Christian Discussion Thread XI: Anicetus’ Revenge

[Neanderthaland]

It's hard to take them seriously when their evil fortress looks like something out of Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.

St. Basil’s is powerful, don’t underestimate it. (Unless you were talking about another church, most Orthodox churches are very colorful and pretty.)

Does it have the high ground?

[Lower Nubia]

@Lower Nubia
Yeah, the "linguistic motivation" is only an impression, something less of an hypothesis.
If i had seen some direct reference of it, i would have reported them.

I also find it disingenuous that political expediency is the main reason for princely conversion. When we look at the past, people converted out of genuine Christian and heartfelt faith.

Like the Hussites in Bohemia? Yeah, i don't buy it. There was a political drive. (the focus on "main" is misplaced, it isn't about main or lesser, but what supported the movement past the obvious normal outcome of separatist movements)

You don't have to buy it. The point of main or lesser is the reformation has a number of factors for its acceptance, however, some factors are more important. Labelling political motivation as a factor without guaging its importance as a factor is meaningless.

No different from how Nestorious was welcomed by the Church of the East in the neo-Persian empire, which was in rivality with the Roman empire, from which Nestorious had been banned.

That example doesn't prove your point though. The Sassanids were not Christian, and had no vested interest in whether one sect was "true" over the other. Allowing it to be manipulated to suit Sassanid interests, without fear of meddling in the "truth" because all of Christianity was "wrong" anyway.

Why must we conclude this? There have been many periods in time when leaving the Church would of been politicaly tactful, the investiture crises’ is an example, the anti-pope controversies.

It's a matter of occasion.
Luther and others, before and after, starting their own movement isn't something new either, nor unique, all previous movements eventually labelled as heretical did the same. They started from some founder, they found their niche of first supporters, then grew wider.

Except, Luther was different, or at least the time he arrived was. His movements effects remain today. Lollardy, Waldensianism, Hussites, Anabaptists, Zwinglism, they exist today, but they fizzled out, to the point of lacking relevancy, and they are not nearly the movements you should be crediting them too here.

Why was Luther successful? A number of factors, a major one was the printing press, but the printing press doesn't persuade, the content to print was as important as the print itself, and the catalyst? Widespread hypocrisy, contradiction, and corruption in the Church and importantly... Evident to everyone in real, material, ways. Something not even the Saeculum Obscurum did was take money from the poor to such a degree. Luther's argument was simple and persuasive. Another reason? State support. Nobody denies a movement requires state support to remain protected. The question at hand is why did rulers convert? Assuming it's primarily political is disingenuous - it removes the real heartfelt reaction to the reformation, making it out that Protestantism survived because rulers were greedy, or selfish. Plenty of realms had dispute with the Papacy at the time in real political times, but did not convert - Venice and France are examples - even with France's large protestant populations.

That is a separate matter from what supported those movements past the critical point where: either they lose steam into irrelevancy, or get crushed by other forces. (not only the catholic church on heretics, the muslims and the Ming dynasty did a number on the Church of the East)

Luther created the occasion, to be acted on. In a time where the desire to act on any opportunity was getting higher.

Luther didn't create the occasion, the Catholic Church did. Luther just pointed at the rot, and made a fuss - everyone could see the rot, but Luther complained about it. Additionally, nobody denies the necessity of a state for the survival of a group. It's about why those states (princes) converted. I contend that the majority converted because they genuinely believed Luther's position as authentic, and true.

The Church of England was somehow less corrupt than Rome

That's laughable. Did that book also mention how the "Supreme Head of the Church of England", King Henry VIII introduced the witch hunts with the Witchcraft Act 1542?
(Church of England, Separated from: Roman Catholic Church (1534) )
(Jewel's Apologia ecclesiae Anglicanae (the Apology of the Anglican Church), published in 1562; as references)

I didn't say it was without corruption. I said it was less corrupt than the Catholic Church. Which it was. There were provisions on priests that far outstripped Catholic measures at the time. Specifically proper education, Indeed, English priests were considered an English wonder of the world for their quality in that regard. Additionally, the 1542 Witchcraft Act was repealed in 1547. While the 1563 Witchcraft Act only tried "153" witches - who would of likely been tried for homicide anyway. The obvious counter is Bloody Mary killed way more than that to the point that even English Catholic's didn't want a Catholic monarch for a while.

Rome’s position that without the Pope, these Church’s would descend into Anarchy
Ironically, the Church of England did become flippant on doctrine, 150-200 years after the Apology, the book has now aged like milk to a modern reader for that fact.

Have you looked at how many different protestant "brands" exist, lately?

I literally say:

"the book has now aged like milk to a modern reader for that fact."

The books premise and statement at the time was correct. I can't expect John Jewel to read the future. I'd like to point out that the majority of denominations increased exponentially in the 18th-19th century... 200-300 years after the reformation. So John Jewel would be correct for a couple centuries.

If it isn't clear, that division is the anarchy which was talked about, no one said it'll happen the next day. But if you are a church with the mandate to be eternal until the end of the world, disintegrating after some decades or even some centuries, still counts as a failure.

This isn't the conversation. The conversation is: "some factors that made the reformation successful, and how the states adopted that reformation".

Nobody denies that the premise: "The Bible is the primary authority - the Church is second" is going to be a buffet for later individual interpretation.

The Anglican church maintained the most integrity among all protestantism, which isn't surprising when you consider the genesis of it, compared to other protestant churches. They are nothing alike. The Church of England didn't rewrite itself, nor did it trash all of its structure, right from the start.

Cheers, but no. Anglicanism returned to an integrity starting with the tractarians. Until then it may be considered Reformed Episcopacy, just, before then the latitudinarians were very prominent and they couldn't even be bothered to be adamant on doctrine, and liturgy - lazy reformed episcopacy... Which is way worse than Episcopal Lutheranism. Anglicanism is lucky in that return to orthodoxy, cheers Newman. You traitor.

To make a metaphor:
Whereas the protestant churches, like the ones of Luther, did move out of the catholic house and built a dirt house with sticks in the courtyard. A fuckton of little shacks in the courtyard.
The Church of England instead did isolate itself in their own room, and locked the door.
The quality of life of the buildings they reside in, is quite different between the two.

Man, i'm liking a lot that allegory, i'll call it the christian village.

I'd say the Church of England built a mud hut. Fortunately, everyone got bored of the mudhut, the tractarians threw a three legged stool through the window of the Catholic house - everyone piled in through the window and then we locked the door to the room. Every now and then the door opens to let someone into the Catholic house, or a Catholic into the Anglican room, or people jump out or in the window.

[Luminesa]

St. Basil’s is powerful, don’t underestimate it. (Unless you were talking about another church, most Orthodox churches are very colorful and pretty.)

Does it have the high ground?

If you stand at the top of it, yes.

[Neanderthaland]

Does it have the high ground?

If you stand at the top of it, yes.

I imagine standing on top of St. Basil's looking down would be so disorienting as to negate any advantage. Like fighting while looking through a kaleidoscope and high on LSD.

[New Visayan Islands]

Man, i'm liking a lot that allegory, i'll call it the christian village.

The Village Hidden in Christ?

[State of Turelisa]

Scripture supports the five points of Calvinism.


TOTAL DEPRAVITY

No man can come unto me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him
JOHN 6:33

UNCONDITIONAL ELECTION

For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth; ROMANS 9:11
Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth. ROMANS 9:18
Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour? ROMANS 9:21
But ye believe not, because ye are not of my sheep,
as I said unto you.
JOHN 10:26

LIMITED ATONEMENT

Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood.
ACTS 20:28

IRRESISTIBLE GRACE

For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God EPHESIANS 2:8
No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day. JOHN 6:44
But by the grace of God I am what I am: and his grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain; but I laboured more abundantly than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.
1CORINTHIANS 15:10

PRESERVATION OF THE SAINTS

And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. JOHN 10:28
And this is the Father's will which hath sent me, that of all which he hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day
JOHN 6:39
Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ PHILIPPIANS 1:6

[Lower Nubia]

Scripture supports the five points of Calvinism.


TOTAL DEPRAVITY

No man can come unto me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him
JOHN 6:33

UNCONDITIONAL ELECTION

For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth; ROMANS 9:11
Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth. ROMANS 9:18
Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour? ROMANS 9:21
But ye believe not, because ye are not of my sheep,
as I said unto you.
JOHN 10:26

LIMITED ATONEMENT

Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood.
ACTS 20:28

IRRESISTIBLE GRACE

For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God EPHESIANS 2:8
No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day. JOHN 6:44
But by the grace of God I am what I am: and his grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain; but I laboured more abundantly than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.
1CORINTHIANS 15:10

PRESERVATION OF THE SAINTS

And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. JOHN 10:28
And this is the Father's will which hath sent me, that of all which he hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day
JOHN 6:39
Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ PHILIPPIANS 1:6

It was all so obvious it needed Calvin 1,526 years after Christ’s death to create a new Church to reveal the plain and obvious meaning of the Scripture here.

[Lost Memories]

I didn't say the Church of England was without corruption. I said it was less corrupt than the Catholic Church. Which it was. There were provisions on priests that far outstripped Catholic measures at the time. Specifically proper education, Indeed, English priests were considered an English wonder of the world for their quality in that regard.

Said by who? When? On the basis of what? How did they knew? What did "corruption" refer to there? What was the actual event/s labelled as "corrupt" ?
That looks like a nice echo chamber of praise and disinformation. Reformers praising themselves.

With some historical fact checking, it wouldn't be surprising if your "the real heartfelt reaction to the reformation" did turn out to be in fact, populism, based on disinformation.
Most of the anti-catholic cliches are already historically demonstrated as fabricated, or distorted out of their context, for political propaganda. But i honestly don't know if there has been some investigation yet over the veracity of the popular beliefs in germany, on which "the real heartfelt reaction to the reformation" was based on. It's something worth to look into.

