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Cathar just means “Puritan.”
English Reformers and loyalists to Rome actually used the term along with “Precisianist” (in the 39 Articles) and other terms. I am sure they remembered the Albigensian Cathars who fought English knights in France 400 years before and that the comparison was deliberate.
“The Puritans did not condemn reproduction, which is the essence of Catharism.”
You are right, the Puritans favored reproduction but not what caused reproduction. The Cathars condemned reproduction but they populated large communities in the south of France. They each were sexually austere, and this leads to the sterility you speak about.
There were many splinter groups that fit under the Puritan umbrella. Most stayed loyal to England, but the Pilgrims abandoned England for Holland before setting sail to the New World.
Are you linking them to their descendants who abandoned the Union for Empire?
Comment by Pain —
ME:
“Are you linking them to their descendants who abandoned the Union for Empire? ”
The less important point here is my reply to y9our question: No, Pain, if I meant that I wold have SAID it.
INFINITELY more important is that you have grabbed what I said and run with it. This is what I LIVE for!
Go ahead and expand on this point for us! It doesn’t have to be profound, and it doesn’t HAVE to be but a few sentences., though more is welcome. We need demonstrations here of how to BUILD on my points.
#1 by Pain on 02/14/2007 - 12:53 am
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I should have put my long reply in “Pain’s OTHER Point” here.
Just to make sure, I have nothing against Roman Catholics, or high churchmen, or low churchmen, who are a big part of American history and tradition.
Also much of Puritanism had a positive role to play; it was people who acted without thinking things through that were the problem.
I don’t have anything against New England either; I would love to visit one day, and a good man who calls himself a “swamp Yankee” has invited me. He says I have to see the old stone walls in the woods of Connecticut.
Last, there were very real heresies that were fortunately defeated. They were not only theologically bizarre and stupid, but they created psychological harm in their followers as well. Modern heretics we call “cultees” unless they have taken over mainline American denominations, in which we case we call them “liberals” or persons of dwindling congregations. Heretics taking over the Church is nothing knew either: a hundred years ago, many of the leaders of the Dutch Reformed in the Netherlands stopped believing in God; five hundred years ago heretics who had taken over Church leadership were burning Christians at the stake.
For a while some people doubted that Gnostics could be as bad as Church writers such as Irenaeus said. Then ancient gnostic texts were found. The gnostics may have been worse than anyone thought. They practiced disturbing sexual practices, believed women could not be saved, and taught that salvation for men was found through memorizing secret passwords and handshakes.
Any idea, any theology can sound odd at first hearing. But if it can be explained clearly and simply, then we have something legitimate. Not everyone can explain things well and not everyone has thought everything out, but clear and simple answers are out there. With the web, anyone who honestly looks can find.
If explanations of certain groups balloon into something bigger and bigger, and more and more complicated, and more and more confusing, then we have cult programming, like gnosticism or like the PC Cult.
Religions of aliens, such as Islam prove to be dissatisfying. The virgins of Islam is goofy. It’s lowly. Who wants a heaven that’s a brothel.
The West can handle metaphors, such as angels singing in heaven. The literal-minded can’t handle metaphors. The whole point of heaven was that it was something better but so different from earth, that trying to understand it in the boring details of everyday life wouldn’t do it.
The ancients understood that. There were shamanic experiences of some sort available to everyone. Shamanism wasn’t just for witch doctors. Enough ordinary people had experiences — or rather foretastes — of the divine, that people could appreciate how wonderful heaven could be.
The Greek pagans had already talked about Heaven and immortality, so a version with the vindictive gods cleaned up was believable when Christianity came around.
Stories of heaven of rampant self-indulgence and petty wish-fulfillment, like the Arab Paradise, would have set everyone in the Greek world to laughter.