The Papacy and the Historian VIII: The Perennial Papacy?

Extract

In the preceding papers I have looked at the papacy historically, from the borderland of history and theology, but historically none the less—and socially. I have tried to relate developments in the papacy to certain features in the social structure of the day. I have passed a good deal by. I have said little about the Reformation, what I did say was by way of a criticism of Calvinist notions of Catholicity, a criticism made on theological grounds. I have said nothing about Luther because it seems to me that Luther’s phenomenal achievement of turning the Bible back from a rather quaint law book, which is what the canonists had made it, into the source of a personal encounter, which is what it was meant for, has been absorbed as much as it ever will be into the general Christian mainstream. Outside his capacity as a supreme master of the art of reading Scripture Luther seems to me to have been a disaster. His theology of Church order, if one can call it that, led from one Babylonish captivity to another: his social and political teaching were ruined by his need to creep to the German princes, his protectors. He was after all Philip of Hesse’s paid pander. But most important, the Reformation has only indirect lessons to teach for the student of papalism. If the Reformation was not simply a theological movement but a social movement too, an important stage in the development of a revolutionary capitalist society, then, if I am right, the papacy’s contribution to this movement of revolution had largely been made. In the event the papacy did little in the Reformation period except to serve as a symbol, a rallying cry.