Did the Church lose power by it's lack of secrecy?

Started by Aethel, December 31, 2022, 08:43:27 AM

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Aethel

The Unknown, the Secret, the Hidden - concepts in the human psyche that make people feel unedged, unnerved. When it comes to human or humanoid things, it signifies the potential of having power over people. Why? Simply because the human psyche cannot evaluate the risk it poses to that individual person's well being (as well as their community), so it creates tension and a need to figure out that risk.

Any horror movie worth it's salt will not reveal the monster / killer, either ever or until much later in the film. Once you know exactly what you are dealing with in the film, the monster isn't as scary. But those initial moments where something ominous is killing people / haunting people, and you don't know exactly what, freaks you out. The unknown can be scary.

You can apply this to multiple cults and religious groups today, back then and forever. The Christians certainly freaked out the pagan Romans by their secrecy at first. This weird group that is calling our gods evil demons; they worship a Middle Eastern deity that they claim became incarnate as a man; and they meet in secret on Sundays to eat the flesh and blood of that god. One of the oldest pieces of Catholic lore I heard constantly growing up was that the Ancient Romans thought the Catholics were cannibals in secret because of the Eucharist. That made a lot of the Romans paranoid, particularly as the Gospel spread and the Christians gained more social power.

Cults today too - people find groups like Scientology and the Freemasons creepy because of their bizarre hidden rituals that nobody has access to. Same with the Mormons and their closed off hidden rituals.

Even groups that people have public access to, but are closed off by foreign language, freak people out. The Jews freak people out - their rituals are all in Hebrew, nobody knows what they are doing, they can talk to each other in a language nobody else can, they teach each other stuff in their own language that nobody else has access to, and they are incredibly socially powerful. That freaks people out.

So this only leads to this question - did we lose something of power and might by "opening up the Church" and making the ritual mundane? The Catholics, especially so in Protestant countries like America and Canada, had mysterious rituals that, unless you knew Latin and understood basic Catholic theology, seemed bizarre and way too lengthy. Men wearing weird robes with lace (Lace! Why Lace!? Does Jesus like Lace?!), facing away to the altar such that you can't see what the Priest is doing. He's chanting, CHANTING! Mysterious ancient Latin incantations that nobody understands at all. He's using incense, and people are ritually kneeling, standing, kneeling, standing. Bells are rung at certain points - why? He lifts up his hand several times. He says some Latin phrases that everybody else knows, but you don't. He lifts up this wafer and wine which they claim is literally Jesus Christ - why?

When the Catholics came to America, particularly in droves in the 19th century, it freaked people out. Many Protestants thoughts that Pope was directly communicating with Priests and Bishops, and was trying to brainwash the children into becoming revolutionary monarchists. Why? Because they had bizarre rituals and knowledge that the Protestants did not see for generations. Rituals that could last for an hour and a half, to two hours. It just seemed like magical mumbo jumbo (The infamous "Hocus Pocus" comes from Protestants mocking "Hoc est Corpus Meum", or "This is my body") and a group of people who, by virtue of their hidden things, could be up to something. They could talk to each other in Latin, and with each other - but not you if you were an outsider.

This created a certain type of "in-group" dynamic of mysterious stuff and hidden knowledge that most people just didn't have. The Catholics had schools where, you too, could learn about this information, but you had to join the group.

I seriously wonder if the real reason why the Church lost it's prestige in the world is because of it's lost of psychological power. When the rituals were shortened, you saw what the Priest was doing, and he faces the people, you know exactly what's going on. Nothing is hidden anymore, no more mysteries to solve. It's just a mundane thing now where the Priest says some things about the Gospel and the bread turns into Jesus.

Aethel

I had this thought because a friend of mine had a Latin Mass wedding, and a lot of his non-Catholic / agnostic friends attended. When we talked, they all were unnerved and confused by the Latin Mass; one person made the claim that they thought the Priest was summoning demons with the Latin chant.

Jean Carrier

#2
Not really, it was more a political process. Princes realized they could take the Church's money by going Prot, and then the enlightenment came around and they realized they didn't even need that pretense any more. The Catholic religion is very much "exoteric" (though i think ultimately the exoteric-esoteric dichotomy is false and non-Catholic) by nature, a public city on a hill. That some dumb prots and Americans don't understand the Latin Mass is only indicative of America's complete lack of culture, history, or tradition.

Besides that, though the Church can no longer excercise her power as easily in the practical order, she still possesses absolute spiritual and (indirect) temporal power, i.e. the two swords. This is acknowledged in the 1983 Code of Canon Law:

Quote
Can. 1311 The Church has the innate and proper right to coerce offending members of the Christian faithful with penal sanctions.

Can. 1312 §1. The following are penal sanctions in the Church:

1/ medicinal penalties, or censures, which are listed in cann. 1331-1333;

2/ expiatory penalties mentioned in can. 1336.

§2. The law can establish other expiatory penalties which deprive a member of the Christian faithful of some spiritual or temporal good and which are consistent with the supernatural purpose of the Church.

All mankind was in the ark with Noah : all the Church is with me on the rock of Pensicola!
- Pope St. Benedict XIII, in response to the emissaries of Anti-Emperor Sigismund and the Conciliarist Council of Constance who demanded his resignation

Miriam_M

Quote from: Aethel on December 31, 2022, 08:43:27 AM

I seriously wonder if the real reason why the Church lost it's prestige in the world is because of it's lost of psychological power.


I do not agree that it is only or even primarily because of "secrecy" but because of the deliberate abandonment of authority, dignity, circumspection, and discretion (which includes "secrecy" but is not limited to it), and because of the Church's embrace of modernism and its cousin, relativism.  Hierarchy, clergy, and theologians chose to become embarrassed by their power and to dissociate from it.  The entire world has suffered because of those foolish decisions.