Welcome to the program.
We call this program the Historical Facts.
From the Reformation to modern times.
And it is really important that we understand history.
Because if we do not understand history, we are doomed to repeat history as the
saying goes.
And in particular, to understand the history that is so well documented from
the time of the Reformation right up to modern times.
This is most important that we do this.
I am very privileged to have with me today Pastor Bill O'Carroll, who is well known
in Biblical studies and historical studies.
And it is a joy to have him here again to speak now about the Reformation times
right to modern times.
So, welcome Bill.
Thank you Richard.
It is a pleasure to be here.
So it is hard to overestimate the importance of knowing history.
There is a fairly widespread ignorance of history, even things that are well known.
There is a well known history, for example, of the Second World War.
But the people involvement with the dictators during the Second World War is
not well known.
So it is important that we document and give the historical facts and that we do
this right from the time of the Reformation up to modern times.
I know that it will be a joy to share these things with you and an encouragement
and a warning that if we do not understand the facts of history, we are destined to
be overtaken and overtaken in particular by the Church of Rome, who tries to
rewrite history.
Now I want to begin by having Bill here explain for us what was the response of
the Catholic Church to the remarkable success that the Reformers had at the time
of the Reformation.
How did the Catholic Church respond and just what happened after the Reformation?
Well, Richard, as you well know, the response of Roman Catholicism to the
biblical faith of the Reformers was vicious and it was called, in the history
of books, it is called the Counter-Reformation, against, counter,
against the Reformation.
It was advanced principally through the political and educational influence of the
Jesuit order of Romanism.
This religious society was founded by Ignatius of Loyola in the year 1530 A.D.
and recognized officially by the Pope at that time, Pope Paul III, ten years later,
a decade later.
The Jesuits, in a very uncompromising, very militant manner, led a movement to
restore Roman Catholicism to the position it had had before the Reformation.
They became known as the Pope's Shock Troops, the Pope's Army, to restore
Catholicism to what it once was.
Ignatius, the founder of this order, his most important endeavor, his purpose
was to, again, lock down both the Holy Roman Empire, various countries that made
up the Holy Roman Empire, into unquestioning obedience to the Roman
Catholic Church.
That was the purpose, to put them into unquestioning obedience, which means
unquestioning obedience, of course, to the Pope.
His primary tactic was to train his men, the Jesuits, to excellence in various
skills and professions, and their intent was primarily to convert the children of
Bible believers back to Catholicism.
They wanted to convert adults, of course, as well, but their primary
focus was the children, just as the great, famous, but great in the bad sense,
but the famous dictators of history, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, go on and on,
are on record as saying, give me the children, and I will own the society.
And so that's what the Jesuits wanted to do, get the children, particularly the
rulers' children, the various rulers, the important people in society.
They became the tutors and teachers to these children, because of their
excellence in their studies and in their various fields.
Their intent, again, lead the nations back to the old captivity, to papal Rome.
Now, in some countries, principally Spain and Italy, the Reformation had not taken
hold significantly, and the Jesuits were able to swoop in and solidify the hold
that Roman Catholicism had on the heads of states of those nations and nation-states
and the people.
In other countries, however, for example, Poland, and I'm proud to have some Polish
heritage, the Reformation had established, had taken hold tremendously, and
established, in fact, schools and colleges, Protestant schools, Protestant
colleges.
The Jesuits still relentlessly sought to undermine what had been achieved in the
expansion of biblical faith, of the true gospel.
That was their successful tactic then, and this isn't just history, it's still
today.
Many people were, and still are, won over to Catholicism through parents
sending their children to private Catholic schools and universities where they're
given a Catholic education.
We have the case today, many fine, Bible-believing Protestant parents will
send their children to a Catholic school, and then they're surprised when the
children either convert to Catholicism or certainly pick up many ideas that are
foreign to Scripture.
That's where they learned it.
See, the Jesuits' intention, then and now, is to indoctrinate populations.
