Foundations of the Anglican Church LIV

1884 photograph of Lollards' Tower at Lambeth

Palace--London Residence of the Archbishops

of Canterbury

In our last entry we saw the story of William Tyndale, an English priest who translated the scriptures into English, fled to the Continent to avoid the anti-Lutheran heresy hunts that went on under Henry VIII, and was put to death in 1536 for his Protestant ideas in Antwerp, then under the dominion of the very Catholic Emperor, Charles V.  In order to understand how Henry VIII was able to separate England from Rome we need to understand the religious mood in England in the sixteenth century.  Beneath the surface of an officially Catholic England, was a lot of discontent with the Church especially among the urban merchant classes.  The rural peasantry and the nobility were comfortable in their Catholic faith, but trouble for the hierarchical Church had been brewing for some time in England—at least since the days of John Wycliffe and those who followed his ideas and were known as “Lollards.”  If you want a refresher on Wycliffe and the Lollards look at the entries for April 27^th and 28^th  2011, and June 7^th and 8^th 2013.  I also want to tell again the story of Richard Hunne, a London merchant, whose 1514 murder while under imprisonment by  the Bishop of London gave a focus to the anger of many in the merchant class against the bishops and “The Church,” i.e. the institutional hierarchical Church. 
Richard Hunne was a merchant-tailor in the City of London in the early sixteenth century. His infant son, Stephen, died in 1511 and his funeral was at the Church of Saint Mary Matfellon, Whitechapel, London. The priest, Thomas Dryffeld, demanded the infant’s christening gown in which the tiny corpse was dressed, for a fee. Now this sounds gruesome to the modern reader, but it was standard in the Middle Ages that the various trappings of a funeral—the pall that covered the body, any cloths or bunting with which the church was draped for the funeral, and even the shroud in which the corpse was dressed belonged to the priest by ways of fee. Also any candles or other decorations that were used went to the priest. They would be resold to the undertaker (or in the case of candles, to the chandler) who could then sell them to the next grieving family for re-use. The baby most likely, at least by custom, would not have been buried in the Christening gown in any case but have been simply wrapped in linen or wool before being interred. Nevertheless Richard Hunne begrudged the priest the gown. He was a tailor, a very wealthy tailor, and the gown was of some more than usual value. Hunne could have afforded it. He was a man of means. But on principle he would not give in. It is difficult to know psychological motives of a person long dead unless they have left us some strong indication, and Hunne probably did not even understand himself why he was so tenacious on this point. Perhaps he was angry over the death of his son; that is a normal reaction at the death of someone we love. And the anger over the death of a child often is directed towards God—or religious figures who “represent” God to us—because we simply don’t know where else to direct it. We just don’t know why, on Hunne’s part, this escalated as it did, but it did.
Dryffeld for his part would not give in either and had Hunne summoned before the Archbishop’s court at Lambeth for settlement. The auditor of the case, Cuthbert Tunstall, would later be Bishop of London under both Henry VIII and Queen Mary. Tunstall had no axe to grind and simply applied the law. Hunne was ordered to give over the Christening gown or its value—6s 8d (probably about $225.00 in today’s money). There was no further punishment and Tunsall ignored Dryffeld’s demands that Hunne be excommunicated. One would think that the end of the matter. It wasn’t.
Hunne went to St. Mary Matfellon for evensong on December 27^th, the feast of Saint John the Evangelist. The priest conducting the service, this time Henry Marshall, Dryffeld’s vicar, recognized him and stopped the service, shouting that that Hunne was an excommunicate (he wasn’t, as I just wrote) and under the curse of the Church. The service, Marshall shrieked, could not continue until Hunne left. The scene was costly to Hunne’s business as devout Catholics would have nothing to do with an excommunicate. On the other hand, it seems Hunne was baiting the priest for this church, Saint Mary Matfellon, was not Hunne’s parish and was over two miles from Hunne’s home. Moreover, Hunne had brought a party of friends with him to the service and they all stomped out together. In the event, Hunne sued Marshall for slander in the Court of King’s Bench.
