The Wrongs of Thomas More
nealstephenson.substack.com
nealstephenson.substack.com
The Wars of Religion, from Luther's 95 Theses to the Treaty of Westphalia, lasted for 100 years (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_wars_of_religion). The anti-Reformation thinkers could see perfectly well that they would be the near-inevitable result of letting just anybody set forth their own interpretation of Scripture. From our own vantage point, the Reformation was undoubtedly a good thing, even if you are Catholic, because it established freedom of thought (relatively speaking), but it was several generations of conflict that was often vicious even by the standards of war.
If More had had perfect knowledge of the future, looking at the Wars of Religion that the Reformation would lead to, he would not have been at all surprised. If he thought that burning half a dozen heretics was preferable to several generations of civil war, well, he might have been incorrect, but it doesn't make him a monster. It makes him a man afraid of the storm that's coming, and desperate to avoid it by any means possible.
The rationale is quite simple: They believed in an eternal Hell. Unrepentant heresy places you in eternal Hell. Hell also has levels and is not the same for everyone; not necessarily Dante's circles, but not far off. This is easily proven, just look at Saint Thomas Aquinas, who warned that sins against the deliberate intellect (heresy, blasphemy, schism) are much more inexcusable than sins of the passions and nature (lust, sloth); even if both are damnable. Vice versa, Heaven also has levels, and it was (and is) a pious opinion that no two people are ever at exactly the same level.
If Hell is eternal, and it is possible for you to make your own Hell worse, killing you if you refuse to repent directly prevents you from making your eternal punishment worse. It also prevents bringing other people with you, and the guilt you would bear for influencing other people. In a way, it is an act of charity to other people and yourself; causing some Saints and scholars to comment at the time to do otherwise would actually be hateful. There's also the issue of, if someone was going to repent, the logical assumption that going to the noose or stake is a much stronger motivator than dying in your sleep at 73.
In line with the above, the very act of burning itself was seen as somewhat of a charity. A public spectacle to warn against following them (charity to the viewers); but also a constant suggestion, even to the end, to the burned of what is waiting for them eternally, giving them one last chance to repent. For what it's worth though, Historians tell us that most of the burned died by suffocation and not by the actual burning, which would have been probably also been known at the time.
(Worth remembering, both the Reformers and the original Catholics burned at the stake for similar rationales.)
On that note, "for nothing" implies an automatic bias towards lack of belief; not shared by the majority of people on earth. While Christians no longer burn at the stake, Islamic countries still stone for adultery.
The other reason it's difficult is the sheer prevalence, even in our modern culture, of the Black Legend which injected all sorts of myths regarding the Inquisition and Medieval culture. For example, the Inquisition rarely used torture, Torquemada only had 1% of his heretics executed, and there is only one documented instance of a woman ever being racked (and it wasn't even part of the Inquisition). The effects of the Black Legend were so extreme, that to quote the modern European historian Elvira Roca Barea:
"If we deprive Europe of its hispanophobia and anti-Catholicism, its modern history becomes incomprehensible."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_legend
Or, if that sounds too boring, broad, or controversial, here's History for Atheists admitting the Inquisition and witch hunts is one of the dumbest arguments for atheism, due to heavy involvement of commonly accepted myths:
https://historyforatheists.com/2024/02/the-great-myths-14-th...
All I can say is history is inevitably determined by the sick fucks that rise to the top.
It’s only an assumption that the mis-translation was unintentional. It could have been quite deliberate. Do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment.
Also, while I know the quote, that’s not the same as never dealing death and judgement. Tolkien was not a pacifist, but a soldier.
"When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them."
Leviticus 19:33... So I of course responded that there are a lot of verses that they don't agree with in chapters 18-20 related to the death penalty.
YouTube subsequently shadow banned me.
"Thou shalt not kill" isn't a sin because human life is inherently valuable to God (reading the OT, it clearly isn't) but because humans are God's property, and so only God, who created humans, has the right to decide when and how they die. Under the particularly cruel and brutal Bronze Age ethics from which the Abrahamic God as a concept was derived, killing is perfectly justifiable when God wills it, and is only a sin otherwise because it defies God's will.
...which shouldn't even be possible if God is omnipotent but that's a whole other can of worms.
