A Shorty from a Long Debate : on Innocent III as a pretended "mass murderer of Christians"

HGL's F.B. writings : A Shorty from a Long Debate : on Innocent III as a pretended "mass murderer of Christians" · Albigensians and Innocent III - Which was the Christian Side? · "Sola Scriptura inevitably results in countless contradicting theologies." · Someone admired Kent Hovind without my reservations · Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : Kent Hovind's Errors on Anti-Catholicism and Heliocentrism

"Your favorite pope was a mass murderer of Christians," someone told me. I had said I considered Innocent III as one of my or even my favourite Pope. So, if someone calls him a "mass murderer of Christians" he is probably considering Albigensians as the true Christians in 1220. My reply to this starts by quoting the phrase, then I add:

Albigensians were not Christians.

If you are a Christian, you believe: In the beginning God created heaven, and earth.

Albigensians believed God had created heaven. They believed someone else had created earth.

If you are a Christian, you believe: And he said: Let us make man to our image and likeness: and let him have dominion over the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and the beasts, and the whole earth, and every creeping creature that moveth upon the earth. [27] And God created man to his own image: to the image of God he created him: male and female he created them. [28] And God blessed them, saying: Increase and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it, and rule over the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and all living creatures that move upon the earth. [29] And God said: Behold I have given you every herb bearing seed upon the earth, and all trees that have in themselves seed of their own kind, to be your meat: [30] And to all beasts of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to all that move upon the earth, and wherein there is life, that they may have to feed upon.

Albigensians believed the body, the need for sex and the need for food come from the devil, as well as any dominion exercised in this earthly realm.

So, the ones he targetted were not Christians.

But more, he was not a mass murderer. Calling Albigensian Crusade "mass murder" is like calling Patton a mass murderer of Germans. OK, some massacres did occur, but Innocent III didn't order massacres, he ordered the war.

And then there is the Inquisition. It was anything BUT mass murder even for those who have the extreme blindness to consider Albigensians as innocent. One which I have not had since reading Umberto Eco at 16 - yes, he was a Marxist, but no, he was not as bad a historian of Babylon as Hislop and not as bad a historian of Albigensians as Foxe./HGL