Population and the Reformation

[Allweather]

I was reading about Pope Gregory and how he would preach sermons in public. He was the pope who started the homily in your church. The reason he wanted the homily was because the average priest was ignorant about the Bible (so much for oral teaching). It was not available to most people including the clergy. The first homilies were taken from sermons by the church fathers. Most priests concentrated on performing the Mass. Can you honestly say that there were no false teachings in the church when most priests didn’t even know what the Bible or their church taught? This ignorance along with forced conversions under Constantine weakened the original church and paganism was incorporated into Catholic teaching. Even under Constantine less than half of the population in the Roman Empire called themselves Christian.

It is about Gods timing! That and the fact that protestants placed so some much emphasis on making the Bible available to every individual.

Nancie, seems to me you’re just jumping all over the place. First you say that Gregory wanted “the homily” because the “average priest” was ingorant of the Bible. How is it that the homily was going to solve that problem? Assuming that problem existed, which the way you state is seems rather simplistic to me.

Now, about false teachings. You assume that there were false teachings abroad because priests didn’t know the Bible or Church teachings. You also say they concentrated on “performing the Mass.” Isn’t that what priests are supposed to do? In an age when most people were illiterate, when books were fabulously expensive, and few could read them in any case, why wouldn’t it be appropriate for priests to concentrate on saying Mass and administering the Sacraments?

Anyways, I’m sure you have a source for this information, and could expand upon it, and I wish you would, because it seems terribly oversimplified given the geographical expanse and cultural diversity of Europe, even in the middle ages. Maybe you could also explain why, if there was so much false teaching, the Church somehow came out of that illiterate era with its teachings intact, its institutional character and authority intact, and even managed to survive some pretty tremendous events, among them the plague, and the Reformation, not to mention the rise of nationalism and the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, on and on.

 

[lak611]

I was reading about Pope Gregory and how he would preach sermons in public. He was the pope who started the homily in your church. The reason he wanted the homily was because the average priest was ignorant about the Bible (so much for oral teaching). It was not available to most people including the clergy. The first homilies were taken from sermons by the church fathers. Most priests concentrated on performing the Mass. Can you honestly say that there were no false teachings in the church when most priests didn’t even know what the Bible or their church taught?

Do you have any references for this? What is your source?

 

[ASimpleSinner]

I was reading about Pope Gregory and how he would preach sermons in public. He was the pope who started the homily in your church. The reason he wanted the homily was because the average priest was ignorant about the Bible (so much for oral teaching). It was not available to most people including the clergy. The first homilies were taken from sermons by the church fathers. Most priests concentrated on performing the Mass. Can you honestly say that there were no false teachings in the church when most priests didn’t even know what the Bible or their church taught? This ignorance along with forced conversions under Constantine weakened the original church and paganism was incorporated into Catholic teaching. Even under Constantine less than half of the population in the Roman Empire called themselves Christian.

It is about Gods timing! That and the fact that protestants placed so some much emphasis on making the Bible available to every individual.

Problematic with your understanding is the idea the priests who could not understand the Bible (and I would love a citation for this assertion) would be able to read and understand the writings of the Early Church Fathers.

Then again, if there was such an obvious, accessible and universally agreed upon notion of what the Scriptures taught using sola scriptura it stands to reason that the Reformers would have found a common ground for a truly United Protestant Church. Nothing could be further from the historic truth. Calvin, Zwingli, Luther, Cramner, et al differed widely with each other and sometimes acted violently against each other. Several generations on, all seeking recourse to the same books of the Bible, the differences and divisions would grow sharper still.

But in pointed to numbers of adherents as a source of empirical evidence for some sort of “Divine Providence for the creation of Non-Catholic Christian sects” How could you respond to someone who points out that 500 years on, the vast majority of self-identified Christians are still adherents of churches about which the Reformers would have had grave reservations?

