HISTORY, ETC: BONUS MATERIAL - ON POPES AND CANCEL CULTURE

Pope Francis I spoke out this week against cancel culture, and attempts to suppress 'differences and sensibilities'. Given the long history of the Catholic Church, that's a little hard to swallow

Just over five hundred years ago, in the spring of 1521, the Diet of Worms convened to decide whether the German friar Martin Luther was a heretic. For quite some time Luther had been tormenting the Catholic Church with a series of blistering attacks against what he saw as its corruption and decadence.

Luther’s assault was deadly, because it did not take aim only at individual churchmen. Having begun by protesting the sale of indulgences, Luther rapidly developed an intellectual position that threw shade on the entire history of the Roman Church as it had evolved throughout the Middle Ages.

Unsurprisingly, the Diet of Worms, which assembled under the supervision of the soon-to-be Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, took the view that Luther was a heretic. When Luther was called before it, he refused to recant his writings or his beliefs. So in the Diet’s official verdict he was censured, and citizens of the empire were forbidden to promote his views.

To put it in modern terms, Luther’s ass got cancelled. Which, presumably, would not have pleased the current Pope, Francis I. But more of that in a second.