It's the same as with the truth of God.
Really, the relation between truth and observation is the basis for dealing with truth. And arguably the basis for living in the world without being a gullible fool.
A single point of view isn't equal to the truth. Only when multiple different points of views coincide, then the composed image of truth can reasonably gain some value of veracity.

For most protestants, at their origin, and now, the "corruption of the church" is an act of faith. And actually part of their historical identity. Regardless of Truth. (or to aim lower, regardless of historical factuality and historical context)

[The Rich Port]

.... wait.... is there actually an Angel UFO conference?

Get in the robot, Tars.

Check mate atheists

[Lost Memories]

I've come across a quite interesting transciption of a presentation (supposedly happened in 2015) in preparation for the 500 years anniversary of the lutheran reformation of 2017.
It contains some interesting references which could deserve some checking, and gives a quick summary of the accepted historiography of the events between 1517 and 1519, from where comes the conflict started by Luther, and how it developed in those few years.
It's only 8 pages.

1517-2017: An Ecumenical Reflection on What We Are Commemorating
Michael Root
The Catholic University of America

Let me focus for most of the rest of this presentation on what we can agree occurred at the Reformation’s beginning, the events unleashed by Luther’s protest of Oct 31, 1517.
I use the word ‘unleashed’ deliberately, for a certain mismatch of action and effect occurs.
An unknown professor of theology at an undistinguished university circulates some theses for debate to his colleagues and sends them also with a cover letter to one or more bishops - and the unity of Western Christendom collapses.
Now, I have always thought very highly of the world-historical importance of the ideas put forward by theology professors, but something here calls for explanation.

summary

page 3
indulgences, the starting point
the evolution of indulgences: from a special event & fund raising for public utility projects, to substitution of penance & plain transaction

page 4
developments past the indulgences matter, 6 points:
1) popularity of the text of the 95 theses, printed and spread by fans
2) the catholic response focused right away on authority, not in a well served way
3) political interferences: The Elector of Saxomy, Frederik the Wise, protecting Luther, and obstacolating any examination
4) rush of judgement by the catholic authorities
something new i didn't knew:
August 1518, Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian complains to Rome that Luther's views were having "noxious" effects in Germany, and needs to be stopped.
(not referencing the theses, but an anonymous transciption of a sermon of Luther, on limits to excominication)
5) interview of Luther with cardinal Cajetan: failed opportunity to reconcile, or demonstration of impossibility of reconciliation because of biases
the debate further changed form

Historians know often way more than the people of the studied time knew, it shows here too.
"fog of war":
Catholic authorities did have only few texts of Luther, Cajetan tried to gather and understand as much as possible, but he still lacked Luther's lecture notes, now understood as important.
Luther didn't knew Archbishop Albrecht and Emperor Maximilian had denounced him to Rome.
Luther thought it had been the Dominicans to denounce him. Tetzel (the orator of indulgences in Germany) and Prieras (the first to publish an accusation of heresy) were Dominicans.
Luther didn't trust Cajetan since the start, because he was a Dominican too.

Luther claimed more times that his theses were just to start a debate, he wasn't committed to the theses when they were written.
But no one, both present people, both contemporary supporters or opponents, did read those as if he wasn't committed to them.

6) early 1519, pause of debate. But everything was already set in line of collision
Luther also had decided to refuse any compromise.

page 7
Cautionary notes from the speaker
1) the early origins of rupture are historically important, but they don't constitute present divisions
2) the current popular debate is not on a level of professional historical research, but still on the level of the big narratives about the last 8 centuries of christian history
the narrative of the age of obscurantism, followed by the evangelical clarity. Few scholars would explicitly sign on to that narrative today.

[Lower Nubia]

I didn't say the Church of England was without corruption. I said it was less corrupt than the Catholic Church. Which it was. There were provisions on priests that far outstripped Catholic measures at the time. Specifically proper education, Indeed, English priests were considered an English wonder of the world for their quality in that regard.

Said by who? When? On the basis of what? How did they knew? What did "corruption" refer to there? What was the actual event/s labelled as "corrupt" ?
That looks like a nice echo chamber of praise and disinformation. Reformers praising themselves.

It comes from: "The English Reformation by A.G. Dickens". I believe, though I have seen the phrase elsewhere and cannot remember where, I unfortunately don't have the book anymore - though I will get it again. In it he details the growing anti-clericalism in England thanks to a number of clergy scandals throughout the 1500-1520's, including covering up a "suicide" of a merchant who had a dispute with, I believe, the bishop of London. Though, it's been a while - so I may be mistaken on which bishop it was.

With some historical fact checking, it wouldn't be surprising if your "the real heartfelt reaction to the reformation" did turn out to be in fact, populism, based on disinformation.

It is true. Contrary to popular belief even the nobility cared for their eternal souls. It's actually a stretch to say they converted at their known peril of their souls for political motivation. It's far more reasonable to believe that a vast majority had a genuine belief in the truth presented to them. It's clear your use of "populism" here is an attempt to discredit their reasoning, as if they came to the position through emotion, and not quality of mind. The Catholic Church at the time presented no ample refutation of the reformers until the time of the Council of Trent. Even though Luther was outmatched by the works during the time of Trent, for England, John Jewel's Apology was not, and indeed had matched the discourse coming out of Trent, the "great Controversy", a period of refutation against the work and later defences, notably at Louvain, was unsatisfactory to dislodge the works esteemed reputation.

Today though, the Apology has very much "aged like milk" regarding certain Parts. Such as the Jewel's refutation of anarchy and rebellion in kingdoms caused by Heresy, and the unity of English Clergy on Doctrine.

Most of the anti-catholic cliches are already historically demonstrated as fabricated, or distorted out of their context, for political propaganda. But i honestly don't know if there has been some investigation yet over the veracity of the popular beliefs in germany, on which "the real heartfelt reaction to the reformation" was based on. It's something worth to look into.

It's clear you're reasoning out the realities of the failures of the Catholic Church during the reformation. The cliches and stereotypes are born out of a universal and real truth. The fabrication of relics, pilgramage sites, hypocrisy of clergy in regards to sinful action (noted above), and that same clergy's poor education, had born out a heavy anti-clericalism across England. ('Oxford History of Christian Worship', 'The English Reformation', and 'A History of Christianity'.)

It's the same as with the truth of God.
Really, the relation between truth and observation is the basis for dealing with truth. And arguably the basis for living in the world without being a gullible fool.
A single point of view isn't equal to the truth. Only when multiple different points of views coincide, then the composed image of truth can reasonably gain some value of veracity.

I'm not sure what this has to do with anything.

For most protestants, at their origin, and now, the "corruption of the church" is an act of faith. And actually part of their historical identity. Regardless of Truth. (or to aim lower, regardless of historical factuality and historical context)

I'm sorry if you've argued your way into the the belief that this corruption did not exist from which the reformers acted. It's a simple fact, from covering up murders, to faking relics, to having priestly concubines, to seducing women in confessionals, to bribery, and to power politics etc.. etc... these actions were noticeable in England, and documented (A History of Christianity - Diarmaid MacCulloch) to the point that even the Catholics had become haggared by their poor clergy.

Indeed, as has been noted, if the English Catholic clergy had been a competent witness it's unlikely the anti-clericalism of the 1520's would of allowed such a public acceptance of the new Church.

[Luminesa]

Get in the robot, Tars.

Check mate atheists

The cover actually looks interesting enough that I might almost buy it.

[Talvezout]

Not to stir some drama here, but with all the talk about the possible SCOTUS pick and possible rise of anti-Catholicism on the Left, is it weird I've experienced more anti-Catholic hatred from fellow Christians then nonreligious people?

Like I remember in middle school people from my Catholic middle school were banned from a nearby Lutheran school because we were "ungodly".

[Tarsonis]

Not to stir some drama here, but with all the talk about the possible SCOTUS pick and possible rise of anti-Catholicism on the Left, is it weird I've experienced more anti-Catholic hatred from fellow Christians then nonreligious people?

Like I remember in middle school people from my Catholic middle school were banned from a nearby Lutheran school because we were "ungodly".

Not weird at all. Quite the contrary, its entirely ordinary that you would receive more bigotry from your fellow Christians, than from non-Christians.

It's a phenomenon called the Narcissism of Small Differences. It's why I get along better with socially progressive people than I do conservatives despite being center right, because the more similar you are the more obtrusive the differences are. It's simple tribalism

[Lost Memories]

@Lower Nubia
I'll get to you in a later time. Anyway no, i don't claim that there were no abuses.


I've found a very interesting book about the first century post reformation in Germany, which addresses the "the real heartfelt reaction to the reformation"
but before that, a introduction of sorts.

What was the price of a printing press at the time of Luther?

before the printing press:
books were valuable, only the rich or people with wealth could afford to have books
(and often only the rich and the clergy knew how to read)
paper had been a valuable resource too for a long time (more cheap than parchment, but still expensive)
so much that there are records of books being erased and written over because of scarcity of unused paper

What was the price of a printing press?
How much did it cost to operate a printing press?
What was the price of paper?

I don't know the answers about costs, but what could that mean for "the mass printing of the theses of Luther" ?
Those questions point at, who had the money to spend to print the theses?

about literacy, how many could read in 1520 in Germany?
how many could actually read the mass printed theses of luther?
who did announce the theses to the ones who couldn't read?
what was the essence of what was communicated between those who couldn't read?

literacy in 1520 was still very low, the first source i could find mentioned something more or less around the 10% of the population

about printed bibles in the 16th century in germany
what was the price of a printed bible in the 16th century?
less than a transcribed bible, but still too expensive for the populance
who bought the first printed bibles during the reformation?

