Saint Peter's Successor

Saint Peter's Successor According to the Catholic Church

According to the book of popes, in Latin liber pontificalis, which is the official Catholic record of all the popes, Saint Peter is the first pope, and Linus is his successor. Not Saint Mark the Evangelist, who Peter called his son, and not any other of the Evangelists, Matthew, Luke and John, but Linus, who did not write one word in the New Testament!

The Successors of Saint Linus

The book of popes goes on to list the successor of Linus, and so on, down to the present day, calling each of these men by the title of pope. Some other titles attributed by the Catholic Church to the popes are: holy father and vicar of Christ on earth.

No author of the New Testament is considered by the Catholic Church to be Peter's successor, even though Saint Peter did not mention Linus at all in his two epistles, but named Mark, calling him his son.

Saint Mark the First Evangelist

Saint Mark is generally considered to be the first of the three synoptic Evangelists, followed by Matthew and Luke, who each based their own version of the Gospel on that of Saint Mark. Saint John is the fourth Evangelist, who gives an account of Jesus' mission based on his own personal testimony, and therefore is not part of the synoptic cycle.

Saint Mark was not one of the original twelve disciples, and wrote his version of the Gospel following the testimony that Saint Peter imparted to him. In fact, Mark was Peter's disciple, and the one whom Saint Peter chose as his personal adjutant and successor! Without Mark, Peter could not have made known in writing to later generations that which we commonly know as the Gospel according to Saint Mark.

Peter did not write anything, and relied on Mark to write down his personal testimony of Jesus. For this reason he declared that Mark is his son. Not Linus, whom he never mentioned! Linus may be a saint, he may have been a good man, but according to the New Testament, he is not Peter's successor.

The Popes Unveiled

The line of popes that follows Saint Linus down to the present day, would lose all validity if Saint Mark is universally recognised as the first Evangelist and Saint Peter's son, meaning his successor.

Where would the Christian Church be without the Evangelists? We would have no Church if they had not written down the Word of Jesus and his deeds. The Evangelists, as the New Testament clearly shows, never called themselves by the name of holy father, or used the term pope. Linus did not write one word in the New Testament, and neither did any other of the men who the Catholic Church considers successors of Saint Peter.

Who do you believe is Saint Peter's successor?

Do you believe that the Catholic Church, which started to compile the book of popes many centuries after Saint Peter's apostolic mission, is right in declaring another person as the successor of Saint Peter?

Feel free to leave your comment!

Read on: St. Peter the Apostle chose St. Mark as his successor, not the popes:

celticbritannia.blogspot.com/2011/12/mark-son-of-peter-apostle.html

The meaning of Zion in St. Peter's primacy:

celticbritannia.blogspot.com/2012/01/saint-peters-primacy-from-zion.html

The Kentish origins of the English Church:
celticbritannia.blogspot.com/2011/12/origins-of-english-church.html

Celtic Bagpipe Music

Celtic Bagpipe

One of the most important instruments in Celtic music is the bagpipe. It is traditionally played in Scotland, Northumbria, Ireland, Canada and the USA. The term Celtic bagpipe music can be used to define a musical tradition in areas inhabited by people of Celtic origin. 

Bagpipes of British Celtic Origin

Common to England, Scotland, Ireland, Canada and the United States of America, the bagpipe of Celtic origin is composed of an airbag, blowpipe, chanter and drones. Some bagpipes have bellows instead of a blowpipe. Amog the British bellows bagpipes are the Northumbrian and Lowland pipes.

Difference Between Blowpipe and Bellows

The blowpipe is the mouthpiece used to inflate the bag with air from the player's mouth. Highland bagpipes of Scotland are mouth-blown. The bellows is an alternative way to inflate the bag with air, and is placed between the player's upper left arm and the side of their chest. The piper inflates the bag with air through movement of the arm. 