On that note, who is being cruel here: A God who imposed rules on how he wants his creatures to behave to his other creatures; or a creature who hurts his other creatures, and then calls God cruel for stopping it?
Edit, to your reply:
> I know what omnipotent means. The contradiction is that it shouldn't be possible to violate the will of an omnipotent God.
You will have to provide some citations for such an axiom that aren’t based on an atheist stereotype of “omnipotent” and “will.”
TLDR of a Christian perspective:
God is love. Love does not exist outside of God. Love is defined as willing the good of another person. As such, love is fundamentally a choice. As such, humans must have a choice to love. To do otherwise, would make a human a robot. God knows what choice we will make, but does not force it. (A parent who knows the teen will not resist the cake on the counter, does not force the teen to eat cake.) It does not follow, that if humans refuse to love, God should nullify all consequences.
On that note, Hell was not made for humans but for Satan, and we as humans have only the ability to choose love (God) or absence of love (Hell). A person who has chosen to not love, logically cannot live with love itself. Viewing it as humans choosing to damn themselves by refusing to love, would be a more accurate perspective.
You can invoke "free will", but that's just another layer of abstraction for the same problem. If free will truly exists, then God isn't omnipotent. If He does, free will cannot exist.
>On that note, who is being cruel here: A God who imposed rules on how he wants his creatures to behave to his other creatures; or a creature who hurts his other creatures, and then calls God cruel for stopping it?
God isn't cruel for imposing rules, God is cruel for allowing evil to persist and for punishing humans with eternal torment for a state of sin they cannot absolve themselves of. The God of the Bible is very obviously not good, or just, or even self-consistent. More than once He just lets humans into heaven because He likes them.
But yes humans are cruel, too.
This doesn't seem logical to me, but perhaps I'm missing something. Can God not be all powerful and yet decide to allow humans to make decisions for themselves?
Just thinking about my own children, while I am not all powerful, I certainly am powerful enough to force them to comply with most of my instructions. Yet I do not, since part of raising them is giving them the freedom to make mistakes and (hopefully) learn from them and do better.
You can't be omniscient and omnipotent on one hand, and blame your creature for anything it does on the other. Because you are effectively in charge.
Like any parent with babies.
While you don't _know_ all about how they function, you learn to get a grasp of it, and you control most of their environment, and most of their very own, at first. They are babies. You job is to allow them to make decisions for themselves by teaching, supporting, caring for, loving them, and letting them grow, become autonomous, emancipate, and live their life. And live it without you because ultimately, that's what happens.
And as you do, you become less powerful, less all-knowing towards them (if you didn't, you'd keep full responsibility for everything they do).
So, come back to God, if He's omniscient, omnipotent, He's also all in charge. The creatures may have some will or not, whatever they do is already known in advance.
Here is another Christian (Catholic even) perspective.
> God is love. [...] God knows what choice we will make, but does not force it. > It does not follow, that if humans refuse to love, God should nullify all consequences.
If the omniscient, omnipotent God knows what choice we will make, He may not have forced it, but He did set the conditions and dynamic systems for this choice to happen, as He already knows, ahead of time. It's basically the same. There lies the contradiction (or let's call it paradox) of that argument.
> On that note, Hell was not made for humans but for Satan, and we as humans have only the ability to choose love (God) or absence of love (Hell). A person who has chosen to not love, logically cannot live with love itself. Viewing it as humans choosing to damn themselves by refusing to love, would be a more accurate perspective.
That is why Hell/Heaven is likely more a matter of (changing) perspective (how do I live/act with what I have) rather than a definitive objective place. Hell/Heaven is not some mythical afterlife meritocratic estate, it's firstly right here, right now, in each of us, the sum of all our actions and relationships.
And that is consistent with what is in the scriptures, what psychology and neuroscience tells us, and what common daily experience shows.
This is also why the "God is love" mantra is a good thing as long as it's not tweaked into a bizarre reverse way to justify that non-believers/observants of a specific ruleset of a specific religion have chosen to not love, or are "unsaved" and should therefore either be converted or suppressed.
There are other commandments that are characteristic of christianity, but this is not one of them. "Thou shalt not" commandments are basically the same in all cultures. The "thou shalt" commandments are not.
