What would the world be like if the Reformation never occurred, and every Protestant Church was Catholic?

[joe370]

I do not think the world would be very good at all. The reformation and other events along those lines, brought about changes within the Catholic church too, that were for the better.

For example…?

 

[Kaninchen]

I think part of the issue in this particular scenario we’ve all concocted is how to “dethrone” a certain Greek philosopher from his pedestal.

I understand the argument - even I read the ‘Open Society and Its Enemies’ at school.

The revolutionary inventions that really changed the world weren’t really ‘high science’ though, were they? They were relatively simple changes to agricultural practices and machines for doing things faster/cheaper - then an avalanche took place.

It seems to me that our attention in ‘Intellectual History’ is always drawn to the world of ‘educated men sitting in their libraries corresponding with other educated men sitting in their libraries’ (these men being religious, non-religious or anti-religious) while most of the European World was just getting on with unimportant stuff.

My contention is, however, that the unimportant stuff was, at least, as important as anything else that was going on in ‘official society’ and ‘intellectual society’ and, as it turned out, the major generator of change - the explorers, the merchants, the bankers, the craftsmen, the inventors of simple machines.

 

[DaveBj]

Has anyone ever written an alternative history novel based on this question? I’m not aware of any, but then I’ve never researched the question.

 

[MatteoRicci]

One of the most disturbing things I ever heard, as a Christian, was Chaim Potok talking about his time in Japan when in the U.S. military (you can read a fictionalized account of this in his novel Book of Lights). He said that one of the most striking and refreshing things about Japanese culture, for him as a Jew, was its freedom from a tradition of anti-Semitism–at least, he added, the demonic anti-Semitism that comes from Christianity.

Ouch!

Edwin

Ahaha. Well, that old phrase of familiarity breeding contempt comes to mind. The Jewish people are mysterious and “exotic.” The Vietnamese, Koreans, and Japanese on the other hand.

Although this does remind me of two anecdotes which i’ll present for amusement.

1.) When Mao closed off China from the rest of the world with the exception of the Soviet/Communist countries, a number of Jewish people and non-Han Chinese muslims got locked inside with the rest of the Chinese population.

The combination of being such a small populaton living far away from the major population centers coupled with the at least professed egalitarian standpoint of communist ideology along with the aforementioned history of Imperial-Minority affairs lead to a rather cordial relationship between the Communist Party and those groups.

That and Mao, Deng, etc were more worried about the Tibetan issue - inflaming minority relations against the Han majority in the face of an ethnic-national revolt was to be avoided at all cost.

So the two groups gravitated toward each other and had some very good/positive relations. There are even records pointiing to intermarriage. In a land of pig-eaters, was this unexpected?

And then China opened up.

Within a few years, the People’s Liberation Army started research bodies devoted to a new domestic security threat.

It was their first encounter with politicized Islam and Zionism and believe me when I say that the PLA was absolutely shocked when these two normally cordial groups started to develop frictions that lead toward acts of violence emanating from the radical islam side.

2.) Did you know there was actually a short lived Japanese party within the late 20th century that was actually anti-semitic. You see, they believed in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Unfortunately, for the vast majority of European Jews, China might as well have been a distant planet.

Ever hear about the plan to resettle a large chunk of the Jewish population in Manchuria?

You see, when I say that the Japanese believed in the Protocols (Chinese for that matter too), i really do mean they believed in it.

And both political regimes thought the little Austrian artist with the funny mustache was absolutely insane for not taking advantage of the supposed economic prowess of the Jewish people.

 

[Contarini]

Has anyone ever written an alternative history novel based on this question? I’m not aware of any, but then I’ve never researched the question.

Kingsley Amis, The Alteration, is the most famous. In this alternate reality, Luther basically makes a deal with the Church and becomes “Pope Germanus I.” The “Reformed” version of the Reformation happens anyway, but with much less success lacking Luther. (I think that this is a pretty sound, reasonable reconstruction of what could have happened, actually.) However, Amis doesn’t really pursue the religious implications very far–his truncated Protestantism (which flourishes mostly in America) serves primarily as a place for the hero to try to escape to (the hero is a boy singer trying to escape castration–at the end of the book there’s an apparent divine intervention in which his testicles twist themselves into a knot and he has to be castrated anyway–yes, it’s a very weird book). Amis makes the basic mistake I’ve been arguing against on this thread–that if the Reformation had failed the result would be a totally triumphant Counter-Reformation Catholicism. The book is really mostly about totalitarianism, I think. I read it many years ago when I was just getting into sci-fi, and I should probably give it another look. It’s a clever piece of work (all Amis’s books are interesting), even if most folks on this forum (including me) would have trouble with a lot of the basic ideological premises. (Oh, and Amis’ presentation of how the Church approaches castration for musical purposes is certainly not true to the official position of the historic Church, which opposed deliberate castration but was happy to accept boys who were already castrated as singers–this meant that in practice families would castrate their musically promising sons and pretend that it was an accident. I found this out when responding to a thread specifically on “castrati” some years ago on this forum!)

