Anger

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  Not surprisingly, no aspect of my social transition has been more difficult for me to adjust to than the way I am treated by some (but certainly not all) men. Granted, this was not entirely unexpected. Before my transition, I had often asked my female friends about their experiences living as women in a male-centered world. On an intellectual level, I knew that I would sometimes be dismissed or harassed once I started living as female, but I underestimated just how frustrating and hurtful each one of those instances would be. Words cannot express how condescending and infuriating it feels to have men speak down to me, talk over me, and sometimes even practically put on baby-talk voices when addressing me. Or how intimidating it feels to have strangers make lewd comments about having their way with me as I’m walking alone at night down dark city streets. And while I had numerous run-ins and arguments with strange men back when I was male-bodied, I’d never before experienced the enraged venom in their voices and fury in their faces that I sometimes do now—an extreme wrath that some men seem to reserve specifically for women who they believe threaten their fragile male egos. It became more and more difficult for me to see the point in identifying outside of the male/female binary when I was so regularly being targeted for discrimination and harassment because I was a woman, when I so frequently had to stand up for myself as a woman in order to make sure that other people did not get away with it. After a couple of years living in the world as female, I eventually came to embrace the identity of “woman.” Thinking of myself as a woman simply began to make sense; it resonated with my lived experiences. Before my transition, I was hesitant about calling myself a woman, mostly because I had no desire to live up to the societal expectations and ideals that others often project onto that identity. I used to fear that embracing that identity would be tantamount to cramming myself into some predetermined box, restricting my possibilities and potential. But I now realize that no matter how I act or what I do or say, I remain a woman—both in the eyes of the world and, more importantly, in the way that I experience myself. While I used to view the word “woman” as limiting, I now find it both empowering and limitless.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Archbishop Arundel took occasion to denounce "that pestilent wretch of damnable memory, yea, the forerunner and disciple of anti-christ who, as the complement of his wickedness, invented a new translation of the Scriptures into his mother-tongue."617 In 1414, the reading of the English Scriptures was forbidden upon pain of forfeiture "of land, cattle, life and goods from their heirs forever." Such denunciations of a common English version were what Wyclif’s own criticisms might have led us to expect, and quite in consonance with the decree of the Synod of Toulouse, 1229, and Arundel’s reprobation has been frequently matched by prelatical condemnation of vernacular translations of the Bible and their circulation down to the papal fulminations of the 19th century against Bible societies, as by Pius VII., 1816, who declared them "fiendish institutions for the undermining of the foundation of religion." The position, taken by Catholic apologists, that the Catholic hierarchy has never set itself against the circulation of the Scriptures in the vernacular, but only against unauthorized translations, would be adapted to modify Protestantism’s notion of the matter, if there were some evidence of only a limited attempt to encourage Bible study among the laity of the Catholic Church with the pages of Scripture open before them. If we go to the Catholic countries of Southern Europe and to South America, where her away has been unobstructed, the very opposite is true. In the clearest language, Wyclif charged the priestly authorities of his time with withholding the Word of God from the laity, and denying it to them in the language the people could understand. And the fact remains that, from his day until the reign of Elizabeth, Catholic England did not produce any translations of the Bible, and the English Reformers were of the opinion that the Catholic hierarchy was irrevocably set against English versions. Tyndale had to flee from England to translate his New Testament, and all the copies of the first edition that could be collected were burnt on English soil. And though it is alleged that Tyndale’s New Testament was burnt because it was an "unauthorized" translation, it still remains true that the hierarchy made no attempt to give the Bible to England until long after the Protestant Reformation had begun and Protestantism was well established. The copies of Wyclif’s and Purvey’s versions seem to have been circulated in considerable numbers in England, and were in the possession of low and high. The Lollards cherished them. A splendid copy was given to the Carthusians of London by Henry VI., and another copy was in the possession of Henry VII. Sir Thomas More states distinctly that there was found in the possession of John Hunne, who was afterwards burnt, a Bible "written after Wyclif’s copy and by him translated into our tongue."618 While for a century and a half these volumes helped to keep alive the spirit of Wyclif in England, it is impossible to say how far Wyclif’s version influenced the Protestant Reformers.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  "Two years ago," he says, "I wrote about indulgences when I was still involved in superstitious respect for the tyranny of Rome; but now I have learned, by the kind aid of Prierias and the friars, that indulgences are nothing but wicked devices of the flatterers of Rome. Afterwards Eck and Emser instructed me concerning the primacy of the Pope. While I denied the divine right, I still admitted the human right; but after reading the super-subtle subtilties of those coxcombs in defense of their idol, I became convinced that the papacy is the kingdom of Babylon and the power of Nimrod the mighty hunter. Now a learned professor of Leipzig writes against me on the sacrament in both kinds, and is about to do still greater wonders.249 He says that it was neither commanded nor decreed, whether by Christ or the apostles, that both kinds should be administered to the laity." 