The Medieval and Modern (Dis)Connection in the Roman Catholic Church: Introduction

It would have been most adventurous to have been a Christian in 11th century. Besides the fact of not having any choice in your mode of worship or doctrinal belief, the imagination, alone, of the medieval Church would have consumed your every emotion. How can we rightly assert this? Just read what the people of the day felt and thought. Utter fear and compulsion dictated the lives of many lay persons in incessant efforts to avoid eternal damnation and the pains of purgatory.
A few years back I had the opportunity to spend an extended amount of time with the people who are most committed to the Catholic faith in the entire world. Who? you may ask. Not the Vatican, but the Irish. For three months I attended more masses than I think most American "Catholics" attend in a lifetime; and what did I learn? Do what you're told and it'll be okay. My studies of medieval thought and philosophy has been soaked in Catholic doctrine and practice and it is with my intellectual (and comical) lament that today's Catholic Church no longer emphasizes and describes the sacraments like they once did. Have the beliefs changed? If not, why has the practice? We've spent so much time this past month looking at doctrine and proper theological process that I thought a few days ago I'd do a series based on a few medieval plays which demonstrated how the laity has dealt with (historically) the absence of the Scriptures. While even more exaggerated and comical than the mystery plays, it evokes for me other emotions when I read the doctrines of the sacraments in medieval Catholic religion. Think of the Scriptures and our commitment towards exegetical theology and then read about the sacraments of old. Look at the common practice today of the Roman Catholic Church and look at it then. How much disconnection AND connection can you find in the concepts of salvation, faith, and the afterlife in the medieval and modern Roman see?


The Middle Ages roughly lasted a millennium. In it was born a continent and a new world that forever changed the course of history and mankind. From law and architecture to marriage and religion, the modern world still shows remnants of the medieval civilization. One of the most significant and intact, however, is the Catholic Church. Roughly established as a religion in the Classical period of the Romans, the organization as it has come to be recognized was founded and built at the birth of the Dark Ages in Rome. As the Roman Empire collapsed and barbarian tribes swept across Europe, the Catholic Church became the focal point that reunited the continent. Today, its foundations still hold and its doctrines and practices still accepted and heralded by Catholics worldwide, seen best in close examinations of specific aspects of the faith. The Doctrine of Purgatory and the Sacrament of Penance serve as two such medieval contributions of the Catholic Church which, in their essence, remain intact in the modern world.