The Whore of Babylon

[Rhyfelwyr]

Rhy, you are stubonly ignoring historical fact. As early as the 4th Century AD the Pope declared himself leader of the Church, indeed his role as sole Western Patriarch and effective Chancellor of the Emperor made him de-facto ruler of the Western Church.

Why, I haven't argued against what you just stated (although I am highly dubious that papal supremacy was asserted in the 4th Century, maybe you mean primacy?). You say yourself he was head of the Western Church, and I have no problem with that. What I was complaining of is Papal supremacy, whereby the Popacy claims to be the sole manifestation of the church of all the saints on earth. There are no foundations for such a doctrine, it is heretical. I would not take issue with the Bishop of Rome, if he was indeed all that that title suggests. Furthermore, the nature of his headship of the church has changed. The spiritual authority granted to the Popes has been gradually increasingly for the past 1,500 years or so. The early bishops of Rome would never have dreamt of assuming such authority for themselves, and there are a number of quotes to the effect of the one I gave CR above where the past Popes denouce the actions of their successors as those of antichrist. This poses a major problem for the Pope when his position is based on continual apostolic succesion from those same Popes.

Jerome undertook the Vulgate translation under Papal endorsement and Augustine had Pope Leo authorise the conclusions of the Non-Ecumunical Council of Hippo. ALL Western Christianity, in Britain and elsewhere looked to Rome.

I never denied that all of western Christianity looked to Rome. My point is that you are exaggerating the role of the Papacy in the formation of the canon. Hippo was the conslidation of what was already accepted - the gradual formation of the canon took place by consensus throughout all of Christendom, indeed the greatest single influence came from Athanasius in Alexandria, which Pope Damascus copied a few decades later. There is no reason to attribute the canon as it exists today to Rome.

The "Celtic Christian" tradition diverged after the Legions abandoned Brittania, but in 400 AD it was as Roman as anywhere else. The point about all this is that there is no independent tradition which the Reformers drew upon. Everything came from within the Catholic Church, including the scripture.

Of course, the Reformers never drew upon the Celtic Church, 'tis a myth that the Celtic Church was some sort of pure, uncorrupt predecessor of the later Reformed churches. But it is equally untrue to say that it was as Roman as anywhere else, especially as early as 400AD. The decline of Celtic Christianity only really began after the victory of the Roman faction at the Synod of Whitby in 644 AD in which the old Celtic method of calculating easter was abandoned. Indeed, Scotland only officially came within the authority of a Roman archbishopric in 1151. York and Canterbury had claimed authority over Scotland for some time before that, although it was never recognised in Scotland itself, leaving it in a somewhat ambiguous position. Although it is fair to say that Papal influence was still very strong by that point, it just lacked a formal stance.