Good and the Bad

Short term good: the selling of indulgences to pay the expenses for constructing the Sistine Chapel.

Long term bad: selling indulgences causes the Protestant Reformation.

But was the Reformation such a bad thing? Yes, Martin Luther seized upon indulgences – particularly after Johann Tetzel’s intense sales pitch – and wrote the 95 Theses in 1517. Talk about an assault on the Papacy’s power. Whew! Chill out, Martin.

*

Look at it closely. Luther disliked indulgences on principle whether you got them through good actions or paid for them. People wanted a way to get partial remission for their temporal wrongs. He couldn’t stand the idea. Takes a lot of balls to deprive humanity any hope after death.

One was saved, in Luther’s view, by Faith, not Works. He rejected nearly the entire structure of the Catholic Church. Get rid of Works, streamline the communication with God, and you arrive at his grand conclusion: what do we need a Pope for? 

The facts were that these malcontents, or what I call them: the real assholes (see below for a modern version) against the Papacy went back to the 1200s, starting with the Albigensian Crusade in France. Then, in England, John Wycliff’s followers, the Lollards, made noise in the 1300s. Finally, Hussites in Bohemia were bitching about the same things Luther attacked a hundred years later (Luther admitted this, by the way). Top it off with the Germans. They hated the Papacy because it wasn’t freakin’ German. A revolution – or reformation – was inevitable. Indulgences were the least of the Church’s worries.

It got worse when Calvin wrote about predestination. Then Henry the Eighth wanted a male heir so badly he opted out of the Roman Church. (If ‘Enery doesn’t make the “Jerk” Hall of Fame on the first ballot, no one will) His actions indicate how much the so-called Reformation was carried forward by princes and kings, not religious men. And look what Calvin spawned: evangelicalism and apocalyptic craziness. The Catholic Church has meant to prepare the people for the Judgment Day but is not trying to hasten Armageddon. Leave that to the psychotic fundamentalists.

Pope Sixtus digress. 

I really wanted to mention my nephew, Giuliano, Pope Julius II. How comical is it that he gets the historical glory for hiring Michelangelo to paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling? Giuliano is portrayed as some king of art patronage with aesthetic sensibilities. We saw otherwise, (above). As Cardinal, and later Pope, he was a brutal power monger. His laughable aesthetic chops rivals the likes of John C. Calhoun and Sean Hannity. And then to have him portrayed by Rex Harrison (Dr. Doolittle himself) in The Agony and the Ecstasy (agony for me) – I just can’t deal with it.

Ciao, my followers, and bless you. I have to catch a plane.