Religious freedom
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I’ve stated my position. I’m not a Catholic. I just think mediaeval England had a lot of good about it that has been forever lost, and that the Tudor tyranny was responsible. If you want to consider that progress and well done, then it spites the common people of the time. If you think we lost nothing because the Middle Ages were dark, ignorant and pointless, and had nothing of value for us, then so be it.
As for religion, I do prefer Oscar Romero to Jim Jones. I’m not apologising for that either.
“I just think mediaeval England had a lot of good about it that has been forever lost, and that the Tudor tyranny was responsible. If you want to consider that progress and well done, then it spites the common people of the time. If you think we lost nothing because the Middle Ages were dark, ignorant and pointless, and had nothing of value for us, then so be it.”
I don’t think many of us would deny that point, William Morris’ ongoing popularity within the party being but one manifestation of this. However Catholicism being better than Protestantism is a bit like saying standing in a barrel of shit is better than doing handstands in a barrel of shit, much better not to be in the shit at all.
Most of the advantages of pre reformation Catholicism came from the fact that very few people appear to have really believed in most of the bollocks the church talked about and society had corrupted (or in my view improved) most of the teachings of the church to be less moralistic and more practical (A quick scan throught the Canterbury Tales shows that)
Exactly, and the Chaucerian humour was typical and refreshing.
Do you like Dario Fo? He reproduced the Mistero Buffo dramas, popular in Italy. Not to mention the Decameron, and earlier, in the 11th century, the Carmina Burana, performed by students to let off steam: spoofing the Liturgy and Mass. (Harmonia Mundi released these in the 1970s).
England lost the majority of its medieval literature, music, science and art. The medieval churches here are mere grey shells. Alison Weir points out the sheer splendour and kaleidoscope of colour that were the buildings, inside and out, of medieval England. Archaeology at Dover Castle has revealed the preponderance of bright colours preferred, far from the conventional image drawn from mere ruins.
If harvests were good, the peasantry ate well and lived well, and enjoyed ample leisure – unlike the misery of post-Reformation to 20th century wage-slaves ever could.
The Church provided hospital care and herbal knowledge was far advanced.With the Reformation comes the end of ribaldry where religion is concerned. Calvinism takes the new gravity to its extreme, and in Scotland in the 17th century establishes the most vicious of all women-hating regimes. Ranterism rebels against the puritan strictures which however intensify as Britain is isolated from the mainland of Europe and evolves a sickening insular patriotism.
Meanwhile the Council of Trent bourgeoisifies the Roman Church, which becomes a mirror image of its protestant rivals.
So in effect your point that the development of capitalism without the reformation (using the example of Spain, France, Italy) is wrong, because the post reformation Catholic church in these countries was not the same church?
No. The specific case of England is unique in that it separated England from the mainstream of European culture.
The rise of the bourgeoisie in Europe also necessitated church reform, with “national churches” (Gallicanism in France; a severely autonomous church in Spain which had its own right to appoint bishops irrespective of Rome and with a national, separate, Inquisition whose main loyalty was to the king), but these national churches, although autonomous, did not break with Rome.
Similar to England the Lutheran states developed separately, but in Germany they became isolated and served a reactionary purpose, lengthening feudalism, rather than the bourgeois revolutionary purpose English protestantism served.
The Council of Trent streamlining of the Roman Church as a whole made it suitable to the bourgeoisie, apart from Calvinist minorities, on the continent – and remember, Italy and Spain were more advanced economically at the end of the Middle Ages than was England.The Council of Trent did not begin until ten years after Henry VIII’s break with Rome, and wasn’t completed until twenty years after that.
Count yourselves lucky a Catholic education gave you an historical awareness and a good sound schooling which enabled you to have thought processes which led you to socialism.
What does a poor boy born in the American Bible belt have, with his elders just shouting JESUS in his ear and with no awareness of any history, science, geography or whatever?Count yourselves lucky a Catholic education gave you an historical awareness and a good sound schooling which enabled you to have thought processes which led you to socialism.
That is nonsense by the way.
What ‘eventually’ led me to socialism was oral history at my grandparents knees about the great slaughter of WW1, the Calton weavers and actual personal lived experience as a worker union member, engaged in and trying to make sense of the class struggle and sectarian reinforcement of both catholic and protestent prejudice which undermined the lessons of the class struggle.
Fair enough.
Just making the point that Catholic schools have a good reputation re: the classics, the humanities and literacy. If one has other sources for this, then good. Likewise, my father, like your grandparents, was one of the last in a generation that still produced the self-educated thinking person, who did not depend on the state school system for their education, which most do today. A home life rich in books is invaluable. I count myself very fortunate in that.
Yes similarly I was introduced to old classics like Dickens and Twain by my grandmother but the Victorian slums were still very much in evidence all around me in the east end of Glasgow.
..but education in both Catholic and Protestant schools is for work.
The fact of some ‘better’ state schools regardless of their religious labels obscures the churning out of ‘specialist’ working class wageslaves with “notions of upperosity” (O’Casey) as some more of them are in the professions or have gone on to university brain washing and regard themselves as middle class.
You don’t half talk a lot of baloney sometimes.
‘Count yourselves lucky a Catholic education gave you an historical awareness and a good sound schooling which enabled you to have thought processes which led you to socialism.’
I believe there is more ‘historical’ evidence for the existence of King Arthur than there is for Jesus Christ. I don’t know any socialists who believe a ‘Catholic’ education, whether their own or others, enabled ‘thought processes leading them to socialism’.
I just mean a good grounding in the humanities and the classics gives one the tools for analytical and reflective thought, which is hardly the case for most today.
I’m not saying it leads people to become socialists, but it gives them mental disciplines they should be thankful for.My father took me to bookshops.
Another father on the bus was teaching his little boy to shout football slogans. I wondered what mental tools he was being given.You are right that most do not, especially today, make good use of the tools they have been given, and are deluded by the business culture and status culture of the “more favoured” among the wage slaves. But a socialist friend of my father’s was thankful for his Catholic college education. As for me, i’m thankful both for my father, and also for the old-fashioned private school I went to – upon reflection.
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