moviefreakedmind said:
I think people can decide for themselves what books are “for their own good”. I’m sure you’d be less apologetic if Catholic doctrines were tyrannically banned.History does not seem to support the concept that people are capable of correctly judging the truth on their own all the time. I think things that are true should be promulgated, and things that are untrue should be suppressed. Or do you think that Facebook taking strides to eliminate fake news is “tyrannical”? People have a right to the truth, and the Church’s intent was to protect that right.
History supports the concept that people are capable of great stupidity and great brutality, and the Catholic Church has participated in that just as much as everyone else has. When Facebook starts taking strides to eliminate fake news by murdering or jailing people then I will deem that an accurate analogy. Obviously they weren’t protecting anyone’s right to the truth by ensuring that those people didn’t have a right to comprehend the truth unless they learned Latin. I honestly thought, until now, that everyone including the most devout Catholics could agree that the Catholic of the olden days was horrifyingly corrupt and immoral but I guess that’s not the case.
I wasn’t talking about murdering and jailing people, and if that’s what you meant by “tyrannically banned,” it wasn’t clear to me. I certainly agree that that was usually immoral.
You’re really fixated with this whole Latin thing, aren’t you? The fact that Latin was the lingua franca of Europe does not mean that the Catholic Church was deliberately trying to conceal the truth from those who were uneducated. Is that what Newton and Linnaeus and Copernicus did when they all wrote in Latin? What did they have to hide? You’re ignoring the fact that because everything was in Latin, Europe was more unified in the medieval era due to the facility of communication. It was easier to exchange ideas. You could be educated anywhere in Europe in the same language. It was unfortunate that most people weren’t educated, but the societal structures weren’t in place to allow for it. If everything had been in the vernacular, it wouldn’t have made a huge difference because people wouldn’t have had the opportunity to learn to read anyway.
Saying that “the Catholic of the olden days was horrifyngly corrupt and immoral” is making quite the blanket statement. There have been good and bad Catholics of every time and place. Many so-called Catholics nowadays are horrifyingly corrupt and immoral. Many Catholics in the Middle Ages were wonderful, loving people. Not much has changed except the ways in which people are immoral or virtuous.