1,100,000,000 Catholics
350,000,000 Orthodox (Chalcedonian)
35,000,000 Orthodox (Non-Chalcedonian)​

1.48B baptized around the globe who still adhere to:

Baptismal regeneration
7 Sacraments
Apostolic Succession
Auricular Confession
Monasticism
Iconography
Veneration of Mary & The Saints
The Eucharist as the Presence of Christ

1.48B baptized around the globe who still reject:
Sola scriptura
Sola fide
Sola gratia As presented by and in degrees still held to by the fractured Protestant communities today?

Then again, I would like you to better define who “The Protestants” are in your play-book. Today that would include anyone from “Jesus Only (Oneness) Pentecostals” to Episcopalians that bless same-sex unions. From Snake-handling Baptists to high-Church (and highly confessional) Missouri Synod Lutherans.

Given your sentiments and expressions, I am inclined to believe you largely identify Protestants as Pentecostal/Evangelical groups whose distinctive theology and eclesiology are newer still than the original Reformers.

You assert:

The rapid growth of population began about the same time the printing press was invented. Presently there are 6.6 billion people alive today who have the opportunity to hear the Evangelical Gospel.

One could rightfully assert that the rapid growth in the Catholic Church in these past 5 centuries has also been prompted by the greater dissemination of published materials. Doubtless the Society of Jesus - an order with a marked charism of defending the tenants of the Catholic faith, founded during the reformation and today still the largest order in the Church - benifited greatly from the printing press as well. It would have been a very difficult thing to form as many well educated priests and brothers as they did without the printing press to mass produce the Scriptures, the ***Spiritual Exercises *** and St. Ignatius Loyola’s favorite work - much included in Jesuit formation The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis.

A Catholic could and would easily respond, the world today is filled with 6.6B people who are ready to hear, recieve, live in and live by the teaching’s of Christ’s Church - the Catholic Church.

 

[Nancie_Lew]

Nancie, seems to me you’re just jumping all over the place. First you say that Gregory wanted “the homily” because the “average priest” was ingorant of the Bible. How is it that the homily was going to solve that problem? Assuming that problem existed, which the way you state is seems rather simplistic to me.

Gregory complains about priests not being able to write sermons for themselves because they didn’t know what the Bible taught. I doubt they even knew why they were performing the Mass. .

Now, about false teachings. You assume that there were false teachings abroad because priests didn’t know the Bible or Church teachings. You also say they concentrated on “performing the Mass.” Isn’t that what priests are supposed to do? In an age when most people were illiterate, when books were fabulously expensive, and few could read them in any case, why wouldn’t it be appropriate for priests to concentrate on saying Mass and administering the Sacraments?

 

[Allweather]

Gregory complains about priests not being able to write sermons for themselves because they didn’t know what the Bible taught. **I doubt they even knew **why they were performing the Mass.

I’m not aware of this, would you mind giving me your source on this information? What makes you have the doubts you have?

And BTW which Gregory are we talking about? There’ve been a few.

One of the reasons there were no Bibles is because the church was more interested in building big fancy Cathedrals. Yes peasants were illiterate and they were taught what to believe from stained glass windows. The church should of concentrated on teaching people how read and making copies of the Bible for them.

OK, one of the reasons according to you is that the Church was spending more money on construction than on printing Bibles. I feel like this is a gross oversimplification, but I’m willing to believe that it is a factor among several. Let me ask a handful of questions:

The people who built the cathedrals… who were these people?

Are you certain none of them had access to bibles?

Are you certain the Church didn’t teach people to read?

How did the Church survive with its doctrines and structure intact if it didn’t properly transmit the faith, whether by reading or other means (stained glass)?

 

[ASimpleSinner]

One of the reasons there were no Bibles is because the church was more interested in building big fancy Cathedrals. Yes peasants were illiterate and they were taught what to believe from stained glass windows. The church should of concentrated on teaching people how read and making copies of the Bible for them.

Learning during what free time? Buying with what money?