1. Luther first discusses the sacrament of the Holy Communion, and opposes three errors as a threefold bondage; namely, the withdrawal of the cup from the laity, the doctrine of transubstantiation, and the sacrifice of the mass. (a) As regards the withdrawal of the cup, he refutes the flimsy arguments of Alveld, and proves from the accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Paul, that the whole sacrament was intended for the laity as well as the clergy, according to the command, "Drink ye all of this." Each writer attaches the mark of universality to the cup, not to the bread, as if the Spirit foresaw the (Bohemian) schism. The blood of Christ was shed for all for the remission of sins. If the laymen have the thing, why should they be refused the sign which is much less than the thing itself? The Church has no more right to take away the cup from the laity than the bread. The Romanists are the heretics and schismatics in this case, and not the Bohemians and the Greeks who take their stand on the manifest teaching of the Word of God. "I conclude, then, that to deny reception in both kinds to the laity is an act of impiety and tyranny, and one not in the power of any angel, much less of any Pope or council whatsoever." ... "The sacrament does not belong to the priests, but to all; nor are the priests lords, but servants, whose duty it is to give both kinds to those who seek them, as often as they seek them." ... "Since the Bishop of Rome has ceased to be a bishop, and has become a tyrant, I fear absolutely none of his decrees; for I know that neither he, nor even a general council, has authority to establish new articles of faith." (b) The doctrine of transubstantiation is a milder bondage, and might be held alongside with the other and more natural view of the real presence, which leaves the elements unchanged.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  But to the same source may be traced also the undue interference of kings, princes, and magistrates in ecclesiastical matters, and that degrading dependence of many Protestant establishments upon the secular power. Kingcraft and priestcraft are two opposite extremes, equally opposed to the spirit of Christianity. Luther, and especially Melanchthon, bitterly complained, in their later years, of the abuse of the episcopal power assumed by the magistrate, and the avarice of princes in the misappropriation of ecclesiastical property.

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  This idea—that much of what is commonly called transphobia is merely traditional sexism in disguise—moved to the forefront of my mind as I began to be invited to do spoken word performances at various queer women’s events around the San Francisco Bay Area. While I was welcomed very warmly by most of the women who attended these events, I would sometimes come across certain women who would act dismissively toward me, who seemed bothered by me being there, who acted as if they were granting me a special favor by tolerating my presence, who would make offhand and inappropriate comments about my trans status as if to remind me that I was not a real woman like they were. This sense of ownership and entitlement about being a woman or being lesbian seemed hypocritical to me. After all, as soon as we would walk out the door, all of us would face similar discrimination for being women and for being dykes. But what was most frustrating about the way that many of these women dismissed me was the fact that they seemed to have no problems at all with female-bodied folks expressing masculinity and with trans people on the FTM spectrum attending their events. In other words, they didn’t have much of a problem with transgender people per se, just so long as they were male-or masculine-identified rather than female-or feminine-identified. This privileging of trans men over trans women is not merely a bias held by certain individuals, but rather one that is often institutionalized within queer women’s culture and organizations. These days, it is not uncommon to see the word “trans” used to welcome trans men (but not trans women) on everything from lesbian events to sex surveys and play parties. And even at the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, women are no longer defined based on their legal sex, appearance, or self-identification, but on whether or not they were born and raised a girl. And while some performers who identify as transgender and answer to male pronouns are invited to take the festival stage each year, someone like myself—who identifies 100 percent as female—isn’t even allowed to stand in the audience.3 As with most forms of prejudice, transwoman-specific discrimination within the queer women’s community seems to proliferate even more in the absence of trans women than in our presence; this is no surprise, as bigots are typically too cowardly to dare have their views openly discussed or debated with the very people they despise. While anti-trans-woman sentiments are generally expressed outside of my view, I still hear about them all the time from my trans male and queer female friends, who often tell me about self-identified dykes in their community who openly discuss lusting after trannybois and trans men one minute, then in the next, deride trans women for being “creepy” and “effeminate.”

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Pope Gregory XI. himself now took notice of the offender in a document condemning 19 sentences from his writings as erroneous and dangerous to Church and state. In fact, he issued a batch of at least five bulls, addressed to the archbishop of Canterbury, the bishop of London, the University of Oxford and the king, Edward III. The communication to Archbishop Sudbury opened with an unctuous panegyric of England’s past most glorious piety and the renown of its Church leaders, champions of the orthodox faith and instructors not only of their own but of other peoples in the path of the Lord’s commandments. But it had come to his ears that the Lutterworth rector had broken forth into such detestable madness as not to shrink from publicly proclaiming false propositions which threatened the stability of the entire Church. His Holiness, therefore, called upon the archbishop to have John sent to prison and kept in bonds till final sentence should be passed by the papal court.560 It seems that the vice-chancellor of Oxford at least made a show of complying with the pope’s command and remanded the heretical doctor to Black Hall, but the imprisonment was only nominal. Fortunately, the pope might send forth his fulminations to bind and imprison but it was not wholly in his power to hold the truth in bonds and to check the progress of thought. In his letter to the chancellor of Oxford, Gregory alleged that Wyclif was vomiting out of the filthy dungeon of his heart most wicked and damnable heresies, whereby he hoped to pollute the faithful and bring them to the precipice of perdition, overthrow the Church and subvert the secular estate. The disturber was put into the same category with those princes among errorists, Marsiglius of Padua and John of Jandun.561 The archbishop’s court at Lambeth, before which the offender was now cited, was met by a message from the widow of the Black Prince to stay the proceedings, and the sitting was effectually broken up by London citizens who burst into the hall. At Oxford, the masters of theology pronounced the nineteen condemned propositions true, though they sounded badly to the ear. A few weeks later, March, 1878, Gregory died, and the papal schism broke out. No further notice was taken of Gregory’s ferocious bulls. Among other things, the nineteen propositions affirmed that Christ’s followers have no right to exact temporal goods by ecclesiastical censures, that the excommunications of pope and priest are of no avail if not according to the law of Christ, that for adequate reasons the king may strip the Church of temporalities and that even a pope may be lawfully impeached by laymen.

