B. U. G. S.

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That was an interesting link to the site about Bishop Michelle. There were a number of historical groups called “Cathari.” Any group could call themselves “pure.”

What is interesting to me about calling 17th-century judeophile low church groups “Cathars” is not just to show that they believed themselves more pure than their countrymen, but to indicate they had cut themselves off from historical Christianity. My impression is that the Puritans and their separatist Pilgrim brethren were seen a Christian, but had gone astray in removing alleged “Romishness” from the Church.

For example, the Reformers saw that Holy Communion was celebrated every week, but not administered to the People except on Easter, and then only the bread. The Reformers said that such adoration of the elements without allowing the people to partake of them made the elements idols. Some Puritan groups, however, discouraged Holy Communion altogether. This is why a compromise was cut to require Communion only once a month. Radical Puritans also said that there was no real presence of Christ during the act of Communion and said that the bread and the wine were just symbols.

This notion of symbols, by the way is wordist; it makes them just reminders of what Christ did without any meaning in and of themselves: the bread and wine are just words in 3-D.

Although the Puritans were recognized as Christian, the Pilgrims had sadly cut themselves off from everyone but those in their small groups, making them nations with nations, just like the Cathars. Or the Jews.

I was trying to expand on what you said Bob, but I was worried I sounded more like I was correcting you, which is annoying. So I deleted everything I wrote in my comment but what you saw.

Since this does sound to me like I am commenting the way you like, I’ll try to expand on the ideas I deleted. I am going to use “Pilgrim” to mean a group of radical separatist Puritans. Most Puritans cooperated with their non-Puritan countrymen.

I think that when they were called “Catharist,” their contemporaries were consciously comparing them with the Albigens Cathars. This group of Cathars (there were many) had an uncertain descent from Manichaeism. I have never seen a direct link from them to the Puritans, but there are similarities even though the Pilgrims were probably recognized as Christian.

I wonder if there was a direct descent.

Calvin was French and he complained about French persons in his congregations that opposed some of what he did and taught as too Roman. The Calvinists corresponded with people all over Europe, including the English. The Puritans, especially the separatists, echoed many of the same views. Calvin was French and he complained about French persons that opposed some of what he did and taught as too Roman. I think traditionally the puritans among Calvin’s congregations are said to be influenced by Zwingli, but I don’t think this explains all of the radical views.

I wonder if any of those puritans were in fact surviving Cathars hoping for a patron in Calvin.

The Pilgrims rejected the Apostolic Succession. But they had their own succession of ideas.

Some general tendencies both Cathars and Puritans had were:

An extreme rejection of the things of the flesh. The orthodox view is that creation was created perfect, but through wrong choices necessitated by freedom of will of angels and men, corruption entered creation. The gnostic Manichaeans said that creation was made evil in the first place by an evil god. But an extreme rejection of the things of the flesh leads to much the same thing: that creation is evil and fleshly pleasures are evil simply because they are of the flesh.

The Pilgrims separated themselves from everyone else who was less pure. As I reminded us earlier, so did the Cathars and the Jews.

Like most people who caught themselves off from everyone else, the Puritans in America believed they were superior to everyone else, “the city on a hill” that shone light to the world. Just like the Cathars, the gnostics, and the Jews.

Puritans became known as merchants, just as the Cathars and the Jews.

Puritans had a way of materializing everything. By that I mean all things were regarded as if they were physical objects. The spiritual mystery in the act of Communion was rejected in favor of seeing the bread and wine as just physical objects and regarding the act as just a physical commemoration. The Puritans were men of the Enlightenment, which sought a way to avoid the bloodshed of the recent religious wars. However the Cathars, the gnostics, and the Jews also had a way of dealing with spiritual things as if they were physical things that could be dissected. That is, spiritual things were just fancy words.

We could all make more comparisons, but the point I am making is that the Puritans who rejected the apostolic succession actually had their own succession. If not literal descent, then just the patterns in which ideas appear and reappear.

Lake High tries to make the Puritans genetically distinct by way of the Vikings. That isn’t historically possible, but since there is a good deal of continuity, there may be a genetic factor involved with Puritans, Pilgrims, and Yankees. The Bush’s are a good old-fashioned Yankee family of carpetbaggers, right? Aren’t they arrogant and materialistic like their forebears?

On the other hand, it may just be a succession of ideas, since many Italian and Irish that now control New England seem to carry on the tradition.

I see a common thread to this literal succession of ideas: Puritanism -> Universalism -> Yankee capitalism -> socialism. To me they seem at heart to be a continuation of the same impulses of arrogance, materialism, fadishness, Judeophilia, cutting themselves off from all others, compulsive moralizing, obsession with abstractions, and WORDISM.

I hope this expands on your ideas, Bob. I have much more to say on this and it is all inspired by your articles.

I haven’t read through this, so I hope there isn’t too much bad writing. This was written on the fly. I am being called to a movie…