More about medievalism

I previously raised the idea that a Catholic authoritarian mindset that arose in the medieval era led to the Great Schism and the Protestant Reformation. As this seems to have raised a little bit of interest, I will say more about it.

There are those in present day Catholicism, and I think they speak for something central to the religion, who think God's will being done on earth means something like medievalism. It is a compelling vision. Everyone has his place, his role, his superiors and his limits of responsibility. Joy is participation in the right order of things, in fitting into the whole. Christian unity is to be achieved by getting everyone on board with that.

The trouble is that we have been there and done that. Christian disunity is the result of Orthodox and Protestants jumping ship, preferring freedom to the Roman vision of order. The Catholic medieval vision of unity became, unintendedly, a key cause of disunity. The Catholic response to this was to feel superior not chastened, which is human nature and understandable on that basis.

It would be extremely difficult for some Catholics, at least, to give up the lingering medievalism in their thinking. They would need to rethink what it means to be Catholic. The organizational structure, the Church, is defining of what is Catholic; separate the hierarchical and authoritarian aspects out of the matter and it becomes difficult to talk about Catholicism in a way that adequately explains it.

Unfortunately for those same Catholics, the road forward in eccumenism leads to an awkward question. What they mean when they say "Church" is at odds with much of the rest of Christendom. Christians' genial willingness to skirt difficult points like this one when we talk to each other is why we can talk about unity for centuries and never achieve it.