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  It infuriates me when cissexual women use “male privilege” as an excuse to dismiss MTF spectrum folks, as it belies their reluctance to examine their own birth privilege (having been born into a physical sex that matches their subconscious sex), their socialization privilege (being socialized into a gender consistent with their subconscious sex), and their cissexual privilege (having others consider their femaleness legitimate and unquestionable). Some women bristle when I suggest that they may have experienced socialization privilege, as they assume that I am negating the many ways in which childhood socialization can be restrictive and disempowering for cissexual female children and adolescents. My intention in bringing up the notion of socialization privilege is not to dismiss the obstacles faced by cissexual girls, but to highlight the very different, yet significant, gender disadvantages faced by MTF spectrum children. For example, when I ask my cissexual female friends if they would have preferred it if their parents had decided to raise them male rather than female, most of them immediately answer “no.” Posing the question in this way allows them to recognize that the potential male privileges they might have gained if raised male would not be worth the price of having to deny or repress their femaleness and femininity. Male privileges, while very real, are little consolation when you feel like you have to hide your femaleness/femininity from your family and friends; when you’ve endured being the only female/feminine-inclined person in often-misogynistic male-only spaces such as men’s locker rooms; when you cannot safely share your femaleness/femininity with others, but instead must clandestinely explore it on your own in isolation; when you are unable to simply be female/feminine without having others accuse you of “emulating” women or of merely being “effeminate.” I am not trying to make the case here that MTF spectrum folks are “more oppressed” than cissexual women, as playing the moreoppressed-than-thou card serves no purpose other than narcissism. But I do hope to encourage cissexual women to take a moment to put themselves in our shoes, to consider how patronizing and condescending dismissive quips about “male privilege” would sound to you if you had been forced against your will into boyhood. As someone who spent my childhood desperately wishing that I could be a girl rather than boy, and who as an adult considers it a privilege to finally have the opportunity to live in the world as a woman rather than a man, I find those attempts to undermine trans women’s femaleness by decrying “male privilege” hollow and crass.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  There was no assertion of authority contained in this bull which had not been before made by Gregory VII. and his successors, and the document leans back not only upon the deliverances of popes, but upon the definitions of theologians like Hugo de St. Victor, Bernard and Thomas Aquinas. But in the Unam sanctam the arrogance of the papacy finds its most naked and irritating expression. One of the clauses pronounces all offering resistance to the pope’s authority Manichaeans. Thus Philip was made a heretic. Six months later the pope sent a cardinal legate, John le Moine of Amiens, to announce to the king his excommunication for preventing French bishops from going to Rome. The bearer of the message was imprisoned and the legate fled. Boniface now called upon the German emperor, Albrecht, to take Philip’s throne, as Innocent III. had called upon the French king to take John’s crown, and Innocent IV. upon the count of Artois to take the crown of Frederick II. Albrecht had wisdom enough to decline the empty gift. Philip’s seizure of the papal bulls before they could be promulged in France was met by Boniface’s announcement that the posting of a bull on the church doors of Rome was sufficient to give it force. The French parliament, June, 1308, passed from the negative attitude of defending the king and French rights to an attack upon Boniface and his right to the papal throne. In 20 articles it accused him of simony, sorcery, immoral intercourse with his niece, having a demon in his chambers, the murder of Coelestine, and other crimes. It appealed to a general council, before which the pope was summoned to appear in person. Five archbishops and 21 bishops joined in subscribing to this document. The university and chapter of Paris, convents, cities, and towns placed themselves on the king’s side.22 One more step the pope was about to take when a sudden stop was put to his career. He had set the eighth day of September as the time when he would publicly, in the church of Anagni, and with all the solemnities known to the Church, pronounce the ban upon the disobedient king and release his subjects from allegiance. In the same edifice Alexander III. had excommunicated Barbarossa, and Gregory IX., Frederick II. The bull already had the papal signature, when, as by a storm bursting from a clear sky, the pope’s plans were shattered and his career brought to an end.