Indulgences Quotes
Much of the Catholic Church was greatly influenced by Aquinas long past his death. This quotation laid the foundation for the view, that anything the Church does, even if seemingly wrong or absurd, has some positive value. Here, Aquinas refused to totally condemn the Church practice of giving indulgences (official absolution for serious sins) to the rich in exchange for money. His view assumes that there must be some good in all acts of the church, even if we can not now determine it. This view makes reform very difficult even after the evil is recognized. Some theologians argue that although this perpetuates some bad practices, it provides stability and prevents leaders of the church from constantly trying to adapt the church to meet current popular or civil criticism.
The King had earlier replaced the Pope as the head of the English church. The references to money referred to a then common corruption of the Church whereby people could buy indulgences—religious papal pardons of past or future sins. This was a major revenue source for the Vatican and a major issue for Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformers some of who saw the pope as the Devil incarnate See {623153}. For Martin Luther’s view pf the practice and {626720}, {595195}, and {639436} for other contemporary views.
This quotation illustrates how much of an egomaniac Hitler was. Here, he had achieved almost nothing in his life very significant yet, and he compared his points to those of the founder of Protestantism when Martin Luther nailed his points to the doors of the Roman Catholic Church in Wittenberg. For a short time, they actually became more important to Germans that the points of Luther, but that didn’t last very long, and Germany has reformed itself and Luther’s points are well remembered, and Hitler’s are only studied by scholars interested in the history of the period and the Nazi era—the most tragic in German history.
Clerics of the age were often combinations of fund raisers and tax collectors.
Starting with the Crusades, the Popes began giving indulgences to those who would die in battle fighting for a holy cause. The Papacy was then at one of it’s lowest points. Two men, Clement and Urban, both claimed the Papacy and each had raised an army to fight the other. Each was promising indulgences to those who would fight, and in a modality similar to the Muslim terrorists of the 21st century, the soldiers were promised ascendancy to Heaven if the fell in battle for such a holy cause. Wycliffe, in a wonderfully original notion, proposed that the people who live in peace be granted the indulgences. See {618086}.
The Christian Crusaders then believed, like many Muslims even in modern times, that the person who dies in Battle defending God and the Faith shall ascend immediately to paradise. The Muslims threw in many virgins to go along with the ascendency, but the basic idea was the same.