The case is very complex and we don’t need to go into all the details as we will only end up losing our point, but it involves the fact that in England at the time there were two judicial systems—the King’s and the Church’s. Certain offenses were to be tried in Church court—Hunne’s refusal to pay the mortuary fee to the priest, for example, was a matter for an ecclesiastical court, not the King’s Bench. Also, certain persons could only be tried in Church court, the clergy—from the Archbishop of Canterbury down to the lowliest parish clark—in point of fact. This privilege of exemption from the King’s Justice was a sore point for many going back to the time of Thomas Becket whose fights with Henry II were on this exact point of clerical exemption from civil law. At this very moment, Parliament was debating a bill to strip the lower clergy (those below the rank of subdeacon, such as acolytes, lectors, porters, etc.) of privilege in Church courts, demanding that they be tried for their crimes as everyone else in King’s Bench. Hunne by bringing the slander case against a priest into the King’s Bench was denying the right of the Church to try a case involving a member of the clergy. This implied that the Church was subject to the Crown. This was a dangerous compromise of clerical privilege. The Bishop of London thus went on to have Hunne arrested for “heresy.” The “heresy” substantially is denying the supremacy of the Church over the State.
Hunne was confined in Lollards’ tower—the prison reserved for heretics—in the Archbishop of Canterbury’s London residence, Lambeth Palace. Two days later, December 4^th, 1514 he was found hanging in his cell. The jailers said it was suicide. The coroner’s jury said it was murder. Witnesses came forward and testified that they had heard members of the Bishop of London’s household plan the murder. One witness said that a servant of the Bishop had told him, the witness, that Hunne would be dead by Christmas. It seems that agents of the Bishop of London had attempted to murder Hunne in his cell by inserting a red-hot wire through his nostril into his brain—leaving no trace of violence and making the death appear natural. However there was a struggle, and in the struggle Hunne’s neck was broken. The corpse was hung to make it appear that the broken neck was the result of him having committed suicide by hanging.
Hunne was posthumously judged guilty of heresy and his body burned. As a convicted heretic, the Church confiscated his estate—leaving his wife and children penniless. This caused a huge outcry among the merchants of the city. Hunne was one of them, a member of the Guild of the Merchant Tailors, one of the guilds that controlled the political establishment of the city. When the Reformation came to England, it was slow to spread among the nobility and among the working classes—but it spread like wildfire among the business classes. They were educated and they were self-made men (and women) and they were ready to move on from the world of clerical privilege and control.
This story is one of many stories—more dramatic than most, but still only one—that hows the loss of confidence in the hierarchy and the clergy on the part of the Middle Class.  Part of this was the remnants of the Lollard movement which had encouraged a strong evangelical fervor among  the laity that differentiated the Lollards from the religious establishment.  But it was more complex than that.  You had, in the Middle Class, an educated group of people who were interested in religion but also had sufficient education to think for themselves and think critically.  They were not inclined to accept ideas simply on “authority,” but wanted their questions answered and their opinions heard.   We need today to be careful in the Church for we too have an educated laity who think for themselves and no longer accept something  just because “Father says so.”  Moreover, many of the laity today are better educated than the average priest—something not true sixty years ago—and even more educated and urbane than our bishops.  Authority today is answerable to its constituents.  Certain people in the Church may not like that, but they have to wake up and smell the coffee: thing have changed whether they like it or not.  Very frankly, the abuses of authority in the American Church by prelates like Cardinals Burke or George or Law or the late Cardinal Hickey,  or Archbishops Cordileone, or Lori, or Bishops Morlino, or Finn, have put the Church on some perilously think ice.  Part of Pope Francis’ appeal to people is that he seems to be more dialogical, or at least more aware of their perspectives and questions than his predecessors.   This is not a time for authority to be exercised peremptorily.  Indeed we see here those who understand authority as power (abuse) and those who understand authority as service and we need leadership whose trigger-finger is not quite so itchy as others would have it.  The tooth-paste does not go back into the tube and an educated and critically-thinking laity need far more sophisticated response from Church leadership than they have been getting in some circles.  It is a new day and a new day requires new ways of doing things.      

