The Middle Ages

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suko

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Hello all, I was hoping to get some advice for evangelizing a nonpracticing catholic whom I’ll be staying with in a hotel for 3 weeks for job-related training. We’ll be spending a lot of good quality time together so I see this as a great way to get him back to the Church.

Anyway, I’ve had a little debate with him in the past, and found out that he believes everything that the Church teaches except for (I believe) contraception. He brings up the point about the Middle/Dark Ages and I think because of all the corruptness that was happening in the Church which is why he can’t completely trust this Church. I’ve brought up what St. Paul has said himself when he describes the Church, “the household of God, the pillar and foundation of truth.” But he would have none of it.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, especially on how I can respond on the corrupt things that was happening during the Middle Ages. =)

Thanks and God bless!
 
The Church is comprised of sinners and acknowledges that fact. Recognize that yes, there was corruption. If we were not sinful, we would not need God’s grace to sustain us, heal us, and move us to repentance.
Just as the modern day scandal hurts every believer, so also does the corruption of some holding positions of power during the Middle Ages continue to hurt the Church today.
As St. Paul says, when one member of the body hurts, the whole body hurts.
 
He can’t trust the Church - because of something that happened nine hundred years ago?

The one thing that comes to mind sounds weak, but here it is. At the time, we knew it was corrupt. The Church was a mess. ***Europe ***was a mess. We knew then, as we do now, that those were a bunch of awful people (except maybe Charlemagne). Then we did something about it.

I mean, what more do you want us to do?

Besides, if there never were any corruption, the same people like you who fault us for once having been corrupt would just accuse us of whitewashing our history. So you’re being doubly unfair and dishonest.

If you bothered to look it up, you would know that from 1123 to 1563 there as many Church councils in those four centuries alone as in the remaining sixteen put together. We addressed the problem. What more do you want us to do?

Oh by the way, I don’t hear you complaining about ***government ***corruption. King Ethered II ordered a massacre of Danish residents in England in 1002 - that’s why ***I ***no longer trust the UK. Do you?
 
I’m not sure exactly what period your friend is concerned with. You might get a list of saints from the time, there are many, to show him that there were always faithful Catholics working to reform the Church. I’m sure people here can recommend some saints. One that comes to mind was Catherine of Sienna.

Hope that helps.
 
Thx to everyone for all your responses. 🙂
pippin said:
I’m not sure exactly what period your friend is concerned with. You might get a list of saints from the time, there are many, to show him that there were always faithful Catholics working to reform the Church. I’m sure people here can recommend some saints. One that comes to mind was Catherine of Sienna.

Hope that helps.
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Hmm, the only problem with this is that if I were to give him a list of saints that were working to reform the Church, that would kind of prove the point that the Church isn’t the pillar of foundation and truth if it’s always in need of reform, since reform would mean that it isn’t already grounded in the truth, hence the need for reform.
 
Christians have faith in Christ rather than the Church by itself. The Church is holy not because of her members, who are sinful like everybody else, but because of her glorious Head. If we trust in Christ the Head, he will make us, the body, into perfect images of his Divine goodness.
 
suko said:
Hello all, I was hoping to get some advice for evangelizing a nonpracticing catholic whom I’ll be staying with in a hotel for 3 weeks for job-related training. We’ll be spending a lot of good quality time together so I see this as a great way to get him back to the Church.

Anyway, I’ve had a little debate with him in the past, and found out that he believes everything that the Church teaches except for (I believe) contraception. He brings up the point about the Middle/Dark Ages and I think because of all the corruptness that was happening in the Church which is why he can’t completely trust this Church. I’ve brought up what St. Paul has said himself when he describes the Church, “the household of God, the pillar and foundation of truth.” But he would have none of it.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, especially on how I can respond on the corrupt things that was happening during the Middle Ages. =)

Thanks and God bless!
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Use the Green Scapular. Our Blessed Lady has used it to convert many souls. Read about them here:

greenscapular.com/
amazon.com/dp/B001DMQBXY?tag=acatlif-20&camp=213381&creative=390973&linkCode=as4&creativeASIN=B001DMQBXY&adid=01PTZ6AN3GFHMY9W595Z&
 
Get ahold of the CD series by Matthew Arnold “Fire and Sword” It explains the actual facts of the Crusades, the Inquisitions, and the Reformation. It will answer his objections better than anything,
 
In another discussion thread someone made the insightful comment about the “terrible Dark Ages” and how people use that and other examples from Church history as convenient excuses for living against the known teaching of the Church. In your co-worker’s case, then, it seems that his thoughts about the Middle Ages are a smoke-screen for his issue with the teaching of the Church on contraception. This, rather than discussing the Middle Ages, is where you efforts should be focused.
 
The middle ages are usually assigned to the period from the fall of the Roman Empire in the West (AD 476) to the Renaissance or discovery of America (AD 1492).

While the roman empire which collapsed was ostensibly christain it was undermined by an exhausted and corrupt civilisation. Through its own failings it fell and was replaced by violently barbaric kingdoms. All except Ireland, which was never colonised by the Romans. Ths is interestingly where Gobbons anti-christian thesis falls apart, for Ireland became christian but not roman, s had teh rest of europe, and so flourished, not only as the lands of saints and scholars, but also as the base from which europe was rechristianised and re-civilised anew. It was this spring of learning, which established centres of learning across the continent that allowed Charlemagne to take those first steps out of teh Drak ages, in the 8th-9th centuries.
To be sure the medieval world was violent. The average lifespan was probably under 30, but the foundation for a moral and fresh civilisation where put into place by the actions of the chruch and the new christian civilisation. If you read Rodney Starks “For the Glory of God” you will see that the christian monastic tradition was the indespensible foundation stone of modern science and human rights. Apparently this is now so undisputed a fact that even Ricahrd Dawkins admits to it, and it was all done in the middle ages.

As for the brutaliy of the time, it must be understood that throughout the period, the progress to a better more just state remained the main trajectory, unlike during the classical Roman period, where the trajectory was ever downward (morally as well as politically and scietifically) from the time of the Scipios and the late Republic. The facts of life in say the 10th century where just too brutal for a ruler now to be brutal and remain in command.Just as the Jews in the old testament where living in a tough uncomrompising and hostile world, so where the medieval christains. But they got better.

I think the middle ages are in fact a triumph, not a disaster. Violence was there, but it was not gratuituous like it was in the more spohisticated classical civilisation where people watched gladiators die in the arena. But if it werent for teh middle ages, we´d probably still be in the dark ages. In fact the dark ages where an escape to innocense from the incurable awfulness of late imperial antiquity.

ANd finally the fruits of the middle ages were born immeditaley in some of the gretest works of art, literture and discovery in the history of mankind- namely the Renaissance ’ which took place right under the nose of the church. I say under the nose, sarcastically of course, for it is forever inferred by “enlightened” secularists that the church wanted to hold humaity back. How wrong they are.
For me its no accident that this gret outpouring of talent and humaity should occurr where the church and religion was strongest -Ireland in the 6th century and then Italy in the 15th century.
 
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