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  It was inevitable that the Church should feel the effects of these changes. Its wealth, which is computed to have covered one-third of the landed property of the realm, and the idleness and mendicancy of the friars, awakened widespread murmur and discontent. The ravages made among the clergy by the Black Death rendered necessary extraordinary measures to recruit its ranks. The bishop of Norwich was authorized to replace the dead by ordaining 60 young men before the canonical age. With the rise of the staples of living, the stipends of the vast body of the priestly class was rendered still more inadequate. Archbishop Islip of Canterbury and other prelates, while recognizing in their pastorals the prevalent unrest, instead of showing proper sympathy, condemned the covetousness of the clergy. On the other hand, Longland wrote of the shifts to which they were put to eke out a living by accepting secular and often menial employment in the royal palace and the halls of the gentry class. Parson and parish priest pleyned to the bishop, That their parishes were pore sith the pestilence tym, To have a license and a leve at London to dwelle And syngen there for symonye, for silver is swete. There was a movement from within the English people to limit the power of the bishops and to call forth spirituality and efficiency in the clergy. The bishops, powerful as they remained, were divested of some of their prestige by the parliamentary decision of 1370, restricting high offices of state to laymen. The first lay chancellor was appointed in 1340. The bishop, however, was a great personage, and woe to the parish that did not make fitting preparations for his entertainment and have the bells rung on his arrival. Archbishop Arundel, Foxe quaintly says, "took great snuff and did suspend all such as did not receive him with the noise of bells." Each diocese had its own prison, into which the bishop thrust refractory clerics for penance or severer punishment. The mass of the clergy had little learning. The stalls and canonries, with attractive incomes, where they did not go to foreigners, were regarded as the proper prizes of the younger sons of noblemen. On the other hand, the prelates lived in abundance. The famous bishop of Winchester, William of Wykeham, counted fifty manors of his own. In the larger ones, official residences were maintained, including hall and chapel. This prelate travelled from one to the other, taking reckonings of his stewards, receiving applications for the tonsure and ordination and attending to other official business. Many of the lower clergy were taken from the villein class, whose sons required special exemption to attend school. The day they received orders they were manumitted.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  The principle of the general priesthood of the laity found its political and civil counterpart in the American principle of the general kingship of men, as expressed in the Declaration of Independence, that "all men are born free and equal." 2. In the second part, Luther chastises the worldly pomp of the Pope and the cardinals, their insatiable greed, and exactions under false pretenses. 3. In the third part, he deals with practical suggestions. He urges sweeping reforms in twenty-seven articles, to be effected either by the civil magistrate, or by a general council of ministers and laymen. He recommends the abolition of the annates, of the worldly pomp and idolatrous homage paid to the Pope (as kissing his feet), and of his whole temporal power, so that he should be hereafter merely a spiritual ruler, with no power over the emperor except to anoint and crown him, as a bishop crowns a king, as Samuel crowned Saul and David. He strongly demands the abrogation of enforced clerical celibacy, which destroys instead of promoting chastity, and is the cause of untold misery. Clergymen should be allowed to marry, or not to marry, according to their gift and sense of duty. Masses for the dead should be abolished, since they have become a solemn mockery, and devices for getting money, thus exciting the anger of God. Processions, saints’ days, and most of the public festivals, except Sunday, should be abrogated, since holy days have become most unholy by drinking, gambling, and idling. Monasteries should be reduced in number, and converted into schools, with freedom to enter and to leave without binding vows. Certain punishments of the Canon law should cease, especially the interdict which silences God’s word and service,—a greater sin than to kill twenty Popes at once. Fasts should be voluntary and optional; for whilst at Rome they laugh at fasts, they let us abroad eat oil which they would not think fit for greasing their boots, and then sell us the liberty of eating butter and other things; whereas the apostle says that the gospel has given us liberty in all such matters (1 Cor. 10:25 sq.). He also would forbid all begging in Christendom; each town should support its own poor, and not allow strange beggars to come in, whether pilgrims or mendicant monks; it is not right that one should work that another may be idle, and live ill that another may live well, but "if any would not work, neither should he eat" (2 Thess. 3:10). He counsels a reduction of the clerical force, and the prohibition of pluralities. "As for the fraternities, together with indulgences, letters of indulgence, dispensations, masses, and all such things, let them all be drowned and abolished." He recommends (Art. 24) to do justice to, and make peace with, the Bohemians; for Hus and Jerome of Prague were unjustly burnt, in violation of the safe- conduct promised by the Pope and the Emperor.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  But this extreme and isolated passage is set aside by his repeated declarations against carnal warfare, and was provoked by the astounding assertions of Prierias, the master of the papal palace, that the Pope was the infallible judge of all controversies, the head of all spiritual, the father of all secular princes, the head of the Church and of the whole universe (caput totius orbis universi). Against such blasphemy Luther breaks out in these words: "Mihi vero videtur, si sic pergat furor Romanistarum, nullum reliquum esse remedium, quam ut imperator, reges et principes vi et armis accincti aggrediantur has pestes orbis terrarum, remque non jam verbis, sed ferro decernant .... Si fures furca, si latrones gladio, si haereticos igne plectimus, cur non magis hos magistros perditionis, hos cardinales, hos papas et totam istam romanae Sodomae colluviem, quae ecclesiam Dei sine fine corrumpit, omnibus armis impetimus, et manus nostras in sanguine eorum lavamus? tanquam a communi et omnium periculosissimo incendio nos nostrosque liberaturi." Erl. ed., Opera Latina, II. 107. He means a national resistance under the guidance of the Emperor and rightful rulers. § 45. The Babylonian Captivity of the Church. October, 1520. De Captivitate Babylonica Ecclesiae Praeludium D. Martini Lutheri. Wittenb. 