And for anyone who wants to know what the Cathars were actually like, as opposed to what IHS says they were like, I suggest reading the following as a starting point.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathars I liked your link, especially the paragraph where the author says that the Cathars did in fact encourage their members to commit suicide by starving themselves to death. Though the author quibbles over whether or not starving yourself to death really constitutes suicide. I understand suicide to be choosing to deliberately kill oneself by ones own actions. Thus if I choose not to eat until I die, I am committing suicide by starvation. Maybe you think if someone stops eating for a few days & then dies at the end of that period, the not eating & the dying are unrelated.
Dearest Os, please read your own links in the future.
Dearest IHS sweetey-pie snookums
, I did read that link. Not only did I read the link but I read the text it links to. Astonishing, is it not? Whoever would have thought?
Anyway the reason I linked to it, or one of the reasons to be precise, was that you were comparing the Cathars to the Heaven's Gate cult. This is, if not dishonest, at least a woefully poor comparison. Your implication was that the entire Cathar culture was based on self-destruction and that massacring the Cathars was a benefit to humanity and therefore justifiable. This from the person who loves to rant about the disgusting habits of atheists. Lovely. How about I take a few quotes from the article I linked to and see if you are capable of reading them?
Upon reception of the consolamentum, the new Perfectus surrendered his or her worldly goods to the community, vested himself in a simple black or blue robe with cord belt, and undertook a life dedicated to following the example of Christ and his Apostles — an often peripatetic life devoted to purity, prayer, preaching and charitable work, or so it was claimed.
How utterly horrible, IHS. No wonder you are appalled.
While the Perfecti vowed themselves to ascetic lives of simplicity, frugality and purity, Cathar credentes (believers) were not expected to adopt the same stringent lifestyle. They were however expected to refrain from eating meat and dairy products, from killing and from swearing oaths. Catharism was above all a populist religion and the numbers of those who considered themselves "believers" in the late twelfth century included a sizable portion of the population of Languedoc, counting among them many noble families and courts. These individuals often drank, ate meat, and led relatively normal lives within medieval society — in contrast to the Perfecti, whom they honored as exemplars. Though unable to embrace the life of chastity, the credentes looked toward an eventual time when this would be their calling and path.
Well I must admit that really does sound like a suicide cult.
Many credentes would also eventually receive the consolamentum as death drew near — performing the ritual of liberation at a moment when the heavy obligations of purity required of Perfecti would be temporally short. Some of those who received the sacrament of the consolamentum upon their death-beds may thereafter have shunned further food or drink in order to speed death. This has been termed the endura. It was claimed by Catharism's opponents that by such self-imposed starvation, the Cathars were committing suicide in order to escape this world. Other than at such moments of extremis, no evidence exists to suggest this was a common Cathar practice.
Umm, yeah. What was that again?
So the Cathar "priesthood", for want of a better term, tried to live frugal lives that followed the example of Jesus. The vast majority of normal Cathars led perfectly normal lives, apart from refraining from meat and dairy products, and some Cathars who were already almost dead may have shunned food and drink for a short time.
This is hardly analogous to Heaven's Gate or Jonestown, but then I've long since learned not to expect unfailing accuracy from fallible humans, especially some of them in particular.
Now let's contrast the behaviour of that horrible suicide cult with the behaviour of your wonderful church.
In January 1208 the papal legate, Pierre de Castelnau was sent to meet the ruler of the area, Count Raymond VI of Toulouse. Known for excommunicating noblemen who protected the Cathars, Castelnau excommunicated Raymond as an abettor of heresy. Shortly thereafter, Castelnau was murdered as he returned to Rome via Saint Gilles Abbey by a knight in the service of Count Raymond. As soon as he heard of the murder, the Pope ordered the legates to preach a crusade against the Cathars. Having failed in his effort to peacefully demonstrate the errors of Catharism, the Pope then called a formal crusade, appointing a series of leaders to head the assault. There followed 20 years of war against the Cathars and their allies in the Languedoc: the Albigensian Crusade.
The Béziers army attempted a sortie but was quickly defeated, then pursued by the crusaders back through the gates and into the city.
Arnaud, the Cistercian abbot-commander, is supposed to have been asked how to tell Cathars from Catholics. His alleged reply, recalled by a fellow Cistercian, was "Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius." — "Kill them all, the Lord will recognise His own." The doors of the church of St Mary Magdalene were broken down and the refugees dragged out and slaughtered. Reportedly, 7,000 people died there including many women and children. Elsewhere in the town many more thousands were mutilated and killed. Prisoners were blinded, dragged behind horses, and used for target practice. What remained of the city was razed by fire.
Arnaud wrote to Pope Innocent III, "Today your Holiness, twenty thousand heretics were put to the sword, regardless of rank, age, or sex."Now of course this could not possibly be seen as using violence to prevent people living as they wish. Good heavens, no. That sort of thing is the preserve of horrible, nasty Muslims. They're the only ones who kill people they see as apostates.
About the only suicidal thing the Cathars did as a whole was to disagree with your pope's ideas on religion. That certainly proved to be suicidal. Yet here you are on a site for apostates, merrily slagging off people who wished to think for themselves and claiming their brutal extermination was a good thing. You're amazing. Truly amazing.
Topic: "The 'Eurabia' myth"-debunked?