"most printed bibles went to parish churches, pastor's libraries, purchased by governments, or bought with public funds by the clergy"
"prices of the printed bibles were high in the 16th century, "
https://www.jstor.org/stable/650697?seq=10

Protestantism and Literacy in Early Modern Germany
Richard Gawthrop and Gerald Strauss (1984)
https://www.jstor.org/stable/650697

Literacy and Society in the West, 1500-1850
Rab Houston (1983)
https://www.jstor.org/stable/4285275

Incombustible Luther: The Image of the Reformer in Early Modern Germany
R. W. Scribner (1986)
http://archives.evergreen.edu/webpages/ ... luther.pdf

Luther's House of Learning: Indoctrination of the Young in the German Reformation
Gerald Strauss (1978)
https://archive.org/details/20200508-lu ... 1/mode/2up


the history book of Gerald Strauss is the one more renowned of the listed texts, by citations according to google scholar
curiously, there is scarce and fragmented personal informations online about Gerald Strauss, no wiki page, only pieces here and there
but there is an association with a prize named after him https://sixteenthcentury.org/gerald-strauss-prize/#0

The book in question is:
Luther's House of Learning: Indoctrination of the Young in the German Reformation
Gerald Strauss (1978)

The picture it paints is very vivid and quite out of the common narrative, it's also apparently highly regarded even if it somehow faded into obscurity, odd combination.
Among all the details it reports, about the period between 1520 and something 1630 in Germany, in those elector states of the holy roman empire which did support protestantism, at the time Luther was trying to figure out how to manage the thing he started.
Among all the more tecnical details of church and state relations, there are quite a number of almost comical little details and little tales, here one as anticipation:

They rang church bells against storms and hail,
addressed Christian prayers to the devil,
used altar vessels to locate missing objects,
and crossed the border to Catholic regions where
obliging priests blessed their
herbs, roots, potions, and wands.
(this happened, after the failure of protestant universal education, half-spoilered)

p.1(pdf.10)
INTRODUCTION:
REFORMATION AND EDUCATION

In the history of education, the reformations of the sixteenth cen¬
tury hold an important place.
This familiar fact is not only supported
by a modern scholarly literature of formidable weight and volume, but
contemporary sources attest to it as well.

Schools grew in number and quality as a consequence of both the Protestant and the Catholic Reformations.
They profited—some more, some less—from the energetic scholarship of
two generations of European humanists whose enthusiasm
for teaching touched every level. Instruction became more professional.
Orderly bureaucratic processes brought about a desirable measure of
coordination among schools and universities.
A vigorous sense of purpose imparted fresh impetus. Religious goals
and civic objectives combined to gather the ways of teaching and learn¬
ing in that web of ecclesiastical and secular administrative procedures
that is the true image of the established Reformation.

These matters, though well known, are not without their unanswered questions.
How innovative were the reformers as educators?
What substantial gains, if any, did Protestant schools and universities
add to the centuries-old curriculum of the better institutions of primary,
secondary, and higher learning?
How important was the reformers’role in the extension of popular education?
What was their effect on literacy?
Was schooling still repressive, despite Luther’s outbursts
against pedants who kept their pupils “locked up in a kind of dungeon’’?
Did the evangelical revival broaden public respect for learning,
and, if so, did this change in the climate of education touch the system
where it really counted: the attitude of the pupil?

In their approach to
these and similar questions, historians of education have usually concearned
themselves with the mechanics of their subject, the formal
institutions and activities of instruction: schools founded or reformed,
teachers appointed, curricula and textbooks, fees and salaries, school
attendance, and so on. All these tell us much about what was taught
and learned, and why, but by no means do they say everything.

There is another side to educational thought and practice in the
sixteenth century that has not had its share of attention.
The Reformation would have been less than the great experiment in renewal and
restoration it was had it failed to set its educational goals far beyond
merely teaching good Latin, sound learning, and the principles of the
evangelical faith to small groups of favored young men.
It did try to do more—and here the Lutheran Reformation in Germany is of particular
significance because it tried to do it first.

Not content with the limited goals of formal
instruction, they broadened their aims to include the population at
large: city dwellers, small-town folk, villagers.
To reach these ordinary
people, they devised instruments of indoctrination (in no pejorative
sense of that word) and developed techniques of conditioning (as they
must now be called), acting in what they conceived to be obedience to
the divine command to propagate God’s revealed truth and to show
their fellowmen how they could live by it.
Education, they believed,
was the best of pious works, and in this light they saw their own actions.

This enterprise is the subject of my book. With its highly proble¬
matic outcome it makes an absorbing story, and it reveals some of the
still-unexplored terrain of the German Reformation.

Involving the
highest ambitions, fondest hopes, and most energetic efforts of the re¬
formers, the story carries considerable emotional power as we pursue
it to its disheartening denouement.

Most of the leaders of the Lutheran
Reformation came to fear that their labors had failed. Their disap¬
pointment and their sense of despair can be most effectively explained
by setting them against the vaulting expectations of the movement’s
pristine years.


---
p.3
Wherever the Reformation was formally estab¬
lished (by government legislation always, no matter what the sources
of its original impulse), it solidified itself in institutions and procedures
that grew ever more rigid in the course of the sixteenth century.

Education was to take place in a setting of
fixed institutions governed by bureaucracies whose competence per¬
vaded entire domains, from capital to hamlets.

The acceptance of this constraint by Luther and other early re¬
formers represents a major concession to intractable reality.

His many remarks on teaching and learning show him arriving most reluc¬
tantly at the conclusion that voluntary effort, parental direction, and
community enterprise were weak reeds from which to construct a
vigorous educational program.
It caused him a good deal of pain to admit
the failure of his early conviction that a change of heart must pre¬
cede the imposition of doctrines and rules. ^ He never completely aban¬
doned his hope for an inward transformation of the individual through
the gospel. But as the events of the mid-1520s and 1530s overtook him
and his young movement, the fulfillment of this hope became ever more
distant.

Luther’s early ideas reflect his personal distaste for system and
uniformity in matters of religion. In the light of later developments
this is not without a touch of irony.

But in the early 1520s Luther be¬
lieved that a true evangelical renewal in individual and society could
come only from within the individual person and the singular Christian
community. He therefore recommended as a model (ein gemeyn
exempel) for Christian congregations the constitution of the town of
Leisnig in Saxony (drawn up with his assistance and published in 1523
with a vigorous preface by him), in which it is stated that:

“every house¬
holder and his wife shall be duty-bound to cause the wholesome, con¬
soling word of God to be preached to them, their children, and their
domestic servants, so that the gospel may be impressed [eingebildet]
on them for their betterment.”®

Although Christian education was pri¬
marily the responsibility of preachers, their sermons could not always
reach those who stood in greatest need of instruction: children and
simple people. Householders therefore had to do their part.

[...]
Luther’s emphasis on domestic instruction was shared by other re¬
formers. Johann Bugenhagen, whose influence on the Reformation in
northern Germany was second only to Luther’s, argued that “if we are
ever to produce able preachers for our country, parents must make a
beginning by teaching good discipline in their homes, as God com-
mands them to “Good discipline,’* meaning Christian instruc¬
tion, demanded more than memorizing prayers. Luther always insisted
on the need for understanding, for “meaning it.” Don’t speak the words
“coldly, without reflection,’’ he said.

[...]
A touch of uneasiness
creeps into Luther’s early assertions of these views. What, he asks, if
children fail to respond? What if householders lack the necessary skill,
or are ignorant or indifferent? Still, he seems as long as possible to
have held to his conviction that home was the best place for training
the young in their Christian obligations and in the tasks they were to
perform in life.l


---
p.5
The church needed
pastors and theologians; governments required lawyers, bureaucrats,
geographers, and medical doctors. The traditional subjects of the triv-
ium and quadrivium were retained for their conventional purpose, to
prepare the able-minded for higher learning toward advanced degrees.
In the early 1520s the reformers imagined that popular support and
governmental goodwill would suffice to promote_a voluntary and lo¬
cally supported program of Christian and academic instruction.

Events soon proved them wrong. Whatever zeal for the support of
education may have been aroused by the ej^citement attending the first
years of the Reformation, it rapidly evaporated as burghers, and the
town councils representing them, discovered the cost. With sources of
money drying up, teachers departed and pupils played truant as their
families began to doubt the value of formal schooling.*

In 1524 Luther
and his colleagues saw schools approaching a state of desolation.*® It
was also becoming manifest that parents were neglecting their duty of
supervising Christian upbringing in their homes. Some lacked the
piety for it, others did not seem to concern themselves about their off¬
spring’s welfare, were too busy, or did not know how to do it.^® Luther
began to doubt the practical applicability of his principle that the
parental hearth was the best place for Christian nurture.^

Even more
destructive to his early ideas about education were the religious and
social disturbances of 1521-25: the troubles in Wittenberg, the knights* re¬
volt, the peasant uprisings. Clearly, people were not yet prepared to
receive the saving message of the gospel.

They could not be trusted
with the new freedom Luther had offered them, meticulously defined,
or so he thought, in his treatise on Christian liberty of 1520. Where so
many mental aberrations led to such widespread tumult, ohly firm con¬
trol could restore and preserve order. A change of emphasis suddenly
becomes apparent in the reformers’ thoughts on education, and a stri¬
dent tone betrays their deep anxiety over the drift of events.