1520. Erl. ed. Opera Lat., vol. V. 13–118; German translation (Von der Babylonischen Gefängniss, etc.) by an unknown author, 1520, reprinted in Walch, XIX. 5–153, and in 0. v. Gerlach, IV. 65–199; the Lat. original again in the Weimar ed., vol. V. An English translation by Buchheim in First Principles of the Reformation (London, 1883), pp. 141–245. In closing the "Address to the Nobility," Luther announces: "I have another song still to sing concerning Rome. If they wish to hear it, I will sing it to them, and sing with all my might. Do you understand, my friend Rome, what I mean?" This new song, or second war-trumpet, was the book on the, "Babylonian Captivity of the Church," published in the beginning of October, 1520.248 He calls it a "prelude," as if the real battle were yet to come. He intended it for scholars and the clergy, and therefore wrote in Latin. It is a polemical, theological work of far-reaching consequences, cutting one of the roots of Romanism, and looking towards a new type of Christian life and worship. He attacks the sacramental system of the Roman Church, by which she accompanies and controls the life of the Christian from the cradle to the grave, and brings every important act and event under the power of the priest. This system he represents as a captivity, and Rome as the modern Babylon. Yet he was very far from undervaluing the importance and benefit of the sacrament; and as far as the doctrine of baptism and the eucharist is concerned, he agreed better with the Catholic than with the Zwinglian view. Luther begins by thanking his Romish opponents for promoting his theological education.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  apostles? Where has there been a king who lived in such worldly pomp as he does, who professes to be the head of all whose duty it is to despise and flee from all worldly pomp—I mean, of all Christians? Not that this need concern us for his own sake, but that we have good reason to fear God’s wrath, if we flatter such pride, and do not show our discontent. It is enough that the Pope should be so mad and foolish, but it is too much that we should sanction and approve it." After enumerating all the abuses to which the Pope and his Canon law give sanction, and which he upholds with his usurped authority, Luther addresses him in this impassioned style: — "Dost thou hear this, O Pope! not the most holy, but the most sinful? Would that God would hurl thy chair headlong from heaven, and cast it down into the abyss of hell! Who gave you the power to exalt yourself above God? to break and to loose what he has commanded? to teach Christians, more especially Germans, who are of noble nature, and are famed in all histories for uprightness and truth, to be false, unfaithful, perjured, treacherous, and wicked? God has commanded to keep faith and observe oaths even with enemies: you dare to cancel his command, laying it down in your heretical, antichristian decretals, that you have power to do so; and through your mouth and your pen Satan lies as he never lied before, teaching you to twist and pervert the Scriptures according to your own arbitrary will. O Lord Christ! look down upon this, let thy day of judgment come and destroy the Devil’s lair at Rome. Behold him of whom St. Paul spoke (2 Thess. 2:3, 4), that he should exalt himself above thee, and sit in thy Church, showing himself as God—the man of sin and the child of damnation .... The Pope treads God’s commandments under foot, and exalts his own: if this is not Antichrist, I do not know what it is." Janssen (II. 100) calls Luther’s "Address to the German Nobility" "das eigentliche Kriegsmanifest der Lutherisch-Huttenschen Revolutionspartei," and "ein Signal zum gewaltsamen Angriff." But the book nowhere counsels war; and in the letter to Link he says expressly: "nec hoc a me agitur, ut seditionem moveam, sed ut concilio generali libertatem asseram"(De Wette, I. 479). Janssen quotes (p. 103) a very vehement passage from Luther’s contemporaneous postscript to a book of Prierias which he republished (De juridica et irrefragabili veritate Romanae Ecclesiae Romanique Pontificis), expressing a wish that the Emperor, kings, and princes would make a bloody end to Pope and cardinals and the whole rabble of the Romish Sodom.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  He may have read Nestorian writings.650 At all events, he came to similar conclusions. Having little confidence in his own opinions, Elipandus consulted Felix, bishop of Urgel651 in Catalonia, in that part of Spain which, since 778, was incorporated with the dominion of Charlemagne. Felix was more learned and clear-headed than Elipandus, and esteemed, even by his antagonist Alcuin, for his ability and piety. Neander regards him as the originator of Adoptionism; at all events, he reduced it to a formulated statement. Confirmed by his friend, Elipandus taught the new doctrine with all the zeal of a young convert, although he was already eighty years of age; and, taking advantage of his influential position, he attacked the orthodox opponents with overbearing violence. Etherius, Bishop of Osma or Othma (formerly his pupil), and Beatus, a presbyter, and after Alcuin abbot at Libana in Asturia,652 took the lead in the defence of the old and the exposure of the new Christology. Elipandus charged them with confounding the natures of Christ, like wine and water, and with scandalous immorality, and pronounced the anathema on them. Pope Hadrian, being informed of these troubles, issued a letter in 785 to the orthodox bishops of Spain, warning them against the new doctrine as rank Nestorianism.653 But the letter had no effect; the papal authority plays a subordinate role in this whole controversy. The Saracen government, indifferent to the theological disputes of its Christian subjects, did not interfere. But when the Adoptionist heresy, through the influence of Felix, spread in the French portion of Spain, and even beyond the Pyrenees into Septimania,

