Jesuitenpest!
October 11, 2005
A review of The Jesuit Specter in Imperial Germany and The War against Catholicism: Liberalism and the Anti-Catholic Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Germany: “When, on those rare occasions, cocktail party conversation turns to the subject of papal infallibility, invariably people are surprised to learn that this seemingly central aspect of Catholicism is of rather recent vintage. While to most Catholics and non-Catholics today, the primacy of the pope’s position within that church seems self-evident, infallibility was only officially adopted in the Roman Catholic church in 1870 during the first Vatican Council, and only after considerable resistance even among its own bishops. As bishops cast the final vote in Rome on July 18, 1870–the day before the beginning of the Franco-Prussian war–its opponents abroad, both Catholic and Protestant, began a zealous campaign. Papal infallibility, they argued, made Catholicism incompatible with the ideals of individual freedom, with the principles of liberalism, and, indeed, with the modern nation-state. …”This is Jesuitenpest! in The Japery, a part of The New Pantagruel. Previously: Children and Natural Theology | Next: RJN Blogs | TrackBack (0) | Comments (0)
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