This is a note focusing on one particular part of my previous essay on Western deformation.
There, I wrote, while noting that the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century was a part of the overall arc of deformation:
The Protestant Reformation, for example, was not uniformly bad, nor was its deformation on a par with the deformation in Gnosticism or in Utopianism. Nevertheless, it was a key part of the overall process in advancing the reconfiguration of the deformation in the overarching career of Western civilization.
I did not at the time explicitly point out the precise aspects of deformation to which the Protestant Reformation contributed.
These were:
1) the process of bringing Gnostic movements, that heretofore were generally underground, out into the mainstream;
and
2) the process of bringing anti-Catholicism into the mainstream.
These two processes were closely inter-connected, for most of the Gnostic movements throughout the Middle Ages were anti-Catholic, either in essence, or as a consequence of being persecuted by Catholic authorities—and, of course, quite often a combination of the two.
Furthermore, the process of anti-Catholicism was a key component in the ongoing development in the West of anti-Christianity, which itself has been a key component of the most general and most amorphous pathology of all in the modern West—namely, the morbidly excessive cultivation of self-criticism.
In our time, anti-Catholicism has bifurcated into two fairly separate streams:
a) a largely theologically based anti-Catholicism resident in varying degrees among Protestant Christians;
and
b) a more general anti-Catholicism among more or less secularized Westerners (which includes a vast population of atheists, agnostics, dabblers in various flavors of New Age religiousity, and Leftist and/or politically correct Protestants, along with nominal Catholics and ex-Catholics).
With (a), we see its manifestation mostly among many of the so-called “non-denominational” Protestants, often further categorized as “Evangelicals” and/or “Born Again” Christians, and not so much among the more mainstream Protestant churches (Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, etc.). Interestingly, when we do find anti-Catholicism among the more mainstream Protestants, it is usually due to the fact that they have been more susceptible of Leftist—and from there, Politically Correct Multi-Culturalist (PC MC)—influence, which tends to put them in the category of (b).
With (b), we see the continuity between the original anti-Catholicism unleashed by the Protestant Reformation and the more generalized, secularized anti-Christianity, itself bleeding over into the most generalized Western pathology of all, the paradoxical anti-Westernism that unfolded over the centuries—in a process progressively “lite”—from anti-Catholicism to anti-Christianity to Utopianism to Revolution to Leftism to PC MC.
As a solidly mainstream descendant of the Protestant Reformation, it is ironic that Lutheranism today would for the most part eschew anti-Catholicism in the interest of a sincere belief in an ongoing ecumenical dialogue with the Catholic Church; and even more ironic is the tendency for anti-Catholicism to lurk among Lutherans only to the degree that they have succumbed to Leftism and/or PC MC influence: thus anti-Catholicism can be said to have been purged from mainstream Protestantism, only to find a way back in through the back door, as it were, through Leftism and/or PC MC. (The same could be said, to a great extent, for anti-Semitism: when in days of yore it was a more central and theologically based tendency among the mainstream in Christianity, it has become formally renounced by the mainstream in the interest of sincere endeavors to build bridges with the Jewish community, and yet has found a way back in through the back door, as it were, in the Leftist and/or PC MC tendency to vilify Israel and through that vilification to nurture a crypto-anti-Semitism.)
We shall close with a look at the Godfather of the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther. These quotes are taken from an article that appears to me to be fairly scholarly, with an ostensibly good bibliography of footnotes reflecting a solid footing in the primary sources.
The Turk and the Pope do not differ at all in the form of religion; they vary only in words and ceremonies. For the Turk observes his and Moses’ ceremonies; yet the Pope, partly Christian ceremonies and partly such as were born of his own brain. . .
Just as the Turk violates the washings of Moses, so the Pope [too] does violence to Baptism and the Sacrament [of the Eucharist]. And just as the former does not stay with Moses, so the latter does not stay purely with Christ.
The Pope, with his followers, commits a greater sin than the Turk and all the Heathen. . . The Turk forces no one to deny Christ and to adhere to his [own Islamic] faith. . . Though he rages most intensely by murdering Christians in the body—he, after all, does nothing by this but fill heaven with saints. . .
The Pope does not want to be either enemy or Turk... He [the Pope] fills hell with nothing but ‘Christians’. . . This is committing real spiritual murder, and is every bit as bad as the teaching and blasphemy of Mohammed and the Turks. But whenever men do not allow him [the Pope] to practice this infernal diabolical seduction—he adopts the way of the Turk, and commits bodily murder too.
Let us zero in on the stark crux of Luther’s comparison of the Turk and the Pope: While the Turk kills Christians, he is only killing their body, not their soul—and in fact, he is helping Christians, at least more so than the Pope is: for by killing the bodies of Christians, the Turk is in fact filling Heaven with martyrs. The Pope, on the other hand, is far worse, for in his deceptive teachings of a false Christianity, he is leading innumerable Christians astray and killing their souls—thus ensuring that they will end up in eternal Hell.
Conclusion:
In his function as the catalytic founder of blatant and rampant anti-Catholicism in the West, Luther accelerated and augmented the process of Western deformation that would eventually devolve in successive stages into the PC MC that dominates the mainstream throughout the West today—a dominant mainstream that continues to worry more about the Catholic Church than about Islam, but for reasons entirely material, unlike the spiritual rationale articulated by Luther. At least Luther had a spiritual obsession with the purity of his reform as an excuse for his obtusely ass-backwards priorities; the PC MC majority today has no such concerns and measures things supposedly in rationally secularist terms—and yet they have taken the torch up from Luther through the back door, as it were, to continue the irrational vilification not only of the Catholic Church, not only of Christianity, but also of the West itself (and most acutely, that vanguard of the West, America), while treating with kid gloves and back-bending “respect” an Islam that is outrageously regressive and anti-liberal, not to mention a positive menace to the world.
I’m not sure which mentality is more pathological—that of Martin Luther, or that of the intelligent, free-thinking, tolerant, modern Western secularist whose brain has been thoroughly washed with the detergent and fabric softener of PC MC.
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