PAIN'S OTHER POINT | 2007-02-12
Cathar just means "Puritan."
English Reformers and loyalists to Rome actually used the term along with "Precisianist" (in the 39 Articles) and other terms. I am sure they remembered the Albigensian Cathars who fought English knights in France 400 years before and that the comparison was deliberate.
"The Puritans did not condemn reproduction, which is the essence of Catharism."
You are right, the Puritans favored reproduction but not what caused reproduction. The Cathars condemned reproduction but they populated large communities in the south of France. They each were sexually austere, and this leads to the sterility you speak about.
ME:
My understanding is that nobody is sure the Albigensians were Cathari. That is assumed. But the Ian Church was always good at wiping out traces of opposing theologies.
By the way, Alexander Whitaker's Cambridge professor father was a major go-between for the Anglican Church and the Puritans. He was a very, very low church half-Calvinist himself, but inside the Established Church.
During a political campaign, one of my co-workers was a guy studying to be a very, very High Church Episcopal priest and he HATED Alexander Whitaker. He was the first person I ever met who knew who Alexander Whitaker was, since like all pre-Pilgrim history, this part of Jamestown is totally ignored.
American Episcopal churches have been overwhelmingly Low Church since the beginning. That is because Alexander Whitaker WAS the beginning.