[...]
Luther gave his support to this shift of educational authority from
private to public jurisdiction, from voluntary to compulsory participa¬
tion, and from associative to institutional organization. ‘‘What if
parents don’t do it [i.e., teach their children the elements of faith]? Who
is going to do it then? Will it remain undone and children left aban¬
doned? If so, what excuse will governments offer for themselves?”^7
Like Melanchthon, Luther blamed the decline of schools on the spread
of a know-nothing ideology among the people.


p.9
Bugenhagen described the
institutions he founded in these very terms. They are places, he writes,
where “our poor ignorant youths are taught the Ten Commandments,
the Apostles’ Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the sacraments with as
much explanation as they need to know; where they learn to sing Latin
psalms and read Scripture in Latin. . . . And they study these subjects
not for themselves alone, but to the end that some among them may
grow up to be preachers, jurists, physicians, or God-fearing, hard-work¬
ing, honest, obedient, content, cheerful, learned, peaceful burghers
who, in their turn, will bring their children up to be God-fearing Chris¬
tians. And so it will continue from generation to generation.’*'*

Indoctrinating society at large was not yet the main goal. A com¬
petent professional pastoral and instructional cadre first had to be
trained.
Luther’s hopes for the “priesthood” of all believers and the
sanctity of all worldly callings: the diffusion throughout society of a
Christian ethic based on intimate knowledge of Scripture.
Luther’^
catechisms of 1529 were to serve this broader pedagogical purpose, and^
he had high hopes for their juccess.'^

Events were to prove Luther’s confidence somewhat premature.
The results of a visitation in Electoral Saxony in 1528 were disappoint¬
ing. Elsewhere, too, signs of popular indifference were becoming pain¬
fully clear. As for the “peace and virtue” resulting from the acceptance
of his reformation, the evidence was, to say the least, ambiguous.

In any case, what did it mean to claim that someone had ‘‘accepted"
{angenommen) Luther^s reformation? Had he received it into his heart
or had it been imposed on him by political fiat? This was the dilemma,
first faced by Luther in the late 1520s, that was to keep his successors
enthralled for more than a century, now lifting their hopes, now throw¬
ing them into despair. Reacting to the events of these early years,
Luther too, veered from excited optimism, to deepest gloom.

But whether encouraged or despondent, he made it evident now, as did his
colleagues, that they no longer counted on individual effort and per¬
sonal zeal. Only dimly aware of the fateful consequences of their deci¬
sion, they welcomed the good offices of political authority and em¬
braced them as the most promising agent for accomplishing their
pedagogical objectives.


p.10
By the late 1520s, then, the ground had been prepared for estab¬
lishing political control over education.^

The political mentality characteristic of sixteenth-century rulers
found little to admire, and less to trust, in the teeming world of in¬
stincts and actions they tried to control.

All human creatures were selfish.
Left to themselves, to their natural impulses, they went their
several ways driven by self-love and swayed by passion, unstable, heed¬
less of the future, doing injury to themselves and their kind.

Holding
them in check and keeping society from falling to pieces called for
throttling their natural inclinations. This was the function of laws.
Laws touched highborn and low, rich and poor. They
entered every corner of life, ignoring distinctions between private and
public domains.

Backed by surveillance and enforcement, laws were
intended to regulate every action, to let no evasion go undetected and
no transgression unpunished.

Needless to say, governments were not nearly the successful
guardians of peace and order that their ambitions dictated.

Governing
was a frustrating and thankless task, and one gets the impression that
those who were charged with it gained little satisfaction from their
duties. This dyspeptic attitude goes some way toward explaining why
Protestant reformers received a ready hearing in so many council halls
and audience chambers.

In any case, princes and magistrates listened attentively as re¬
formers conveyed to them their hope that a system of improved schools^
would bring about a significant amelioration in individual and society.

No one saw a conflict in this fusion of religious and secular objectives.
Protestant reformers regarded it as a part of Christian education to
train people in the habits of patient and obedient citizenship. Rulers,
for their part, never doubted that the conscience of their subjects was
the legitimate business of the Christian state.

Preachers in Nuremberg, for example, urged the city’s
council to consider the use of coercion—‘‘as it used to be done under
the papacy”—to compel citizens to memorize the new catechism.^

Elsewhere it was said that, like a natural father attending to the raising
of his children, “government as a common father^^s should establish
and maintain schools in the great household of a territory or city.




CONSEQUENCES

p.250 (pdf.255)
Visitations
Lutherans took a justified pride in having revived the ancient
apostolic custom of “visiting”—that is to say, going to see, to inspect,
investigate, correct, and, if necessary, to punish (the word visitieren
suggests all these meanings)^—congregations, parish folk, church and
lay officials in their respective territories.


p.266 (pdf.271)
What folk could not hide, on the other hand, was their lack of
interest in the official religion, its doctrines, its formulations (especially
the catechism), and its ministers. This fact is simple to establish. People
either knew the catechism or they did not know it, and visitation
examinations revealed that overwhelmingly they did not. This apparent
indifference to the formal religion remained unchanged over the cen¬
tury.


p.273 (pdf.278)
Whatever the reasons, the fact of public aloofness tov^ard preachers
and gospel is indisputable, being demonstrated in visitation after
visitation. In 1578, “it [was] the common complaint everywhere [in
Saxony] that people, young and old, do not go to catechism sermons."^®
“The pastor reports that hardly anyone comes to church to hear him
preach the catechism and the weekday sermons.
And if they do come,
they run out again as soon as he starts preaching."^^ The superinten¬
dent of Boma rep)orted in 1578 that “it is the chief complaint of nearly
all pastors [in die city of Boma] that when they announce the cate¬
chism examination, no one will come to church.
The hired hands
would rather quit their places of service than let themselves be inter¬
rogated on their faith." To which the consistory added the telling
marginal comment that “we will never make an impression upon these
burghers^ [burgerschafi] and their servants until the elector issues a
direct order to the city council."

The report from Boma also showed
that “people drink and gamble during the time of divine service; in¬
deed, the councillors themselves sit in the taverns and the common
townsmen follow their example. No one seems to reprimand them for
missing church."^ In the superintendency of Meissen, in 1579, “no more
than six or eight householders out of a populous parish come to church
[on Sundays], regardless of ceaseless reminders and admonitions
from the pulpit, . . . nor can the pastor keep people from going to
sleep during the sermon, or from running out before the prayer and
the blessing

The same conditions were reported in the superinten¬
dency of Leipzig: “absenteeism from service ... no one punished for
it . . , children and adolescents avoiding the catechism; . . . they play
cards while the pastor preaches, and often they mock or mimic him
cruelly to his face; . . . cursing, blaspheming, hooliganism, and
fighting are common; . . . parents set their children bad examples by
refusing to go to service; . . . they enter church when the service is half
over, go at once to sleep, and run out again before the blessing is
given; . . . nobody joins in singing the hymn; it made my heart ache to
hear the pastor and the sexton singing all by themselves."^® “No one
here knows the catechism. The other day the pastor asked a sixteen-
year-old boy to give him the first commandment, but he did not know
it. When asked to name his maker, the boy answered that his father
was Hans Lindner, recently deceased."^

In 1579, a territorial diet, convened at Torgau to undertake church
and school reform in Saxony, acknowledged that “absenteeism from
the preaching of God’s word waxes daily in our land. If this trend con¬
tinues, people will eventually revert to a savage, beastly life."

But nothing seemed capable of reversing this trend. “Everyone, young
and old, has now fallen into such lax habits and such a false sense of
security [sicherheit],'* wrote the Leipzig theologian and church ad¬
ministrator Heinrich Salmuth in 1581, “that they think themselves too
good for the catechism.*’^
When questioned on their reasons for not
going to church, “the people answer arrogantly that ‘the Turk and the
pope are not doing us any harm.’

A pastor in Seifersdorf, in the
superintendency of Dresden, complained that it usually took an hour’s
bell ringing and another hour’s solitary singing to collect enough
people to commence the service.®®
In Senftenberg “not one out of a
hundred comes to the afternoon service.”®^ Again and again one
learns that the passing years brought no improvement.
From Heimsdorf near Borna, in 1581: “Every defect listed in past visitations is still
being observed here. . .. Threats and warnings are of no help, for people
regard them as old wives’ tales.*’®
From Zwickau: “All the old com¬
plaints are being repeated here and we have found them justified.”®®
And so on, with occasional good reports gratefully acknowledged, but
no signs of steady or lasting progress.®


Once in a while the clergy’s
bitter sense of frustration breaks through the bureaucratic formulas.
When visitors attacked the pastor in the town of Hartha for the poor
performance of his parishioners, he defended himself heatedly, saying:

that his parishioners are not angels, but sinful, frail, and in large part
malicious men and women (in this parish as, indeed, in the whole world)
who live and act against the Ten Commandments and the secular laws,
and who will neither listen to reason nor heed warnings. The congrega¬
tion, for its part, accuses the pastor of having insulted them from the
pulpit by calling them ‘the devil’s brood’; which words the pastor, in his
reply, justified by citing John 8 [44-47], saying that he had addressed
some (not all) of his parishioners in these words because of their inveterate
habit of missing church, because they despise the sacraments, and be¬
cause they lead an abominable life and will not listen to warnings.®

Clearly there was another side, that of the parishioners, to the general
picture the visitations conveyed of public apathy and malevolence. The
documents tend to muffle this side, but occasionally a voice escapes
from the cover of official disapprobation:

The pastor [in Lastau, superintendency Colditz] complains that his
auditors pay him no respect and are careless about going to church. But
his parishioners say that he always preaches too long, and often about
strange subjects, so that they cannot follow him. They say they would
like to have a postil read to them. When we put these complaints to the
pastor, he denied preaching too long (although he conceded that the
hand on his clock is not working properly) and submitted that his eyes
are too weak to allow him to read from the pulpit. He also asserts that he
is frequently obliged to admonish his auditors for their many vices, and
that they do not like to hear the truth.®

---

This disposition was taken down in 1617. After nearly a century of
institutional and educational reform in Saxony conditions were still
very far from satisfactory. Nor could honest churchmen see much
ground for hope even in the distant future. They knew that the quality
of pastoral service had improved, at least by and large.*’ The network
of vernacular and catechism schools covering most of the duchy must
have given them satisfaction.** But the public’s lack of response to
these benefits was unmistakable. In villages and small towns parents
sent their young to school only grudgingly.** Too tight-fisted to pay
the modest fee,** unwilling to release children from farm, house, or
shop for catechism study (while writing and reading proceeded at a
snail s pace),** they allowed their offspring to grow up, as one superin¬
tendent said, “like the dumb beasts of the field, without an inkling of
die word of God.’’*’ Neglected during their formative years, the yoLg
developed obtuse minds and recalcitrant habits, passing these, in their
turn, to the next generation. Authorities tried to break this vicious circle.
But th^ could Aink only of instruments that had already failed them:
more nprous visitations,** a six-stage method of dealing with offenders
from fadierly admonitions in private’’ to the synodial ban against
habitual deviants.** None of these devices helped. The visitation pioto-
cols of the mid-1600s in Saxony show no measurable departure from
the familiar defects listed in earlier reports.