Chanter

The chanter is the finger piece with which the player gives the notes, and comprises a set of holes, similar as with a flute. The melodious tune of the bagpipe is given by the chanter.

Drones

Bagpipes of British origin usually have a set of three drones, these being placed on the piper's shoulder and upper left arm. The drones vary in pitch, and each gives a distinct and constant droning sound that accompanies the melody given by the chanter. One of these is known as the tenor drone.

For more on British bagpipes, read on:
celticbritannia.blogspot.com/2011/05/british-bagpipes.html

Caption: Canterbury Cathedral

Saint Patrick's Letter to Coroticus

Christianity Among the Picts

Were the Picts Christianised in the time of Saint Patrick? The letter written by Saint Patrick to Coroticus is generally acknowledged as being an indirect confirmation that Christianity had reached the Picts by the first half of the fifth century. The wording in Saint Patrick's letter, though, is incoherent with regards to the Picts, who are three times mentioned in it, and twice referred to as “apostate Picts”.

The feasible interpretation of the wording “apostate Picts” is that Saint Patrick is referring to Christian Picts who he believed had diverged from the Law of Christianity, or possibly from some established and even questionable doctrines of the Church.

Raid Conducted by Coroticus

The context of the letter, which is addressed to Coroticus and his soldiers, describes a raid that had taken place in Ireland, in which a number of Christians had been slain, while others were taken prisoner to Britain and sold as slaves to the Scots and the Picts.

The letter does not give light to the title of Coroticus, who may be a local chieftain of the Britons or a governor acting within the authority of Rome. Patrick merely describes him as a tyrant. There is no reference to the geographical area where this leader governed, which could be anywhere along the western coast of Britain from Strathclyde to Wales.

Saint Patrick Condemns Coroticus

The letter excludes the participation of Scots and Picts in the raid, but condemns Coroticus for having carried out the raid and for selling the Christian prisoners to the Scots and the Picts rather than releasing them at the request of Saint Patrick.

Patrick's letter does not indicate that Christians among the Picts had any participation in the whole affair. Similarly, Saint Patrick's own deportation from Britain to Ireland at the hands of Irish raiders could not be attributed to the Christians of Ireland.

Saint Patrick's Fulminations at the Scots and Picts

The letter to Coroticus is particularly emotional, being written by the same man who had previously converted the people who had been either slain or enslaved, which could explain the anguish in his words as being generally directed against whole populations, including any Christians among them. Furthermore, it does not explain whether Saint Patrick is interceding only for enslaved Christians, or also for any other Irish people who may have been among those enslaved.

However, the episode that took place, by no means the only of its kind in that period, has served, paradoxically, to confirm that Christianity had already reached the Picts by the middle of the fifth century, which is the period when Saint Patrick's letter was written.

Conclusion

It is unlikely that fifth century Pictish Christians living among the greater Pictish population would have held deported people as slaves, and there is no evidence in Saint Patrick's letter to Coroticus to justify the belief that Christianity among the Picts was in any way apostate.

Written by D. Alexander

Saint Kentigern of Scotland:
celticbritannia.blogspot.com/2011/07/kentigern-saint-of-scotland.html

For more on the early Scottish Church, read on:
dimitri-alexander.suite101.com/the-early-church-in-scotland-a366784

Read also: The Celtic origins of the English Church:
celticbritannia.blogspot.com/2011/05/english-church-is-built-upon-celtic.html

The British Isles in the Neolithic Stone Age:
celticbritannia.blogspot.com/2012/03/british-isles-in-neolithic-stone-age.html

The First Written Translation of the Gospel

The original written Gospel in Greek is a translation from Aramaic.

The Gospel in Aramaic

Jesus preached the Gospel in Aramaic, and his followers translated the Gospel into Greek. As a result, the books and epistles in the New Testament, including the four versions of the Gospel, were all written in Greek during the first century AD. Throughout the ages, these original biblical scripts have been carefully copied in order to maintain their authors’ exact words.

