I don’t get why Galileo - who did his pioneering work while being a good Catholic and was, in point of fact, best buddies with the Pope until they had their falling-out - demonstrates Protestantism is necessary for science.
It is true that his buddy famously turned on him and forced him into a humiliating recantation, but a goodly part of the reason for that was that Galileo went too far in his publication - not scientifically, but in terms of poking nasty fun at the Pope personally (he had a character in his famous book who was apparently modeled on the Pope and named him something like “simpleton” only in Latin). The Pope was not amused.
This is basically no different from anywhere else in Europe - Protestant nobles and rulers were not noted for allowing total freedom to poke fun at them at the time, either.
But, intellectuals could generally get away with more in Protestant countries – or, if facing suppression, could sometimes move from one Protestant country to another – because the Protestant world had no monolithic universal institution, analogous to the Inquisition or the Jesuits, empowered to enforce intellectual conformity/orthodoxy.
The “why” is at least as interesting as the “how,” BTW: The Jesuits considered philosophy a perfect, complete, closed system, built up step by flawless step from Euclidean geometry among other things, producing a body of absolutely certain knowledge – which dovetailed perfectly with their vision of an authoritarian Church having all the answers. Thomas Hobbes, fiercely anti-Catholic but also in his own way an absolute (statist) authoritarian, opposed the theory of indivisibles for exactly the same reasons. But that whole intellectual world-view is completely inimical to the scientific enterprise and the scientific method.
Well, yes, if scientific research came to a halt entirely, in a hideous interregnum, a dark ages of thought, then, certainly, nuclear weapons would not have been developed.
But if basic physics was allowed to progress, then radioactivity would be understood from the instability of some nuclei, the chain reaction would have been discovered, someone would have built the first reactor, people would have seen the potential for electric power generation…
And, alas, some few would have understand how it could be weaponized.
Governments might not have gone for a full-moose crash-program like the Manhattan Project…but they would always have been spending a little on weaponizing fission. Then, one day – maybe a century later than in our timeline, but eventually, some government would have exploded a test bomb.
Thinking otherwise is as wrong as imagining that the Wright Brothers could have developed aircraft, but that planes never would have been used to fight wars. That just isn’t how human nature works.
In his foreword to the autobiography of a once famous, but now mostly forgotten, British spy for the Soviet Union, Kim Philby, his friend and ex-colleague in SIS, the once famous, but now mostly forgotten, British Author Graham Greene, made this comparison of the pro-soviet ‘traitors’ ( Burgess & Maclean, etc. in a cast of thousands ) to those catholics who served the Church in the 16th/17th centuries against the interests of the then rulers, who hoped the USSR would eventually after many centuries produce a John XXIII instead of the Roderigo Borjas of yore.
John XXIII would have been very popular back then.
Really? He himself foretold the splintering of the church in the Parable of the Sower: all of his apostles went on to preach, but not all were successful.
I’m familiar with both Graham Greene and Kim Philby, but I still find the comparison facile. And it’s less than you’re making it out to be…Greene’s just saying that, like those English Catholics who participated in plots against Queen Elizabeth, Philby let his ideological fanaticism lead him to treason, and like well meaning Renaissance Catholics, Philby is willing to overlook the evils and mistakes of the leaders for the promise of some future better world.
Besides, I’m not entirely convinced the existence of the Church as a counterweight in the middle ages was a bad thing. It was a check against royal power and a counter to royal abuses (although obviously not the only one).
I don’t think the phrase ‘worth it’ is relevant. In A March of Folly, Barbara Tuchman lays out the case it was predicted but yet unstoppable for a vast array of reasons. It was just short of inevitable.
I remember hearing a minister (Lutheran) say that he believed it was good that no Xian sect became too numerous, because that tended to lead to persecution. Of course this was the same guy who said spending money on fancy church buildings when people are starving is an insult to God.
Well, he was elected Pope, not Anti-Pope. That label was applied by people trying to distance the church from his actions. And he was elected by Cardinals, not civil authorities. If your point is that the authority of the church could be bought by the civil authorities, that’s hardly evidence that the Reformation wasn’t necessary.
I’m not a Catholic-hater. I just wanted to point out that even if exaggerated things have been said about the superorganism in question, there are perfectly true historical things in its past that are eye-openingly horrible.
If being a minister means having little power and minimal income, then the people who just want power and money seek out other careers.
For several centuries, Pope was the best job you could get if you weren’t a king’s first-born. I’m not impugning all of them, but some were clearly not there to serve God.
Well, one thing that did not get fixed was a celibate priesthood. Which had, at the time, a well-known association with corruption and sexual abuse.
I came from a Baptist background. That corrupt televangelist you remember was probably Baptist: that form of corruption was characteristically associated with the structure of the Baptist church. Not so much institutionalized sexual abuse.
There is a reason why the RC church has had a lot of recent problems with revelations of sexual abuse: that kind of abuse has been characteristic of the RC church forever, was one of the big reasons the church was stripped of criminal judgement powers over the clergy, and was one the most obvious reforms brought in by Luther.
Not saying reform would lead to re-unification: just saying that the counter-reformation did not erase, and was never intended to erase, all the differences.
I just do not see the need for all these diverse sects-is there any really big difference between Methodism and Episcopalianism? Of course, most protestant sects differ greatly from the RC church, so there are indeed fundamental differences in doctrines (between the RC and protestant Christianity).
Greene was pro-communist, by the late phases of the cold war at least (he was still fairly conservative back when he wrote <I>The Power and the Glory</I>), so he probably wasn’t intending this as a criticism of Philby, or for that matter of the 16th century English Catholics.
I skimmed that, but I don’t think it disproves my claim. Greene was (broadly speaking) pro-communist, that doesn’t mean he approved of everything the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Cuba or any other communist state did. He did, in the last analysis, state he felt more ideological kinship with the Soviets than with the Americans. (NB: I’m not saying this as a criticism of Greene, either).
I would argue that the “Christian unity” was a myth pushed by Popes from 11th century onward who tried to boost their power base.
There have always been schisms in Christianity, starting probably with disagreements between Peter and Paul about gentiles. Prior to 11th century, every bishop was practically running his own church (provided that he knew any theology, or gave a damn, or was even literate). And most monastery orders were a sect of their own for all practical purposes.
I know things haven’t turned out as well as hoped, but someone had to stand up to the big bully (RCC) and punch them in the mouth for all the errors of their ways. I can’t imagine God was any pleased with what he was watching from Heaven.