Roots of the Reformation XV: Anti-Clericalism and Reformation, a case study

Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury
who fostered the Reformation in England

We had been talking about clerical privilege and the resulting anti-clericalism in sixteenth-century Europe on the brink of the Protestant Reformations and I would like to continue exploring that topic so that we can see how a clerical culture works against the welfare of the Church.  I think that this topic is interesting in the light of the mentality that created the attempted cover-up of the contemporary sex-abuse scandal in the Church.  Perhaps in a few days we can look at the newly released report on the sex-abuse scandal by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and see how that report is yet another attempt by some within the Church to circle the clerical wagons to protect the clerical system rather than to address the fundamental changes that are necessary for the Church to function effectively in today’s society. 

A sixteenth-century Case History: Richard Hunne was a merchant-tailor in the City of London in the early sixteenth century.  His infant son, Stephen, died in 1511 and his funeral was at the Church of Saint Mary Matfellon, Whitechapel, London.  The priest, Thomas Dryffeld, demanded the infant’s christening gown in which the tiny corpse was dressed, for a fee.  Now this sounds gruesome to the modern reader, but it was standard in the Middle Ages that the various trappings of a funeral—the pall that covered the body, any cloths or bunting with which the church was draped for the funeral, and even the shroud in which the corpse was dressed belonged to the priest by ways of fee.  Also any candles or other decorations that were used went to the priest. They would be resold to the undertaker (or in the case of candles, to the chandler) who could then sell them to the next grieving family for re-use.  The baby most likely, at least by custom, would not have been buried in the Christening gown in any case but have been simply wrapped in linen or wool before being interred.  Nevertheless Richard Hunne begrudged the priest the gown. He was a tailor, a very wealthy tailor, and the gown was of some more than usual value.  Hunne could have afforded it.  He was a man of means.  But on principle he would not give in. It is difficult to know psychological motives of a person long dead unless they have left us some strong indication, and Hunne probably did not even understand himself why he was so tenacious on this point.  Perhaps he was angry over the death of his son; that is a normal reaction at the death of someone we love.  And the anger over the death of a child often is directed towards God—or religious figures who “represent” God to us—because we simply don’t know where else to direct it.  We just don’t know why, on Hunne’s part, this escalated as it did, but it did.

Dryffeld for his part would not give in either and had Hunne summoned before the Archbishop’s court at Lambeth for settlement.  The auditor of the case, Cuthbert Tunstall, would later be Bishop of London under both Henry VIII and Queen Mary.  Tunstall had no axe to grind and simply applied the law.  Hunne was ordered to give over the Christening gown or its value—6s 8d  (probably about $225.00 in today’s money).  There was no further punishment and Tunsall ignored Dryffeld’s demands that Hunne be excommunicated.  One would think that the end of the matter.  It wasn’t.

Hunne went to St. Mary Matfellon for evensong on December 27^th, the feast of Saint John the Evangelist.  The priest conducting the service, this time Henry Marshall, Dryffeld’s vicar, recognized him and stopped the service, shouting that that Hunne was an excommunicate (he wasn’t, as I just wrote) and under the curse of the Church.  The service,  Marshall shrieked, could not continue until Hunne left.  The scene was costly to Hunne’s business as devout Catholics would have nothing to do with an excommunicate.  On the other hand, it seems Hunne was baiting the priest for this church, Saint Mary Matfellon, was not Hunne’s parish and was over two miles from Hunne’s home.  Moreover, Hunne had brought a party of friends with him to the service and they all stomped out together.  In the event, Hunne sued Marshall for slander in the Court of King’s Bench.

The case is very complex and we don’t need to go into all the details as we will only end up losing our point, but it involves the fact that in England at the time there were two judicial systems—the King’s and the Church’s.  Certain offenses were to be tried in Church court—Hunne’s refusal to pay the mortuary fee to the priest, for example, was a matter for an ecclesiastical court, not the King’s Bench.  Also, certain persons could only be tried in Church court,  the clergy—from the Archbishop of Canterbury down to the lowliest parish clark—in point of fact.  This privilege of exemption from the King’s Justice was a sore point for many going back to the time of Thomas Becket whose fights with Henry II were on this exact point of clerical exemption from civil law.  At this very moment, Parliament was debating a bill to strip the lower clergy (those below the rank of subdeacon, such as acolytes, lectors, porters, etc.) of privilege in Church courts, demanding that they be tried for their crimes as everyone else in King’s Bench.  Hunne by bringing the slander case against a priest into the King’s Bench was denying the right of the Church to try a case involving a member of the clergy.  This implied that the Church was subject to the Crown.  This was a dangerous compromise of clerical privilege.  The Bishop of London thus went on to have Hunne arrested for “heresy.”  The “heresy” substantially is denying the supremacy of the Church over the State. 

Hunne was confined in Lollards’ tower—the prison reserved for heretics—in the Archbishop of Canterbury’s London residence, Lambeth Palace.  Two days later, December 4^th, 1514 he was found hanging in his cell.  The jailers said it was suicide.  The coroner’s jury said it was murder.  Witnesses came forward and testified that they had heard members of the Bishop of London’s household plan the murder.  One witness said that a servant of the Bishop had told him, the witness, that Hunne would be dead by Christmas.  It seems that agents of the Bishop of London had attempted to murder Hunne in his cell by inserting a red-hot wire through his nostril into his brain—leaving no trace of violence and making the death appear natural.  However there was a struggle, and in the struggle Hunne’s neck was broken.  The corpse was hung to make it appear that the broken neck was the result of him having committed suicide by hanging. 