The New Testament's historical authority is based on the grounds that it was written during the first century and is a translation of Jesus' spoken Gospel. As the New Testament does not contain any teachings from later periods, it does not deviate from the Gospel of Jesus.

The Four Evangelists

The English term Gospel is a translation from the Greek word Evangelion, which means the good message. The authors of the four versions of the Gospel are called Evangelists. The four Evangelists are Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

The Evangelist Matthew

Saint Matthew may be one of the twelve disciples of Jesus, but he could also be another person with the same name as the Matthew known in the Gospel, one with access to the apostolic testimony of his time. It has been suggested that he originally wrote his gospel in Aramaic, but this theory is without historic foundation, as no such script has ever been known to the Church.

The Evangelist Mark, Son of Peter

Saint Mark is not among the original twelve disciples, but he had close contacts with the other Apostles. The Apostle Peter, in his first Epistle, states that Mark is his son. The meaning of this title is that of disciple, and also adjutant, and so it can be reasonably assumed that the Evangelist Mark wrote his version of the Gospel following Peter’s direct account of the Word of Jesus.

The Evangelist Luke

Saint Luke, author of the third written gospel, is also the author of the book of Acts of the Apostles. He is not mentioned among the twelve disciples, yet his written testimony is of fundamental importance within the Church. In his book of Acts, he describes how the Church was founded in Jerusalem and subsequently spread to many towns and regions far and wide. There can be no doubt that Luke had close contacts with Saint Peter, as he is the main narrator of Peter’s apostolic mission.

The Evangelist John

Saint John is the youngest of the twelve disciples of Jesus, as he himself states in his gospel. Apart from being the author of one of the four written gospels, he is also the author of the book of Revelations and of three epistles. It was towards the end of the first century when he put ink to paper and presented his accounts as they are revealed in the New Testament.

Successive Written Translations of the Gospel

Over the centuries, disputes arose concerning ecclesiastic authority. From the fourteenth century onwards, reformists in England and Western Europe began to question the position of papal Rome with regards to doctrines within the Church, arguing that the Word of Jesus must be made known as it is written in the New Testament and translated into the spoken languages of different peoples. A law from the Vatican in fact prohibited the use of the Bible other than in Latin.

The English and European reformists started translating the Bible in the common tongues of the people, thus making the Gospel of Jesus comprehensible. Many papal doctrines that did not derive from Jesus' original preaching of the Reign of God were challenged, for they were found to be contrary to the Gospel.

Long before the Reformation, the Orthodox Church had already challenged Roman papal supremacy, dedicating time and effort to render translations of the original New Testament in different languages. During the ninth century, the two Orthodox missionaries Cyril and Methodius of Thessalonica preached the Word to the Slavs who inhabited the Balkans. In order to translate the Holy Scriptures from Greek into Slavonic they formed the Cyrillic alphabet, ascribing a letter to each phonetic sound in the Slavic language.

Conclusion

Jesus preached the Gospel in Aramaic, which was the common language in Galilee and Judea during the first century, and his spoken words were written by the Evangelists in Greek. These writings are the first written translation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ!

Article written by D. Alexander.

 

Read also: The first oral translation of the Gospel:
celticbritannia.blogspot.com/2011/12/first-oral-translation-of-gospel.html

Saint Peter's Primacy from Zion:
celticbritannia.blogspot.com/2012/01/saint-peters-primacy-from-zion.html

Saint Mark the Evangelist:
celticbritannia.blogspot.com/2011/10/saint-mark-evangelist.html

Saint Peter's Successor:
celticbritannia.blogspot.com/2011/07/saint-peters-successor.html

Dover by the Sea

Britannia's Oldest Settlement

Dover, of which the Celtic name is Dubra, meaning the Waters, is Britain's first and oldest port, and is home to the Bronze Age Boat. Dover is probably Britain's oldest settlement, and thus can be considered the cradle of civilization in the British Isles. It is said that Dover also gave the Celtic name of Albion to Britain.