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  It was the fiery signal of absolute and final separation from Rome, and destroyed the effect of future papal bulls upon one-half of Western Christendom. It emancipated Luther and the entire Protestant world from that authority, which, from a wholesome school of discipline for young nations, had become a fearful and intolerable tyranny over the intellect and conscience of men. Luther developed his theology before the eyes of the public; while Calvin, at a later period, appeared fully matured, like Minerva from the head of Jupiter. "I am one of those," he says, "among whom St. Augustin classed himself, who have gradually advanced by writing and teaching; not of those who at a single bound spring to perfection out of nothing. He called the Pope the most holy and the most hellish father of Christendom. He began in 1517 as a devout papist and monk, with full faith in the Roman Church and its divinely appointed head, protesting merely against certain abuses; in 1519, at the Leipzig disputation, he denied the divine right, and shortly afterwards also the human right, of the papacy; a year later he became fully convinced that the papacy was that antichristian power predicted in the Scriptures, and must be renounced at the risk of a man’s salvation. There is no doubt that in all these stages he was equally sincere, earnest, and conscientious. Luther adhered to the position taken in the act of Dec. 10, 1520, with unchanging firmness. He never regretted it for a moment. He had burned the ship behind him; he could not, and he would not, return. To the end of his life he regarded and treated the Pope of Rome in his official capacity as the very Antichrist, and expected that he soon would be destroyed by spiritual force at the second coming of Christ. At Schmalkalden in 1537 he prayed that God might fill all Protestants with hatred of the Pope. One of his last and most violent books is directed "Against the Papacy at Rome, founded by the Devil." Wittenberg, 1545.295 He calls Paul III. the "Most hellish Father," and addresses him as "Your Hellishness." instead of "Your Holiness." He promises at the close to do still better in another book, and prays that in case of his death, God may raise another one "a thousandfold more severe; for the devilish papacy is the last evil on earth, and the worst which all the devils with all their power could contrive. God help us. Amen." Thus he wrote, not under the inspiration of liquor or madness, as Roman historians have suggested, but in sober earnest.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Heretics should be overcome with books, not with fire; else, the hangmen would be the most learned doctors in the world, and there would be no need of study." In Art. 25, Luther urges a sound reformation of the universities, which had become "schools of Greek fashion" and "heathenish manners" (2 Macc. 4:12, 13), and are, full of dissolute living." He is unjustly severe upon Aristotle, whom he calls a "dead, blind, accursed, proud, knavish heathen teacher." His logic, rhetoric, and poetic might be, retained; but his physics, metaphysics, ethics, and the book "Of the Soul" (which teaches that the soul dies with the body) ought to be banished, and the study of the languages, mathematics, history, and especially of the Holy Scriptures, cultivated instead. "Nothing is more devilishly mischievous," he says, "than an unreformed university." He would also have the Canon law banished, of which there is "nothing good but the name," and which is no better than "waste paper." He does not spare national vices. He justly rebukes the extravagance in dress, the usury, and especially the intemperance in eating and drinking, for which, he says, "we Germans have an ill reputation in foreign countries, as our special vice, and which has become so common, and gained so much the upper hand, that sermons avail nothing." (His frequent protest against the "Saufteufel" of the Germans, as he calls their love of drink, is still unheeded. In temperance the Southern nations of Europe are far ahead of those of the North.) In conclusion, he expresses the expectation that he will be condemned upon earth. "My greatest care and fear is, lest my cause be not condemned by men; by which I should know for certain that it does not please God. Therefore let them freely go to work, Pope, bishop, priest, monk, or doctor: they are the true people to persecute the truth, as they have always done. May God grant us all a Christian understanding, and especially to the Christian nobility of the German nation true spiritual courage, to do what is best for our unhappy Church. Amen." The book was a firebrand thrown into the headquarters of the papal church. It anticipated a reply to the papal bull, and prepared the public mind for it. It went right to the heart of the Germans, in their own language wielded with a force as never before, and gave increased weight to the hundred grievances of long standing against Rome. But it alarmed some of his best friends. They condemned or regretted his biting severity.246 Staupitz tried at the eleventh hour to prevent the publication, and soon afterwards (Aug. 23, 1520) resigned his position as general vicar of the Angustinians, and retired to Salzburg, feeling himself unequal to the conflict. John Lange called the book a "blast for assault, atrocious and ferocious." Some feared that it might lead to a religious war. Melanchthon could not approve the violence, but dared not to check the spirit of the new Elijah.

