The cardinals and bishops of the Catholic Church have been naughty for centuries. Why can’t they practice what they preach? At Christmastime 2014 Pope Francis scolded them for their vanity, hypocrisy, back-biting, gossiping, boasting, lusting for power and control, and acting like Lords of the Manor. This book is an expansion on Pope Francis’s admonition to his inner governing circle, the Vatican Curia, tracing this naughtiness from the time of Emperor Constantine who converted to Christianity in the early 4th century and gave the Church palaces, basilicas, riches, and a noble lifestyle. It is a short journey throughout the lascivious and corruption-filled history of these church leaders—their torture of non-believers, selling of indulgences and church offices, concubinage, partnering with evil kings and rulers—ending with the 20th century Vatican Bank frauds, the money-laundering for Mafia and Mason crimes, the betrayal of the Church, and the sexual abuse of children scandal. These popes, cardinals, and bishops of the Catholic Church are and have been the Real Hindrance to Reform with their peculiar Vatican mindset of clericalism, arrogance, and exaggerated self-estimation of their superiority over everyone and everything. It has been evolving for 1700 years. This short book is not a denunciation of the Catholic Church, but a ray of hope that the Vatican will make the deep changes that are necessary for survival of Catholicism. Only a priesthood that includes married, celibate, male and female priests with a non-clerical mindset will bring about the needed reform of the Catholic Church—not the Pope alone, nor the regressive Vatican mindset of clericalism ingrained in present-day church leaders.

Illustrated with 180 photographs, paintings, and illustrations, Dark History of the Catholic Church reveals the corruption, scandals, murder and dark deeds behind the world’s oldest Christian faith.

Paralleling his friend Alexis de Tocqueville's visit to America, Gustave de Beaumont traveled through Ireland in the mid-1830s to observe its people and society. In Ireland, he chronicles the history of the Irish and offers up a national portrait on the eve of the Great Famine. Published to acclaim in France, Ireland remained in print there until 1914. The English edition, translated by William Cooke Taylor and published in 1839, was not reprinted. In a devastating critique of British policy in Ireland, Beaumont questioned why a government with such enlightened institutions tolerated such oppression. He was scathing in his depiction of the ruinous state of Ireland, noting the desperation of the Catholics, the misery of repeated famines, the unfair landlord system, and the faults of the aristocracy. It was not surprising the Irish were seen as loafers, drunks, and brutes when they had been reduced to living like beasts. Yet Beaumont held out hope that British liberal reforms could heal Ireland's wounds. This rediscovered masterpiece, in a single volume for the first time, reproduces the nineteenth-century Taylor translation and includes an introduction on Beaumont and his world. This volume also presents Beaumont's impassioned preface to the 1863 French edition in which he portrays the appalling effects of the Great Famine. A classic of nineteenth-century political and social commentary, Beaumont's singular portrait offers the compelling immediacy of an eyewitness to history.

Goodbye, Good Men uncovers how radical liberalism has infiltrated the Catholic Church, overthrowing traditional beliefs, standards, and disciplines.

A powerful account of witches, crones, and the societies that make them From the gruesome ogress in Hansel and Gretel to the hags at the sabbath in Faust, the witch has been a powerful figure of the Western imagination. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries thousands of women confessed to being witches--of making pacts with the Devil, causing babies to sicken, and killing animals and crops--and were put to death. This book is a gripping account of the pursuit, interrogation, torture, and burning of witches during this period and beyond. Drawing on hundreds of original trial transcripts and other rare sources in four areas of Southern Germany, where most of the witches were executed, Lyndal Roper paints a vivid picture of their lives, families, and tribulations. She also explores the psychology of witch-hunting, explaining why it was mostly older women that were the victims of witch crazes, why they confessed to crimes, and how the depiction of witches in art and literature has influenced the characterization of elderly women in our own culture.

Collection of 38 hymns and chants widely credited to Martin Luther. Includes piano accompaniment and brief notes about the origin of each hymn.