, He is mighty to save, He will take great delight in you, He will quiet you with His love, He will rejoice over you with singing.’
Zephaniah 3 v 17
Finally, I think it important to conclude this article with a number of quotes from the Scriptures. These prove that all that was necessary for salvation and the knowledge of God was in existence as divinely inspired oral tradition before the New Testament had even been compiled and put together. This was long before any later Roman Catholic Church Council authorised the final content of the New Testament. While apostolic letters were still being written everything that the Holy Spirit had wanted to be revealed regarding Jesus had been revealed.
Acts 20 v 27. For I have without faltering put before you the whole of God’s purpose.
1 Cor. 11 v 2. You have done well… in maintaining the traditions just as I passed them on to you.
1 Cor. 15 v 1. Brothers I want to remind you of the gospel that you received and in which you are firmly established.
2 Cor. 11 v 3-4. But the serpent with his cunning seduced Eve and I am afraid that in the same way your ideas may get corrupted and turned away from the simple devotion to Christ. Any newcomer has only to proclaim a new Jesus different from the one we preached, or you only have to receive a new spirit different from the one you have already accepted, and you welcome it with open arms.
2 Thess. 2 v 15. Stand firm then brothers, and keep the traditions we taught you.
2 Thess. 3 v 6. We urge you brothers… to keep away from any of the brothers who refuse to live according to the tradition we passed on to you.
2 Tim. 1 v 13. What you have heard from me keep as the pattern of sound teaching with faith and love in Christ. Guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you, guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us.
2 Tim. 4 v 3. For the time will come when men will not put up with sound teaching. Instead to suit their own desires they will gather around them a great numbers of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from truth and turn aside to myths.
Titus 1 v 9. An elder… must hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught so that he can encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it.
2 John v 8-9. Anyone who does not stay with the teachings of Christ but goes beyond it does not have God. Whoever stays with the teachings has both Father and Son. So then if someone comes to you who does not bring this teaching do not welcome him into your home, do not even say peace be with you.
Jude v 3. I felt I had to write to you and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints.
The scripture quoted above from 2 Timothy 4 v 3 is a prophecy. I ask you to consider if it has not been totally fulfilled through the long history of Roman Catholicism’s doctrinal inventions.
Below is a list of Roman doctrines that never appear in the Holy Scriptures. It is taken from Loraine Boettner’s book Roman Catholicism.
SOME ROMAN CATHOLIC HERESIES AND INVENTIONS
and the dates or approximate dates of their adoption over a period of 1650 years:
1 Prayers for the dead, about |
300 |
2 Making the sign of the cross |
300 |
3 Wax candles |
320 |
4 Veneration of angels and dead saints and use of images |
375 |
5 The Mass as a daily celebration |
394 |
6 Beginning of the exaltation of Mary |
431 |
7 Priests began to dress differently from laymen |
500 |
8 Extreme Unction |
526 |
9 The doctrine of Purgatory established by Gregory 1 |
593 |
10 Latin language used in prayer and worship, |
600 |
11 Prayers directed to Mary, dead saints and |
600 |
12 Title of Pope or universal bishop given to |
607 |
13 Kissing the pope’s foot began with pope Constantine |
709 |
14 Temporal power of the popes, conferred by |
750 |
15 Worship of the cross, images and relics, authorised |
786 |
16 Holy water, mixed with a pinch of salt |
850 |
17 Worship of St. Joseph |
890 |
18 College of cardinals established |
927 |
19 Baptism of bells, instituted by pope John X111 |
965 |
20 Canonisation of dead saints |
995 |
21 Fasting on Fridays and during Lent |
998 |
22 The Mass developed gradually as a sacrifice, |
|
23 Celibacy of the priesthood, decreed by |
1079 |
24 The Rosary, mechanical praying with beads, |
1090 |
25 The Inquisition, instituted by the Council of Verona |
1184 |
26 Sale of Indulgences |
1109 |
27 Transubstantiation proclaimed by pope Innocent 111 |
1215 |
29 Adoration of the wafer (Host) decreed by |
1220 |
30 Bible forbidden to laymen, placed on the index |
1229 |
31 The scapular invented by Simon Stock, an English monk |
1251 |
32 Cup forbidden to the people at communion |
1414 |
33 Purgatory proclaimed as dogma by the |
1439 |
34 Doctrine of the seven sacraments affirmed |
1439 |
35The Ave Maria (part of the latter half was |
1508 |
36 Jesuit order founded by Loyola |
1534 |
37 Tradition declared of equal authority with |
1545 |
38 Apocryphal books added to the bible by |
1546 |
39 Creed of pope Pius 1V imposed as |
1560 |
40 Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary |
1854 |
41 Syllabus of Errors proclaimed by pope Pius 1X |
1864 |
42 Infallibility of the pope in matters of faith |
1870 |
43 Public schools condemned by pope Pius X1 |
1930 |
44 Assumption of the Virgin Mary |
1950 |
God said this to Moses:
‘You shall not add unto the words which I command you , neither shall ye diminish from it, that ye may keep the commandments of the Lord your God which I command you.’
Deut 4 v 2.
Chris Higham