I keep telling people that Catholicism was one of the four pillars of medieval feudalism, which is based on a little-known late Roman legal principle called usufruct, or 'use of the fruit'...in other words: communism. That makes it, by definition, a leftist institution because it sought to advance social security through tightly-knit group cohesion and communal use of the land without private ownership.
The four pillars of the feudal era were Feudalism itself (the socio-political construct); Manorialism (the land tenure construct); Catholicism (the legal, clerical and intellectual construct--think of it as the early 'deep state'); and finally, the Guild System ( the economic construct). These all worked in mutually-reinforcing synchronicity to promote a monolithic, paramilitary, cascading pyramid of hidebound collective security.
The medieval feudal structure was so pervasive and stultifying that Europe stagnated under it for a thousand years. In the millennium of its ascendancy, Europe only managed to generate THREE inventions: the moldboard plow, the padded horse collar, and the percheron draft horse. Compare that with the 30 years of ingenuity of the post Civil War US: between 1865-1890, the US patent office registered 660,000 patents for the products that would change our lives and usher in the modern era.
Catholicism might be a major religion, but that does not make it right-wing. By its very nature, it's a left-wing institution.
I keep telling people that Catholicism was one of the four pillars of medieval feudalism, which is based on a little-known late Roman legal principle called usufruct, or 'use of the fruit'...in other words: communism. That makes it, by definition, a leftist institution because it sought to advance social security through tightly-knit group cohesion and communal use of the land without private ownership.
The four pillars of the feudal era were Feudalism itself (the socio-political construct); Manorialism (the land tenure construct); Catholicism (the legal, clerical and intellectual construct--think of it as the early 'deep state'); and finally, the Guild System ( the economic construct). These all worked in mutually-reinforcing synchronicity to promote a monolithic, paramilitary, cascading pyramid of hidebound collective security.
The medieval feudal structure was so pervasive and stultifying that Europe stagnated under it for a thousand years. In the millennium of its ascendancy, Europe only managed to generate THREE inventions: the moldboard plow, the padded horse collar, and the percheron draft horse. Compare that with the 30 years of ingenuity of the post Civil War US: between 1865-1890, the US patent office registered 660,000 patents for the products that would change our lives and usher in the modern era.
Catholicism might be a major religion, but that does not make it right-wing. By its very nature, it's a left-wing institution.