Quote:
Originally posted by bilmore
I dunno. You make it seem like the Lil Rascals all huddled around the cute girl who yells "I know!! Let's put on a SHOW!" My reading leaves me contemplating a very cowed and nearly-enslaved peasantry paying, on pain of death, rather large and crippling percentages of their cashflow, usually to the church-landlord, sometimes merely as a multi-tithe apart from land rent. They could refuse, but then be shunned, driven out, denied salvation (which had a much more immediate impact to a people who died in their twenties and had to live in a religiously homogenous society that depended on communal life for . . . well . . . life), or actually even be killed at the direction of the priest. Not quite the "leave it in the anonymous envelope in the bowl" scenario.
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I've not spent the time reading on this topic that you have, but have to say in response only that you must find today's Church much more acceptable, at least measured by its wealth, and in its influence and power over its subjects.
By that measure, I'd imagine that you'd be even more pleased sitting in a progressively more secularized Europe, so long as you're not (say) sipping cappucino in the streets of Rome. Excepting their troublesome foreign policy positions, of course.
Finally, I gotta say that you and Atticus trading calm, informed, interesting debates has been too long absent from this board, and I find the overall effect disorienting. What's come over you two this weekend? Must be the Passover/Easter holiday, no?
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