VICARS OF CHRIST: The Dark Side Of The Papacy.

red & black ½ cloth hardbound 8vo. ~ 8º (octavo). dustwrapper in protective plastic book jacket cover. fine cond. binding square & tight. covers clean. edges clean. contents free of all markings. dustwrapper in fine cond. not worn or torn or price clipped. nice clean copy. no library markings, store stamps, stickers, bookplates, no names, inking , underlining, remainder markings etc ~ first american edition so stated. first printing ( # 1 in # line). 484p. chronology. (list of ) the popes. general councils of the roman church. a note on sources. ecumenical councils. select bibliography. index. religion. world history. biography. history of roman catholic church. christianity. politics. ~ In a book that is startling, informative, and highly controversial, a former Jesuit narrates the story of the popes~from Saint Peter to John Paul II. Vicars of Christ provides a historical perspective on the Catholic Church in crisis today. The Holy Fathers have always paid a price for power on earth. The problems of the contemporary Catholic Church~its rigid attitudes toward politics and religious freedom the declining number of priests and nuns, its refusal to broaden the rights of women, and the fierce opposition to Vatican policies on birth control divorce, and celibacy~are the products of two millennia of powerful, political, and fallible popes. Peter De Rosa, who says he is a "patriotic Catholic," shows how the popes have created the papacy from scratch~with more than a measure of scandal, murder, genocide, and doctrinal confusion. Only by understanding what the church was can we understand what it is today. Pope Gregory VII, for example, in the eleventh century, instituted an entire document~forgery factory in the Vatican~to prove that the pope could not make a mistake, that he could depose kings and princes at will, and that he was necessarily a saint. Other popes were certainly not saints. The Borgia pope, Alexander VI, in the 1400s, had a stable of mistresses, a litter of illegitimate children, and a penchant for murdering cardinals for their money. Borgia popes bred Borgia popes: Alexander's son and grandson both ascended to the papacy. The grandson was such a libertine that women pilgrims were warned away from the Holy See, lest they be raped by the pope. The Church has a long record of anti~Semitism. Popes in the Borgia era created a ghetto for the Jews, required them to wear distinctive yellow hats whenever they ventured out, and even forced them to pay for the wall surrounding the ghetto. The Holy Fathers could be more vicious toward those among its own who opposed the power of the church. Innocent III murdered far more Christians in one afternoon~ 12,000~than any Roman emperor did in his entire reign. Popes reintroduced torture into the judicial system. And more recently, within the last century, popes have called religious freedom madness, free elections godless, and a free press tantamount to atheism. Popes make mistakes, says Peter De Rosa. They have erred tragically not only in their personalities but in setting forth Catholic doctrine on faith and morals. In more than a century there have been only two exercises of "papal infallibility": the immaculate conception and the Assumption of Mary. When Pope Paul VI banned contraceptives in 1968, he was not speaking infallibly. And more than ninety percent of American Catholics felt he was mistaken. In Vicars of Christ, Peter De Rosa dispels the myths about the papacy in favor of hard facts, and provides everyone, Catholic and non~Catholic alike, with the true, alarming story of the Church in crisis. …