If you look back on the History of the Catholic Church, two major events that happened at around the same time, will pop out at you. These are the Reformation and the Inquisition. The reformation was a movement to break off from the Church. Lead by the hot-headed Luther, the Reformation is seen to many as a break away from the old, outdated, and corrupt Catholic Church. If you look closer, you can see it was a rejecting of the Church, with flawed Philosophy and distorted logic that was filled with much bloodshed.…
Organized religion is defined as an “institutionalized religion, usually with a hierarchical clergy and rules to govern the means by which adheres participate” (Merriam-Webster). History has shown that organized religion is, in most cases, forcefully placed in society. As a result, many people develop an intense disdain and contempt for organized religion. One can see the use of a forced organized religion in the work of Leonardo Sciascia. The overall theme of disdain and contempt for organized religion is portrayed through both the Rector of Sant’Anna’s and old Professor Roscio’s thoughts regarding Catholicism and the Catholic Church itself in the novel, To Each His Own by Leonardo Sciascia.…
The Catholic Church has been a big influential force in the Latin America. It influence can be found since the beginning when Christopher Columbus discovered the Americas. On the first island that they landed, Hispaniola or now Haiti/Dominican Republic, was were the church started to spread its influences. Among their priorities, the first of Church was stablish in the new continent. The other priority was to be a conscience to the “conquistadores” or conquerors about fair treatment of the Indians that would be become new subjects to the church and protect them from slaves’ treatment.…
Hook - Try to envision an infamous organization that was known for slaughtering hundreds of thousands of innocent people. Men, women, and children alike. This organization committed hundreds of hate crimes against innocent individuals simply because they shared different moral values and beliefs. I am sure many of you are thinking that “ISIS” fits this description, but the organization that I am talking is Catholic Church in the eleventh century.…
The liberal order ruled Italian politics from 1860-1922, and centered around the long standing tradition of trasformismo, coalition forming to develop a flexible, centrist party. Unfortunately, this system had the potential for tyranny by the majority to run rampant, which allowed the rise of fascism in Italy. The liberal order existed in a parochial political culture and a church that did not support the government. It allowed for oligarchic rule in a highly centralized, corrupt state, a dangerous combination. Numerous other centers of power, like the mafia, undermined the legitimacy of the regime (Bull, Newell 2005).…
Machiavelli in the Reformation The institution of the catholic church during the renaissance of rome was a complex and beautiful establishment that turned the renaissance into the blissful era that it was. This enormous wheel turned under the guise of pious reverence, and the spokes were the small psychological manipulations divvied out by the enormous world power. The help of indulgences, corrupt popes, and even lack of faith in the upper ranks of the church were the pillars to the parthenon of the church. Faith at this time became a leash, the dominant power of the church was the controlling master, as the general population became the obedient pet, blindly following, painstakingly sweating for their master’s pleasure. And their masters were the corrupt politicians, petty criminals raised to the height of society with purchasable offices.…
The “siècle des Lumières” and accompanying French Revolution were, and often still are, characterized as mass movements of antagonism towards faith and religion. As the Catholic faith of the old regime crumbled, the revolutionary spirit of the time promised to do away with orthodoxy and create a new egalitarian society based on freedom. Ideas like these were fueled by the French philosophes, with thinkers like Voltaire referring to orthodox religion as “the mother of fanaticism and civil discord” and “the enemy of mankind” (Gliozzo, 1971, p. 274). However, later critics of the Revolution recognized that, in fact, the secular values of the Revolution had formed their own type of fanatic political theology.…
The film Planet of the Apes is an explicit depiction of dogmatism and free inquiry within a hierarchical society, depicting the power of the few over many, much like religion specifically Catholicism. Whilst the film veils the indisputable first world connections through the use of apes and a “fictional” world, the theories and ideologies subliminally placed create many juxtapositions to the power within religion. Catholicism is the oldest and authoritative religious groups, which put in place many of the dogmatic practices still used today. By observing the practices of the Catholic Church it will be readily seen how institutions who are put in places with high authority often take advantage and oppress those below them.…
Since the start of their reigning, the Franco regime had some important ideologies that they put in place. One of the ideologies, as stated by Juan Carlos Ocaña Aybar, was national-Catholicism. By this, the church would defend the Francoist dictatorship and as a reward for this, the Church was able to dominate Spain’s social life and education. And so it did. The church started to work as if it were the state.…
The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements by Eric Hoffer stands out in the social-psychological literature because of it’s author’s notorious lack of formal education and for the conclusions he drew about social movements and their participants. Hoffer, seeking to better understand the prognosis of large social movements and how they gain and lose members, applies numerous theoretical examples to illustrate his arguments including Nazism, Christianity, Islam, and Communism. Hoffer’s book provides an historically-backed assessment of, mostly western social movements but fails to include the largest possible scope and empirical evidence base. To fully understand the books shortcomings, though, we must first look to its conclusions.…
Religious and spiritual belief systems have existed for nearly as long as humans have and those systems have, in turn, held a power over most humans since its creation. So where does a worshiper go to practice their religion? For most, the hub of religious practice is a physical space, like a shrine, church, temple, or mosque or some other house of worship. When a belief system has a physical place and gains religious “administrators”—priests, the Pope, Imams, Rabbis—suddenly it’s the middlemen and middle-space between the worshiper and the divine figure that holds the earthly power over humans. This text will study the Roman Catholic Church’s use of Baroque and Tridentine art and architecture in their churches, originating around the time of the Counter-Reformation, in order to depict the ideals of spirituality and worship of the Catholic Renewal in opposition to the Protestant Reformation.…
Firstly, there are many examples of how the Church's Institutionalism offers opportunity to suppress or even be corrupted. For Example, the Churches was created so that "the fullness of power" stayed in control by "a ruling class" by basically taking it, (Dulles). As a Christian, I don't oppose the Catholic Church, but I do see a conflict of interest, in the richest most influential Christian representatives on earth who wear jewelry, and Gold head adornments worth millions, while we still have millions dying daily of a vast numbers of reason. Another contradiction arises with "The principal paradigm" which the Vatican II basically claim to be the new "People of God of the New Covenant," replacing previous chosen people and the Covenant offered…
The thought of a Cosa Nostra and Catholic Church having an intimate relationship is unsettling to many civilians. Evidence proves connections between both Cosa Nostra and Catholic Church exist. The Catholic Church experienced many scandals which is now referred to as “Disgraceful Period of the Roman Catholic Church”.…
By ultimately accepting the change globalization brought about, with different a different cultural identity, the Catholic Church saved itself from collapsing and becoming an example of what happens when a cultural identity isn’t accepting of others. Since the Catholic Church did accept globalization, strong homogeneous cultural identities can be seen between the Lutheran and Catholic Churches, such as their impersonation of God’s justice. While still not complete replicas, their views on God (more so the Catholic Church) has changed positively and God is seen as someone to be loved rather than…
In today’s society, most actions of terrorist violence seem to have a religious motivation to them, but often the violent actions themselves go against the teachings of these religions and are rather an out of context generalisation of these teachings. For religions such as, Islam, Christianity, and Catholicism, they have been used multiple times as a powerful source of motivation to terrorist violence, in events such as the crusades and gunpowder plot, and also from terrorist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and Islamist extremism. By looking at these events and cross referencing with the teachings of the religions they correlate to, it can be seen that religion is always used as an excuse to promote one religion or as a misconception of religious…