They accomplished this not so much by overtly teaching Catholic doctrine,
but they interpret, through their school systems, every subject matter from an
underlying doctrinal viewpoint that is standard Roman Catholicism.
As always, it's always rather the Catholic viewpoint that's predominantly taught and
promoted in these schools, even in our day of so-called dialogue with Catholics,
that some Protestants have fallen into that trap.
Furthermore, if the students are not converted to Catholicism, they are
rendered less effective in their biblical witnessing, in their biblical faith,
because of their Catholic training.
That's why it's so insidious.
That's why Bible-believers have absolutely no business sending their children to
Catholic institutions.
Absolutely no business doing that.
Now, another means which Ignatius taught to draw people back into the Catholic
Church, or for the first time, was a well-thought-out program of
self-mastery and self-discipline.
His principal book was called Spiritual Exercises, and that was intended to teach
people how to deny themselves completely, and how to reach a mystical union with
God.
And that's a works-righteousness approach, of course.
The self-denial and reaching this so-called mystical union with God,
it's a works-righteousness.
The child of that is existentialism and de-orthodoxy.
His conviction, we're talking about Loyola Ignatius, his conviction was that
self-denial and these mystical experiences would lead to full obedience to the Roman
Church, because they'd done that for Ignatius of Loyola himself.
The populations that are not grounded in the Bible are notoriously superstitious.
I once heard it said that if you don't believe in the God of the Bible,
it's not that you won't believe in anything, it's that you will believe in
anything.
It's superstitions.
And because populations that aren't grounded in the Bible, they don't have any
sure knowledge of God through Jesus Christ and his written Word, the Bible,
mysticism has a great appeal to these people.
And so Ignatius was able to play off of that as well, and the Catholic Church does
that all the time, particularly as these people face their future.
To such people that are adrift in spiritual darkness, the Catholic Church
offers the spiritual authority of the Pope and his visible rituals to give them a
sense of stability.
Then Catholicism offers people the thrill of mystical experiences in place of
spiritual truth.
Truly, Catholicism is an utterly deceptive organization.
Now by the mid-17th century, the Society of Jesus, as the Jesuit order was called,
had thousands of members across Europe, all across Europe.
Their mission then and now has been the eradication of the efforts of the
Reformation.
Over the next few centuries, the Jesuits became the papacy's most powerful force to
affect Western culture.
The Jesuits have had a strong political influence with Catholic monarchies across
Europe.
It's an indisputable matter of history.
They've led the main counter-Reformation efforts for four centuries by upholding
papal authority, restoring the sacramental system, promoting this mysticism with all
these superstitions to those nations, many nations, that had been touched by the
biblical principles of the Reformation.
Much of what papal Rome has achieved since the Reformation, and in modern times,
has been due to the planning and strategy of the Jesuits.
Yes, this is quite true that the Jesuits succeeded right across Europe and they
were quite successful even in places like Poland, where they really stamped out what
had been biblical faith growing in Poland.
But nonetheless, while papal Rome was advancing, a fact of history really
brought an end to what had been one of their main ways of advancing over the
years.
And that was their fact that they were a civil power and that they had papal states
and that they controlled people not simply as a religious organization but through
civil law, because they were recognized to be a civil state and they had power over
princes and kings.
And so this actually came to an end and it was one of Napoleon's generals who brought
it to an end.
Napoleon's generals came into Italy and into Rome and into the Vatican itself and
they removed Pope Pius VI from his papal throne.
Not only was he physically taking off his papal throne, but they removed his civil
power.
His right to territory as a civil power was taken from him by force of arms.
This really brought an end to the Holy Roman Empire.
The empire had ruled for many centuries across Europe and Rome being the one to
dictate the rules for the emperor.
And it is amazing how it all fell by Napoleon's general.
And we had the demise of Romanism as a civil power that happened in 1798.
And it was complete.
It was the end of civil power as such.
