Digital Continent Digital Continent Easter 2017 | Page 11

religious thought led many away from the teachings of the Church towards heretical thought. 4
Through divine providence two exceptional men immerged to defend and reform the Church,
Dominic de Guzman and Pope Innocent III. Dominic, who would become the founder of the
Order of Preachers and eventually canonized as a saint in 1234, sought to bring those who were
practicing unorthodox teachings back into the Church. He lived a life of austerity, he preached
and he formed a group of women in Prouille, France who once catechized by Dominic in turn
catechized children in the orthodox teachings of the Church. 5 Innocent III, formally known as
Cardinal Lothario Conti, called for an ecumenical council to take place in Rome, November
1215. The council known as the Fourth Lateran Council spoke to the troubles of the world, the
loss of the Holy Land to the Saracens; the need for reform in the Church; and condemnation of
the Albigensian heresy. 6 It is during this council that the holy Trinity was defended, “we firmly
believe and simply confess that there is only one true God, eternal and immeasurable, almighty,
unchangeable, incomprehensible and ineffable, Father, Son and holy Spirit…this holy Trinity,
which is undivided according to its common essence but distinct according to the properties of
its persons, gave the teaching of salvation to the human race.” 7
4
Walter Wakefield, Heresy, Crusade and Inquisition in Southern France, 1100-1250, (CA: University of California
Press, 1974), 18.
5
Ibid.,31.
6
Clement Rabb, O.F.M., The Twenty Ecumenical Councils of the Catholic Church, (MD: The Newman Press, 1959),
93.
7
Fourth Lateran Council: 1215, http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Councils/ecum12-2.htm, accessed, January 21,
2016. n.1.