Those are generous replies, for which thanks.
Knife fight: I like the image very much, and I think it is accurate. “And if you do not have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one…,” said a certain Someone.
With utmost respect to everybody here, I am not sure the net (I quit a religion and ethics site because of bad faith and worse manners from militant protestants and militant atheists) takes religious discussion as seriously as you do, very sure that few could be better prepared for it than you, and yet I was unsure whether your first reply, yesterday, was in the spirit of a conversation.
Only in Catholic Italy did the Renaissance start (my Ph. D. is in the Renaissance and Classical Tradition): soon enough it is supported by the Popes, and therefore we get Greek back and increasing levels of Latinity and Hellenism, levels still being explored today both in themselves and in their presence and influence elsewhere. A lot remains in mss.
It may be that, well into the sixteenth century, self-styled Protestants had a higher level of Biblical learning, but Italy did not, in Classical Tradition, simply fall away: France and Northern Europe contributed more and more, far into the seventeenth century, so that English vernacular critics could refer, somewhat wittily, to ‘Dutch commentators.’ But Le College Royal and before it Leuven, both Catholic and the latter a Papal institution, formalized the study of the three languages we both would agree form the basis of our culture. Again, much remains to be discovered for every century about the level of Latinity and Hellenism, and so I wonder, too, if much the same is true of Hebraism.
Praeceptor Germaniae though he was Melancthon owed everything to Italian classical scholarship, so far as I can make out, and Luther, I am told, was following a Medieval Catholic tradition in the posting of his theses.
In other words, only the RCC or men within it (Petrarca to Luther and More) began the Renaissance, from which the reformation seems a kind of sad outgrowthr:
Ignorant of Hebrew, I still wonder, then, had things not accelerated so quickly and so tragically (Belligerant German Princes, France, the Wars of Religion), whether the reformers would not have been busy Catholics, less or more effective. (not to say I see any value to their efforts.)
Trent is not really the one-stop source for the RCC some seem to take it to be: our creed, a thousand years older than Trent, does not say we believe in the Bible, so its apparent indifference to It is unsurprising, although I have a hard time believing that no Catholics knew Hebrew well enough to consider the contributions from Petrarch to Valla and beyond in classical textual criticism as clarifying. Classical philology went hand in hand with Sacred philology (so Erasmus, Lipsius).
Again, the learning required I am referring to is top down, no doubt about it, although as JP II (santo subito!) said to a friend: “Good students make good priests.” How far down it goes, in every religion, is a question. The point is that CCC, inter alia, guides priests, and the CCC is scrupulously edited and referenced to the Bible, Fathers, Sacred Tradition…
Protestanism I think more and more tends to Bible waving and thumping, English Bibles of course. Fundamentalist or no, these proliferating sects surely are not fostering anything like a Renaissance. My impression is that the mainstream–I am happy to accept your view of it–is polluted more and more by these sects.
If there is a moderating voice, to shift metaphors, I fail to hear it on any of the life and death matters I mentioned yesterday. On the contrary, the Episcopal Church, for example, is rocked, in some places to the point of schism. The NYT reported the failure of a Luthern diocese or synod to discipline an openly gay Priest as if that were a triumph of true religion (search me: it may have been perfectly just, but you get my point). To me, that is but overdetermined by the nature of protestantism itself, only a matter of time.
You speak very personally and openly about your spiritual journey: like yours, mine is linked to an intellectual one; after decades of agnosticism, I am back to my cradle and playground, the RCC, because I am persuaded She is true! How I ever thought otherwise I can now see arose from my foolish human pride, but also from my ignorance. Only by the Grace of God have I made it back, this time with my family, who will be admitted to the Church, Deo volente, this Friday.
I wish you every good wish in your search for truth.
God bless.