Church and Light Tower by the Sea
Britannia's Light Tower Church within the Castle-walls stands upon the White Cliffs of Dover, above the port and harbour. Standing in the East-West line of the cosmic order, this church indicates a road leading directly to the foundations of Christ's Church.

Folkestone Road: Road of the People's Stone
The Foundations of the Church of Christ are to be found along Folkestone Road in Dover. The etymology of this name is from Old English and means Folca's Stone, Folca being a man's name with the meaning of People, Folk, Nation. Destiny so willed it that the road along which the foundations of the Church of Jesus Christ are to be found is called by this name, as Christ is the Corner-Stone. Upon the foundations of his Church Prosperity will come.

Jesus is the Son of Man, to whom the name Folca can quite readily be associated, and being also the Son of God, it is to the founding stone of his Church that the road leads from the Fair Lady's Light Tower Church standing on the White Cliffs of Dover.   

Our Celtic Mother Britannia Fair! 

Read on: Christ's Church revealed in Dover:
celticbritannia.blogspot.com/2011/10/christs-church-revealed.html

The Holy Drone: Sarge held the Drone (the note) as Britannia's Soldiers entered the Church carrying gifts of thanksgiving in the name of the Fair Lady.
And the Chanters played.

Written by D. Alexander

Kent and the Industrial Revolution

Kent, How Agriculture Prevailed Over Industry

iron ore and coal were the two natural resources essential to the Industrial Revolution, yet Kent's iron ore mines were empty and the coal was too deep.

 

Kent is commonly known as the Garden of England. What is not common is how Kent challenged the Industrial Revolution and managed to maintain this title in all England!

 

The Weald

The clue to this success starts in the Weald, which spreads from southern Kent to Sussex and Surrey and on into Hampshire. The name comes from old English and means forest. The whole area used to be densely covered with woods and forests and over a period of many centuries was a source for timber production. Many of England’s ships were built with Wealden timber. The Wealden areas of Kent and East Sussex also had iron ore in plenty.

The timber and iron production made this part of the Weald into one of England’s important industrial centres during the Middle Ages, and the abundance of wood in the vicinity of the iron ore mines supplied cheap fuel for the furnaces without incurring into great expenses for the transport.

The Industrial Revolution

During the nineteenth century – the period which saw the Industrial Revolution change British society – factories appeared in large numbers in the towns and villages located in the vicinity of coal and iron ore mines, as this enormously reduced the cost of transport of the coal and iron ore over long distances to far away factories. In that period the roads were little more than beaten earth-tracks, and the railway still did not exist. As a result, miners and factory workers moved to these new industrial centres by their millions, often bringing their families with them, and within decades villages became towns and small towns became industrious cities.

Kent Resisting the Industrial Revolution

When machines powered by steam made their appearance around the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Weald’s iron ore had been used up, making the mines unproductive. Consistent numbers of Kent’s Wealden population actually moved to other areas of the County. Adding to this, the vast coal reserves in Kent had still not been discovered, as they are very deep and so escaped detection.

Kent’s coal reserves were found around the end of the nineteenth century, but it proved too difficult and uneconomic to extract the coal from under the ground. Consequently only a few mines in Kent remained in production, not far from Dover, but with unsatisfactory results for the mining companies, and the quarries were eventually closed.

Kent was preserved for agriculture owing to the fact that Kentish generations had already exploited the iron ore, and because nature made Kent’s coal largely inaccessible and therefore unproductive to mine. These two factors prevented the transformation of Kent into a centre of mass mining and industrial production, as hundreds of thousands of people would otherwise have moved into the County and large cities would have developed out of small towns and villages.

The Garden of England
Throughout the twentieth century and on into the present millennium, Kent has maintained a position of preeminence in agricultural production, cultivating about half of England’s orchards and accounting for half of the national hop production, as well as being home to intensive horticulture. Important food-processing factories employ thousands of people in various locations within the County.