In the region of Saxony governed independently (from 1572) by
the princes of Coburg matters stood no better. A general visitation
earned out there by Duke Johann Casimir shortly after he came of
revealed the usual apathy and disrespect among the popu¬
lace. They kept their distance from church; they made for the door on
hearing the first word of the sermon; they were rowdy in the yard
while se^ice was in progress; they gossiped maliciously behind the
pastors back and defied him to his face; they disregarded the laws
against Sabbath work, neglected their children’s religious instruction,
^rs^ and blasphemed, enjoyed gargantuan drinking bouts attended
by ‘swinish behavior,’’ and engaged in sorcery, soothsaying, and
magic-mongermg.

As usual, this dismal catalog concluded with the
ament that no threats, warnings, punishments, rebukes, or appeals
had made any impact on so insensible a race of people.** As in the rest
of Saxony, the fault in Coburg could not be laid to any lack of oppor-
tuniues to learn. Visitations in 1577, 1578, and 1580 showed that German
schools funcuoned in all the principality’s towns and in many of its
villages.** Visitors asked pastors “How competent are [schoolmasters]
and their assistants? ... Are they diligent or lazy? Do they keep good
isciphne in school? Do they teach the catechism and Christian
hymns?

To make certain that ministers were actually performing
their assigned task of supervision, visitors charged “some notable
citizens” with the duty of watching the clergy, and reporting derelic¬
tions to the superintendent.*® But the results in Coburg were as dis¬
appointing as elsewhere in Saxony.

---
Latin and German schools flourished also in the Protestant arch¬
bishopric of Magdeburg,*® but visitations conducted there front 1570
could demonstrate no connection between schooling and religious
understanding.
In a few places the indicadons gave ground for hopes.
Sixty peasants in one village could recite sections of the catechism,
some of them all five parts of it. "Those who live in villages where
school is held nearly always give better answers,” one visitor notrf in
1583.’®
But he himself suspected that this was an exception, a suspicion
that rested on good evidence, for the Magdeburg visitors had spent
two or three hours inspecting every village. “We have found epicureans
here,” they wrote in summary, "who hardly know a word of the cate¬
chism and never think about their salvation. Indeed several have let it
be known that it’s all the same to them whether we bury them in the
churchyard or elsewhere.”

When the visitors asked a random sampling
of villagers how they applied the Decalogue to their lives, it turned
out “that a great many of them did not know how to relate their sins
to the commandments, and most refused to admit that cursing, fornicat¬
ing, and being dead drunk count as sins.”

In part this situation could
be attributed to ineffective preachers.” The root cause, however, lay
elsewhere, in a human condition so fallen in its habits and so obtuse
in its senses that appeals and warnings could not penetrate:
"
Godlessness, open scorn for God’s word and doctrine, for the gosj^l
and the sacraments, contempt for pastors, disobedience, gross incivility
and defiance have so gained the upp)er hand over the common people in
this district [of Zinna, in the archbishopric], not to mention fornication,
adultery, and every other sort of vice, especially blaspheming, fraud and
deception, and swinish drinking, that it is not possible to give a sufficient
description of it.
"

Visitors were sore at heart as they watched their pastors waiting in
empty churches while people took their ease "under the linden tree, in
the tavern, or the gaming house,” deaf to the tolling of the bell.’* The
Brandenburg consistory’s verdict on such conduct as "a wild, disorderly,
Cyclopic nature and behavior”’* does not, in the light of Protestant
expectations of a transformed spiritual and moral life, seem excessive.

2
Despite such expressions of disappointment and frustration there
was no inclination in official Lutheran circles to abandon hope. Instead,
they took every small instance of success as a sign of a possible turning
point.’® Twenty years, even thirty, they reasoned, were not long enough
to eradicate the residuum of a thousand years of Roman perversion.”
Time was of the essence. In the face of mounting evidence to the con¬
trary, churchmen remained stubborn in their conviction that, over the
long run, catechism and sermon would accomplish their transforming
work in individual and society.
[...]
The duchy of Braunschweig-Wolfenbuttel’® had been made Prot¬
estant during occupation by the League of Schmalkald in 1542, re¬
catholicized in the late 1540s after the victory of Charles V in the
Schmalkaldic war, then turned Lutheran again in 1568 when Duke Julius
inherited the territory from his Catholic father and reintroduced the
Reformation on the model of the neighboring duchies of Kalenberg
and Luneburg. A fact-finding visitation launched in the year of Juliuses
accession unearthed evidence of pastoral incomp>etence so egregious
as to be scarcely believable.’
[...]
In this light, the apathy found to prevail among the
populace could cause no surprise.®^ But it did spur authorities to re¬
double their efforts.

---
Two decades after 1568
these reports still reflected a state of general desolation. People could
not be persuaded or browbeaten to go to service and catechism. At
most, two or three householders turned up, “and there the sexton
stands, all by himself, waiting in the empty church until in the end he
has to abandon the catechism."

Week-long drinking orgies were the
rule at Easter and Whitsun, also dancing and gambling on Sundays,
not to mention fornication, adultery, and horrible blaspheming to
which the entire population was addicted. In 1572 the visitors reported
that:

It is the greatest and most widespread complaint of all pastors here¬
abouts [the town of Barum] that people are too lazy to go to church. . . .
Nothing helps, neither pleas nor threats. And the same obstinacy exists
on weekdays, when the catechism is preached, and only the least part of
the parishioners come, so that the pastor preaches to an empty church.
... Is it any wonder that they respond poorly in examination and can give
no sensible account of the articles of the catechism? Even if you find
someone who can recite the words, . . . ask him who Christ is, or what sin
is; and he will not know it.®

In a few places the outlook was not quite so hopeless. But in the
district of Woldenberg, in 1586,

after the hymn had been sung and the congregation admonished, when
[the visitors] asked the people about the previous Sunday’s gospel read¬
ing, and whether they could repeat something from it, even a word or
two, they found not a single person among the adults or the young who
remembered anything. . . . When asked next what each man owes to Cae¬
sar and the government, and what he must give to God, there was not a
soul who could give an answer.®


-------- comment
on one side, it's sad to look the newly reformers trying for what they believe to be the right thing and failing hard
but on an other side, they seemed way to obsessed with memorization
what good is there in having memorized the names of the books of the old testament, or remembering the sermon of the previous week?
leaving aside that the ability of memorization the medieval priests did have, was the result of a lot of training, which the common people didn't have, so the request to have them memorize in the same way, was rather telling of how the reformed priests were out of touch with the populance
but leaving that aside, if even the populance had been able to memorize everything, would that have made them morally better? i have some doubts, being a good christian isn't about reciting the bible verse by verse, but it's about what you do in your life on earth, how do you come forth to the ones in need

if anything, it's a positive thing that the attempt of the reformers to coach the populance into obedient slaves for the elites failed miserably in face of human nature
people acting like people, if the face of an attempts of the reformed education/formation machine, is quite amusing though
---------

In 1590 the
parishioners of a large and well-to-do village in the district of Salzlieben-
halle ‘‘did not know who their redeemer and savior is.” Their pastor
vigorously denied blame for this extraordinary piece of ignorance.
It is the people’s fault, he said. They don’t want to go to church, and
where else should they learn their religion?®
The visitors conclude:
‘‘If people will not go to church more diligently in the future, we shall
be able to accomplish little with them.”®

-------- comment
Strauss was quite right in his premise, before starting this elencation of reports of the protestant janitors of the populance
there is a gold mine in those documents, and also lots of pearls

if you decide to reinvent the wheel, you'll also have to be the donkey of your cart
--------

Even allowing for the many doctrinal shifts in Wolfenbuttel in
the middle of the century, which older people could still recall in the
1590s, it is difficult to account for such behavior except as the expres¬
sion of an utter lack of concern with the formal religion and the
obligations imposed by it. Duke Julius and his successor took pains
to improve religious and academic schooling in the principality,®® but
their best efforts were defeated by the general lack of interest.

