Catholic Info
Traditional Catholic Faith => General Discussion => Topic started by: Jamie on February 16, 2010, 01:44:25 PM
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I am reading "Characters of the Inquisition" which is very interesting and it refers to Ramon Llull who was condemned by one of the inquisitors and later by two Popes. But his followers today claim he was beatified by Pope Pius IX in 1847 and that his cult was approved. It is also said that he is the patron saint of the Balearic islands.
Now, the Characters of the Inquisition author (writing before Vatican II and often making negative remarks about liberals) states that there is no evidence that the beatification occurred and that it is untrue. But it does seem to be propagating on the Internet as fact.
Does anyone have any knowledge on this subject as I find it rather curious and definitely interesting. Here are a couple of the errors of Llull condemned by his inquisitor Nicholas Eymeric:
1. That God has many essences
19. That the Holy Ghost is conceived of the Father and the Son
47. That the body of Christ on the cross was dead as his soul left it, but equally not dead as the divine essence did not recede from it.
53. That the will of Our Lady is against justice, for she did not wish her son dead.
Here is one that might be particularly interesting to Raoul:
92. That in matrimony, man is generated with sanctity; and that matrimony so binds, that no man ought to approach his wife, except for the sake of offspring.
Thoughts?
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I once complained that Pius IX was an occult heretic, using this very weird beatification as proof -- Lull was known as "Doctor Illuminatus" and was considered an alchemist! -- along with his various ambiguous-sounding statements that have led some to believe there is salvation for those who are ignorant.
I later apologized to both Pius IX and Raymond Lull, because I don't know their hearts. Lull, though censured and rebuked in his time and afterwards, died in the good graces of the Church. Then again, so did Erasmus.
Some say he wasn't an alchemist and that this label was only attached to him after his death. Some say he was a Kabbalist; others a crypto-Muslim.
Raymund Lull, First Missionary to the Moslems --
Eymeric, a Catalonian Dominican in 1334 and the inquisitor of Aragon after 1356, expressly states that Lull was a lay merchant and a heretic. In 1371 the same Eymeric pointed out five hundred heresies in Lull's works, and in consequence Gregory XI. forbade some of the books. The Franciscans, Antonio Wadding and others, afterward warmly defended Lull and his writings, but the Jesuits have always been hostile to his memory. Therefore the Roman Catholic Church long hesitated whether to condemn Lull as a heretic or to recognize him as a martyr and a saint. He was never canonized by any pope, but in Spain and Majorca all good Catholics regard him as a saintly Franciscan. In a letter I have received from the present bishop of Majorca he speaks of Raymund Lull as "an extraordinary man with apostolic virtues, and worthy of all admiration."
Frederic Perry Noble, in speaking of Lull's conversion, says: "His new birth be it noted, sprang from a passion for Jesus. Lull's faith was not sacramental, but personal and vital, more Catholic than Roman." Even as the Catalonians first arose in protest and revolution against the tyranny of the state in the Middle Ages, so their countryman is distinguished for daring to act apart from the tyranny of the Church and to inaugurate the rights of laymen. The inner life of Lull finds its key in the story of his conversion. Incarnate Love overcame carnal love, and all of the passion and the poetry of Lull's genius bowed in submission to the cross. The vision of his youth explains the motto of his old age: "He who loves not lives not; he who lives by the Life can not die." The image of the suffering Savior remained for fifty years the mainspring of his being. Love for the personal Christ filled his heart, molded his mind, inspired his pen, and made his soul long for the crown of martyrdom. Long years afterward, when he sought for a reasonable proof of that greatest mystery of revelation and the greatest stumbling-block for Moslems-the doctrine of the Trinity - he once more recalled the vision. His proof for the Trinity was the love of God in Christ as revealed to us by the Holy Spirit.
The "five hundred heresies" made me laugh. Is that all?
I don't know enough about Lull to form any kind of judgment. I'll just say in general that many who seem to be Catholic in the Middle Ages and Renaissance may have had inspiration from the devil to infiltrate the faith and mix it up with alien elements. This new kind of heretic was not like the old kind that tried to create schism and draw people away from the Church, but worked from within like a cancer, with long-range Antichrist-style plans whose fruition we are seeing today.
Many of these occult heretics to this day go undetected and are considered good Catholics, while God undoubtedly knows what they really were in their hearts and will send them to hell. I'd say Erasmus and Meister Eckhart are very probable examples of damnable heretics who somehow escaped punishment as such. Meister Eckhart almost seems to have written in a kind of code that would be picked up later by Ratzinger and other mystical frauds.
These occult heretics, over generations, plant seeds which grow into plants for future, bolder heretics to cultivate. Such is the slow operation of the mystery of iniquity.
As for Lull, I don't know. I am trying not to pretend I have to be an expert on everything, and I'm not going to speculate on Lull when I hardly know anything about him. There is definitely something strange about that beatification, because nothing about Lull strikes me as proper material for sainthood -- he is more of an interesting eccentric -- but luckily beatifications are not infallible.
P.S. As for No. 92 being an error, that depends on how it was phrased in the original language. If Lull had said that you MUST never approach your wife except for the purpose of offspring, it would be error. All you MUST do is not try to stop offspring, but you can approach your wife to pay the debt.
But if he said what it says here, that you OUGHT to only approach your wife for this reason, it's perfectly good advice for those who can live up to it. I would say Eymeric read "must" for "ought," and in context that could be what Lull really is saying, "matrimony so binds," etc.