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  For example, the gay rights movement has historically framed much of their activism around the premise that heterosexuals oppress homosexuals. This oversimplification creates the false impression that homosexual and heterosexual people are “opposites”—an idea that marginalizes bisexuals. Further, the terms most commonly used to describe the prejudice faced by lesbians and gay men—“homophobia” and “heterosexism”—mistakenly imply that queer people are primarily discriminated against because of their sexual orientation. This is a false assumption, as those in the lesbian and gay communities who arguably face the harshest discrimination from the straight world are those who also exhibit exceptional gender expression (i.e., outwardly feminine gay men and butch lesbian women). This privileging of sexual orientation over other gender inclinations has allowed some gay rights activists to exclude gender-variant people from their movement (under the premise that they are focused on sexual orientation, not gender identity or expression), while simultaneously claiming that the prejudice and violence faced by transgender people is the result of “homophobia.” This appropriation of gender-variant experiences and struggles by single-issue gay rights activists seems to serve the sole purpose of placing cisgendered gays and lesbians atop the queer pecking order. Any movement whose goal is to truly end prejudice against all queer people must begin by replacing gay-specific phrases (like “heterosexism”) with more inclusive ones (such as “oppositional sexism”) that are equally respectful of all exceptional gender and sexual traits, and which acknowledge the fact that, in many cases, homophobia and transphobia are indistinguishable phenomena. The transgender movement, which was primarily made up of those excluded by mainstream gay rights groups, has conceptual and linguistic problems of its own. The fact that at least two overlapping classes of people—those with exceptional gender expressions and those with exceptional subconscious sexes—have been subsumed by the category “transgender” has created a lot of unnecessary tension and confusion. The result is that at least two different (and largely incompatible) views of gender have gained hold in this community. The first one, which is forwarded by many transsexuals, can be summed up by the popular phrase “sex is in the body, and gender is in the mind.” While this saying is useful to convey why a transsexual might want to change their physical sex to match their identified sex, it oversimplifies the concept of gender. The fact that the word “gender” is shorthand for subconscious sex inadvertently privileges subconscious sex over gender expression. Further, it mistakenly implies that more socially influenced aspects of gender (such as gender identity and gender roles), as well as one’s ability or willingness to conform to oppositional sexist ideals, stem directly from one’s subconscious sex, which is most certainly not true. People who espouse this view often look down on those people who identify outside of the male/female binary, or who express combinations of masculinity and femininity, presuming that these groups do not represent “serious” or “true” transgender people.

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  The fact that sexualization is an attempt to dehumanize and disempower women is even more evident in remarks we get on the street, which invariably occur when women are presumed vulnerable (when we are alone or outnumbered) and often go unchallenged solely because the men who make such comments are physically stronger than the women they harass. Perhaps it’s only one in fifty or one in a hundred men who stoop to the level of catcalls (or worse), but over time they take their toll and achieve their intended effect: They make us feel like we are targets. Indeed, the sexualization that occurs in both media imagery and public harassment reinforces a power dynamic between the sexes in which men are invariably viewed as predators and women as prey. This predator/prey mind-set makes it virtually impossible for us to imagine that a woman has the potential to be a sexual aggressor (evident in the common disbelief about, and inability to articulate, instances of woman-on-woman sexual violence or female fetishism) or that a man can be a sexual object (as seen by the tendency for people to view young boys who are seduced by adult women as being “lucky,” as opposed to being victims of statutory rape).1 In fact, the only instances in which adult men seem to have the potential to become sexual objects is when they are sexualized or coerced into sexual acts by male aggressors. Understanding this predator/prey dichotomy is crucial for us to make sense of the way transsexual women are sexualized in our society. Even though many people insist that trans women remain male despite our transitions, we are hardly ever sexualized as “men.” Sure, there have been a handful of movies that depict fictional MTF transsexuals violently preying on women, but such characters are almost always portrayed as “deviant” or “deranged” males rather than as actual trans women. For example, the characters in the movies Dressed to Kill (1980) and The Silence of the Lambs (1991) neither live as nor physically transition to female, and their supposed transsexuality is treated simply as a psychosis that drives them to commit violence. In the vast majority of cases, however, the sexualization of trans women casts us in the role of sexual object rather than sexual aggressor. For example, the tranny sex and porn industries, which primarily cater to straight-identified men, overwhelmingly feature trans women as their sexual objects. In contrast, trans men are not objectified by straight-identified men to nearly the same extent; trans male porn (what little of it there is) attracts a predominantly gay male and queer female audience.2

