Bishop of Durham

In Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, Swift portrays the differences of state religions as a comedic spectacle, directly contrary to his personal viewpoints in favor of a state religion. In Louis XIV’s Versailles, religion, specifically Catholicism, was intertwined into the French government. As an absolutist king, Louis controlled the entire state of France and ensured all of France was Catholic. At Versailles, Louis displayed his power over France through religion. Both Swift and Louis XIV…

Characterization has been the cornerstone of literature for centuries. Character presentation can attain any framework or shame. In The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer uses thoughts and actions, to characterization of the Friar and the Monk to emphasize corruption in the Catholic Church. The monk is a religious character who is corrupt. Instead of reading on his cell, he prefers to go hunting. He also decides to wear decorative clothes instead of dressing in simple clothes. The Friar is…

Introduction “Four Hail Marys” is a mastery short story written by Anne Goodwin. The story is about Four Hail Marys the Roman Catholic prayer, the mother of Jesus. In this short story Mary is relevant to the catholic religion and by using the words “Hail Mary” which means one is saved from their sins, we find Mary in this story trying to live up to that name “Hail Mary”. This essay will critically analyse the written short story by discussing the main characters, a brief overview of the plot,…

Aquinas’ Gradation Argument According to The Internet Encyclopedia (http://www.iep.utm.edu/aquinas) Thomas Aquinas lived in 1225–1274, as a catholic priest in Italy. He was well known for his philosophical and theological ideas or arguments. One of his arguments was that he can prove Gods existence gradation of beings. Anyone who claims they can prove God to be real comes off as possibly heretical or blasphemous. In this case Aquinas teaches bad doctrine and I would classify it as heretical.…

The Catholic Church heavily influences most, if not all, of Ireland’s people. Angela's Ashes is a memoir of Frank McCourt's life, in which he describes the influence of the church on his life as he grows up. Through the use multiple characters from the book, Frank portrays the Catholic Church as a bad influence because it leaves the children uneducated, leading them to be misguided and fearful of committing sins. Sex is something every person learns about before their adulthood, but the Catholic…

crusading owed a great debt to pilgrimage. Many more crusades would take place and the theme of the crusades were augmented to suit the need of the Church. The needs or purpose or victims could have been the Muslims, Jews, Cathards, Albigenses, bishops, heretics, and any and every nonbeliever. The Crusades would go on for 200 years and by this time the marriage of church and state yielded a great deal of power and persuasion through their…

One of the reasons we had many problems in the Church near the early 1800’s is because of Pope Boniface VIII. Pope Boniface the VIII was not a saint, but a scoundrel. He influenced the church in a negative way by opposing King Philip IV of France, trying to make many changes in the Church that produced outcomes which were negative and issuing the Unam Sanctum. His family and his background had a big influence on his beliefs and those beliefs affected everything he did and said. Pope Boniface…

The Frankish kingdom grew substantially, along with the church, during the reign of Charlemagne. As new territories were conquered they were they were Christianized; some brutally, such as the Saxons, Muslims were driven beyond the Pyrenees, and the Avars were practically annihilated. The Church looked to Charlemagne for protection, such as from the Lombards. Charlemagne wanted a center of control, however his territories were about the size of the European Union of today. This made is…

Description: The painting The Last Supper, was done by Jacopo Tintoretto. It was created around in 1519 and 1594. It is oil on canvas, 12’ 18’ 8”, and it is housed in the Basilica di San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice, northern Italy. The purpose of this painting is to illustrate miracle of Eucharist- the transubstantiation of earthly into divine food. During this period, the Catholic Reformation was in fully swing. This painting illustrated the importance of this sacrament to the Catholic doctrine…

There were many issues leading up to and causing the Great Schism between the East and West. According to the documents it would appear as if the Eastern Orthodox had more issues with how the West Catholics ran the church and began inching away from the word then the Catholics had with the Orthodox. The events that leads up to the schism were more important that the events following the schism. The great Schism occurred in 1054 but tensions existed long before that. Before 1054 Catholics and…