Another alternate history that imagines a fusion of Protestant reform impulses with Catholicism is Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials series. But Pullman is far less interested in taking religious history seriously than Amis–he simply imagines Calvinism and Catholicism somehow being united, so that the “Magisterium” is centered at Geneva, and this lets him roll all negative stereotypes about Christianity into one (since Calvinism and Catholicism are the two Christian traditions with the worst reputations for harshness and repression, justly or unjustly), which is really all he cares about.

It’s interesting that both these works center on children approaching puberty. Both authors seem to see organized Christianity as a kind of totalitarian force with a particular investment in preventing people from growing up, sexually and otherwise. The Reformation, which in many narratives (both the Whig/secular narrative that considers it good and the conservative Catholic narrative that considers it bad) is a kind of adolescent rebellion for Western civilization, thus is a useful starting point for these writers.

Edwin

 

[Contarini]

I do not think the world would be very good at all. The reformation and other events along those lines, brought about changes within the Catholic church too, that were for the better.

The formation of the Roman Inquisition and the Index of Prohibited books were good things?

The transformation of medieval caution about (and occasional emergency measures against) vernacular Scripture translations into a general policy of serious restriction if not prohibition was a good thing?

The creation of a clerical caste radically separated from laypeople was a good thing?

The elimination of the more “democratic” elements of the medieval Church, so that the upper echelons of the hierarchy were now dominated by the aristocracy, was a good thing?

The fear and loathing of anything that sounded “Protestant,” so that “evangelicals” who were devoutly Catholic were persecuted, was a good thing?

Of course there were things that happened in the Counter-Reformation that were good–I just picked out some of the things that I consider very bad. And there were quite a lot. Furthermore, many of these are the things most obviously attributable to the Reformation–most of the good things were things that had been called for for years anyway.

Edwin

 

[GKC]

Has anyone ever written an alternative history novel based on this question? I’m not aware of any, but then I’ve never researched the question.

Keith Roberts/ PAVANE

Phyllis Eisenstein/ SHADOW OF EARTH

GKC

 

[Contarini]

Keith Roberts/ PAVANE

Phyllis Eisenstein/ SHADOW OF EARTH

GKC

I need to read these, especially Roberts.

It looks like both novels take the Armada as the point of divergence, by which time Counter-Reformation Catholicism was in place.

What I’m interested in is the possibility that if things had gone differently in the 20s and 30s, the official Catholic Reformation would have looked a lot more like what my alias Contarini wanted to see and a lot less like what Carafa wanted. What frustrates me about Amis’ book is that he imagines Luther somehow being reconciled with the Catholic Church without taking seriously what kind of Catholic Church Luther could possibly have been reconciled with, or what effect someone like Luther spending his life as an orthodox Catholic of high standing would have had.

Edwin

 

[GKC]

I need to read these, especially Roberts.

It looks like both novels take the Armada as the point of divergence, by which time Counter-Reformation Catholicism was in place.

What I’m interested in is the possibility that if things had gone differently in the 20s and 30s, the official Catholic Reformation would have looked a lot more like what my alias Contarini wanted to see and a lot less like what Carafa wanted. What frustrates me about Amis’ book is that he imagines Luther somehow being reconciled with the Catholic Church without taking seriously what kind of Catholic Church Luther could possibly have been reconciled with, or what effect someone like Luther spending his life as an orthodox Catholic of high standing would have had.

Edwin

Though it’s somewhere in the archives, I don’t recall the Amis very well. PAVANE is a delight.

I might recall others.

Though I am a fan of all alternate history, this particular premise I have trouble developing systemically, in my head.

GKC

 

[GKC]

Randall Garret’s Lord D’Arcy series. A little light for this sort of musing, but among my favorite alternate history.

GKC

 

[Kaninchen]

2.) Did you know there was actually a short lived Japanese party within the late 20th century that was actually anti-semitic. You see, they believed in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Being bonkers knows no international borders.

Ever hear about the plan to resettle a large chunk of the Jewish population in Manchuria?

Vaguely, yes but now I’ve had the opportunity to read up on it. Rather reminds me of Oliver Cromwell letting Jews back into England - because he thought that it would bring the ‘Second Coming’ forward - good things coming from weird thinking.

 

[minion]

Wow, the comments are mostly negative of the Catholic Church, even in those alternative history books mentioned earlier. ^^; One thing for example, I really do doubt science & technology would’ve been suppressed by the Catholic Church, due to the creation of the printing press - it’s the key invention that made knowledge widely accessible, and literacy almost mandatory. It’s at this point technological advancement progresses at a much faster rate than ever before.

So, what inherent teachings in the Catholic Church do you all believe make the Reformation inevitable? Or is it just the corrupt human element being disobedient to Church teachings?

 

[benjammin]

This makes me wonder, if there had been no protestantism how would the New World have been influenced. Lets say Henry VIII had his own son and didn’t need an annulment and therefore no need to disobey the pope and create his own church. I wonder if there still would have been much competition in the New World since a lot of the reason England expanded was to counteract Catholic Spain. If England is Catholic would it have remained a small nation.