Hunne was posthumously judged guilty of heresy and his body burned.  As a convicted heretic, the Church confiscated his estate—leaving his wife and children penniless.   This caused a huge outcry among the merchants of the city.  Hunne was one of them, a member of the Guild of the Merchant Tailors, one of the guilds that controlled the political establishment of the city.  When the Reformation came to England, it was slow to spread among the nobility and among the working classes—but it spread like wildfire among the business classes.  They were educated and they were self-made men (and women) and they were ready to move on from the world of clerical privilege and control. 

There are differences and there are similarities between the anticlericalism before the Reformations of the sixteenth century and today but we would do well to look at the estrangement that many are finding between the Institutional Church and its spokesmen and many run-of-the-mill Catholics.    

Roots of the Reformation XII: Clericalism—The Paving Stones of the Road to Reformation

Cardinal Dulles suggested that the Servant Model of Church
is the model for the next millenium.  Here a Franciscan friar
speaks with one of the homeless people near St. Francis
Church in New York City. St. Francis Friary was the home of
Father Mychal  Judge, OFM, the NYFD chaplain, the first
registered death of the 9/11 tragedy

 Clericalism leads to-and in turn falls victim to—one of the great Catholic heresies which is to confuse the Church with its Lord.  This is complicated by the Catholic tendency to limit, at least in practical understanding, the Church to its Institutional manifestation.  When Catholics say “The Church…” they tend to mean the hierarchical institution which externally governs the Church, but the Church itself is a far more complex, indeed mysterious, phenomenon.  When I say mysterious, I don’t mean puzzling but rather sacred, indeed numinous, reality.  The late Avery Dulles in his 1974 book  Models of the Church spoke of five key models by which the Church can be understood.  The first on he mentioned—and which he thought was grossly overused—is the institutional model.   This is the model in which am emphasis is place on hierarchy, magisterium, canon law, juridical authority, etc.  Oh, and clericalism!  How could I forget.  And it is this institutional model that most people mean when they talk about “the Church.”

Cardinal Dulles wrote that the Church is not only, or even fundamentally, an institution but it also has a sacramental character.  That is to say that the Church is a visible representation of the Invisible (to the human eye) Master who himself is the fundamental sacrament of God.  In other words, Jesus, the Church’s Lord, is himself the visible representation of the Invisible God and the Church, as the visible representation (re-presentation) of Christ, is a sign and means of God’s Grace in the world.  Moreover, the Church is also kerygmatic—that is to say the Church has a Divinely ordered mission to proclaim the Gospel of the Kingdom of God, the ongoing message of its Founder and Lord.  Dulles also calls the Church a communio—a covenantal bonding of the faithful into the One Body of Christ.  The Church is truly the physical Body of the Risen Christ—as truly (though obviously in a different mode) as is the Eucharist the physical Body of the Risen Christ.  Indeed the Catholic Tradition as found in Saint Augustine witnesses to the intrinsic unity between the Eucharistic Body and the Ecclesial Body of the Lord.  As Christ is one, the Eucharistic Body and the Ecclesial Body are one and the same, and it can be said that in certain respects each derives its authenticity as the Body of the Lord from the other.  Finally, the Church—and according to Dulles this may be the key model of Church for the next millennium—is Servant. 

  

Cardinal Burke, center, one of the prelates who represent 
the Institutional Model of Church.  Cardinal Burke has not
lately been seen speaking with the homeless outside
Gamarelli's--the Rome tailor shop specializing in retro
prelatial garb. 

Many people, especially those who hold positions of pompous power (Cardinals Burke, Pell, Castrillon Hoyos, and others who like parading around the world in cappae magnae) or even those who have powerless pomp (monsignors, the pezzi grossi of the Vatican Bureaucracy, members of the Institute of Christ the Sovereign Priest) are having difficulty letting go of the institutional model and embracing the servant model.  Can’t say I blame them; washing the feet of disciples is dirty work; it’s much more fun to be bundled up in silk and fur, though I don’t think of that as a “guy thing.”  But the Servant Model is the model that can restore credibility to a Church that has squandered its moral leadership in these last three decades.   Ah, but the gift of hope tells us that someday soon (and very soon) the Gospel will prevail once more over Gamarelli’s catalogue. (Gamarelli is the “tailor to the popes” and papal wanna-be’s.  See blog entry of March 28^th 2011 for photo of Gamarelli’s window.)   But this is the problem with clericalism –it derives its energy from the institution of the Church and the power the institution has rather than deriving its authority from the Gospel and the authority the Gospel confers. 

