User talk:Mircea Romania/Protestantism and Ecumenism. Or why to be an Orthodox

My dear Mircea, referring to this:

As it is known, the new lands „civilization” really meant the destruction of more advanced civilizations and the killing of tens of millions of indigenous. At this fact it must be added that the Europeans that gone to the New World had not was selected to do a real civilization, but even they were the least civilized people: convicts, men with a poor morality, adventurers. They made Anti-Christian deeds: murders, thefts, and so on. When they had driven away, they not only were out of the Church teachings, but also they were impelled to do more wrong deeds. And they did do those.

When they returned to Europe with a lot of wealth for the kings and other people, they also retained some for they and so they became rich men. Of course, they didn’t change their wrong religious and moral visions, but, because they had brought services to the kings and because the kings expected to send them again in expeditions to the New World to become richer, it could be supposed that the kings defeated them when they had problems. As kings’s protected men, as rich people and with a conquering hero’s halo it may be presumed that they acquired a great influence in the society. This implies that a segment of the society began to admire and to follow their visions and their behaviour. So, if until there Inquisition had repressed (very) drastically any departure relative to the Catholic teachings, beginning with the apparition of those people, there was installed…”the exception”: for those men there were other rules, namely the population saw that it could live also without the need to follow the Catholic Church teachings… In fact, those vanquishers of the New World were a knot of influent people that exhibited Non-Catholic views and behaviours. Otherwise, caught between the Not-Christian deeds that they have did in expeditions and the opulence that they might show when they returned in Europe, it could be assumed that they didn’t have much time to teach, to know and to follow the Catholic Church’s requirements.

I must state that this mixes unappropriately Spain and England.

The Reformers or rather their worldly protectors were rich people, true. But not rich Spanish Conquistadors escaping Spanish Inquisition by royal favour. One reason is that the worst Conquistadors - I name Pizarro - did not escape justice altogether. Pizarro died in Perù, excommunicated from the Church and outlawed by Spanish crown. He was hunted down and killed by the King's soldiers.

The closest parallel to people like Pizarro as Protestant Reformers would be the the founder of Prussia as a secular state. He was the last Grand Master of the Teutonic order in that area. He was also closest of kin to the duke of Brandenburg, the late ruler in Berlin, but he could keep Berlin legally only if he married and had children, Prussia (now the Kaliningrad area, more or less) legally only by staying a monk soldier. He adopted Protestantism because Luther taught no-one should be monk. Then he took Prussia as a new secular land from the hands of the Polish King (which Prussian rulers later attacked, contrary to his oath).

Hans 07:44, March 11, 2008 (PDT)

continued

Protestant Prussia came from Teutonic Order. Scandinavian countries, who had actively sent volunteers to it, became Lutheran, Prussia veered to Calvinism.

England, France and Germany had sent armies to the crusades ... Protestantism would not have stood a chance without the Protestant after a century majority in England (not to mention Scottish lowlands, Scotland having received Templar refugees after their trial), half of Germany and strong minority in France (up till Louis XIV chased it back into Roman Catholicism or out of the country). Dutch Calvinism took its greatest proponents from Orange, a South French county that had previously been active in crusades ...

But Spain had very few Protestants. The Inquisition dealt with Cryptojudaism, into which it counted Jewish ritual Christian believers, with Alumbrados and only after that with Lutherans and Secret Moors. Alumbrados were people seeking the direct inspiration from God, without going to Church or looking into the Bible.

Ignatius of Loyola was three times accused of being an Alumbrado. He was cleared three times before the Inquisition. He taught his spiritual disciples hesychastic prayer (for the Pater, Ave, Gloria and Creed, he did not use the Jesus prayer), he called the RCC "the Orthodox Church", except for the rules about obeying the Pope in Rome, most of his "rules for agreeing with the Orthodox Church" would have been acceptable to the Orthodox - like honouring the Virgin, fasting canonically and giving alms. He also distinguished between the sinful woman and the sister of Lazarus. I know this about him after reading the appendices of his Spiritual Exercises.

Hans 09:42, March 12, 2008 (PDT)