The Middle Ages spanned hundreds of years across countries that had very different views from each other. If you can think of something strange, it probably happened. Just one example: Women might not be able to own property in one town, but can literally vote alongside princes in another (abbesses in Medieval Germany). Stereotypes are rarely directly applicable to the whole period, any more than me digging up a stereotype of an 1850s Californian would be applicable today.
Secondly though, it downplays the likelihood that the majority of priests, bishops, and cardinals, did labor in good faith and, at least on paper, viewed the rules imposed as equally applicable to themselves. Whether they followed them or not, even the serf believed God would avenge. I would say a more accurate comparison for the nuanced authority and love-hate relationship might be our modern police.
Indulgences, crusades, excommunication, infallibility of the popes and only God knows what else. These are not stereotypes, they are facts. The belief that God would avenge is a Biblical fact, all the others was pure fantasy, used as controlling tools. That is history.
Facing reality is never easy, just necessary for avoiding future calamities. Here in the states, we avoid truthful history all the time, hopefully not to an eventual disaster.
The word "kill" here is famously a translation issue. The original Hebrew word means something closer to (but not precisely) "commit murder".
Don't assume that the King James translation would capture the kind of nuance you are asserting is absent.
In isolation, and if that was what it said in the source language, sure.
When the same source (either of the books of the Bible containing -- slightly different -- versions of the decalogue) also includes lots of specific commands to kill from the same origin as the "Thou shalt not kill", it gets murkier, and when also the "Thou shalt not kill" is arguably closer in the source language to "do not murder", well...
(Which is not to defend the practice at issue, just to point out that the decalogue is not, alone, necessarily a great way to make the point that it should have been clearly wrong within the religious framework it nominally sought to server; I think there are good arguments, both within and without that framework, just not that one on its own.)
The beliefs have not changed, but democratic society has moderated their effects.
I’ll gladly take 32,000 for the entire Inquisition over another Russian, Chinese, Cambodian, or Vietnamese revolution. Atheists need to own their history too.
It's pretty clear where the inspiration for the Inquisition came from.
“Religion is the soul of soulless conditions.” - Karl Marx
“Communism begins where atheism begins.” - Karl Marx
But seriously, there’s a whole Wikipedia article on the origins.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxist%E2%80%93Leninist_ath...
The early communists did not hide this connection. Guess what one of the first agencies in the new USSR was called? The League of Militant Atheists. Ironically, the league was responsible for more deaths by itself than the Inquisition.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_Militant_Atheists
As for why atheism often leads to communism, the reason is fairly simple. Atheists like to pretend that they are only responsible for one tenant of belief: “I don’t believe in a God.”
This is not actually true. Imagine if a country puts in a law banning adultery, with heavy fines for doing so. The atheist would likely be angry, even if everyone else in the country agreed with the law. Why should they? There’s no God saying that’s wrong; it’s just a personal opinion like preferring a red car over a blue car. It turns out there’s actually a second tenant:
“Any law or penalty or qualm of conscience, imposed solely by religion, without a justifiable ground outside of religion, shall be considered an unjust oppression, which must be destroyed.”
An oppression, not live and let live, not merely an inconvenience, even if the majority is fine with it. That’s where violence begins, and the preference for an inherently Godless (and inherently anti-religious) society originates.
The two then are as impossible to reconcile as oil and water; one must be comfortably under the thumb of the other if any tolerance is to be had. If one ever loses the upper hand, or the two become an equilibrium, violence will immediately start - an Inquisition on one hand, a League of Militant Atheists on the other.
One cannot judge what Communism is by interpreting literally any text written by a Communist, because all such texts have been just propaganda designed to fool the weaker minds. In order to understand Communism, one must examine what Communists have done, not what they have said. By comparing facts with words, one can deduce the meanings of the Communist words.
Whoever is not aware about the differences between the Communist language and the traditional language, does not understand what Communism is. I was born and I have grown in a country occupied by Communist invaders, so I know very well what Communism really is, and it has no relationship with atheism, in the traditional sense of the word.
No Communist has ever been atheist, despite their claims, with the possible exception of Karl Marx, who might have been sincere in what he has written. However any later Communist has used the books of Karl Marx only as a propagandistic tool, without caring about whether Karl Marx believed anything of what he has said.
