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Entry: Greenspan's Gambits Link: http://www.takimag.com/site/article/greenspans_gambits#5612 Post contents: Whether any "loot" was "stolen" and by whom is a matter of dispute. Let's remember that the pre-reformation church gained its status as an established and tax-supported institution through its forgery of the Donation of Constantine, so one might say its gains were ill-gotten in the first place. Surely the great wealth of the church was a matter for great internal debate within it during the middle ages, which produced such eloquent advocates of its divestment as St. Francis of Assisi. The later hunger of the Roman church for money, raised through such scandalous practices as the sale of indulgences, was after all one of the principal causes of the Reformation. The transfer of assets from rapacious prelates to rapacious secular lords was mostly an even trade. In some cases they simply switched titles, as in the cases of Albert of Brandenburg-Anspach, the last Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights, who became a Lutheran in 1525, took the former monastic state of the Knights for his own, and assumed the title of duke of Prussia; or the last preceptor of the Knights Hospitallers in Scotland, Sir James Sandilands, who surrendered the lands of the preceptory of Torphichen to the Scottish crown, and bought them back as a private individual, being created Lord Torphichen in 1564. Can one imagine such persons having been any more faithful servants of the Christian religion before the Reformation than they were after it? In any event, there never was an establishment of the Church of Rome in British North America, so the question of what happened to the patrimony of that church after the Reformation is really Europe's, not ours. The various Christian denominations exist here as they did in the time before Christianity was an official religion, supported by the voluntary gifts of the faithful. I suspect this is better both for the churches and for the communities they serve. I l find in the New Testament no suggestion of a platform for government. Christ's message was to each of us as individuals. He said to render unto Caesar what was Caesar's, and unto God what was God's. Taxation is Caesar's province, not God's; and it is to pay the cost of Caesar's works, not God's. Let us therefore view it, together all of Caesar's projects, with the scepticism they properly deserve. Sent at: 2008 11 22