Confessing Church

The Catholic Church classifies pride, lust, gluttony, envy, greed, laziness, and wrath as the seven deadly sins. In Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, he analyzes each of these sins and their influence on the lives of pilgrims making their way to Canterbury. Among these pilgrims, the reader would stumble upon a nun and a pardoner. Although the nun and the pardoner share employment in conjunction with the Catholic Church, the sins of which they are guilty differ immensely, as do their…

starting to be acceptable. During the Middle Ages, between 600 and 1450 A.D, Europe saw Islam make its way into Sspain and the dramatic change brought about by the Christian Schism of 1054 CE. However, there certainly were ideals, like the Roman Catholic Church, that were left relatively unscaved by the turmoil. The Umayyad Caliphate was primarily located in Syria until around 750 CE when they were overthrown and the Abbasid Caliphate took over. This forced the Umayyad Caliphate to relocate to…

concludes the church and state must be separated in order to reach happiness. Boniface tries to use the “divine law” to get more power. He writes, in his Unam Sanctum, that all power is derived from God. Hence then, the pope has the right to govern over both the church and government because there’s “one shepherd” and everyone is subjected to his “spiritual power”. He even brings the Greeks. Boniface says,…

Soren Kierkegaard was a Danish philosopher who questioned the reflection of an individual. However, Kierkegaard was most known for fighting against the perversion of the individual by the Christendom (83). He believed the Christendom was ruining the overall essence of how to be a true Christian. Kierkegaard then came up with the belief that the Christendom, which he calls the crowd, is the untruth. This is because he believes the only way to be a true Christian is to be an individual, which is…

living in days of uncertainty. In these uncertain days how can the church rise up and bring healing or guidance to a nation that appears to be worried? The church, as a body of Christ, can be a place for the brokenhearted, for people who are marginalized, for people…

Chaucer’s Agenda (An analysis of Chaucer’s iconoclastic attack on institutions in 1300 BCE) “To our understanding of that complex series of religious and secular events still generally known as ‘the English Reformation’ (Whiting). Indeed, Chaucer wrote some very controversial tales about many radical pilgrims of his day, and for the first time brought skepticism into the minds of the commoner. Do you believe that Chaucer had an agenda, an intention to his satirical outlash? For he did attack…

Julian of Norwich, in her Revelations of Divine Love, synthesizes the asceticism which had permeated the Roman Catholic Church from its earliest history with the philosophical advancements made by Saint Thomas Aquinas only one hundred and fifty years before her. She does this seamlessly and almost certainly unintentionally, demonstrating that the philosophical developments of Saint Thomas Aquinas were familiar concepts to her such that they shaped her mystic religious view. Despite the…

do anything for the sense of authority or power, one of them being Reverend Parris. Reverend Parris is one of, if not the most, power-hungry characters in The Crucible because prior to the plot of the play, the audience learns he was greedy in his church, during the play the audience witnessed many moves made out of his need for authority, and at the end of the play when the audience sees his authority-ridden facade start to crumble. Through dialogue, there is an obvious hostility between…

Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to the doors of a church in Wittenberg, Germany. At that time, the Catholic church had twisted the original meaning of scriptures to encourage the buying of indulgences, which were paid passes out of purgatory, the costly visiting of relics, most of which were fake, and the submission to the ultimate authority of the pope, who was one of the most powerful men in the world. To add to this injustice, the church purposely refrained from translating the Bible…

decision, people started to look at these royal courts to settle a case, rather than to Church or baronial courts.” In comparison to Jones’ article which only briefly states, “John’s father, Henry II (1133-1189) had been a particularly enthusiastic legal reformer.” The second significant way in which they vary is how they cover King John. The article provides more detail on the actions that made him so hated by the Church and his barons. In his article, Jones explains how John knew how the…