The Catholic Church in the 14th Century

I'm reading a really great book entitled A Distant Mirror. It is a book about the 14th century written by Barbara Tuchman and highly recommended to me by my father. I'm into the second chapter and enjoying it thoroughly. Here is an interesting paragraph from it:

"Money could buy any kind of dispensations to legitimize children, of which the majority were those of preists and prelates;* to divide a corpse for the favoured custom of burial in two or more places; to permit nuns to keep two maids; to permit a converted Jew to visit his unconverted parents; to marry within the permitted degree of consanguinity (with a sliding scale of fees with the second, third and fourth degrees); to trade with the infidel Moslem (with a fee required for each ship on a scale according to cargo); to received stolen goods up to a specific value. The collection and accounting of all these sums, largely handled through Italian bankers, made the physical counting of cash a common sight in the papal palace. Whenever he entered there, reported Alvar Pelayo, a Spanish official in Curia, "I found brokers and clergy in reckoning the money which lay in heaps before them."

* Out of 614 grants for legitimacy 1342-43, 484 were to members of the clergy.

Well, that certainly says "heaps", doesn't it! That little tidbit at the bottom made it even more priceless. I have never been a fan of organised religion and especially Catholicism. Christianity is bad enough and Cathoicism is that much worse. Which should make this weekend very interesting... Luis' family is here for his father's 70th birthday. The Roman Catholic cavalry has arrived. His uncle goes to church every single day. That is not piousness, that is guilt. Or just weirdness. Take your pick.

His one aunt I never met and don't know much about her. On the other hand, his other aunt has a PhD in Christianity. I get that this is a doctorate, but one doesn't think of non-medical doctors. And she is not a doctor. She's a person giving into all kinds of ideas that are bad - like being pro-life instead of pro-choice. I think that is bad. I suspect somewhere in there is the ideal that people who are not married should be celebate. Uh... no. Not so much. And so completely unrealistic.

Tell me this is not too scary. To me it is. And I am not going to not wear my penticle because these folks don't get it or think that I am a devil-worshipper.

Well, I'm the wicked witch at work. Why not at home?