I found a broken link at Jesusneverexisted which dealt with the fact that early popes were a bunch of scumbags..or worse. I contacted Ken and he provided a corrected link.
http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/papal-princes.htm
http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/papal-princes.htm
Quote:Callistus
– Embezzler, Extortionist, Friend of Emperor’s Whore, Makes Pope, Dies with Transvestite!
Sex, corruption, murder – the scandal would spice up any era! But this was the Christian church before it was corrupted by power, as it waited in the wings of pagan Rome.
In the late second century a bright and ambitious presbyter Hippolytus was keen to impose his own carefully thought out ideas on the Christ-followers of Rome, a church split into many rival factions. Hippolytus was a Greek-speaking theoretician, schooled under Irenaeus at Lyons and by the eastern 'apologists' like Origen. His best known work is the Refutatio Omnium Haeresium (‘Refutation of All Heresies’). His mentor, Irenaeus, had already censured Pope Victor (189-198) for arrogance towards other bishops and when Hippolytus took up residence in Rome he viewed the church there with some alarm.
Victor was pressing ahead with the Latinization of the Roman Church and had excommunicated the Greek Churches of Asia Minor, ostensibly over the dating of Easter. A Greek-faction under ‘Theodotus the Money Changer’ had established an independent church in Rome which rejected the idea of the Trinity (at that time being promoted by the ruling faction), preferring the 'adoptionist' theology of 'Jesus an ordinary man on whom the Spirit descended at baptism.'