Communism is indistinguishable from a monotheistic religion and almost every Communist word and every Communist institution has an exact equivalence in Christian words and institutions.
The fact that the Communists have persecuted or killed the priests or the believers belonging to other churches has nothing to do with their claimed atheism, but it has the same nature as the fights between Protestants and Catholics.
One can consider Communism as the worst Christian sect, which has done things identical with other past religious excesses, but at a much greater scale.
Associating communists with atheists is a huge confusion (which was the purpose of the obfuscated Communist language).
Communists have just acted vs. Christians in the same way as Christians vs. different kinds of Christians, and for the same reasons, i.e. in order to suppress anyone who swears allegiance to different authorities.
When discussing communists you cannot "take them at their word", because Communists have always used a special language where a very large number of words have very different meanings than their traditional meanings, for propagandistic purposes. Moreover, even when some phrases should mean the same thing as in normal language, it is more likely than not that they are just lies.
Reading any ancient publication from the former communists states requires experience with communist propaganda to understand which sentences are true and which are false.
Communists have changed completely the meaning of many words, in order to obfuscate the true essence of Communism.
Communism was not atheism, on the contrary it was a kind of monotheistic religion practically indistinguishable from a Christian sect, but where everything was renamed and whose priests succeeded to obtain the supreme power in the state, unlike in the Western countries where religion is more or less separated from the state.
There is a huge list of exact correspondences between Christian concepts and Communist concepts. Communists had prophets (Marx, Engels and Lenin), holy books (i.e. the books written by the prophets), saints, martyrs (illegalist Communists), priests (the members of the Communist Party with party functions), a Pope (the general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union), Inquisitions, heretics (e.g. Trotsky or Tito), and so on.
All the religious institutions have been replaced by the Communists with exact counterparts having different names, e.g. the chaplains of the military units have been replaced by political officers through which the Communist Party controlled the military institutions, the religious education in schools has been replaced by a so-called political education which taught the Communist religion, and so on.
While Christians were manipulated to behave as their leaders desired with the promise that obeying the rules will ensure them a happy after-life, even if their present life sucks, the people in Communists countries were manipulated to behave as their leaders desired with the promise that obeying the rules will ensure a happy life for their grandchildren who will live in a true Communist society, even if their present life sucks because the present society is not truly communist.
There has never been any relationship between Atheism and Communism, except that the Communists have hijacked the word atheist, by claiming that the Communist religion is Atheism.
Tangentially, I was just riffing earlier with A Colour For Every Season
Referring to the fact that there were other factions besides the Blues and the Greens but we mostly only remember those two.
Those concepts are not particularly _christian_ in themselves, they're more constituents of an institutionalised belief system implementing hierarchical control points. It's proven efficient, and you find it in the Roman antique society, you find its equivalent in complex societies, even today in republics, in companies, etc.
Founders, constitutions or associates pacts, policies, fellows/staff members, executive managers, CEO or chairman, internal inspection, HR, etc.
Like I said, I genuinely believe its pointless to assign blame to the dead for things in the past. But if we are speaking of moral judgements in the abstract one's cultural context is only mitigating. It isn't a get out of jail free card.
What you are describing as anarchy here, is anomy in reality.
Anarchy is basically any society without rule from the top, whatever the top may be, replace by reasonable self-rule and consensual interactions of that society.
Anomy is chaos, ruled by the ones with the biggest bats, without any protections against that, for the masses.
That is a big difference.
Then anarchy as you describe it can not exist. In a power vacuum someone will have the biggest bat and thus be the ruler.
Yes that’s paraphrasing Monty Python. But real anarchism isn’t the rejection of all authority, just the rejection of hierarchies of power in favour of ideas of collective responsibility and decision making.
Committees, not Crowns.
Thus it can’t exist becuase some group will eventually gain more power than others and thus exert control.
The Netherlands was for a long time the only place in Europe that considered religion to be a personal affair- Amsterdam famously was the only city with a synagogue. However even the Dutch occasionally had to execute or banish religious extremists.
Very hard to predict it happening but easy to see with hindsight.
Ha. That's the most brilliant joke in this whole write-up. Of course he could not agree with them. Just as Luther simply could not stop himself from raising his 95 questions.