It is frightening how much of the negative energy that “former Catholics” have towards the Church is rooted in clericalism.  I first noticed this about thirty years ago in Ireland where my relatives—all (at the time) Church-going Catholics—spoke venomously of their Parish Priest because of what they perceived to be (and I think correctly) his abuse of power.  The power of an Irish Parish Priest was something to be contended with even thirty years ago—he had veto over the public school teachers and administrators as well as many other decisions that technically pertained to local government.  Over the years the antagonism toward the clergy in general seems only to have increased.  This is not to say that many individual priests are not very popular with their parishioners.  Those priests who mix easily with the people, sit in the pub, go to the cattle shows, and visit the homes of the parishioners without expecting the best china and fancy tea cakes are well liked.  Let a priest put on airs, however, and the most devout Irish Catholics become passive aggressive in ways only the Irish can; while many more avoid confrontation and simply walk away from the Church and decided that  a “long lie” in bed on Sunday morning will do them as well as a sermon. 

The anti-clericialism in the United States manifests itself differently but is growing even faster.  The main reason that we have so few vocations today is due, primarily I believe, to the fact that the priesthood is no longer a respectable profession.  This is not due only to the sex-abuse crisis; in fact I believe there are other even deeper roots of the decline in respect for priests today.  Compared to the parishioners, the priest is no longer better educated—and indeed in suburban or wealthy city parishes, is often less educated than most of the people in the pews.  When he speaks, the priest speaks more of what he learned from books than what he has learned from life—his own and his parishioners.  He often seems hopelessly out of touch, indeed at times from another planet.  Poor preaching, that is to say, irrelevant prattling from the pulpit, is probably the number one reason Mass attendance is falling in the United States.  It is absolutely embarrassing to listen when a priest makes a fool of himself speaking of things about which he knows nothing or when he expects his educated parishioners believe pious stories of saints who fly through the air, hosts that bleed, or decapitated bishops who continue to preach as they carry their head to the cemetery.  Legends and myths have their place, but it is not in the pulpit.  On the other hand when there is sound scriptural preaching that reinforces doctrine and can be related to everyday life, people find a comfort and credibility in their pastors. 

The key to good pastoral personality, like the key to all deep spirituality, is self-knowledge.  By self-knowledge I mean that one, cleric or lay, needs to know oneself not for one’s role or for whatever sacraments one has received but to know oneself in the unfathomable sea of sin and grace.   One has to strip away all pretense, all external trappings, all peripheral roles and deal with one’s own self naked in God’s eyes and naked in one’s own.  One has to see all the warts and wrinkles and cellulite and discern who we might have been had it not been for our sinfulness, who we truly are, and who we might be yet in the sight of God and by his grace.  And there is nothing more foreign to the clerical psyche as the courage it takes to abandon—totally abandon—role and be naked for who one is and nothing more in the sight of God and one’s own sight.  This is why diocesan priests so rarely make good spiritual directors for the spiritual life does not begin until one has so confronted one’s truest self and has been sufficiently humbled to throw oneself on the Divine Mercy, pleading for grace.  Once you have done that you find it very difficult to piously parade around in birettas and surplices that look like they come from Victoria’s Secret.   Once you have stood naked before God and in your own eyes, you need not title, no robe, no ring or fancy hat.  You know who you are and you can be who God wants you to be for others.  How rich a Church we would be if more of our clergy did that and fewer were seduced by rank and privilege. 

The Roots of the Reformation II: It's didn't start with Luther



A medieval burgher peeks out frin his
window beneath the pulpit of the
Stefansdom in Vienna--it was this class
that was drawn to the eachings of
Peter Waldo