Do you have a good idea of the economics of the time, the wage of the average peasant, the cost of a manuscript (paper, ink, room, board, education, health care for a trasncriptionist??) to produce how many copies for how many households?

Consider the following:

THE PRACTICAL PROBLEMS OF SOLA SCRIPTURA
chnetwork.org/journals/sola/sola5.htm

Upon reading this article several times it occured to me that Mr. Akin misses a possible “PRESUPPOSTION #8” Eight, if the average Christian is going to evaluate the teachings of the Scriptures for him or herself in the light of sola scriptura it presupposed not only a level of literacy in general, but (a) literacy in Latin or Greek or (b) literacy in the vernacular and accurate translations done by competent translators in the vernacular (c) a vernacular that enough words and ideas to translate the Scriptures into.

If you can articulate a good counter-argument with references I would be anxious to hear it.

 

[mark_a]

The church

**should of **

concentrated on teaching people how read
Yes. Just like the Protestants did here in the south, both before and after “the war”.

 

[Semper_Fi_1]

One of the reasons there were no Bibles is because the church was more interested in building big fancy Cathedrals. Yes peasants were illiterate and they were taught what to believe from stained glass windows.

That’s a nice thought, and that’s exactly what the Church did. The Church invented western civilization. It is responsible for our hospitals, for our university system, and for helping the poor. It was a Catholic who invented the printing press. Next allegation?

 

[Sixtus]

.
Why? The printing press could have been invented years before the Reformation. That would have helped to spread Catholicism. After all the Chinese had movable type long before the Europeans. The printing press played a crucial part in spreading Protestantism in Europe. It was invented about the same time the population in Europe had begun to explode.

 

[spauline]

In effect, the Printing Press has more served the dragon than the woman. It is inevitable given human nature that as the world first comes into its own scientifically, materialistically, these things will be used for bad spiritual results progressively. In effect, this is what has happened. Yes, the timing of the Printing Press and the Rebellion was good, not in the immediate sense for the true Kingdom, but for the dragon. Hence, it is absolutely no coincidence, that the truth would be astronomically confounded as the propogation of information becomes dramatically more possible. Hence, as the technology has increased over the last 500 years, so the spiritual has progressively declined in opposition. Hence, for the dragon, the Printing Press enables him to destructively divide Christians as never before. Then becoming sick of the scandal therefrom, both wars, divisions, etc, man becomes disillusioned with religion and turns his intellect away from religion and towards the creation (not that studying the material world is bad in and of itself, but that the study thereof becomes MORE important than that of religion).

So then, inevitably, man’s efforts becoming more focused on science and materialism, his esteem of religion becomes even worse, finally that he believes the ultimate lie of secular messianism, that he needs God in no sense, that all he needs is science and materialistic progess.

But, behold, God will HEAL these spirtual deficiencies. So then, God is now saying to humanity, “You think you don’t need me at all? That purely through science and materialistic affluence, you can solve all your problems, and even ignore my moral principles. So then find out the hard way. And when the consequences come, your world will almost come to an end. But then you will cry out, and I will have mercy on you, and bring you all back home to Rome. And then you will have the best of both worlds, spiritual and materialistic prosperity, that is, until your second apostasy, in which case you will be irredeemable, and then your world will end for good, forever.”

 

[Montalban]

Nancie Lew;2378138:

The Printing press WAS invented long before the Protestant Reformation.

It was actually first originated by Catholic Monks but soon adopted by the commercial world. Monks were doing forms of printing upto 200-years before the official date.

Guttenberg lived entirely before the Reformation

 

[Montalban]

I thought that this thread was an extension of the belief that Catholics kept the Bible out of reach of the individuals - to control them

But it now seems it’s about a remarkable theory that God held back with the truth until the printing-press became available (which is out of whack, historically, anyway).

It’s out of whack that God would let Jesus come to us, then hold back with the truth for 1,500 years more.