bluekumul
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Christian humanist, democratic socialist, world citizen
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Post by bluekumul on May 29, 2023 14:44:35 GMT
I don't want to imply that Catholic theology changed, but I've noticed a difference in social teachings.
Medieval Church was universalistic, modern Church at least accepts or even promotes (Poland, Ireland) national identity. Medieval Church exalted celibacy and treated sexuality as a necessary evil, modern Church is more positive about marriage and parenthood. It seems that medieval Church was more Platonic in its philosophy and modern Church is more Aristotelian. Any thoughts?
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Post by tisbearself on May 29, 2023 18:04:12 GMT
Medieval Church wasn't universalistic. Unless maybe you mean in the sense that the Pope would have preferred to have one big Catholic area with either himself or his favorite Holy Roman Emperor in charge. Popes spent more time involving themselves in affairs of European governance than they did on spiritual pursuits.
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Post by theguvnor on May 29, 2023 18:43:16 GMT
The Medieval Church had a range of positions on sexuality. Using a term like 'Medieval Church' is awkward. It's a useful reference term for general speech but the term covers such a large span of time that it can also be a term that trips us up. There's plenty of very, very frank discussion about sex in works authored by people who held orders in the Church. What they often focus on is disordered sexuality but they don't deny it is a natural part of life. My own view on it aligns with those across the centuries who have regarded it as one more part of life. Or as John Lydon famously observed sometimes, 'He'd rather have a nice cup of tea.'
The Church's relationship with national identity in Ireland is complex. I could waffle about it all day but I suspect someone would tell me to shut up at some point quite quickly once I started with that. It's equally complex with regard to Poland but I'm not Polish so I'd leave that to a Pole or someone more knowledgeable in Polish history.
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Post by homeschooldad on May 29, 2023 19:55:31 GMT
The Medieval Church had a range of positions on sexuality. Using a term like 'Medieval Church' is awkward. It's a useful reference term for general speech but the term covers such a large span of time that it can also be a term that trips us up. There's plenty of very, very frank discussion about sex in works authored by people who held orders in the Church. What they often focus on is disordered sexuality but they don't deny it is a natural part of life. My own view on it aligns with those across the centuries who have regarded it as one more part of life. Or as John Lydon famously observed sometimes, 'He'd rather have a nice cup of tea.' The Church's relationship with national identity in Ireland is complex. I could waffle about it all day but I suspect someone would tell me to shut up at some point quite quickly once I started with that. It's equally complex with regard to Poland but I'm not Polish so I'd leave that to a Pole or someone more knowledgeable in Polish history. I'm reminded here of the reference to homosexuality in Jone's Moral Theology. He very succinctly notes the fact that, yes, there is such a thing as homosexuality, and, yes, sometimes people do stuff like that. And that's it. It's sexual activity outside of a licit marital act, ergo, mortally sinful, but he doesn't go off on some big jeremiad about it. Attachments:
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Post by theguvnor on May 29, 2023 20:05:32 GMT
Seems a reasonably sensible way to deal with the whole thing. You can't police people's bedrooms and the matter is between two consenting adults whilst I'll bow to the fact the Church regards it as morally disordered I'm not going to get overly excited about it.
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bluekumul
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Christian humanist, democratic socialist, world citizen
Posts: 200
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Post by bluekumul on May 30, 2023 12:19:22 GMT
Using a term like 'Medieval Church' is awkward. It's a useful reference term for general speech but the term covers such a large span of time that it can also be a term that trips us up. This is probably the most useful thing I have learned from this thread. Thank you! After doing some research on Wikipedia it seems that asceticism, universalism and Christian Platonism were indeed present, but were not the only accepted interpretation of Christianity.
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Post by homeschooldad on May 30, 2023 13:18:12 GMT
Using a term like 'Medieval Church' is awkward. It's a useful reference term for general speech but the term covers such a large span of time that it can also be a term that trips us up. This is probably the most useful thing I have learned from this thread. Thank you! After doing some research on Wikipedia it seems that asceticism, universalism and Christian Platonism were indeed present, but were not the only accepted interpretation of Christianity. It's very much a shorthand term for a time when virtually all Christians (at least in the West) were Catholic in union with the Pope of Rome, and the Church was both all-powerful and the primary guardian of academics, morality, and so on. Some call it "the Age of Faith", and others, "the Dark Ages". Protestants are especially fond of the latter term.
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Post by ralfy on Jun 2, 2023 2:46:04 GMT
About celibacy, from what I remember, clerical celibacy became the norm only after a thousand years after the beginning of the Church. Also, the Church began to question thinks like colonization, especially in light of slavery, only much later. There's even incidents like an apology to Galileo, but made almost four centuries later.
Meanwhile, many characteristics today, like communal activity and even the use of vernacular languages, were part of the Church before the medieval period. Also, things like laypersons being allowed to read Scriptures by themselves were not allowed, and that put pressure on the Church as the printing press was developed and followed by the rise of protestant groups.
Finally, that printing press plus significant advancements in science has led to a more secular world, which is something that the medieval Church would not have been able to imagine, and to which the Church has to respond.
And I think the only response to that will involve a combination of Plato and Aristole. Or, following Casey Kasem, one has to keep his feet on the ground but keep reaching for the stars.