In the
neighboring duchy of Braunschweig-Grubenhagen, where the Refor¬
mation had been introduced as early as 1532 and institutionalized in
1544,®^ visitations in the 1580s tell an identical story. Indeed, so unedify¬
ing was the information elicited by the questioning that Superintendent
Schellhammer feared ‘‘that the visitations themselves will in the end
become an object of ridicule among the people here.”®

Many churches
are empty on Sundays, Schellhammer reported, schools go unattended,
and no one wants to learn the catechism.®^ ‘In nearly every parish,*'
he wrote, ‘T heard the complaint that people over eighteen years of
age are embarrassed by the catechism and will not attend lessons.**®
He found one man who could say the Lord’s Prayer in Latin but did
not know what the words meant.®

The superintendent appended the
usual list of depravities common among the people: habitual drunken¬
ness (including brandy-drinking in church),®® gaming, blasphemy,
whoring, and magic-mongering, the latter an all-pervasive practice
but difficult to trace to its perpetrators “because people are thick as
thieves with each other in these villages, and no one wants to tell on
his neighbor.'*®’

This situation had not changed by the second decade
of the seventeenth century.®

Children could sometimes say their cate¬
chism, and schools seemed to be better attended in 1617 than they had
been in 1579. But the pity of it was that by the time they grew up people
forgot all they had learned. As a pastor in Kalenberg told the visitor:
“in cases where we are sure that a child knew his catechism years ago,
we find out that by the time he had grown up he remembers nothing
of it.**®® This discovery was made nearly everywhere.^®

---
When Duke Julius of Wolfenbiittel inherited the duchy of Kalen¬
berg in 1584, he prepared there an uncompromising inspection of both
clergy and laity. As has been shown in the preceding chapter, this
visitation was principally designed to expose and remedy clerical in¬
competence.

The transcripts of the visitors' long sessions with
hundreds of ministers*®^ are dramatic documents.
Only the totally
uninformed were summarily excused. Of the rest, none was allowed
to pass with evasive or confused answers. Turning the pages of the pro¬
tocols today, one can still imagine these wretched pastors squirming as
questions of increasing complexity and, quite often, distincdy un¬
friendly tone rained down upon them.

The doctrine of the Trinity
gave them no end of trouble.
Many were at a loss to show how inherited
sin was passed to all men.
The problem of the will confounded them utterly.

Few respondents could rebut contrary arguments. When chal¬
lenged, they resorted to mere repetition, or else fell silent: ”tacet,**
as the protocol keepers wrote in many cases:
‘Can man exercise his
free will in spiritual things?’ ‘No one can do it with his own powers.'
‘Prove this from God’s word.’ Tacet, . . . ‘Show that we are justified
by grace, and not by works.* Tacet. . . . ‘To what end must we do good
works?* ‘Not for our own good.* ‘This is no answer. Prove that we must
do them for the honor of God.* TaceL”^

---
Universities and seminaries were able to raise the standard of
clerical performance in the course of the following decades. But the
public did not keep step. '"Our pastors would be glad to do what is
demanded of them/* wrote a Kalenberg superintendent in 1628, “if only
people would go to church.**^
He continued: “Seeing that everyone
grows more wicked now from year to year, we must call on the secular
authorities to support us in our holy office.**^®® Collaboration between
church and state was, of course, the first and lasting objective of all
visitations and the decrees issuing from them.

The government imposed severe punishments, but they brought no
results. Anyone found sitting in a tavern after the church bell had
ceased ringing was fined, as was the offending landlord.**** Sorcery
was a capital offense.*** But all this was of no avail.

But little changed in the course of years, and the authorities*
attempt to explain their failure by blaming it on Anabaptists and Cal¬
vinists in their midst carries little conviction in the face of the universal
drinking, whoring, and blaspheming detailed in the protocols.*

----
Even a resolute organization could not overcome determined public resistance.

[...]
The same documents should have convinced officials that school
and catechism could not automatically accomplish the hoped-for reform
of private and public religion. Schooling was available nearly every¬
where in the Brunswick duchies in the 1560s and 1570s, Most villages
kept a sexton’s school for reading, writing, and catechism; or, at the
very least, “the pastor instructs several boys,” that is to say, those
whose parents could spare them and wished them to learn. But in fact
children were being kept out of school either by poverty or by their
parents’ resistance to enforced education,”^ or else they were re¬
moved “as soon as they have gained a smattering of writing and read¬
ing.”

---
Apart from the sons of the well-to-do, only boys (and never any
girls) who received stipends remained at school long enough to enjoy
the molding influence of doctrine and discipline.^^® The work of these
privileged pupils was often highly satisfactory. In the salt-mining town
of Zellerfeld, in Grubenhagen, for example, visitors “went to the
school, where the rector first gave us a Latin oration, after which he
examined the older pupils in their [Latin] catechism, Greek Gospels,
. . . Terence, and other authors while his assistant examined the younger
boys and presented their writing and exercise books. And they all
passed admirably,’’^

In major cities—Braunschweig, Hannover^^e—
excellent gymnasiums and Latin schools provided sound instruction.
As late as the third quarter of the sixteenth century, these elite schools
were the overriding educational concern of territorial and municipal
authorities,'^^ as has been seen. The instruction of the general public
was another matter.

Opportunities to absorb the rudiments of the
evangelical faith were not lacking; but there must have been large
numbers of youngsters who never crossed the threshold of a school.

How, for example, could one persuade boys who worked in the salt
mines in Grubenhagen to go to catechism on Sunday afternoons?

For Saxony, too, as has been seen, copious evidence suggests that learning
opportunities existed throughout the duchy.
But the point is that
although elite schools produced able ministers, and many children
acquired in their local schools or from their catechism teachers a
smattering of religious education, very little of this transferred itself
to the general adult population, on whose everyday lives and thoughts
the formal religion appears to have made scarcely an impact.

---
Distinctions between rich and poor do not fully explain this general
failure of the Lutheran program of indoctrination.

Again and again
visitors noted that children forgot what they had learned in school the
moment they left it. This, of course, is the most ubiquitous complaint
of all. "'Does it not cry to high heaven,'" wrote the superintendent of
Schleswig-Holstein from an inspection journey in 1639, “to observe
how much thought they give to their domestic affairs and matters of
daily life, and how keenly they keep them in mind, and then to see how
they have forgotten the essential and necessary points of faith and
salvation that we have so often and so distinctly inculcated [vorge-
keuet] and impressed [eingebildet] in them? How can our Lord God
tolerate such blindness?"

Over and again it was demonstrated
for Protestant churchmen that as soon as the business of life claimed
people’s attention, they seemed to give no further thought to spiritual
matters.

p.283 (pdf.288)






p.300 (pdf.305)
CONCLUSIONS

A deep-seated ambivalence toward their objective split the re¬
formers’ minds into opposing attitudes and impaired their pedagogical
program from its outset with fatal inner contradictions.
Torn between
their trust in the molding power of education and their admission that
the alteration of men’s nature was a task beyond human strength,
they strove for success in their endeavors while conceding the likeli¬
hood of defeat.
They believed in the sanctifying virtue of voluntary
actions taken by freely choosing Christians but allowed their distrust
of the individual sinner to justify his subjection to administrative con¬
trol and intellectual coercion.
Unwavering in their efforts to conform
men and women to the evangelical model, they recognized in their
failure the confirmation of their worst suspicions.

This debilitating oscillation was not merely the result of their
frustrating labors as pedagogues. It arose from their ambivalence
toward the Reformation itself, from the painful sense conveyed to
them in the 1520s and 1530s that somewhere the movement had taken
a wrong turn.
Luther himself blamed Thomas Muntzer for the missed
direction. “Muntzer did us great damage in the beginning,” he said of his
great antagonist. “The work of the gospel was going so well, but along
came Muntzer and spoiled it all.’’^
More plausibly, Aurifaber charged
in the 1560s that “politicians, lawyers, and courtiers” were taking over
from preachers and theologians, “directing religious matters like
worldly affairs”^ and building an institutional shell without Christian
substance.

After the middle of the sixteenth century little time seemed
left to set things right. A mood of foreboding invades the pronounce¬
ments of Protestant churchmen, and a sense of having to make haste
“in these dangerous, wicked, and last days of the world.**
As the signs
pointing to doomsday multiplied and the evidence mounted that men
would not listen to warnings, the reformers* innate inclination to ex¬
pect the worst became a dominant strain in their reading of events.

This reaction, in turn, drained them of their energies and kept them
from responding imaginatively to the deteriorating situation.


[...]
This lack of resoluteness in the face of general defiance cannot
be understood without taking into account the extraordinary tenacity
of popular resistance to imposed doctrines and observances.

The strength of this opposition has been consistently underestimated in
traditional interpretations of the Protestant Reformation.
To sixteenth-century theologians, who were well aware of it, it was a source of last¬
ing anguish and daily dismay. Refusing to let political and church
powers browbeat them into abandoning age-old folk practices and folk
notions, people waged passive resistance by staying away from church
and ignoring its teachings. Only in the rarest of instances were au¬
thorities successful in overcoming their subjects’ tendency to withdraw.

Lacking respect for the ways of popular belief, churchmen felt no com¬
passion for the religious needs of ordinary people and gained no under¬
standing of their disinterest in the formulas of the official creed. Insensi¬
tive to the appeal of religious experiences and expressions differing
from their own orthodoxy, they treated deep-seated customs with con¬
tempt and intolerance.

[...]
Beliefs we now recognize as the ideological cement of
fraternal and kin associations in village and town they rejected as
shameful symptoms of ignorance and depravity. They condemned
time-honored traditions as relics of an outlived pagan and Catholic
past, a body of notions to be eradicated in favor of the uplifting precepts
of the new Protestant state churches.

Given this lack of comprehen¬
sion on the one hand, and their unquestioning self-righteousness on
the other, it is no wonder that churchmen could not gauge, much
less conquer, the massive opposition thwarting their policies almost
from the beginning.

The urban academic’s ingrained contempt for
peasantry and rural life seems to have made Protestant churchmen
obdurate to the physical constraints defining daily existence in small
town and countryside.

