Writing The Second Reformation
Originally published at Agent Incite. Please leave any comments there.
As a student of history, and enough of a glutton for punishment to observe today’s politics I wonder if it could happen. Could we see, in the next five to fifty years a new Reformation? The Catholic Church was rocked by the sex abuse scandal. It is still dealing with backlash from its actions and inaction regarding the Holocust. The Vatican’s latest offensive against its own staff and worshipers is to term some of its Nuns, perhaps the most highly regarded arm of the Catholic Church, “radical feminists“.
So, if you were to depict either the events of the second reformation or a post 2R world in fiction what would it look like? Is the next Martin Luther even a man? Does the current Catholic Church become still more conservative? Does it roll the clock back, and if so to what point in history? Could we see the rebirth of the sale of indulgences? Would a new schism entail a time when there is again more than one pontiff?
As for the new Church, what ever it might term itself (or its-selves if more than one arm splits) where do they set the new policy? Are Priests allowed to marry? What about Nuns? Fully ordained female priests? Is this a “primitive church” that goes strictly off what the Bible says about Jesus’s life and teachings? Which arm becomes the more evangelical? Does the current Pope react the same was as Pope Leo X?