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Post by homeschooldad on Jun 2, 2023 5:28:45 GMT
About celibacy, from what I remember, clerical celibacy became the norm only after a thousand years after the beginning of the Church. Also, the Church began to question thinks like colonization, especially in light of slavery, only much later. There's even incidents like an apology to Galileo, but made almost four centuries later. Meanwhile, many characteristics today, like communal activity and even the use of vernacular languages, were part of the Church before the medieval period. Also, things like laypersons being allowed to read Scriptures by themselves were not allowed, and that put pressure on the Church as the printing press was developed and followed by the rise of protestant groups. Finally, that printing press plus significant advancements in science has led to a more secular world, which is something that the medieval Church would not have been able to imagine, and to which the Church has to respond. And I think the only response to that will involve a combination of Plato and Aristole. Or, following Casey Kasem, one has to keep his feet on the ground but keep reaching for the stars. You do well note that the printing press basically "started the fire", to paraphrase Billy Joel. Books were now available to a mass readership, and literacy increased, as it does no good to print books if people can't read them. The rise of Protestantism (which was very much tied to that same printing press), and the availability of Bibles (albeit published by heretics for the most part), set the tone for everything that followed in religion. You couldn't very well have Protestants knowing their Bible (or at least 66 books of it) backwards and forwards, and have Catholics being told "oh, you mustn't read that". In short, Protestants raised the bar. Fast-forward 500 years to the Internet, the printing press of our day, now democratized so that anyone who is literate and can get their hands on a cheap computer and can obtain Internet access becomes, in effect, a publisher, a columnist, a pamphleteer, a propagandist. Just in today's news, Pope Francis is basically pleading for people to play nice and quit stirring up stuff. It's too late to put the genie back in the bottle. We're not like Jehovah's Witnesses who only read what their leaders let them read in Awake! and The Watchtower.
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bluekumul
Full Member
Christian humanist, democratic socialist, world citizen
Posts: 200
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Post by bluekumul on Jun 2, 2023 14:53:59 GMT
About celibacy, from what I remember, clerical celibacy became the norm only after a thousand years after the beginning of the Church. St Augustine, the ultimate authority in theology according to medieval scholars, did not have high regard for human sexuality. He seems to have been influenced by Plato and possibly by gnosticism. I also recall reading about medieval rules specified when married couples can have sex. There were many days during the year when this was not allowed.
However, mandatory celibacy for priests was introduced only in the 12th century, not long before Thomistic Aristotelianism replaced Augustinian theology. That's strange. I love that! Neil Howe developed a concept of civic and prophetic generations, alternating in a cycle. Civic generations (like millennials/zoomers) contribute to science and institutional order, prophetic generations (like boomers) to spirituality and idealism. Both components are necessary for well-being of society. I think Plato provided the prophetic component of Western philosophy and Aristotle the civic. High Middle Ages might have been a prophetic dominated period.
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Post by tisbearself on Jun 2, 2023 18:29:05 GMT
The purpose of clerical celibacy was to prevent Church property from getting entangled in/ separated from the Church through inheritance issues, and also to prevent the priesthood from becoming an hereditary career that would pass from father to son. Obviously, for this to become an issue, the Church would have needed some centuries to become fairly stable and have enough property holdings and disputes over same to bring the concern to the bishops' attention. In the early years of the Church where you had small groups of believers struggling to survive amidst oppression, there was little property involved and more pressing concerns, like not getting martyred.
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Post by theguvnor on Jun 2, 2023 19:01:00 GMT
Mind you, this got rid of one problem and numerous orders of monks created another. Many of them started to accrue huge sums of money, which is why numerous medieval chroniclers satirize the lifestyle of friars, among other groups. It's sadly inevitable that where wealth and power is to be had men and women will cluster around it. That's true everywhere. Buddhist monasteries in many places suffered from issues like this and had to be reformed or closed down over the centuries.
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Post by tisbearself on Jun 2, 2023 20:22:39 GMT
Starting in the early 1200s, the founding of the Franciscans, Dominicans, and other mendicant orders, where the members lived on alms and did not own property, was supposed to address these issues of wealthy clerics and monks. Of course it brought a different set of problems, as towns could get overwhelmed economically if too many mendicants showed up begging for support, plus some mendicant orders like Carmelites still managed to drift into too comfortable of a lifestyle and were reformed a couple centuries down the road.
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Post by theguvnor on Jun 2, 2023 20:32:09 GMT
Some of the orders in England were fantastically wealthy - Peterborough was a byword for corruption and several local Bishops are famed for arguing with Abbots about the self-indulgent lifestyle of the Monks. Bishop Gray in the early 15th century is on record as having endless arguments about the presence of women in the monasteries in the town and the entrance an exit of known prostitutes. But the monasteries had so much financial sway he had to let it go to a large extent. But, if anyone is waiting for a perfect Church where stuff like this is not happening it is not coming along of course.
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Post by homeschooldad on Jun 2, 2023 22:33:51 GMT
The purpose of clerical celibacy was to prevent Church property from getting entangled in/ separated from the Church through inheritance issues, and also to prevent the priesthood from becoming an hereditary career that would pass from father to son. Obviously, for this to become an issue, the Church would have needed some centuries to become fairly stable and have enough property holdings and disputes over same to bring the concern to the bishops' attention. In the early years of the Church where you had small groups of believers struggling to survive amidst oppression, there was little property involved and more pressing concerns, like not getting martyred. Then it would be nice for the Church to own up to that, and quit exalting celibacy as some kind of end in itself.
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