Defending the Medieval Church's History

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Hello,

How can I respond to the claim that, while Christianity began as hope for the oppressed that was ‘‘challenging the social order,’’ the Catholic Church of the Middle Ages made it a means to oppress people? No examples were provided to support such a claim but I suppose the speaker would cite the Inquisition, the Universal Church that wouldn’t let people ‘‘think differently,’’ the feudal system, ‘‘subjagation of women,’’ etc.

I know these claims are wrong, but I heard this recently and I was not sure what to say exactly.

Thanks!
 
There’s no need to defend it. The Catholic Church was instrumental in western civilization as we know it, there were growing pains, people aren’t perfect. Things happened the way they had to.
 
Read the Gospels. Christianity is not a political or economic system.
 
I would just say that the Church is made up of people, and people will always make mistakes. It’s the truth, whether y’all agree on what happened or not 🤓
 
I guess what I’m saying is that I want to prove the beauty and goodness of the Middle Ages, a time when the Church was very important to almost everyone’s life. Many liberals argue today that overthrowing the Church’s power was the best thing for western civilization but I disagree.
 
Europe was a hundreds of little entities always fighting each other, pagans, Christians, different tribes etc. only unification through force was going to bring relative stability. Once that was achieved we saw the marvels of the renaissance. Unfortunately it was short lived and Luther’s revolution undid much of the Church’s work which gave rise to the European wars of religion and others. Had the unity been maintained I’m confident we’d have never seen either world war or the secularization of Europe.

Medieval times were violent. The church had to use the tools it had at the time, which were soldiers and swords. People hate on the church for the inquisition and the stamping out of heresy, but they were necessary for stability.
 
Well you could read up on these things. There are some great books out there about the history of the Catholic Church from one volume summaries…just a couple of examples…
How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization by Thomas Woods

History of the Catholic Church: From the Apostolic Age to the Third Millennium by James Hitchcock

The Real Story of Catholic History: Answering Twenty Centuries of Anti-Catholic Myths by Steve Weidenkopf
Click to expand...
to multi volume in depth…
Six volume History of Christendom by Warren Carroll
Click to expand...
There are also books that address various objections specifically…
The Real Story of the Inquisition by Steve Weidenkopf
Click to expand...
 
That’s becauase liberals hate the church. Liberalism (in the classical sense) was built entirely on liberating man from any authority including God’s. Arguing with them is generally fruitless. They only worry about freedom to do as they wish with no regard to duty or responsibility or honor to Who grants that freedom.
 
Ah, I see. All you have to do is cite all the art that was produced during the Middle Ages. It’s visual proof of beauty and goodness. Look up some pics of illuminated manuscripts, or some of the architecture of the time. That stuff didn’t appear on its own… it’s physical proof of the goodness of the age.
 
Unfortunately in these times liberals don’t want to know the truth or even more damaging they only consider their ‘truth’. They are like little children that shout ‘Crusades’ and cover their ears…‘Inquisition’ and cover their ears.
We even see that within the Church…never mind the history of the Church liberals question or outright dissent from the teachings of Jesus. But at least you will have the knowledge for when you do happen to meet a grown up that will listen lol.
 
That’s a remarkably uninformed question if it’s actual and not a rhetorical ‘snark’. Seriously, any reasonably educated person (Christian or not) knows that one does not impute 21st century knowledge to 14th century minds. . .or vice versa.

That does not mean that there do not exist understandings, ‘absolute truths’ if you will, that are common to both the ‘cave dweller’, the earliest’ historical’ man or woman, those who came before Christ, and those who came after, to these times and beyond. Those things certainly exist.

But just as those in prehistory might have chosen to deal with problems through ostracism and casting out, or through a death sentence, those today might try counseling, medication, incarceration. Same ‘problems’, different solutions.

It doesn’t mean that the person who killed 35,000 years ago was ‘wrong’ to do so simply because in the same situation today the ‘solution’ would not have been killing. Today a mass murderer will have a trial, sentencing, and while in some places he may still be executed by judicial fiat, he may also be incarcerated, treated, may even depending on circumstances and the nature of the causes of his actions and the development of factors including his treatment, someday have ‘paid his debt’ and be freed.

Those latter options were not available 35,000 years ago. Letting a person who had killed and would have kept on killing innocents, if it had been tried to send him into exile and he came back and still preyed on innocents, would have been ‘suicidal’, and killing would have been the only assurance of safety (such as it was) for the tribe.

You know it’s kind of sad that people can understand this and accept it for ‘cave people’ or even for non Christians (note how nobody calls out Muslim atrocities, the samurai honor killings, Aztec human sacrifices, or even the casualties of the Gulag etc. Oh no.), but all one has to do is shrill out ‘Inquisition’ and immediately the charges come of how ‘oppressive’ that bad old Catholic Church was, and how all Christians under the surface are just panting to go back to killing millions and millions blah blah blah.
 
I don’t think the necessity exists today because we have stable secular governments that can maintain law and order within their borders for the most part.
 
All the major religions of the world have shown that when they become part of the power structures of their societies, they lose the tenets of what their founders taught.

Christianity, St Francis of Assisi became the opposite of where the Church leaders were going.

It happened to other religions including Taoism, Hinduism and Buddhism as well as Judaism and Catholicism.

It’s better to acknowledge the dirty laundry of the Church’s past, rather than try and whitewash it.

Jim
 
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Medieval times were a great time of invention and beauty. I suggest reading up on them.
 
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