> No reasonable human, then or now, believes that there's any institution, made up of fallible humans, that's never wrong.
One of the basic tenets of (both Orthodox and Catholic) Christian theology is that the Church, as the whole, can't be wrong because it is explicitly guided by the Christ himself through the Holy Ghost. That's why ecumenical councils were (and are, in the Orthodox branch) considered so important: if the brightest and most pious would come together and, while praying for the divine guidance, try to resolve a theological matter, then they will come to the correct answer. The Catholic church, as I understand it, has largely decided that this approach is overly cautious and expensive since a decision of a single person (by the virtue of being the pope of Rome) is already guaranteed to be correct.
And 1+ billion Catholics believe that the specific institution of The Church, which is made up of fallible humans, is never wrong on matters of doctrine and morals - because it is the Body of Christ and cannot be wrong.
They may get into major arguments and quibbles about exactly what that means but the concept of infallibility is pretty well cemented.
Wait until the author digs deeper and learns that many, many intelligent people of the time and before thought burning at the stake was the best option for the burned - and really, truly believed that, and had deep arguments for why.
Also I have to love the recency bias, clearly Henry VIII can only be understood through the lens of a recent and current president!
To further confuse our friend, he can visit the Church of England's website: https://www.churchofengland.org/prayer-and-worship/worship-t... and search "Thomas More" finding July 6th.
It's a bit exaggerated to say that. Not all Catholics believe in the infallibility, neither in every single dogma, which are not articles of faith (and not believing in them, discussing them doesn't make one less Catholic than an other).
Even wondering what proportion of Catholics know about all of them.
1997 Catechism: http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/ccc_toc.htm
1566 Catechism: http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015038914233;vie...
You could read just the 1997 Catechism and not miss out on a dogma/doctrine, but the 1566 is these days an under appreciated masterpiece, a work of art really, while the 1997 has a “beads on a string” and committee-cooked feel in many sections, while still being great.
I’d guess at least a few million Catholics alive today have fully read or otherwise are fully informed about the Catechisms’ contents. Hopefully the number continues to increase over the years.
[+] As a result you won’t know all of Catholic philosophy, theology, history, and particular rulings re: moral theology, but you don’t need to in order to be informed re: Catholic doctrine.
I am saying that reading these is an intellectual aside, overly complex at times, not a requirement, to having the faith and acting like a Christian Catholic. Being Catholic doesn’t require to be an historian, philosopher or theologian, although that’s not contradictory.
Some dogmas, apart from being terribly contextual to when they were thought and proclaimed (by men, again), are totally irrelevant to the mystery of the Revelation and the faith related to it. But they are more relevant in the context of a controlling institution. Which is a totally different, non-spiritual matter.
You assert this, but provide no example/s. HN isn’t a place for deep dives into this subject matter, but maybe you can outline what you have in mind?
> Being Catholic doesn’t require to be an historian, philosopher or theologian…
I agree completely.
> I am saying that reading these is an intellectual aside, overly complex at times, not a requirement, to having the faith and acting like a Christian Catholic.
Being Catholic boils down to loving God and neighbor, cultivating a life of virtue nourished by prayer and the Sacraments in Christ’s Church.
Catechesis plays a key supporting role, helping to form Christians’ understanding of God’s revelation and the various aspects of living the Catholic Faith. So I don’t understand how it’s an aside, as you say.
Agree, it's not the best place for that, sadly. But here you go.
1. Infallibility, first. It appeared in the XIXth century (Vatican I), with the rise of state/nations, and the loss of the pontifical states. It was more a matter of reinstating a theological authority and high-ground to the Pope, than a spiritual or theological necessity. It was also an extension of the gradual universal reach of the Pope, Primus inter pare, while the primitive Church had its authority more spread across bishops.
3. Holy Orders. Debatable, but is more a matter of hierarchical management and institutionalisation than a theological necessity to the point of making it a sacrament.
4. Matrimony. Considered sacred before, got formally defined in the XIIth century, in a specific, restrictive form for temporal (more than theological) reasons, to regulate medieval society, at a time the Church was extending its reach and organisation through Europe [1]. Got further canon-coded in the XVIth. Nothing theological per se, although a lot of exegesis has been built on it. Some of the very, very late consideration the Church has brought to marital life, to education to the affective and sexuality realities of life, to the autonomy of the person regarding their sexuality and to the possibility/necessity of divorce, comes from there. It could have been coded differently - and I believe it will change within the coming century, along the Holy Orders.