And it was with the demise of this civil power that Rome had counted on for so many
years that we had an amazing attempt to reestablish the power and glory of Rome,
even though it now lacked one of its main weapons of being civil power.
And there was one pope who was remarkable in this endeavor to restore the papacy to
some of its power and glory.
And it was Pope Pius IX.
He is often known in the history books as Pio Nono, the Italian name, Pius IX.
And he ruled in the Catholic Church for a long, long time from 1846 to 1878.
And it was a time of nationalism across Europe, and even in Italy itself.
Italy had become an independent republic, much to the displeasure of the pope who
fought against the fact that Italy was going to be independent.
It became an independent republic in 1849.
And now the papacy had neither territory itself, it had not civil power,
and where it had ruled from in Italy, it didn't even have a place that they
could call its own, to be a civil, to be recognized as a civil state.
The papacy had really lost a lot, but not in the mind of Pius IX.
He set about to restore power and glory to the Roman Church.
And he had an intent behind what he did.
First of all, his intent was to proclaim a dogma.
A dogma called papal infallibility.
The dogma that the pope is infallible in all matters that he speaks on faith and
morals.
That he has a divine prerogative, infallibility.
Now this was something that had been unknown even in tradition of the Catholic
Church.
There were famous Catholic historians such as Dollinger and Bernard Hastert who
showed that not only was this teaching not in scripture, but there was no traces of
it in any of the history of the Catholic Church or in the traditions.
It was never claimed.
Nonetheless, while his own historians argued against it, and while there was no
mention of it in scripture, Pius IX set about to establish this as a dogma.
And he got it proclaimed as a dogma in 1870 at what was the First Vatican
Council.
And so this was the first way that Pius IX sought to re-establish.
And now he centralized things that churches could look to, an infallible
authority that the Pope himself was infallible.
He could not make any mistake or error in matters of faith and morals.
Then Pius IX was very clever because he saw that he needed to have the papacy to
be in full command of all the bishops across Europe.
And it had been a tradition in most European countries that it was the people,
the ordinary people of the churches that got together with their clergy to elect
who should be bishops in the different areas of the different parts of the
church, even the Church of Rome.
It was the privilege of the local churches to say who was to be their bishop or their
leader.
Pius IX was very clever and said no, this has to end.
And he claimed to have authority to appoint bishops and of course later on to
appoint archbishops and cardinals so that power would be centralized in Rome.
And he was successful and this became also decrees of the Vatican Council.
One, that bishops were to be appointed by the Bishop of Rome, the Pope.
He had authority.
And so the claim for people infallibility and the claim, the successful claim that
was brought about under Pius IX, that the popes alone appoint bishops,
and later archbishops and cardinals.
So this centralized power.
And these two factors greatly enhanced the Church of Rome even when they had no civil
power.
And it became even more emphatic under the successor to Pius IX.
The successor was Pius X.
And he set about to appoint bishops and cardinals to bring about all the different
laws of the Catholic Church into one code called the Code of Canon Law.
And this was established so that the Church of Rome had the Code of Canon Law
from 1917 onwards.
And this really centralized power that the Roman Church was organized absolutely
under the dictates of the Pope.
And what he said, not only for the people of Rome, but for other churches.
Their claim and their laws of how churches were to be organized down to details of
clerical dress and on and on, all in the Code of Canon Law.
This became known and publicized to the world in 1917.
And this was the first time that the Roman Catholic Church was changing.
Then there came a historical fact that wants to change Romanism.
And I'd like that you would speak about this historical fact.
Certainly will.
Historical fact is the Lateran Treaty in 1929.
This really establishes how the Roman Catholicism, the Catholic Church,
became a modern nation.
Now we think about the Roman Catholic Church, a lot of people say, what are you
talking about a nation?
That's a religion.
It's a church.
Well, it's far more than that.
It is a nation.
As we'll see, it has ambassadors in 174 countries around the world.
It has established itself, it governs itself as a nation.