Thursday, April 28, 2016

History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French Revolution - James MacCaffrey

The Protestant protestors were not reformers, nor did they develop the modern world all by themselves.

by Ferdinand III

James MacCaffrey’s excellent and learned book on a real history of the Catholic Church is an antidote to the usual bigoted tripe passing for ‘science’ or ‘history’. This anodyne deals with the Church fairly and accurately. Its greatness and its moments of immorality and corruption. Its moral imperative and its eras of debauchery and dissimilitude. Its creation of the modern world, and its human created weaknesses and foibles.

For example, the propaganda states that the Protestant revolt against the Church as a ‘reformation’. There was no reforming. Nothing was reformed. Theology was not improved but worsened. ‘Science’ long pre-dates the Reformation, as does capitalism, public education, universities, thousands of practical inventions, advanced maths, optics, industrialization, and literary excellence. Luther and his friends created 200 years of war which destroyed Europe, probably killed 1 million people, tore down churches, monasteries, libraries and rendered societies in half.

The 30 years war in Germany from 1618-1648 is an example of Luther’s madness, arising naturally from the consequences of Christian regression and placing the Church, as Luther did, subservient to state power. It was no accident that many Monarchs embraced the Protesting cult, since the Church became beholden to state and Kingly power, thus giving the world the idea of ‘Divine Right to Rule’. [A concept now much in vogue with Mother Earth cult members, in this case, the Divine Right to Rule of Gaia and her chosen select].

As Luther rabidly demanded ‘sola scriptura’, only Scripture, a belief which negates the Catholic adjuration of free will, reason, inquiry and debate. It was follow ‘the Book’ or perish for the Protesters.

MacCaffrey;

“…[Luther] [a] young monk turned his attention to theology, but, unfortunately, the theological training given to the Augustinian novices at this period was of the poorest and most meagre kind. He studied little if anything of the works of the early Fathers, and never learned to appreciate Scholasticism as expounded by its greatest masters, St. Thomas or St. Bonaventure. His knowledge of Scholastic Theology was derived mainly from the works of the rebel friar William of Occam, who, in his own time, was at constant war with the Popes, and who, during the greater part of his life, if not at the moment of his death, was under sentence of excommunication from the Church. The writings of such a man, betraying as they did an almost complete unacquaintance with the Scriptures and exaggerating men's natural powers to the undervaluing or partial exclusion of Grace, exercised a baneful influence on a man of Luther's tastes and temperaments. Accepted by Luther as characteristic of Scholastic Theology, such writings prejudiced him against the entire system.

Luther defended the view that free will in man and all power of doing good were destroyed by original sin, and that everything meritorious accomplished by man is really done by God. His old opponent at the university, Bodenstein (surnamed Carlstadt from his place of birth), declared himself openly in favour of Luther's teaching on free will, and published a reply to Eck [well known German-Catholic apologist].”

MacCaffrey writes of the Lutheran devastation- not much tolerance is shown toward Catholics or apostates, as Luther gave his movement over to state power:

“…monasteries and churches were plundered, and several of the nobles were put to death. Soon the lay princes of Germany, alarmed by the course of the revolutionaries and fearing for the safety of their own territories, assembled their forces and marched against the insurgents. The war was carried on mercilessly on both sides, close upon 100,000 peasants being killed in the field, while many of their leaders, amongst them Thomas Munzer, were arrested and condemned to death. In nearly every important engagement the peasants, as might be expected, suffered defeat, so that before the end of 1525 the movement was, practically speaking, at an end. Luther, who had been consulted by both sides, and who had tried to avoid committing himself to either, frightened by the very violence of the storm he had been instrumental in creating, issued an appeal to the princes calling upon them to show no mercy to the forces of disorder….”

In the name of reform, the Church was raped, stripped, melted down and debased:

“Luther insisted on individual judgment during his campaign against the Catholic Church, he had no difficulty in urging the civil rulers to force all their subjects to join the new religious body. The goods of the Catholic Church were to be appropriated, some of them being set aside for the support of the new religious organisation, while the greater portion of them found their way into the royal treasury.”

Civil war and butchery spread across Europe. One can argue quite cogently that Church needed a thorough cleaning and reform. On this no dispute is raised. But calling the open barbarity of the Protesters and their large stacks of dead bodies and broken structures a ‘reform’; and then further to deduce that only science and the modern world including Max Weber’s ridiculous assertion of the Protestant work-ethic emanated from such carnage; is truly a remarkable display of historical revisionism – and lying.