5. Penence. Evolved from a public and communautary practice in the early Church, to private confession in the Middle Ages, which served partly as a social control mechanism. Sacrament? ok. Which form is valid? several, depending on the time and the context.
6. Confirmation. It's still unclear why it's been split from baptism in the West Church, contrary to the East one. Who's right? wrong? Does it matter really?
7. Extreme Unction. It's purpose/meaning shifted across time (especially with Vatican II, where it got reframed as anointing of the sick), revealing here again a matter of institutional subjectivity rather than a fundamental theological thing.
I'm not saying those are _bad_ things, not at all. I'm saying that the focus on making those that much important in a catholic's life, and so rigid,
1/ derails from the core spiritual and temporal aspects of faith in the Revelation.
2/ denotes a lack of imagination, or a lack of faith, by wanting to provide definitive answers to questions that ought to be more open ended than that; or alternatively, reveals a want of control that is at odds with the Revelation message.
More generally, the dogmas, and the canon code, and the hierarchical structure of part of the Church is fundamentally worthy of critical consideration, always, because they have been used as tools to subjugation and abuse. The abuse of authority by some, totally breaks the justification of this authority, especially when it claims to be of divine inspiration.
[1] it is no accident that the Anglican Church schism happened.
As for catechesis, it's an aside because: 1/ it's not available to all, and it wouldn't be the fault of the receiver not to have received it, 2/ catechesis (as I experienced it in school, in Church, in several monial and secular communities) is waaaay to much emphasised on a top-down education, and not on developing the critical mind and encouraging healthy contradiction, 3/ it still happens to be very poorly managed, by untrained or inauthentic teachers (I have 3 kids, I've had to report creationist bullshit being pushed on each of them).
The Church is a duality that mirrors Christ's dual nature: as both mortal man and God the son, so too is the Church made up of mortal people and God the holy Spirit. The divine part is infallible, the mortal part is still very much human.
All of which is to say that yes, Catholics and Orthodox Christians both agree that the institutions can get things wrong, most especially when people in power fail. After all, the Pope was once one of the patriarchs of what is now the Orthodox Church. It is impossible for the two to be in schism if the institution was infallible prior to the schism itself.
This isn't true: the formal institution of the Pentarchy (ordering the Church under five patriarchs -- Rome, Jerusalem, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch) was only introduced by the decrees of the Quintisext Council (692), which the Pope notably refused to ratify. In essence, the eastern patriarchs declared there to be a Pentarchy with the Pope as 'first among equals' (a "prerogative of honour"), while the Pope continued to claim a position of pre-eminence over all other bishops.
> It is impossible for the two to be in schism if the institution was infallible prior to the schism itself
The Catholic position is essentially that ratification by the Bishop of Rome is a pre-condition for the Church to make a declaration on matters of faith or doctrine. With that in mind, divergences like the Quintisext Council or the Iconoclast Crisis are at best local policies, at worst heresies, but certainly not "teachings of the Church" which later had to be "reverted". The later schism is also just that -- the Patriarchs in the East choosing to break off from the "primary body" of the Church, moving from a state of union to a state of disunion, but leaving the Church itself still secure.
While I'm not quite as well-versed as with Catholic doctrine, my understanding is that the Eastern Orthodox position is symmetrical, though less strictly defined since the Orthodox tend towards a less legalistic expression of Church hierarchy. They believe that the Church speaks through a consensus of its patriarchs, and therefore that the Pope has simply broken off of the Church by declaring otherwise. In their case, cases like the Council of Hieria (the council which instituted Iconoclasm) are invalid because neither the patriarchs nor their representatives were present at the council -- so heresy was never professed by the Church.
I understand that the Orthodox believe that the Holy Spirit speaks through the Church, and the Church speaks through the Ecumenical Councils (not through the patriarchs). Of course, there have been false councils, too, and the only way to distinguish between them is that some are recognised by the Church as ecumenical and some as false. Practically speaking, one might say that the Church speaks through the Church.
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.
The hard part is understanding someone doing that about something YOU wouldn't care about.
