So, I know this Roman Catholic priest, Father Ted let’s call him. He’s a devout and exemplary modern Catholic, his views very orthodox and in line with Pope Benedict XVI. He lives in central London.
Anyway, Father Ted wants to preach his beliefs to the past using my time machine. After inoculating him against plagues and installing a translator to communicate to the temporal natives, when could I send him (into past London) where his modern-day Catholicism wouldn’t get him thrown on the fire (he’s unwilling to adjust his beliefs)?
I’ve already told him that the latter half of the 16th century is a bad idea, what with priest-holes and whatnot - although I don’t know how modern-day Catholicism would fit in with 16th century Lutherans.
When would he have an excellent adventure, when would guarantee a bogus journey?
Well first of all, most people in England in the 16th century would have been Catholic or Anglican. The “correct” church to be in the eyes of the government changed a few times. You would probably find many more Lutherans in Germany and the Netherlands.
Are you expecting him to basically show up and present himself to the local Catholic hierarchy and expect to be assigned to a church?
And whatever-era street English… lessons for that will be harder to come up with than for Latin, which he is required to at least be able to read and write.
BTW, I think the OP is confusing the 16th and 17th centuries. The century whose years begin with 16 is the 17th.
No he ain’t. I was thinking of Elizabeth I’s reign from 1558, a period of great Catholic prosecution in England. Although the 17th wasn’t that much fun for them either, depending on the year.
He has sound knowledge of ecclesiastical Latin, no fear.
He wants to ingratiate himself in the clergy of the time the best he can.
As mentioned above, it comes and goes.
The clergy were being persecuted during the switch, and the protestants when Mary took over. OTOH, James II was a Catholic king in the 1680’s (until it looked like he would have a Catholic heir, too); Catholics like Guy Fawkes were tolerated up to a point.
How that translates on the ground for various locations - probably depends. My impression is that a lot of the general population didn’t care, and most of the campaign was political and at a higher level.
A good analogy would be the communists and the cold war. Catholic roughly translated to “friend/client/sympathizer” to the French and especially the Spanish. Recall that the reason for Henry VIII’s denied divorce and the schism was that the pope was a “guest” of the Spanish. Many of the pope’s decisions were seen to politically favour the pope’s “hosts”. For much of the next century plus, being catholic was considered being a sympathizer or ally of England’s enemies, just as communists in the USA were considered Soviet/Chinese sympathizers more than adherents to a political philosophy. Much of the control and restrictions were political struggles to prevent the pope, and hence England’s enemies, from gaining influence in London.
Consider that a lot of the political struggle in London was also against the Puritan types, the ones who wanted to remove even more of the pomp and trappings of church ceremonies and decor that created “idols” and distracted men from God, yada yada. The English government had its hands full fending off the radicals on that side of the fence, after a while Catholics were not much of a threat. (The pilgrims left for Holland when they could not live in peace in England, but after a few years decided on New England instead. Pennsylvania was established as a place where Quakers could escape the harrassment of the Church of England, etc.)
Well before 1517 there was only one official church in England, Protestantism didn’t exist.
Would any “modern” Catholic beliefs actually conflict with pre-reformation Catholicism? If not then any time before 1517 he’s good to go.
The stuff from Vatican II doesn’t seem like it would get him burnt as a heretic or anything, even the stuff on relationship with Judaism seems like there was enough of range of beliefs there that it wouldn’t be a problem.
addition: actually Papal infallability was only added as dogma at Vatican I in 1868… Does that mean that there was actually a much broader range of beliefs tolerated by the “catholic” church before then? If so should be even less of a problem for our modern time traveller. He’ll be a fanatic in some ways, but strangely liberal in others, but anyway should fall well within the accepted bounds of catholic belief pre-reformation.
Since the pope has only been declared to have uttered an infallible statement twice–the first in 1854, or so, leading to the 1869 declaration at the first Vatican Council, and the second in 1950–infallibility would not be a problem on its own, nor would there be any point to invoking it.
(Different theologians have made claims that other pronouncements have been covered by the concept of papal infallibility, but the church has never officially recognized any of those other claims.)
He just needs a wealthy benefactor. Even during the worst of the Catholic suppression in Britain, rich and/or noble families with private chapels and private priests were generally tolerated.
Although, honestly, other than the whole allegiance to Rome thing, a post-Vatican II priest might feel a lot more at home at an Anglican church. During much of the 16th and 17th centuries, the official Anglican line oscillated between the ritual heavy “high church” and the more hard line Protestant low church. During the high church periods, the Anglican church largely resembled a Catholic church except for services in English instead of Latin and the priest facing the congregation. Of course, if our stalwart time traveling churchman hangs around for a while, its only a matter of time before orders come down to swing more towards the low church.
I guess that depends on which beliefs he wants to preach and how he wants to preach them. The content of the infallible statements (the Perpetual Virginity and Assumption of Mary) would–I think–be uncontroversial if he preached them among Catholics of most times, but I don’t know how those Catholics would respond if he dried to preach the doctrine of Papal Infallibility itself.
On another topic, the Vatican accepts the scientific theory of evolution, but teaches that it must be understood in a certain way. If Father Ted simply preaches that natural science should be regarded as compatible with doctrine in principle, that would be very different from trying to teach a Catholic understanding of evolution to people before Darwin! (I imagine the former as, “Now, Dougal, I know the Holy Church got off on the wrong foot with science after that whole Galileo thing, but that doesn’t mean that as modern, educated Catholic priests we have to pretend that anything a scientist says must be false. On the contrary! The Holy Father is very interested in science and what scientists tell us about the world. He has an entire team of advisors who do nothing but learn about science, study it, understand it, and then he compares it to a book of stories made up by a bunch of illiterate, desert-swelling nomads who didn’t know a thing about science and thought the earth was flat, and sees whether they agree or not. And only if the scientists tell us anything different from the desert-dwelling sheep herders, only then will the Holy Father inform us that we should pretend the scientists are off their nut. And only–Oh Dougal! Father Jack’s gotten into the furniture polish again! Help me wrestle him down from the roof!”)