Visitation protocols cited instance after instance
of the burdens and perils faced by peasants nearly everywhere: forced
labor on Sundays, lack of adequate clothing against cold weather, farm¬
houses burglarized by vagrants while occupants attended church.
But to superintendents and theologians these hardships neither excused
nor explained the public’s indifference to church and doctrine. Nor
could they appreciate the vexation of villagers and small-town dwellers
over the reimposition of old tithe payments added to new fiscal respon¬
sibilities for the upkeep of churches, parsonages, and schools.

If the events of the 1520s had kindled in people’s
minds hopes for a change, the collapse of the peasant rebellions and
the suppression of urban uprisings had stifled these expectations: a
point driven home by strong-arm intervention carried out by all govern-^
ments, menacingly if ineffectually,®

Ignorant of the social and psychological
functions played in people’s lives by ancient cults, time-
honored associations, traditional beliefs, and received ways of coping
with daily existence, the Lutheran clergy tried with a heavy hand to
suppress these vestiges of a rejected past and supplant them with a
mandatory and uniform set of doctrines.

Against this alien code, ordinary people maintained a vigorous
religious subculture^® that seems to have gained strength and resilience
in proportion to the efforts of a combative Protestant establishment
to replace the permissive climate of medieval Catholicism with an
authoritarian creed.

Protestant visitation protocols convey a marvelously rich and detailed picture of this grass-roots
piety, the operative faith of rural and urban folk. Lutheran churchmen
had good reason to mistrust this autochthonous religion. They ful¬
minated against it as an ’’unchristian, pagan, idolatrous, frivolous,
fictitious and unfounded, lying, deceiving, seductive, ungodly, devil¬
ish” cult,^2 an overt breach of the commandments and the Apostles’
Creed.^

They also instructed visitors to probe in every parish for sooth¬
sayers, cunning women, crystal gazers, casters of spells, witches,
and other practitioners of forbidden arts. Yearly interrogations turned
up massive evidence of a proliferating undergrowth of magic practices
flourishing amid the doctrines and ceremonies of official Christianity.

Lay people rarely gave away much information about this secret level
of their private lives.^^ But clerics talked freely of it, venting their
frustration with the impossible job of sifting superstitious pagan and
medieval ingredients from evangelical elements in the religious prac¬
tice of their flock.

The mixture must have been maddening to conscientious pastors.

People said the Lord’s Prayer while casting lead to
tell fortunes.^
They gathered occult substances on Christian holidays
and invoked the names of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost to
protect chickens from hawks and humans from the evil eye.‘
They
rang church bells against storms and hail,^’ addressed Christian prayers
to the devil, used altar vessels to locate missing objects,^® and crossed
the border to Catholic regions where obliging priests blessed their
herbs, roots, potions, and wands.^
Segensprechen—pronouncing
charms and incantations, making signs and casting spells—was carried
on with the use of Christian and ancient Germanic formulas.
Village healers cured cattle of worms by spitting three times in appeal to the
Trinity.
Wise women called on God to bless the crystal in which they
saw the face of a thief.^
They concocted infusions of baptismal water
against bed-wetting and chanted gospel verses while curing or in¬
flicting an injury.

'There is no limit here to the use of superstitious
spells, both among those who say them and those who request them to
be said/’24 "Charms and spells are the custom here."25 “Many women
hereabouts say incantations."26 These are typical comments made
by pastors to visitation officials.

All over Germany visitation protocols record such phenomena. “Every
inhabitant here goes to the wise woman to obtain her help and coun¬
sel,” reported a visitor from a district in Brandenburg

With this underground network of wizards, cxystal-gazers, sooth¬
sayers, and wise women the church competed for the faith and alle¬
giance of its flock. It was an unequal struggle.^



LeRoy Ladurie's expla¬
nation of this '‘surge of obscurantism’* as a result, in part, of pastoral
neglect of isolated rural communities will not work for Gennany.*

Few
peasant hamlets were beyond the reach of Lutheran state churches,
whose officials regarded the survival of occult practices as a spur to
intervention. But their most intimidating threats went unheeded.
Sometimes offenders were fined or punished, more often they were
merely cautioned to turn to their parish priests rather than their cun¬
ning people. They promised to comply, but soon returned to their old
habits.

Rarely could authorities discover concrete details about these
obscure cults. "We asked the local peasants if they knew of any magi¬
cians, but they fell silent as soon as we put the question. They never re¬
veal anything, no matter how hard we press them.’’®

Clearly, people
believed in the effectiveness of spells and talismans. So did their clerical
mentors. The latter knew that occult lore was based on idolatry and
superstition, but experience told them that it worked. Its means were
unnatural and its effects offended the rational mind;*^ but with the
devil acting as instigator (as they saw it), nothing was impossible.®

This admission contributed to their resigned pessimism. The general
devotion to ancient cults, and the perseverance of people in defending
what they regarded as traditional rights and customs, locked Protes¬
tant church authorities in an endless battle for the loyalty and trust of
their flocks.®



In waging this struggle for people’s minds, the Protestant estab¬
lishment was severely hampered by two processes gradually trans¬
forming the official religion and its institutions.
First, creed and church
were falling victim to a process of bureaucratization that dried up the
movement’s original appeal and channeled it into routinized pro¬
cedures.
Second, Protestant theologians accommodated their teach¬
ings to the social groups dominating the milieu in which their church
functioned. Both developments contributed to the erosion of the
popular base.

Compulsory conformity to
stripped-down observances and rigid doctrines was replacing the
voluntary devotions of early Protestantism^® and the free-wheeling
participatory rites of late medieval Catholicism.®
Mandates and de¬
crees, surveillance and inspection tried to bring everyone to heel. This
uninviting attempt to substitute uniformity, routine, and obedience for
autonomy in the exercise of one's religion is sure to have breathed new
life into traditional forms of popular piety.


Alienation was further exacerbated by the class-oriented direction
of the Lutheran message. In their approach to learners, theologians
treated all ranks of the laity equally as Kinder^doctie children to be
taught and shaped. Not so when they defined the substance of what
they taught. There was nothing egalitarian about the social ethic of
Christian education.

As disseminated in sermons, catechisms,
tracts, hymns, Bible comments, and housefather books, the Protestant
message was pitched to the solid burgher. (=middle class capitalist)
From his life and work it
derived its values and images. Its religious thrust, and its utility in solv¬
ing problems, instilling confidence, and mitigating misfortune, was best
suited to the stable householder.

As for the great multitude of men and
women, they could have found little survival value in doctrines whose
framers made no attempt to integrate their precepts with the practical
needs and aspirations of plain people.


Lutheran theologians seem to have been oblivious to the limita¬
tions built into their message by its ties to a single segment of society.

Of course the pedagogical undertaking may not be the best vantage
point for judging the achievements of Protestantism.
If it was the
objective of the Reformation to complete the breaking up of the medi¬
eval church, it succeeded.
If its goal was to rationalize ecclesiastical
administration and coordinate it with the goals of the early modern
state, it definitely succeeded.
If it sought to channel the religious
energies of an intellectual elite, it was in large part successful.
But if
it was its central purpose to make people—all people—think, feel, and
act as Christians, to imbue them with a Christian mind-set, motivational
drive, and way of life, it failed.


I (lid not know, as I began my studies, whether, and to what
extent, the Lutheran Reformation succeeded or failed in its effort to
convert people to its beliefs. My study of the sources has convinced
me, however, that the burden of proof ought now at last to be placed
where it belongs: upon those who claim, or imply, or tacitly assume
that the Reformation in Germany aroused a widespread, meaningful,
and lasting response to its message.

Before 1530 this may well have
been the case, although even then the resonance was probably con¬
fined to a segment of the urban population. Later in the century one
finds mostly apathy.

The evidence of the visitation records leaves no
escape from this conclusion. But this evidence has not been assimilated
by Reformation historians; nor has it until now been linked to the
reformers’ early reliance on the power of pedagogy to effect a transfor¬
mation in their followers.
Only when this body of information has been
taken into account, and its implications fully explored, are we likely to
gain a balanced understanding of the Reformation and its reception
in society.

https://archive.org/details/20200508-lu ... 1/mode/2up
The tragic part, to the point of being almost comical, starts with the middle section named: Consequences

It's interesting to note that the huge report of Strauss brings some light on how the resurgence of the occult happened in protestant Germany, how the witch hunts in Germany and other protestant lands, originated. They would appear to have been a desperate attempt by the secular authorities (and probably also the reformers, since they mixed) to bring back some order and compliance from the population, which had very little respect for any form of authority, after the failure of the early reformation to reach their starting goals.

[Lost Memories]

Not to stir some drama here, but with all the talk about the possible SCOTUS pick and possible rise of anti-Catholicism on the Left, is it weird I've experienced more anti-Catholic hatred from fellow Christians then nonreligious people?

Like I remember in middle school people from my Catholic middle school were banned from a nearby Lutheran school because we were "ungodly".

It isn't odd, anti-catholicism is deep rooted into anglophone reformed christian culture. Sometimes people remember that as part of their identity.

[Aeritai]

Not to stir some drama here, but with all the talk about the possible SCOTUS pick and possible rise of anti-Catholicism on the Left, is it weird I've experienced more anti-Catholic hatred from fellow Christians then nonreligious people?

Like I remember in middle school people from my Catholic middle school were banned from a nearby Lutheran school because we were "ungodly".

That is very concerning to read there shouldn't be any anti-Catholicism in our Faith. We are all brothers and sisters in Christ we shouldn't hate each other.

[Lord Dominator]

Considering the current Democratic nominee is a practicing Catholic last I checked, I think the supposed rise of anti-Catholicism on the American Left is a tad overblown - I personally suspect that it has more to do with where the two parties have positioned themselves on the matter of public expression of religion and admittance of how your views are shaped by religion combined with the Catholic position on everything related to reproductive and LGBTQ+ issues being nowhere near the Democratic position on the same.

