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Hmm. I think Neal is aware of the ins and outs of this portion of Christian religious culture and history. The question of infallibility was not open then or n
by vessenes 2y ago
Hmm. I think Neal is aware of the ins and outs of this portion of Christian religious culture and history.
The question of infallibility was not open then or now to most ‘thinkers’ in the church: that is while it was a matter of public doctrine and thus a rule for the parish, in private elites debated and discussed. More was a contemporary of Erasmus, and the church had an entire concept of anti popes for goodness sake, popes that had deceived the church. These are frameworks for acknowledging precisely this point - mistakes are made, new things happen.
Modern Catholicism (to this outsider’s eye) has many vigorous sects and differences of opinion carried out regionally and locally. Perhaps on those terms More was correct - if you stop burning people at the stake they tend to disagree more volubly.
What Neal sketches and I think is intriguing is that More seems to have had the bad taste to have been a hard hard ideologue, principled in that he died for his ideology, but not someone who say wanted to stick around to be father to his daughter or husband to his wife if it meant turning a blind eye to Henry VIII’s marriage plans.
- bombcar 2y agoI think part of it is that most people can agree that someone could believe in something so strongly that they wouldn't compromise it, even if it meant death. The hard part is understanding someone doing that about something YOU wouldn't care about.
- achierius 2y agoI don't know if he is. A lot of people, even historians, do not understand traditional medieval Christian (i.e. what is today Catholic and Orthodox) dogma, and so are often surprised when people historically act in ways that "don't make sense". I suspect the reason is because in today's America-centric world, the most visible strain of Christianity is Protestantism, which functions very differently.
- mvieira38 2y agoYou misunderstand what an Antipope is. It is not "a pope who deceived the Church", it is someone claiming to be a pope while he is not. And that notion is in no way abandoned, there have been a number of antipopes in contemporary history, see Peter II, Gregory XVIII and Peter III of the Palmarian Church as the most notable examples.
- vessenes 2y agoThanks for the additional education. My religious upbringing claimed all popes were antichrists so I have to come at catholic history cautiously at best :) That said do you think the main point stands, that doctrinal debate is a thing that happens out of the public eye in the history of the church? It certainly seems that way to an outsider.