As for continental Europe, it might have led to a kind of bigger stronger holy roman empire in Germany that would be united by Catholicism. I have a hard time seeing the church suppressing science and technology. They would probably want to use it to either help people or if they were more sinister, try to expand the papal states. It’s hard to tell though.
In a way, I think the reformation was a bad thing that brought about some good. It made the church start to focus more towards heaven and made them correct abuses in the church. Its all part of God’s plan.

 

[AngryAtheist8]

Wow, the comments are mostly negative of the Catholic Church, even in those alternative history books mentioned earlier. ^^; One thing for example, I really do doubt science & technology would’ve been suppressed by the Catholic Church, due to the creation of the printing press - it’s the key invention that made knowledge widely accessible, and literacy almost mandatory. It’s at this point technological advancement progresses at a much faster rate than ever before.

So, what inherent teachings in the Catholic Church do you all believe make the Reformation inevitable? Or is it just the corrupt human element being disobedient to Church teachings?

That’s an argument that any Catholic Church attempt to suppress science and technology would have failed. NOT that it would have never been attempted.

 

[AngryAtheist8]

This makes me wonder, if there had been no protestantism how would the New World have been influenced. Lets say Henry VIII had his own son and didn’t need an annulment and therefore no need to disobey the pope and create his own church. I wonder if there still would have been much competition in the New World since a lot of the reason England expanded was to counteract Catholic Spain. If England is Catholic would it have remained a small nation.
As for continental Europe, it might have led to a kind of bigger stronger holy roman empire in Germany that would be united by Catholicism. I have a hard time seeing the church suppressing science and technology. They would probably want to use it to either help people or if they were more sinister, try to expand the papal states. It’s hard to tell though.
In a way, I think the reformation was a bad thing that brought about some good. It made the church start to focus more towards heaven and made them correct abuses in the church. Its all part of God’s plan.

Hard to say.
I doubt the British royal line would have been devoid of ambition even if they remained Catholic though:shrug:

 

[GKC]

Hard to say.
I doubt the British royal line would have been devoid of ambition even if they remained Catholic though:shrug:

Henry did have a son, an illegitimate one, Henry Fitzroy, before the advent of La Boleyn. He labored mightily to come up with some way to use that asset (and also his daughter Mary) to deal with the dynastic problem. No go (interesting history, though). And the Duke of Richmond died, like Henry’s other son, early. Bad genes, no doubt. But a source of inspiration for alternate history.

GKC

 

[benjammin]

Hard to say.
I doubt the British royal line would have been devoid of ambition even if they remained Catholic though:shrug:

True, maybe the Pope or some other church official would have stepped in like Torquemada did in South America when he split it between portugal and spain. Maybe something like today with England getting Northern North America like in our timeline.

 

[minion]

That’s an argument that any Catholic Church attempt to suppress science and technology would have failed. NOT that it would have never been attempted.

Besides the mishandling of Galileo, I was with the understanding that the Catholic Church generally supported the sciences.

Heck, it was a Catholic priest that first invented the Big Bang theory.

 

[Holly3278]

I think that if the Protestant “reformation” had never occurred, the world would be drastically different. The Church never would have approved of contraception for preventing pregnancy and I don’t think many other immoral things would have occurred either. I think that morality likely would have stayed true and orthodox rather than becoming so unorthodox as it is today where things like gay “marriage” and abortion are allowed, even by some Christians. For example, some churches of the United Church of Christ believe that gay “marriage” is just fine. Some of them also don’t have a problem with abortion. The Catholic Church, of course, has a major problem with both things and rightfully so. I sincerely wish that the Church would have conquered the Protestant “reformation” shortly after it started but alas, that did not happen.

That said, I do not like to call it the Protestant “reformation” which is why I put reformation in quotes. I think it would more accurately be called the Protestant Revolt or the Protestant Deformation, deformation because it literally deformed the Church with its many heresies.

 

[AngryAtheist8]

I think that if the Protestant “reformation” had never occurred, the world would be drastically different. The Church never would have approved of contraception for preventing pregnancy and I don’t think many other immoral things would have occurred either. I think that morality likely would have stayed true and orthodox rather than becoming so unorthodox as it is today where things like gay “marriage” and abortion are allowed, even by some Christians. For example, some churches of the United Church of Christ believe that gay “marriage” is just fine. Some of them also don’t have a problem with abortion. The Catholic Church, of course, has a major problem with both things and rightfully so. I sincerely wish that the Church would have conquered the Protestant “reformation” shortly after it started but alas, that did not happen.

That said, I do not like to call it the Protestant “reformation” which is why I put reformation in quotes. I think it would more accurately be called the Protestant Revolt or the Protestant Deformation, deformation because it literally deformed the Church with its many heresies.

I think if Christendom had remained unified under the Catholic Church, the Church would have eventually liberalized and/or reformed on its own.
OR (and this is perhaps more likely) most people would basically become cultural Catholics.

Regardless of what the elite think, its not feasible for a theocracy to keep the masses fanatically devoted indefinitely. Over time people get jaded, they get tired of the repression, contradictory ideas come in from the outside, etc.

This has largely happened in the Islamic Republic of Iran, where the younger generations (who have seen the how little the mullahs promises are worth) are probably the most secular and pro-Western in recorded history.