I don't underestimate the effect. At the same time it is foreign to me.
Not so much me, as we all know.
The Jesus I read in the New Testament stripped away those trappings, those veneers, those whitewashes.
Not sure that he did?
Yet somehow by 400 AD all of that returned with a vengeance, and it only progressed from there.
I think we need discuss this.
Referring to the above, take witchcraft.
Scripture, the Old Testament: "
Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." (Exodus 22:18), "
There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch" (Deuteronomy 18:10)
The only close mention in the NT is in Acts 8 with Simon Magus – I detail at length becomes it covers ground discussed elsewhere:
"Now there was a certain man named Simon, who before had been a magician in that city, seducing the people of Samaria, giving out that he was some great one ... But when they had believed Philip preaching of the kingdom of God, in the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized ... Simon himself believed also; and being baptized, he adhered to Philip... wondered to see the signs and exceeding great miracles which were done... (Jerusalem) sent unto them Peter and John... he (the Holy Spirit) was not as yet come upon any of them; but they were only baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then
they laid their hands upon them, and they received the Holy Ghost. And when Simon saw, that by the imposition of the hands of the apostles, the Holy Ghost was given, he offered them money, Saying: Give me also this power, that on whomsoever I shall lay my hands, he may receive the Holy Ghost..."
(The point being, it appears that a tripartite baptism was instituted in Jerusalem but not yet among Christian outreach communities ... be I digress)
The persecution of perceived witches (both men and women, the term later became applied to women only) were widespread in pre-Christian Europe, and was written into Germanic law. The influence of the Church resulted in the revocation of these laws in many places, bringing an end to traditional pagan witch hunts.
A witch could be condemned on the most dubious grounds: My cow died, my crop failed, my roof fell in. A midwife is successful, she's a midwife. Lose the wrong child, she's a witch ... you want their land? They're witches. Interfering mother-n-law, etc.
Throughout the medieval era, mainstream Christian teaching
denied the existence of witches and witchcraft, it was seen as pagan superstition. That failed to eradicate folk belief.
Note: Until the Romance era of the 19th century, faeries were always and everywhere malevolent spirits. Capricious and dangerous. It was believed faeries kidnapped babies, and replaced them with their old, bitter and complaining faeries who did nothing but scream and cry. The defence that a murdered child was in fact a faery was a recognised legal strategy. Now, of course, we see post-partum depression...
The fierce denunciation and persecution of primarly sorceresses in post-Reformation German states were not generally found in the first thirteen hundred years of the Christian era. Meanwhile local folk practice blended with prayer and petitions of intercession to local or patron saints to ward off ill-luck, to protect cattle or ensure a harvest. Bonfires were always seen as a purifying force that could deflect catastrophes or deter ghosts and fairies.
Plants, often harvested under particular conditions, were deemed effective in healing.
An old Norfolk woman cured my children's warts by rubbing the echinacea sap on them. The look of awe on their faces! Echinacea is an irritant, there is a scientific explanation, but the story-telling was half the treatment, and empowered it. For months after, my daughters would play at making 'potions'.
It worked, ergo, she's a witch!
Magic was generally dealt with through confession, repentance, and charitable works of penance. Irish canons treated sorcery as an excommunicable offence until adequate penance had been performed.
The prosecution of witchcraft generally became more prominent in the later medieval era, perhaps driven partly by the upheavals like the Black Death, climate change (the Little Ice Age of the 15th-19th centuries). Witches were blamed. I bet there was a thriving trade in witch-related preventatives and/or cures of disease and crop failure (as there was in relics) and failing, there was a backlash ...
Dominican Heinrich Kramer, assistant to the Archbishop of Salzburg. He seemed obsessed with evil. In 1484 he requested Pope Innocent VIII clarify his authority to prosecute witchcraft in Germany, having been refused assistance by local ecclesial authorities. Kramer failed and was expelled from the city of Innsbruck by the local bishop, who ordered him to stop making false accusations. Bishop Golzer described Kramer as senile in extant letters. Kramer justified his position in his 1486 book
Malleus Maleficarum ("Hammer against witches"). Kramer declared witchcraft was to blame for bad weather. The book is also noted for its mysogyny (go figure). The book was condemned by the clergy at Cologne for advocating views that violated Catholic doctrine and standard inquisitorial procedures. In 1538 the Spanish Inquisition cautioned its members not to believe everything the book said.
We just had this conversation. Swapping Shabbat for Sunday.
Not pagan.
Swapping (Pagan!) Easter for Passover.
Nope.
I don't understand why you would think things would be so different among early Protestants accustomed to what they were taught for generations by the Catholic Church?
My point is that the Reformation changed nothing other than theological details.
Changes taking place, the new bourgeoise, the printing press, etc, were not the fruits of the Reformation. I'm trying to suggest it was the other way round. The Reformation would have liked things to go on much as they always had, only without the 'bells and smells' and a rationalised Christianity.
The Catholic Church had already shown for hundreds of years it was willing to go to war to preserve its power political, so why should it come as any surprise that continued?
None at all. It's what everyone did.
I get that the trappings, the "bells and smells" as you put it, are meaningful to you, and clearly to multitudes of others. I honestly don't wish to deny you any of that. But none of that means a hill of beans to me...
OK, but it did to them.
Jesus does not teach me to enter a worshipful attitude because of vestments and stained glass, He teaches me it is a frame of mind, a place in my heart that does not require *any* outside reference ...
I dispute that, on the grounds of common psychology. Show me a religion that does not have its rites and rituals. Even Zen. It's an expression of a natural desire ... and the point is that the art and artifice of mediaeval churches was, to the simple peasant, highly educational and spiritually uplifting.
I once wanted to introduce theology talks at my local Dominican Church. It's on the borders of uber-rich Hamstead and uber-poor Kentish Town. The parish priest was very guarded. "This place," (And it is quite a place) was paid for by the subscription of Irish immigrant families, who wanted a place of worship. Don't forget them."
When I was a kid, I wanted to waer jeans to Mass. "No," my mum said. "Look at the men. They're all labourers (we lived in a poor Irish immigrant area) but they all have a suit for Sunday. It's a matter of respect."
That's what is at the heart of it: respect. To make an effort, because it's worth it. But then that is not to decry the humble chapel or the roadside calvary, it's all a piece.
I used to attend Sunday Latin Mass at Brompton Oratory. Very fashionable church. Brilliant theological homilies which is why I went and no-one else did
8.00am, me a three others ... I went to Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve and, to my horror, embassy limos were parked two abreast, and a red carpet ascended to the church, it was standing room only for us common folk, and I stood there fuming: "Where the **** were you at 8.00 on a Sunday morning?" I think it's called 'righteous indignation'.
Religion the world over, always and everywhere, has its 'bells and smells' ... the Jews did, and they continue to do so, and there is no reason that Jesus did not participate in the Liturgies of His day, with the incense and singing, the robes and what have you.
Hypocrisy, yes, He raged against that, but that's a different issue.
Here endeth the sermon for today ...
