To: King Taylor
From: Your most trusted Advisor, Weber
Cc: Personal File
Re: Concerning Lawson the Blasphemer
To King Taylor,
I am writing in response to your recent inquires into ideas espoused by Lawson the Blasphemer. At first I would have dismissed his ideas as insane, however my curiosity got the better of me and I decided to look at what he proposes in a more objective light. After a thorough, but in no way exhaustive, study of this matter I have come to one conclusion. Abandoning Pope Francis the Corrupt and taking on Protestant views will, over time, bring drastic political and economic change to your country. In order to demonstrate the effects of the Protestant Faith please allow me to begin by writing a side by side comparison of the two ideas.
Catholicism, as you are well aware, has been the main form of religion in our nation for as long as we can remember. It is a system in which one must speak to a priest in order to speak to God. It also has the belief that the Pope is Gods appointed authority one earth. Concerning the afterlife, it is important that one seek the council of the church and indeed, it is through the church that one is saved. As long as one follows the edicts of the church, by performing penance, or purchasing indulgences, one can be reasonably assured salvation. As you know Mass is conducted in Latin, and no one can understand what is being said, or what the Word of God says, so anyone without a formal education will have to rely on the Church as an intermediary.
Protestantism takes a different approach; people, not the church are ultimately responsible for their own salvation. They believe that it is through a personal relationship with God that they can be saved. They don't believe they can work, or buy their way into heaven. One of the founders of the Protestant movement, Martin Luther, posted his, "95 Thesis" to the Castle Church in Wittenberg, German. Here is an excerpt:
"81. This unbridled preaching of pardons makes it no easy matter, even for learned men, to rescue the reverence due to the pope from slander, or even from the shrewd questionings of the laity.
82. To wit: -- "Why does not the pope empty purgatory, for the sake of holy love and of the dire need of the souls that are there, if he redeems an infinite number of souls for the sake of miserable money with which to build a Church? The former reasons would be most just; the latter is most trivial."
Martin Luther was not the only one who to influence the modern Protestant. John Calvin also played a hand. He taught that man was preordained to be saved by God. That those who heard his calling internally would be saved, but those who did not would not be saved. In other words there is no choice in the matter. Protestantism is a mix of ideas and values and while the exact beliefs vary from place to place, the basic ideas still stand: No one can earn our or buy their way into heaven and there is no one, other than God or the individual who is responsible for salvation.
The implications of this are staggering, so I will attempt separate them down into three areas: Social, Political, and economical. In a social context I believe you will see a stronger focus on the individual. Since there is an emphasis on one's own personal relationship with God as being important and not the relationship with the church, people would begin to look more deeply at their own lives. In addition to causing people to be more individualistic, the removal of the Catholic Church from the equation will take away certainty. The certainty of salvation offered by the Catholic Church will be replaced with doubt. However, that doubt will eventually be replaced with confidence; one must be confident that one is saved, and a way to demonstrate salvation it is important to follow a calling from God. This will lead to what I believe to be the most important turning point, the reordering of labor in the minds of the population. Under the Catholic Church there is one occupation that can be considered a Calling from God; working for the Church. However, under the Protestant ethic people will realize that whatever occupation they currently are working in is a calling by God. That they should work hard and with quality. This is what I call the Protestant Work Ethic. It is best summed up by Benjamin Franklin when he quotes from scripture, "Seest thou a man diligent in his business? he shall stand before kings; he shall not stand before mean men. (Proverbs 22:29)" (Weber, 19)
With rationalization of thought and research methods the sciences should see a reformation as well. Protestants are forced to take the world as it is, and this will push scientists to view reality objectively and not through Pope Francis the Corrupt lenses. Following scientific advancement I believe your kingdom will be able to create better military technology, better sailing vessels and navigation. We can look forward to advances in agriculture, and better techniques for building houses. All of this will come at a high price. The economy of your nation will start to change to meet this new reality.
This new focus on hard work and rational thought will begin to have a more economic and political focus. I believe we will see a move to privatize property. The current system in which the farmers all live and work on a manner is not very productive and, without the support of the Church, unable to withstand the test of efficiency. Manor Lords will begin to enclose their farms, and force the current residents to find accommodation elsewhere. They will then hire them as waged labor to work the farms with a careful eye on their profit margin. Labor has now been turned into a commodity.
I believe it will be vital to create a stable monetary system. Unfortunately this is not possible under Catholic rule. Their rules on usury are very strict, "Nevertheless, the 12th canon of the First Council of Carthage (345) and the 36th canon of the Council of Aix (789) have declared it to be reprehensible even for laymen to make money by lending at interest." (Vermeersch)". With the decreased power of the Catholic Church, and the increased need for capital for your kingdom, it is very likely that we will see an increase in money lenders. There are some negative aspects to the advancements of society, science and economics. Wars will be more costly. You will need to have paid, standing armies with good equipment, larger fleets of ships to insure your interests abroad, and the funding for research to make sure that you do not fall behind the despicable nation ruled by the (Censored). If there is one thing that the Protestants won't change, but enhance, it is the competitive nature of humans.
Another aspect of change concerns your Royal Highness directly. The nature in which you rule will never be the same. As the power for the Pope disappears, you will need to assert more of your own. You will need to order your economy and your country so that you can compete with the nations of the world. You will need to organize your government so it runs more efficiently, collects taxes that are not too burdensome on your economy, establish the borders of your domain, and bring into line all of the lords of the land who owe you their allegiance. Gustav Van Schmoller describes the necessity of a nations focus on internal affairs:
"Questions of political power were at issue, which were, at the same time, questions of economic organization. What was at stake was the creation of real political economies as unified organisms, the centre of which should be, not merely a state policy reaching out in all directions, but rather the living heartbeat of a united sentiment." (Schmoller)
What starts as a reformation of religion will branch out in all directions. From Politics to the daily lives of the people your nation will not be the same. This Protestant Work ethic will lead to something that even the founders of the religion could not have foreseen, and it will eventually become independent of the religion. It will be a reality of our daily lives:
"The Puritan wanted to work in a calling; we were forced to do so. For when asceticism was carried out of monastic cells into everyday life, . . . it did its part in building the tremendous cosmos of the modern economic order . . . the care for external goods should only lie on the shoulders. . . "like a light cloak, which then can be thrown aside at any moment". But fate decreed that the cloak should become an iron cage."(Weber 123)
Bibliography:
Adolph Spaeth, L.D. Reed, Henry Eyster Jacobs, et Al., Trans. & Eds.
(Philadelphia: A. J. Holman Company, 1915), Vol. 1, pp. 29-38.
http://www.iclnet.org/pub/
/ninetyfive.txt
Vermeersch, Arthur. "Usury." The Catholic Encyclopedia.
Vol. 15. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1912. 2
Feb. 2009 <http://www.newadvent.org/
Weber, Max. The Protestant Ethic ad the Spirit of Capitalism. New
York: Routlage, 2006.
Schmoller, Gustav Van. "week four ." blackboard. 1896. Shoreline
Communit College. 2 Feb 2009
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