[source: Crux Ansata, p. 




Like all human organisations that have played a part through many generations, 
the career of the Catholic Church has passed through great fluctuations. It had 
phases of vigorous belief in itself and wise leadership; it fell into evil ways 
and seemed no better than a dying carcass; it revived, it split... It assumed 
its definite form under the patronage and very definite urgency of the Emperor 
Constantine ... Catholicism as we know it is a definite and formulated belief 
which came into existence with the formulation of the Nicene Creed. Eusebius 
gives a curious account of that strange assemblage at Nicaea, over which the 
Emperor, although he was not yet baptised Christian, presided (325 A.D.). Not 
only was the Council of Nicaea assembled by Constantine the Great, but all the 
great councils... were called together by the imperial power. And it is very 
manifest that in much of the history of Christianity at this time the spirit of 
Constantine the Great is as evident as, or more evident than, the spirit of 
Jesus.....Constantine was a pure autocrat .... From him the Church acquired that 
disposition --- to be authoritative and unquestioned, to develop a. centralised 
organisation and run parallel with the Roman Empire which still haunts its 
mentality. A second great autocrat who presistently emphasised the distinctly 
authoritarian character of Catholic Christianity was Theodosium I, Theodosius 
the Great (379-395). He handed over all the churches to the Trinitarians, 
forbade the unorthodox to hold meetings, and overthrew the heathen temples 
throughout the empire, and in 390 he caused the great statue of Serapis at 
Alexandria to be destroyed. Henceforth there was to be no rivalry, no 
qualification to the rigid unity of the Church
[source: Crux Ansata, p. 7-9]


They had forgotten about the Fatherhood of God; they wanted to see the power of 
the Church, which was their own power, dominating men's lives. It was just 
because many of them probably doubted secretly of the entire soundness of their 
vast and elaborate doctrinal fabric that they would brook no discussion of it. 
They were intolerant of doubts and questions, not because they were sure of 
their faith, but because they were not. The unsatisfied hunger of intelligent 
men for essential truth seemed to promise nothing but perpetual divergence...As 
the solidarity and dogmatism of the Church hardened, it sloughed off and 
persecuted heretical bodies and individuals with increasing energy............. 
The intolerance of the narrowing and concentrating Church was not confined to 
religious matters. The shrewd, pompous, irascible, disillusioned and rather 
malignant old men who manifestly constituted the prevailing majority in the 
councils of the Church, resented any knowledge, but their own knowledge, and 
distrusted any thought that they did not correct and control. Any mental 
activity but their own struck them as being at least insolent if not positively 
wicked. Later on they were to have a great struggle upon the question of the 
earth's position in space, and whether it moved round the sun or not. This was 
really not the business of the Church at all. She might very well have left to 
reason the things that are reason's but she seems to have been compelled by an 
inner necessity to estrange the intellectual conscience in men. As the barbarian 
races settled and became Christian, the Pope began to claim an over-lordship of 
their Kings. In a few centuries the Pope had become in Latin Catholic theory, 
and to a certain extent in practice, the high priest, censor, judge and divine 
monarch of Christendom; … So the story of schisms and conflicts runs on through 
the records of the Church. Many of the Popes fought for power for the vilest 
ends,...... Men "sinned" violently and defiantly and yet more superstitiously 
afraid. Death-beds generally recked with penitence, abject confessions and pious 
bequests...The decay of the Empire of Charlemagne had left the Pope unsupported, 
he was threatened by Byzantium and by the Saracens (who had taken Sicily), and 
face to face with the unruly nobles of Rome. Among the most powerful of these 
nobles were two women. Theodora and Marozia, mother and daughter who in 
succession held the same Castle of St. Angelo, which Theophylact, the patrician 
husband of Theodora, had seized together with most of the temporal power of the 
Pope. These two women were as bold, unscrupulous and dissolute as any male 
prince of the time could have been, and they are abused by masculine historians 
as though they were ten times worse..
[source: Crux Ansata, p. 13, 17, 18, 23, 24, 37, 38]