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.
Vatican 2 (and 1, for that matter) would like a word.
Putting aside your conceptions of councils, though, you're trying to give the pope too much power. This infallibility is limited to faith and morals, and it must follow from what the church has already been doing: stating what previously didn't need to be stated. E.g. the pope could not invoke infallibility to declare the death penalty impermissible.
Earlier polytheistic religions didn't pretend to be universal and therefore had more built-in tolerance, even though religious tolerance hadn't been invented yet. Rome could demand sacrifices to their gods but it was accepted that people in different cities had their own gods.
I'm not sure if Stephenson is specifically looking for a PDF scan, but I found an online copy reasonably easily:
I guess he’s saying that only a few thousand people cared about More’s position.
But as an outsider what has always puzzled me is how strongly common people care about what seem to me to be hair-splitting religious arguments. Henry’s split with the catholic church touched off numerous rebellions. And ironically when some later Kings tried to become catholic again, there was even more violence.
To be it’s unfathomable that people who struggle to put food on the table will take up arms in the name of quite abstruse arguments.
it wasn't hair splitting. The Reformation coincides with nation-forming (and is driven by it). So instead of loyalty to the remote Pope, you get loyalty to your nation. The Bible and service. etc in your language and so forth. Classic tribalism of "us" vs "them" which kings and others at the top happily exploited.
The Reformation v0.1 - Jan Huss - was kicking out Germans and others out of Prague University on the basis of it being Bohemian (i.e. Czech) institution.
>To be it’s unfathomable that people who struggle to put food on the table will take up arms in the name of quite abstruse arguments.
It has been shown many times that those people are the easiest to be fired up for some ideological cause. As the bolshevicks were saying "proletariat has nothing to lose, but their chains"
"The Saint" (1997) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Saint_(1997_film) :
> Using the alias "Thomas More", Simon poses as
Heresy is a sin against the moral convictions of the in-group.
> They're making a public gesture of submissiveness.
Submissiveness, as seen from the outside. Loyalty, as seen from the inside. The head of the group is the standard bearer of the group, not just the person in charge.
The concept of loyalty signaling makes a lot of nonsense more understandable to me.
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On the whole, I think labor unions are net positive benefit - so it's hard to point out any problems with them. It feels disloyal.
But one problem is that union representatives have to fight on behalf of the worst dues-paying members. If you don't fight for them, you get voted out next election. You can't have a disloyal rep!
You signal loyalty by pushing boundaries, especially when it's time to fight.
I'm loyal to you, I'm fighting for you - so you should be loyal to me.
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I'm living through my 3rd personal heresy. The first was against the church I was raised in, but more importantly against the church my family still attends.
It's the 2nd heresy that's notable to this discussion - Heresy against the rational skeptics. Debunking was never enough. Being right was never enough. There is no such thing as irrational thought - all thoughts are reasonable inside a person's head.
There might be such a thing as rational communication - the ability to build a common picture in a group of people.
You're wrong - we are both communicating in the same (or proximate) framework or context, but you have incorrect observations or conclusions.
I don't understand what you mean - you need to do more work if you want me to understand.
You're being irrational - we have a severe context mismatch and you need to take my context.
It is disloyal to even try to understand the context mismatch. People not in our context are dangerous enemies.
Honestly I’m perplexed. Consider the heresy of Arianism. In what way was this heresy morally different from the orthodoxy position? I just don’t see how the nature of Christ affects any possible moral or practical, or even ritual position.
I wonder in the future how people will explain the "woke" panic, because even right now, it's a bit hard to explain.
My best effort is: Conservatives do not want Progressives to impose 'secular progressive' moral positions upon them. Of course no one really says it that way because most people have picked a 'side'.
The beauty of the human mind is that we can tell more than one story. I strongly sympathize with progressive morality, but honestly the communication is very poor.
So here's how I would describe the situation to a Progressive: "Whenever you come over to my house, you let a porcupine loose in my living room. Then you say it's my porcupine, but it's not mine! I can't take care of it!".
When we use our strongest and most motivating moral arguments, it is very motivating, but we don't get to choose which direction it motivates people towards. Our moral arguments appeal to us, but you have to already understand and identify with them for them to be 'properly' motivating.