Martin Luther was not the first voice to speak up against the Institutional Church and go his own way—and take followers with him.  Peter Waldo was one of the wealthiest cloth merchants in Lyons—itself one of the wealthiest cities in Europe.  On day, while hearing mass, he was struck by the Gospel Command: if you be perfect—go, sell all that you have (and you will have treasure in heaven) and come, follow me.  Waldo was probably in his early thirties at this time and, in the late twelfth century that was a somewhat more mature and advanced age than it would be now.  He was a serious man, a man of deep piety and the words struck to his heart.  He paid a priest to make him a translation of the gospels into his native Lyonnais patois—a sort of early medieval French spiced with some Provençal—and he began to study the gospels assiduously.  As he was married and had children—two daughters—the monastic life was not an option for him, but neither did he seem to be attracted to that form of Christian discipleship.  Like many of his religious contemporaries—Stephen of Grandmont (who was actually about two generations ahead of Waldo) or Francis of Assisi (who was actually a generation younger than Waldo), he simply wanted to follow the gospel.   He endowed his daughters as nuns in the reformed abbey of Fonterevault, turned his business over to his wife for her support, separated from her and gave his money to the poor.  He then began to preach in the streets of his native city.

The citizens of Lyons were amazed to see one of their wealthiest burghers standing in the streets of their city wearing shabby clothes and talking about Christian discipleship.  The bishop, in his palace and fine robes, was particularly unhappy.  The clergy in their elegant dress and with a comfortable life style were embarrassed by his zeal.  He was told that since he was not in Orders (a priest or deacon) he had no authority to preach.  Waldo’s response was that as long as he conformed to the Apostolic life—no purse, no sack, no walking stick, no change of clothes—the authority which Jesus gave his apostles in sending them out was sufficient (Matthew 10:9-10).  Well, the Gospel rarely suffices to prove much to the clergy who are impressed only with canon law and perhaps dogmatic theology and Waldo was told not to preach.  So he went to the Pope in 1179.  Alexander III was a canon lawyer.  He was impressed by Waldo’s earnestness and his renunciation of wealth and family for the sake of the Gospel but he was a canon lawyer and like many canon lawyers even today he could not think outside the box.  No, Waldo was not to preach.

Well this brought Peter Waldo to a crisis.  The Church told him he could not preach, the Gospel told him he could, and the Holy Spirit, or what he perceived as the Holy Spirit, told him he must.   About twenty years later another Canon Lawyer pope, Innocent III, would cut the Gordian knot and distinguish between what we call “witnessing” and formal canonical and doctrinal preaching—permitting the former to the laity.  Alas, by that time—as so often in the history of the Church—it was too little too late. 

Waldo and his followers found themselves outcasts from the Church.  The movement spread and actually took root in Lombardy in the areas around Milan.  Milan had a long history of tension with the Institutional Church going back to the Patarini controversies of the eleventh century.  The Milanese were not very tolerant of sloppy standards and thought that if the Church were going to legislate things like celibacy then they should enforce the rules.  Moreover, the Milanese had a long history of class conflict and the working class—mostly tied to the cloth industry (and remember Waldo was a cloth merchant) were among the strongest voices crying out against the wealth of the clergy and laxity of clerical morals. 

Waldo was excommunicated by Lucius III in 1184 but the movement was not condemned as “heretical” until Lateran IV in 1215.  Waldo and his followers were quite orthodox in both their Trinitarian and Christological beliefs.  In regard to their ecclesiology and sacramental theology they reflected many of the popularly held beliefs that were accepted by the Church prior to the extensive doctrinal clarifications of the Fourth Lateran Council which defined there to be seven sacraments, the necessity of auricular confession to a priest, and the precise nature of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist.   Three hundred years later,  in the sixteenth century, when the Calvinist Reformation articulated many of the “Reformed Doctrines,” the Waldensians subscribed—more or less—to that theological trend though they would later affiliate with the World Methodist Council of which they are still members today, although not Methodists.   

The real issue was not “orthodoxy” as Waldo and his followers were well within the current boundaries of Catholic faith as it was accepted in the 12^th century.  Years ago I heard a noted Protestant historian say that “the Roman Church will accept almost any deviation from its doctrine as long as it doesn’t challenge the basic authority of the Church itself.”  As a historian, I have seen that time and time again.  Church authorities will rationally discuss any and all doctrines and examine the dogmas of the Church with the most critical scholarship as long as the authority of the magisterium is not brought into question.  Waldo’s challenge to the Church of his day was that he appealed against its authority to Scripture and individual conscience.   What should be noted in the situation behind Waldo and his break with the Church is the antagonism of many people to the wealth and power of the Institutional Church as well as the distance between the hierarchy and many of the clergy, on the one hand, and the working-class faithful on the other.  Peter Waldo had a credibility that many clergy lacked in the eyes of many because of the simplicity and earnestness of his life.  We are going to see this theme repeated in other circles as we build up to the Protestant Reformations.