Innovations of the Roman Church—Minor innovations

This is extracted, unedited, from “The Innovations of the Roman Church” by Apostolos Makrakis (1831-1905). I do not like the style but am in agreement with the substance. 

Neither statues nor pictures are approved according to Jewish practice. Statues are indeed problematic; whilst they are intended only as a help to worship, it does not always stop there in practice. Ikons are a different matter because they are not made by human hands and are the product of prayer.

The Gregorian calendar has been criticised by Jewish authorities on the same grounds: that Easter can occur a month too early.

On the celibacy of the clergy, recent experience should be sufficient to condemn the practice. Married clergy is not of course a guarantee that misdemeanours will not occur, and this is not to suggest that most Catholic priests do not keep their vow of celibacy, but the requirement is neither necessary nor desirable.

But besides the seven major innovations (heresies) and the infallible primacy, the Popes fabricated and introduced other innovations of a lower order, such as, for instance:

1) The use of statues instead of icons (sacred images, or pictures), in imitation of the idolators. The icon, being a picture represents and depicts to the eye the departed soul, whereas the statue represents to the touch the body of the departed. The Church of Christ handed down the icons from the very beginning, having ousted the statues from the churches. St. Luke, one of the seventy Apostles and the author of the Gospel bearing his name as well as of the Acts of the Apostles, initiated the practice by painting pictures of the Theotokos while she was still alive, which she blessed. The Eastern Church preserved this heritage in spite of the furious war waged by the iconoclasts and notwithstanding the pressure and propaganda put forth by the statuarian Romanists.

2) The celibacy of the clergy, instituted in the sixteenth century by Pope Gregory XIII of Rome, which is not recommended anywhere in the Holy Scriptures or in the Apostolical or Synodical Canons. Everyone is left free to choose marriage or celibacy for himself. The Lord said: “All men cannot receive this saying, but they to Whom it is given. For there are eunuchs who were so born from their mother’s womb; and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it.” (Matt. 19.11-12). As a consequence of the law of celibacy of the Papal clergy, the latter fell into malfeasances for which they were subject to no disposal from office when caught in the act, nor are they even now so punished, but only transferred.

For in the Roman Catholic Church the doctrine of the Jesuits that “The end justifies the means” prevails and is practised. That is to say, whatever they do they do for the glory of God, and therefore it is no sin. Adultery, wars with those who oppose the Holy Pope, etc. are all pardonable, because they are practiced for the glory of God and the subjection of all to the Pope!

3) The change of the Julian calendar by Pope Gregory XIII of Rome in the year 1582 by calling October 5th October 15th.

Satan had long endeavoured to change the calendar through the agency of many antichrists and astrologers, but had been constantly defeated by the monkery of both the East and the West, aided by those fearful anathemas of the Seventh Ecumenical Synod against all who should attempt to add to or to subtract from the decrees and regulations issued by the Holy Synods. St. Bede, a monk and philosopher (Anglo-Saxon, A.D. 730) stoutly declared: “The alleged correction of the ecclesiastical calendar is not permissible to anyone.” Likewise conscientious astronomers have at various times declared that no Synod should permit a change of the calendar on an astronomical basis, because astronomers never agree in their astronomical calculations.

THE CHANGE OF THE CALENDAR
In the end, however, the aforesaid Gregory ascended the Papal throne (A.D. 1572) and in cooperation with the astrologers J. Stoeffler, Regiomonus, and Aloysius Lilius effected the change, of the calendar, and changed its name to the “Gregorian”. But it took 150 years to establish the new calendar in the West, during which rivers of blood were shed, and it is even now acknowledged to be erroneous both from the ecclesiastical and from the scientific points of view by astronomers of the West.

The Orthodox Eastern Church disapproved and condemned and anathematised the Gregorian calendar at three consecutive Synods in Constantinople in A.D. 1583 under the presidency of the patriarchs Jeremiah of Constantinople, Silvester of Alexandria, and Sophronios of Jerusalem; and the second time by the same authorities in the year 1587; and the third under the presidency of Jeremiah of Constantinople, Meletios Pegas of Alexandria, Joachim of Antioch, and Sophronios of Jerusalem.