Here's how I would describe the situation to a Conservative: "No one can tell you that you were raised wrong. Once someone is 'grown folks', you can't raise them again. But, sometimes you might notice that some things are nicer for some folks nowadays, and that trend should probably continue, even if it does make it harder to understand some people."
Without referencing police or prison guard unions, can you explain why this is bad?
But sometimes, some people learn what they can 'get away' with, and they become difficult to work with (as a coworker) and difficult to manage.
Do you love the idea of someone just under the legal limit assembling your plane or automobile? Or someone who just doesn't care?
Of course sometimes "doesn't care" is just a reflection of poor management, and thus we have unions.
I don't think it's a problem that can be resolved for all time in one direction or the other, it's a tension in the system.
But! My larger point is that it's hard for a pro union person to even say "It's a tension in the system". What you are supposed to say is "Solidarity Forever" and "screw the bosses" or words to that effect.
Yeah, of course there is "structural" slack (and tension) in any system, but don't forget that "Solidarity Forever" is only two things: 1) a default, initial reaction to managerial imposition, and 2) a chant leveraged to temporarily concentrate force towards the resolution of a crisis.
In meetings, and between workers, there's plenty of room for sober, reasoned planning and rational debate. So, it's NOT hard for a pro-union person to acknowledge systemic tensions; there's a time and a place for both tenors of rhetoric.
Furthermore, there are tensions in the un-unionized firm that also neglect the customer. Remember Deming's first theorem: "Nobody gives a hoot about profits." That's a commentary on managerial and executive tendencies to prioritize personal well-being, short-term gains, activity over productivity, and easily measurable metrics. These are Emperor's New Clothes of their own, frequently unassailable due to corporate culture.
Meanwhile, even saying the word solidarity can met with reprisals—let alone actually discussing unionization. So, I just don't think it's an model for your point given the current discursive hegemony.
Again, I agree with you that at times solidary furvor quashes rational dissent, but it's a deliberate, mechanical part of the union's anatomy and not a religion... mostly. And, secondly, it's silly to make an example of a union hegemony under our current anti-union climate. In fact, I would say, perpetuating this narrative of the mindless, frothing union berserker is harming working families' leverage in an age of increasing labor precarity.
> sometimes "doesn't care" is just a reflection of poor management
I might say, it's a reflection of poor compensation, but I guess that goes under the umbrella of "poor management". I suspect that the venn diagram between yours and mine definitions of "poor management" would have some surprising overlap... and otherwise.
I think the point I was trying to make was about public discussions across moral lines. Another example: it's certainly possible for a pro-choice person to be uncomfortable with trying to define when personhood begins, and even discuss that with other like minded people, but that kind of thing is not what we fight about.
Public fights are incredibly dumb in the sense that they must simplify the arguments. They must do violence to the real and complex issues that human lives are made of. And thus you have several (7?) states that both elected mostly anti-abortion politicians, and also enshrined some level of access to female health care... because they saw that overly restrictive laws caused real harm to real people.
I strongly think that faith without humility is an abomination, just as loyalty without reason is an abomination, likewise progress without compassion. It's just that it so very difficult to be loyal to one's own side and rational about the other side at the same time when the fighting heats up. As it gets hotter, the extremes get louder, and the middle looks disloyal.
Again to be clear, I don't think the truth or the right way is in the middle. I don't consider myself a centrist. I do think that humans seek satisfaction, and it is hardest to shift a morally satisfying conclusion, especially when there is not a more satisfying conclusion in view.
In other words "So what? People have complex histories, what does that change? They should just stop being wrong. Where are you trying to take me?"
I'm sorry, but you just can't get there from here.
... anyway in Wolf Hall, the character of Thomas Moore as written is largely consistent with what the OP is finding in that old manuscript - someone quite keen on their own cleverness and relatively comfortable with interrogations and burning people at the stake. In Wolf Hall his death is stubborn and needless, and in defiance of the wishes of his wife and daughter. At first I took those parts of Wolf Hall as an exercise in "lets see if its possible to invert the plot of A Man For All Seasons". But then this document "A dialoge concerning heresyes" seems to actually back up the Wolf Hall picture of Moore.
I'm obviously preaching to the choir, but damn, Hilary Mantel was brilliant.
Nicely put.