catholic church did NOT support reincarnation

[Rob]

As I understand it, none of christs teaching actually deny or confirm reincarnation. The best we have is "my father prepares a place in heaven (for you)" - something like that. So you have to ask, where do the other writers get their ideas from? And if the actual teachings are so vague - why is the Catholic church so sure of itself? Sound like something is either missing, or has just been made up. Or both.
Of interest, I was reading some of your links quickly, and it looks like the biggest beef with this theory is that the ideas of reincarnation come from Origenes (185-254 AD) who is said to have drawn a lot from pagan beliefs. Not at all like the rest of the early churchs then in that case eh?.....hhmmm (strong sarcasm - catholicism is drenched in pagan indicators). Looks more like a variety of beliefs which a single council is trying to get whittled down to a single church line. But damn, they nearly voted that women dont have souls!! Come on, you cant trust people who are obviously that blind.
Further, you are reducing early christianity down to early catholicism - but there were a number of different sects in the early church eg gnostics. It was later that catholicism went on the warpath and tried to stamp out all opposition (how very christian....), so we now cant be sure what was really going on in the early days as the catholics destroyed much of the history!! I dont know what all the different beliefs were but I would be very suprised if none of them claimed reincarnation.
To me its clear that certain things have been altered (then forming the catholic dogma) in big bad ways, thanks to a certain Paul. For instance, http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbninquiry.asp?endeca=1&ean=9780760707876 - should give you somewhere to start looking from ie I cant be bothered to find better articles :p
adios!
Rob

[no_leaf_clover]

the catholic church used to be pretty barbaric in terms of competition with the other churches of its day, huh?

i posted that message because i had read from several different posts off of this site that the catholic church supported reincarnation until sometime around 350 to 600 AD, when hell and satan were introduced.

thanks for the info, inguma. when i get out of school and get the chance, i was planning on building up a little personal library of books on subjects like that. i'll have to remember to come back and look through all these posts again for the good ones. thanks! []

[Rob]

Hey clover!

NP. I have heard the early church supporting reincarnation thing here a couple of times too, but haven't really done a whole lot of research on the topic so I'm not really in any position to claim any decent accuracy! But yah, seems like catholics have always been pretty brutal. They are the *roman* catholic church I suppose. Btw the most interesting other early christians I have heard murmurs about were those around france, where mary magdelaine and her children were said to have fled to after Jesus moved on. Lots of talk that he was the father of these kids, and the continuation of the royal bloodline (of David, and before that out of Egypt) into Europe. Very interesting!!

[no_leaf_clover]

contrary to things i've read on this forum and gone along with, i just found some sites on the subject by a request from GTP, and found that reincarnation was never taught by the catholic church.


http://www.angelfire.com/ms/seanie/reincar4.html
http://www.geocities.com/seapadre_1999/reincarnation533AD3.html
http://www.saint-mike.org/apologetics/qa/Answers/Church_History/h010801Sarah.html
http://www.dwc.org/webpage/reincarn.htm

however, there are many scriptures and other pieces of evidence that may very well be referring to reincarnation, even though the church itself does not support the theory:

http://www.angelink.com/cathedral/reincarnation.html
http://www.epiphanychurch.org/question/question30.htm

just thought i'd share.