The Cathars:  Cathar Beliefs:  Roman Catholic Propaganda:  Perverting the Natural Order

To the conventional Roman Catholic mind, human society is planned and ordered by God.  God has ordained what is natural and what is not.  The problem arises when we need to distinguish between what is natural and what is not.  If we look to evolution or to human nature, we do not always arrive at the same results as the Medieval Church.  To an objective outsider it looks as though the Medieval Church hierarchy used its own cultural preconceptions to distinguish between natural and unnatural.   Broadly, anything the Church agreed with was natural, and anything the Church disagreed with was unnatural. Under these rules the Church and everything it stood for were natural, and anything opposed to the Church was unnatural. 

This outlook explains the enmity of the Roman Church to many aspects of the Cathars.  For the Roman Church their views were orthodox, other views were heretical.  Their ideas on sex were right, other views were perverse.  Their views on women were God-given, other views were blasphemous.  Their religious rites and books were divine, others were vile satanic parodies.  So too for ideas about suicide and meat eating.

For Medieval Catholics the feudal system was part of the natural order no less than the priesthood.  Everyone was born to a particular station in life - the idea of monarchs reigning "by the grace of God" was to be taken literally.  Catholic Churchmen were horrified to find that in Cathar lands little value was placed on the feudal system, and the natural order seemed to be inverted.  A knight might bow down to a Parfait who was an ordinary commoner.  In theory it could be even worse: a Count might bow to a Parfaite. 

Perhaps the best illustration of how easily current fashion was mistaken for the natural God-given order is provided by attitudes to biblical injunctions.  Catholics were horrified that Cathars would not swear oaths, and were not in slightest moved by the fact that the bible says clearly and repeatedly that oaths must not be sworn - the feudal system and Church courts relied on ignoring this part of scripture. Again, Catholics were mystified by the Cathars refusal to kill.  Catholics took it granted that it was God's will that they should kill almost anyone or anything they wanted to (Click on the following link for more about ignoring biblical injunctions).