July 5
649: Consecration of Pope Martin I, an staunch opponent of Monothelitism, a theory which held that, although Christ had two wills – the human and the divine – the divine will was so dominant that it deprived the human of any ability to act.
1003: (tentative date) The tragic death of Athanasius the Athonite, as the cupola of a church collapses on him. It was he who brought the monastic order to the hermits of Mt. Athos in Greece.
1294: The hermit Peter de Murrhone is elected Pope and takes the name Celestine V. Feeling unfit for the position, he resigned from the post within six months.
1439: The Decree of Union – Laententur Coeli – is signed at the Council of Florence, intending to establish an official theological union between the Eastern (Orthodox) and Western (Catholic) churches. Unfortunately, many in the Eastern Church could not accept the document and a complete unity between these two major Churches remained aloof.
1525: Balthasar Hübmaier publishes his book On the Christian Baptism of Believers in which criticised Zwingli’s handling of baptism and Anabaptists.
1581: William of Orange assumes “entire authority, as sovereign and chief of the land” at the request of the States of Holland and Zealand, as long the war with Spain would continue. This turned out to be a war between the Protestants and the Catholics.
1589: Thomas Belson is executed at Oxford, England, for assisting Catholic priests who were engaged in their mission, despite prohibition against the practice of their religion.
1833: Henry Wilson, the Anglican bishop of Calcutta, India, calls for the abolition of caste system in Anglican churches.
1844: Protestants set brace of cannon to St. Phillip Neri’s church in Philadelphia during the Kensington riots. The Military defends the church, several people lose their lives, and only the Irish Catholics are indicted for murder and rioting.
1903: Demise of English theologian William Burt Pope, who authored the book Compendium of Christian Theology putting up the most powerful systematic arguments for the holiness doctrine in Methodism.
1928: Charles Pean, a Salvation Army worker, sails as a missionary to the infamous   Devil’s Island.
1962: Passing away of Helmut Richard Niebuhr, the Christian Ethics professor at Yale for 30 years. He is better known for his popular and oft-reprinted 1951 classic Christ and Culture in which work that explored the available options of relating one’s personal faith to the world’s highest and noblest principles.
1963: The Holy See officially grants sanction for the cremation of dead for the Catholics, which was forbidden till datum as not plausible with the belief in the resurrection of the dead.
2004: Closing of an exhibition, featuring three hundred and fifty icons from thirty countries, at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Patriarch Bartholomew opened the exhibition with the words, “May the works in this exhibit lead us to the right path of true faith from which true spiritual power derives.”
2007: Rev. Pau Za Khen, a sixty-two-year-old Lutheran pastor is beheaded by unidentified persons in north-eastern India’s Manipur.
Edited by: T. Chempilayil MCBS
Courtesy:Â www.studylight.org