MDDM 35 Christ and History

[jbor]

on 21/2/02 3:10 PM, Mutualcode at aol.com at Mutualcode at aol.com wrote:

> While there was certainly anti-Catholic sentiment especially in a political
> sense in England and the english colonies, the more devasting philosophical
> anti-Catholic and anti-Jesuit (the two were not necessarily the same thing)
> sentiment was centered in the Catholic countries themselves, especially
> France.
> Voltaire, Diderot and the rest of "the philosophes" despised religion in
> general and Catholicism in particular. Most of them were forced into hiding
> if not exile, at least for some of their careers, and their books were
> regularly
> burned in Paris at the order of the censor, the city council or both (Which
> usually
> resulted in higher sales.)

We certainly got a first-hand perspective on this sort of thing from
Christopher Maire in Chs 22 and 23, but I got the impression that it is a
sort of pan-European anti-Jesuit mood rather than anti-Catholicism which
Pynchon focuses on with him. Doesn't he reckon that China might be the only
place left where Jesuits are welcome?

In the novel, the negative attitudes towards Catholicism and "Popishness"
are political and ethnic rather than philosophical, aren't they? And there
have been similar bouts of extreme anti-monarchist and anti-English
sentiment as well, particularly now that we're in America.

best