Edit: Or to be more general, from where I sit it seems more like issues the American left has with the American religious right than something with Catholics specifically.

[Lower Nubia]

Not to stir some drama here, but with all the talk about the possible SCOTUS pick and possible rise of anti-Catholicism on the Left, is it weird I've experienced more anti-Catholic hatred from fellow Christians then nonreligious people?

Like I remember in middle school people from my Catholic middle school were banned from a nearby Lutheran school because we were "ungodly".

I mean, she is crazy.

[Lower Nubia]

Considering the current Democratic nominee is a practicing Catholic last I checked, I think the supposed rise of anti-Catholicism on the American Left is a tad overblown - I personally suspect that it has more to do with where the two parties have positioned themselves on the matter of public expression of religion and admittance of how your views are shaped by religion combined with the Catholic position on everything related to reproductive and LGBTQ+ issues being nowhere near the Democratic position on the same.

Edit: Or to be more general, from where I sit it seems more like issues the American left has with the American religious right than something with Catholics specifically.

It is overblown. The target of the left* are Evangelicals, not Catholic’s, the left* won’t target Catholicism while Pope Francis speaks softly about the Environment, at least. Catholic’s are often disproportionately in positions of political and judicial power - the idea about “anti-Catholicism” is not a thing outside the Fundamentalist Baptist South and other Independent Church’s.

*The left of course is not some monolithic entity that’s coming for your rights.

[The Rich Port]

Not to stir some drama here, but with all the talk about the possible SCOTUS pick and possible rise of anti-Catholicism on the Left, is it weird I've experienced more anti-Catholic hatred from fellow Christians then nonreligious people?

Like I remember in middle school people from my Catholic middle school were banned from a nearby Lutheran school because we were "ungodly".

I mean, historically, it wasn't atheists who persecuted Irish people for practicing "Popery". As an ex-Catholic ex-conservative myself, atheists and liberal progressives saved my life when I lost my faith after the Molestation Scandals of the 2000s.

Blind faith in tradition and dogma dies hard, and it is nobody's fault but our own when we do not abandon it.

[Lower Nubia]

@Lower Nubia
I'll get to you in a later time. Anyway no, i don't claim that there were no abuses.


I've found a very interesting book about the first century post reformation in Germany, which addresses the "the real heartfelt reaction to the reformation"
but before that, a introduction of sorts.

What was the price of a printing press at the time of Luther?

before the printing press:
books were valuable, only the rich or people with wealth could afford to have books
(and often only the rich and the clergy knew how to read)
paper had been a valuable resource too for a long time (more cheap than parchment, but still expensive)
so much that there are records of books being erased and written over because of scarcity of unused paper

What was the price of a printing press?
How much did it cost to operate a printing press?
What was the price of paper?

I don't know the answers about costs, but what could that mean for "the mass printing of the theses of Luther" ?
Those questions point at, who had the money to spend to print the theses?

about literacy, how many could read in 1520 in Germany?
how many could actually read the mass printed theses of luther?
who did announce the theses to the ones who couldn't read?
what was the essence of what was communicated between those who couldn't read?

literacy in 1520 was still very low, the first source i could find mentioned something more or less around the 10% of the population

about printed bibles in the 16th century in germany
what was the price of a printed bible in the 16th century?
less than a transcribed bible, but still too expensive for the populance
who bought the first printed bibles during the reformation?

"most printed bibles went to parish churches, pastor's libraries, purchased by governments, or bought with public funds by the clergy"
"prices of the printed bibles were high in the 16th century, "
https://www.jstor.org/stable/650697?seq=10

Protestantism and Literacy in Early Modern Germany
Richard Gawthrop and Gerald Strauss (1984)
https://www.jstor.org/stable/650697

Literacy and Society in the West, 1500-1850
Rab Houston (1983)
https://www.jstor.org/stable/4285275

Incombustible Luther: The Image of the Reformer in Early Modern Germany
R. W. Scribner (1986)
http://archives.evergreen.edu/webpages/ ... luther.pdf

Luther's House of Learning: Indoctrination of the Young in the German Reformation
Gerald Strauss (1978)
https://archive.org/details/20200508-lu ... 1/mode/2up


the history book of Gerald Strauss is the one more renowned of the listed texts, by citations according to google scholar
curiously, there is scarce and fragmented personal informations online about Gerald Strauss, no wiki page, only pieces here and there
but there is an association with a prize named after him https://sixteenthcentury.org/gerald-strauss-prize/#0

The book in question is:
Luther's House of Learning: Indoctrination of the Young in the German Reformation
Gerald Strauss (1978)

The picture it paints is very vivid and quite out of the common narrative, it's also apparently highly regarded even if it somehow faded into obscurity, odd combination.
Among all the details it reports, about the period between 1520 and something 1630 in Germany, in those elector states of the holy roman empire which did support protestantism, at the time Luther was trying to figure out how to manage the thing he started.
Among all the more tecnical details of church and state relations, there are quite a number of almost comical little details and little tales, here one as anticipation:
[box]They rang church bells against storms and hail,
addressed Christian prayers to the devil,
used altar vessels to locate missing objects,
and crossed the border to Catholic regions where
obliging priests blessed their
herbs, roots, potions, and wands.

Your post having 60,000 character’s is not a reasonable thing.

The problem, of course, is that the entirety of Christendom at the time saw a rise in the occult, even in Catholic states. The rule of thumb for religious conversion is: “whatever religion the king is, so to will the people’s be”. It comes from “Cuius regio, eius religio“. I don’t think anyone denies that the peasantry are adrift with what the state and kingdom do concerning religion, especially in regards to education, sure they have autonomy to a certain regard, but likely they’ll follow along over the decades and centuries - this indoctrination in religion applies equally in Protestant as it does in Catholic kingdoms and states. The question, however, was not about the peasantry, but the rulers. The rulers could read, could discern, and the point stands; that they “would of converted out of genuine belief in the proclamation’s of the reformation - rather than for primarily political reasons.”

[Aeritai]

Not to stir some drama here, but with all the talk about the possible SCOTUS pick and possible rise of anti-Catholicism on the Left, is it weird I've experienced more anti-Catholic hatred from fellow Christians then nonreligious people?

Like I remember in middle school people from my Catholic middle school were banned from a nearby Lutheran school because we were "ungodly".

I mean, historically, it wasn't atheists who persecuted Irish people for practicing "Popery". As an ex-Catholic ex-conservative myself, atheists and liberal progressives saved my life when I lost my faith after the Molestation Scandals of the 2000s.

Blind faith in tradition and dogma dies hard, and it is nobody's fault but our own when we do not abandon it.

So it's my fault for not leaving my Faith? Yeah okay buddy...

[Azad Free India]

At least a porcupine recognizes it has a head.

Every SSPX chapel has a portrait of Pope Francis and masses said by SSPX priests are una cum, which is why sedevacantists like Sanborn et al say it is a mortal sin to attend SSPX masses.

A Catholic college buddy of mine coined a pretty great phrase (well, idk if he made it but I heard it from him).

The SSPX is like a porcupine; they have a lot of good points but you don't want to get too close to them.

Nah, you absolutely do. Diocesan TLMs, the FSSP and ICKSP have some great priests, very intelligent people who will provide great spiritual advice, and I still have a soft spot for the Diocesan TLM priest near me and my old priest who was affiliated with the FSSP, but the SSPX is a whole other level. SSPX priests don't take orders from modernist bishops who will forbid them from giving the sacraments in line with the 1962 Missal because of some social distancing bullshit. The SSPX and the older FSSP priests (who tend to be like 99% theologically aligned with the SSPX) are the only ones who are willing to be straight forward about the Council and the problems the Church is facing today. I don't have an issue with people going to FSSP/ICKSP parishes but if I was away from home and the choice was NOM, FSSP, ICKSP or SSPX I would go to SSPX just for quality of priests they produce.

Not precisely.
The SSPX consecrated four bishops without permission.

There is a state of necessity in the Church. Archbishop Lefebvre's writings make it clear he believed this, therefore he didn't need papal permission.

This has been canonically dealt with- as in the penalties were lifted ten years ago

There was no excommunications in the first place.

(although in the interests of full disclosure, one of them turned out to be a nut and went underground consecrating another bishop every other year or so. He is now separate from the SSPX but still calls himself the SSPX. If you hear someone talking about "the true SSPX" or similar, that's who they're referring to. And they're quite far off the deep end, even by my standards.).

Yes, Bishop Williamson is a very intelligent man but one of those people who is too intelligent they go absolutely crazy and let their intelligence be overshadowed by the insane stuff they spew out every now and then.

The SSPX's current problem is largely their tendency to do things without getting permission from local bishops.

Such as what?

Relations with the Vatican are... odd and complicated, but on the official level they tend to be treated as if they're already part of the church by Rome, and usually by local bishops when they bother to ask.

The SSPX as an organisation has no canonical status but their priests are validly and licitly ordained (something the Vatican has affirmed since like 1976), as are their sacraments.

Have u ever used that?

[The Rich Port]

I mean, historically, it wasn't atheists who persecuted Irish people for practicing "Popery". As an ex-Catholic ex-conservative myself, atheists and liberal progressives saved my life when I lost my faith after the Molestation Scandals of the 2000s.

Blind faith in tradition and dogma dies hard, and it is nobody's fault but our own when we do not abandon it.

So it's my fault for not leaving my Faith? Yeah okay buddy...

I didn't say that did I, I said dogma and out-dated traditions. But hey if that's all your religion is...

Also... Yes. It's your fault if you stay in your own ways and lines of thought, negative or not... That's kinda how choice works.