Word: dogma
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...that his impact on modern life is profound, even for those who know little about the doctrinal feuds that brought him unsought fame. From the distance of half a millennium, the man who, as Historian Hans Hillerbrand of Southern Methodist University in Dallas says, brought Christianity from lofty theological dogma to a clearer and more personal belief is still able to stimulate more heated debate than all but a handful of historical figures...
EVER SINCE Adam and Eve took a bite out of forbidden knowledge, there has always been a strong tension between religion and education. Scholars of the European Renaissance confronted this split when they tore down the rigid ecclesiastical dogma of their day, scientists witnessed its revival during the 18th century Enlightenment, and amid fundamentalist revivals, humanists of the 20th century still feel it today. Parents may push their children to get good grades and go to church on Sunday, but any disciple of the Divinity School can tell you that the connection between religious and secular education is, at best...
Today this sort of thinking seems almost as remote in the church as the sale of indulgences-and this is perhaps the strongest single measure of the council's achievements. The essentials of Catholic dogma stand, of course, as does Rome's claim of universality. What has changed drastically is atmosphere and attitudes. "Before, the church looked like an immense and immovable colossus, the city set on a hill, the stable bulwark against the revolutionary change," says the English Benedictine abbot, Dom Christopher Butler. "Now it has become a people on the march-or at least a people...
...High and low alike, anyone with an education, anyone suspected of murmuring protest, in the bureaucracy, or the universities, or the army, could be sent down. All universities, except for military research centers, were closed, some for three years, some for five, some for a full ten. And, as dogma drove the spike into the flesh of the country, even the revered ancients of the revolution were pushed to death. Li Ta, one of the original founding fathers of the Communist Party of China in 1921, was "struggled" against until he committed suicide. He Long, a Robin Hood peasant bandit...
Common sense itself revolted. The new dogma had not worked and it could not work. So the aging generals of the Civil War and Liberation had to move in, as they did on the night...