I know, 'injustice' seems endemic to the human condition, but I also know that prejudice and propaganda has promoted fantasy figures when it comes to how many have suffered and the reasons why.
Any bandying numbers about without a context really doesn't help — if you look at the numbers killed by cars each year, then obviously cars should be banned and any government that tolerates the automobile must be run by lunatics if you look at those figures isolated from the social context.
Take the Office of the Inquisition.
The common opinion is that it was 'a bad thing'. The reality is something quite different. In Europe, right up until recent history, anyone on trial for anything stood a good chance of being hanged — the assumption being that if you were before the courts you were obviously guilty. The Church became aware that local mayors, magistrates, etc., were sitting in judgement on theological matters (witchcraft being one), and were operating well outside their area of education, and invariably the (safe) sentence was death.
Evidence shows that very quickly, those arrested chose to be tried by the Inquisition rather than the local secular authorities, as the odds of an acquittal was distinctly in the defendants favour.
I'm not saying the office was never abused (look at the contemporary position of young black males in America), but I am saying simply spouting the same old assumptions, repeated so often they are invariably assumed to be true, doesn't help.
I looked round on Google for material evidence to offer you — I haven't got the books nor university library access I had when studying for my degree — but the amount of screaming, polemical bullshit is staggering.
It's a matter of note, for example, that the treatment of Galileo was absolutely enlightened compared to the standard of the day — 'house arrest' in a luxury villa where he could receive and entertain his friends? Unheard of!
Similarly, the truth of the Galileo affair was that his scientific contemporaries were out for his blood (being Aristotelians) and the papacy was the only one on his side, until he ridiculed the pope, then he was on his own.
We, of course, made a complete mess of being overly dogmatic — or is that dictatorial — in our statements. What we should have said is that the language of Scripture is not the language of science, and when the Bible says 'the sun stood still' this was a subjective view, not a physical fact — but that would be asking someone to leapfrog a couple of hundred years of critical text analysis. Where we've backed ourselves into a corner is the assumption that we can never be wrong — and it's an argument I will not surrender to 'authority' when history shows that we have — good grief, we've declared popes to be heretics, so how can they be infallible?
On that note, no-one (not even the Vatican) can say for certain how many 'infallible' declarations the papacy has made, coming from the pope alone. The estimate is around four statements, and not ever uttered word as so many assume.
But we rely too heavily, it seems to me, on subtle and highly nuanced legalistic argument (demonstrated on how we explain that the pope's exhortation to believe the sun revolves round the earth was not a dogmatic statement when it seems to me that's exactly what he was saying).
My measure, naive as that might be, is that Our Lord never relied on such sophistry and rhetoric when disputing with the Pharisees, and nor did the Apostles ... and when the argument does become 'subtle' and 'nuanced', I think we're in trouble ... I think He'd say "What the heck are you on about?"
I also have, I think, sound theological argument to dispute the idea of infallibility, but I'm very wary about 'opening the door' here, as there are too many vested interests who'd want to come in and tear the place down in support of their own agendas, which are often more dogmatic and doctrinaire than the RC Church!
No it's not, it's absolutely the point. Was there ever actually a resurgence in pagan religion? Where? Why? I would say it happened in proportion to the degree that the Reformers removed the idea of 'Mystery' from the lives of the common people. Not because of any virtue of the Catholic Church, other than a vibrant symbolic language that transcends the voice of the pulpit — which became the centre of Reformation religious focus — a language that is all but lost today.
In Switzerland, Calvinists burnt a woman at the stake for putting flowers on her husband's grave. Is that witchcraft? And the Salem trials? It's all about context.
Today we live in an age where people invent mysteries, and the notion of 'mystery' itself is something subjective, largely a casting of one's own idealisations and superstitions, cherry-picked from a variety of religious texts, without penetrating any meaningful order of reality of which 'The Mysteries' speak, because that requires ascesis, hard-work, self-effacement, discipleship — none of which is welcome in a 'me-first' materialist/consumerist culture.
And the RC Church, like the Orthodox Patriarchates, who actually hold the keys, are embarrassed, it seems to me, and unable to formulate a meaningful dialogue with the world on these matters, and rather spout vague niceties ... sheesh ... don't get me started!
Yes they were. And they still are. And they're being murdered by secular authorities in numbers that are, indeed, fantastic ... For the Love of Christ, British Politics today is moving towards a Secret State owned by a rich and powerful anonymous few (like laws allowing un-named govt. bodies to read all your communications as a matter of course, like trial in camera without jury, like allowing the victim to set the punishment for the crime, with is vengence, not the law ...)
But none of that matters, because there's 'X Factor' or whatever on TV tonight!
I know ... I know ... but that is rather assuming that there was no good done in those centuries at all, and I think that's a terrible injustice to the common people ... but yes, I'm with Thomas Hardy:
" 'Peace upon earth!' was said.
We sing it,
And pay a million priests to bring it.
After two thousand years of mass
We've got as far as poison-gas.”
Christmas, 1924
The thing is, if I examine myself, I'm not sure I don't see the signs of what expresses itself in bureaucracies when they find themselves with too much power in their hands. I'm not sure I'm saint enough to take the job on, and it seems to me the saints made bloody asure they weren't put in that position, either!
But I do look for the light of the spirit, both human and Divine, no matter how dark and bleak the prospect. A reckless, impossible endeavour, but that's my Gaelic genes for you ...
God bless,
Thomas
