[stripes1776]

The quality of the clergy depended on the quality of the Lord who provided them with a living. Pluralism also left many livings in the hands of the untrained. But you are also neglecting the role of the religious orders. They went from place to place providing the preaching that was neglected by the local clergy, almost armed with Paris Bibles in the pockets of their gowns, thousands of which are still preserved, to use as the basis of their sermons. San Bernadino preaches to huge crowds, much as Wesley was to do in 18th Century England. Preaching by university trained clergy was available in the larger churches. Luther is the type of this sort of priest.

The point is that an article about reform in Islam was also a Catholic screed against Protestants. Really a cheap shot.

[RobbyS]

The Reformers claimed to be returning the Church to her original purity. What did it accomplish? Religious warfare on a horrific scale, and persecution on both sides which discredited Christianity in the eyes of so many of the educated that they turned to a substitute religion called the Enlightenment. Lewis Mumford called it a modern form of the worship of Apollo.

[vladimir998]

"The point is that an article about reform in Islam was also a Catholic screed against Protestants. Really a cheap shot."

War, famine, genocide, heresy, agnosticism, atheism, passivity, rabid capitalism, communism, socialism, indifferentism, modernism, liberalism, totalitarianism....

Those are the fruits - often competing fruits - of the Protestant Revolution. I think that Revolution deserves a shot, even a cheap one, now and then.

[Conservative til I die]

The point is that an article about reform in Islam was also a Catholic screed against Protestants. Really a cheap shot.

It was titles "Myths about Christianity...and the Middle Ages". A lot of the mythmaking came from the Protestants about the Catholic Church. Much of it viciously slanderous and libelous.

[dangus]

>> The point is that an article about reform in Islam was also a Catholic screed against Protestants. Really a cheap shot. <<

Not really. Protestant gained its foothold in Europe, in part, by opposing the moneys being raised by the Catholic Church to defend civilization from the Islamic horde. For instance, 90 out of 95 of Martin Luther's thesis had to do with the sale of indulgences. He lied and said he had been to Rome and saw all the wicked and decadent ways this was being spent. But his basic ignorance of the geography of Rome disproves he was ever there. The real use of most of the money raised was to build a navy. But Luther knew that the lords who allied themselves with him could be militarily victorious if the Catholic church was preoccupied with Islam.

[Cronos]

well, no, the Puritans were, to some extent, like Wahabbis -- they tore down and committed sacrilege against chruchs and Godly persons -- witness the hordes of Cromwell who gouged out the eyes of Christ in cathedrals in england. That's just like the Wahabbis destroying the tombs of Mohammed and his family