At 02:06 PM 1/30/2004 -0800, Vance Wood wrote: >Hi David: > >Thank You, and thank you again. > >It seems that my casual remarks to a casual question about the authority of >the church has provoked the passion of one or more members of the list. Why >this is I do not know.
It is because, like my friend Bob Clair, I dislike seeing misinformation posted for all the lurkers and newbies. Like Bob, I also don't like pat answers that tend to discourage people from further research and study of complex questions. As the essay that I pointed to yesterday puts it, >From a historical point of view, the idea that the medieval church was corrupt is >based on a couple of methodological fallacies, such as disrespect for the >peculiarities of medieval religion, arbitrary use of historical evidence, and >ignorance of the situation in the medieval church. >http://www.the-orb.net/non_spec/missteps/ch11.html It is these methodological fallacies as much as the specific assertions made that I should like readers of this list to be aware of. It's so easy to project our values onto the past, to interpret the past in the light of what we know eventually happened, and to reduce its complexity to simple a + b = c. The original questioner asked for help in comprehending how people thought "back then," specifically about the Church and religion. Such a quest is not aided by gross oversimplification. Indeed, your response took a fascinating variety of eras and places and people and viewpoints and reduced them to a monochrome. Caroline ********************************* Caroline Usher DCMB Administrative Coordinator 613-8155 Box 91000 --
