Letters to the Editor
-
Walter
Nice to see someone who knows about the history of the church! However, I think some of your analysis is a bit spotty. First, remember you are talking about an overwhelmingly illiterate (pre-literate?) society until well into the 17th Century, hell even most priests were illiterate! Maybe the Church had nefarious reasons for being the sole arbiter of Scripture, but not a small amount of that can be chalked up to simple expediency, not "keeping everyone stupid".
Also, you're misrepresenting Luther a little bit here, it wasn't the contradictions of Scriptural Interpretation that he rebelled against, but rather th problems that arose from the Vatican having both Spiritual and Temporal authority. Take a look at "The Babylonian Captivity Of The Church" or read about his trip to Rome as a monk to see what I'm talking about. Luther, if anything was calling for a more stringent Catholicism...well into the 1530s he still referred to himself as an "Augustinian Monk".
Maybe I'm reading too much into your words, but you seem to be placing contemporary morality on historical eras. I know that it's very tempting to do, but after spending far too many years studying history I've come to realization that you simply cannot do that. You gotta try and understand the mindframes and worldviews of the peoples in question. People who thought very differently about their world than we do ours...it's one of the fun/frustrating things about the study of history :)
And finally, correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to remember learning in my history of science class that based on naked eye observation, the geocentric models made just as much sense as the heliotropic ones (something about retrograde motion?)...so you can see why the Church was so obstinate (the fact that they remained obstinate for so long? Well that's a whole other kettle of fish :)
cheers,