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  Because of our history, the fact that cissexual queers now dominate transgender and queer/trans communities and discourses is highly problematic for those of us who are transsexual. During the 1970s, transsexuals and other cross-gender-identified queers were banished from the “gay rights” movement as it began to focus solely on sexual orientation. This was a calculated maneuver: By jettisoning cross-gender queers (who were typically seen as the “most deviant” by a reluctant mainstream public), sexuality-queers could make the case that they were just like “normal people” except for their sexual orientation. And from the perspective of a lesbian or gay person, this strategy was highly effective. Sexuality-queers, while still marginalized to a certain degree, have made tremendous legal gains with regard to domestic partnership, including reversing “sodomy laws” and gaining protection against discrimination. They now have their own social and political organizations, cable channels, university departments, and even their own Olympics. There are out lesbian and gay politicians and celebrities, and popular TV shows that revolve around lesbian and gay characters. Gaythemed jokes in the media are now more likely to make fun of someone for being homophobic than for being homosexual. Perhaps most significant of all, it has become generally accepted among most Americans—even among those who are stern opponents of “gay rights”—that there is natural variation in human sexual orientation. (Or, as the popular saying goes: “Some people are just born that way.”) As a direct result of the exclusion of cross-gender-identified trans people from the “gay rights” movement, public awareness and acceptance of our identities and issues are about twenty years behind those of lesbians and gays, because the transgender movement didn’t gain momentum until the 1990s. Because of this exclusion, our cross-gender identities and perspectives are not acknowledged to nearly the same extent as lesbian and gay identities and perspectives. For example, when I come out to people as a transsexual, I am often barraged with highly personal questions about my motives, my physical body, and my male past. In contrast, I have never once been interrogated by someone upon coming out to them as a lesbian; that aspect of my person is generally accepted at face value. In other words, I am allowed to exist without question as a lesbian in ways that I am not allowed as a transsexual. In a climate where same-sex attraction has become a given while cross-gender identification has most certainly not, the merging of “sexuality-queers” and “genderqueers” (as seen in the queer/trans community) essentially subsumes transsexuals within the more well-established cissexual queer community. The more inclusive the word “transgender” becomes, the more thoroughly the voices of transsexuals and other cross-gender/cross-living individuals are drowned out by those who do not share our perspectives and experiences.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Early in September, 1411, Huss wrote to John XXIII. protesting his full agreement with the Church and asking that the citation to appear before the curia be revoked. In this communication and in a special letter to the cardinals653 Huss spoke of the punishment for heresy and insubordination. He, however, wrote to John that he was bound to speak the truth, and that he was ready to suffer a dreadful death rather than to declare what would be contrary to the will of Christ and his Church. He had been defamed, and it was false that he had expressed himself in favor of the remanence of the material substance of the bread after the words of institution, and that a priest in mortal sin might not celebrate the eucharist. Sbinko died Sept. 28, 1411. At this juncture the excitement was increased by the arrival in Prag of John Stokes, a Cambridge man, and well known in England as an uncompromising foe of Wycliffism. He had come with a delegation, sent by the English king, to arrange an alliance with Sigismund. Stokes’ presence aroused the expectation of a notable clash, but the Englishman, although he ventilated his views privately, declined Huss’ challenge to a public disputation on the ground that he was a political representative of a friendly nation.654 The same year, 1411, John XXIII. called Europe to a crusade against Ladislaus of Naples, the defender of Gregory XII., and promised indulgence to all participating in it, whether by personal enlistment or by gifts. Tiem, dean of Passau, appointed preacher of the holy war, made his way to Prag and opened the sale of indulgences. Chests were placed in the great churches, and the traffic was soon in full sway. As Wyclif, thirty years before, in his Cruciata, had lifted up his voice against the crusade in Flanders, so now Huss denounced the religious war and denied the pope’s right to couple indulgences with it. He filled the Bethlehem chapel with denunciations of the sale and, in a public disputation, took the ground that remission of sins comes through repentance alone and that the pope has no authority to seize the secular sword. Many of his paragraphs were taken bodily from Wyclif’s works on the Church and on the Absolution from guilt and punishment.655 Huss was supported by Jerome of Prag.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  illiterate men, and ignorant alike of things human and divine? If, holy fathers, we be bound to weigh in the balance the lives, the morals, and the attainments of the meanest candidate for the sacerdotal office, how much more ought we to look to the fitness of him who aspires to be the lord and master of all priests! Yet how would it fare with us, if it should happen that the man the most deficient in all these virtues, one so abject as not to be worthy of the lowest place among the priesthood, should be chosen to fill the highest place of all? What would you say of such a one, when you behold him sitting upon the throne glittering in purple and gold? Must he not be the ’Antichrist, sitting in the temple of God, and showing himself as God?’ Verily such a one lacketh both wisdom and charity; he standeth in the temple as an image, as an idol, from which as from dead marble you would seek counsel.285 "But the Church of God is not subject to a wicked pope; nor even absolutely, and on all occasions, to a good one. Let us rather in our difficulties resort to our brethren of Belgium and Germany than to that city, where all things are venal, where judgment and justice are bartered for gold. Let us imitate the great church of Africa, which, in reply to the pretensions of the Roman pontiff, deemed it inconceivable that the Lord should have invested any one person with his own plenary prerogative of judicature, and yet have denied it to the great congregations of his priests assembled in council in different parts of the world. If it be true, as we are informed by, common report, that there is in Rome scarcely a man acquainted with letters,—without which, as it is written, one may scarcely be a doorkeeper in the house of God,—with what face may he who hath himself learnt nothing set himself up for a teacher of others? In the simple priest ignorance is bad enough; but in the high priest of Rome,—in him to whom it is given to pass in review the faith, the lives, the morals, the discipline, of the whole body of the priesthood, yea, of the universal church, ignorance is in nowise to be tolerated .... Why should he not be subject in judgment to those who, though lowest in place, are his superiors in virtue and in wisdom?