Montaillou: The Promised Land of Error, Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie.

Note: When pondering the militantly gay elements in the Society of St.Pius X's El Paso, Texas' priory, more specifically, those Maplethorpe-like sexual perversities of Father Pfeifer and Brother Gabriel, and observing how they still managed to bamboozle brain surgeons like Ft. Bliss' Doctor Castaneda and former prosecuting attorneys like Suzanne Romano, I guess it pays to remind ourselves that "there's really nothing new under the sun."

I venture to say that Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie gives us all a great deal of food for thought!

Note Two: Bishop Jacques Fournier was the future Pope Benedict XII, and the author of Bendictus Deus, cited even today in The Catechism of the Catholic Church (1997).

Adapted from pages 324 to 325

"But the hard core of religious deviation was the Albigensian heresy. The frontier between believers in Catharism and believers in the orthodox Roman dogma was vague and easily crossed in both directions, by the same people.

"They did not hesitate to fish from both banks (ii. 109).

"Much depended on the changing network of friendly or professional relationships between individuals.

"Pierre Maury (iii.209, etc.):

I want to use what I earn from my work to do good to both sides. Because really I do not know which of the two beliefs is the more valid. Although, in fact, I support rather the faith of the heretics. But that is simply because my communications and relations with the heretics are greater than with the others.

"In Montaillou and Sabarthès the Albigensian doctrine was an extreme manifestation of the point of view which considered the world as evil.

"Despite doctrinal differences, for example on the Incarnation, there was no absolute contradiction between the views of the Cathars and the almost equally radical views entertained by certain people who remained Christian in the orthodox sense of the word.

"All the evidence of the Fournier Register suggests that in Montaillou those who believed in the myth and ritual of Catharism experienced it as an extreme and heroic variant of Christianity and not as a non-Christian religion.

"It was simply true Christianity as opposed to what Guillaume Belot considered the pseudo-Catholicism of the Pharisees (i-473).

"The Cathar believers may have been doctrinally wrong but they were convinced in their hearts that they were Christian."