Agriculture has remained one of Kent’s major sources of revenue because the transport of goods over long distances has gradually become more expensive owing to increasing fuel costs. As a result, imports of food from abroad produced at considerably lower costs than in Britain lose some of their competitiveness, whereas Kent’s vicinity to London, whose markets require a daily supply of food for millions of people, has continued throughout the twentieth century to be an incentive to cultivate the Garden of England.

Written by D. Alexander
 

UK Unemployment in 2012

Will There Be Unemployment in the UK in 2012?

The British Government is taking measures to combat unemployment and bring employment home to British people in the United Kingdom. It is hoped that in the future there will no longer be a situation allowing 90% of jobs in the UK to go to foreign workers, and that the year 2012 will see a change in unemployment figures.

Newspapers in Britain have highlighted the incredible figures on job discrimination, showing the total disparity in job distribution that British people are obliged to endure in the UK.

Lost Generation in 2012 Through Unemployment?

The British Government has openly spoken out to private sector employers in the UK, asking them to change this unbearable situation, to employ British workers and not rely on foreign labour.

The Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith has spoken of a lost generation, and many people are wondering for how long the discriminatory work distribution can go on in the UK, where so many factories and farms employ almost exclusively Polish or other workers from Eastern Europe, and where English is hardly spoken at work.

Unemployment and Discriminatory Definitions in the UK

Over the past few years, a bad habit has been spreading in the United Kingdom, a tendency on the part of a vocal minority, including some employers in search of cheap labour, to define British unemployed people as lazy and unwilling to work.

Although such language is based on a note of hate-propaganda that led to the persecution of the Germans after two world wars and the systematic destruction of German economic productivity, and leads to racial discrimination, such as giving about nine tenths of all jobs to foreign workers and consigning millions of people to living on benefits, it has thus far gone largely without rebuke in the United Kingdom.

The question is, will the British Government take decisive measures to clamp down on this unacceptable and intolerable behaviour and bring private-sector employers in factories and on farms to respond for their actions?

2012: Year of Prosperity in Britain

Will the year 2012 see prosperity in Britain? It is unlikely to happen if nine jobs out of ten go to foreign workers, who consequently can afford to look after their own children and pay their mortgage or rent, while so many British people are systematically made object of racial discrimination in the United Kingdom.

Home evictions for failure to pay the mortgage or rent are expected to reach over 40,000 a year, and a study has revealed that suicides in Britain are often related to unemployment. In order for this to change, the British Government will have to come to the final encounter with those private-sector employers who have had a great time calculating their own private financial gains by employing hard-working foreign labour in place of British workers.

Education and housing demands in the UK to accommodate mass immigration go at the expense of the Country, not at the expense of the private-sector employers. And it is at the expense of millions of unemployed British people who have to make do with benefits from the State. With a national debt of over £900 billion, and so many people languishing in unemployment, the British Government has realised that the present situation can no longer continue.

To achieve prosperity in Britain in 2012, the Government will have to introduce employment laws that put an end to private-sector racial discrimination against British people. This would be an important step to making British society a fair society, where private-sector employers can no longer dictate the laws of employment to their own exclusive and personal advantage.

Then we might see prosperity reigning in the United Kingdom in the year 2012.

Article written by D. Alexander 10 July 2011

Tony Blair receives award in Poland for giving British jobs in Britain to Poles:
http://news.sky.com/story/1044874/blair-award-for-helping-poles-move-to-uk

Read on: British Party, employment not unemployment, campaigning for a fair society.
celticbritannia.blogspot.com/2011/09/british-party.html

Unemployment in Britain in 2011:
celticbritannia.blogspot.com/2011/07/unemployment-in-britain-in-2011.html

UK Jobs: how British people are excluded from basic sectors of employment in the UK.
celticbritannia.blogspot.com/2011/08/uk-jobs.html