Weber--sin and capital

[Terrance]

What's the main difference between catholics and protestants? I grew up
as a 
  Roman Catholic, and when I remember my childhood (let's say until I
was 12 
  years old when I one day refused to go to church, and my parents
accepted 
  that) I must say that I always had a bad conscience. Not because I was
a bad 
  boy, but because I often confessed. I always had scruples about
whatever it 
  may be. I was in the trap of what Foucault called the "confession 
  dispositif". But what's protestantism for me? "Do good deeds and speak
about 
  it". That's the difference for me.

  kwp

The difference is, as Weber (remember PWESC is only one small part of
Weber's huge study of religion) points out, sin and the accumulation of
sin and wealth. Catholics, in this sense, as Weber notes, are not like
Protestants at all, but are, and this makes perfect sense, like a
combination of two other great traditions, Confucianism and Hinduism or
like so many "children's religions" (to take Otto's description of
Catholicism). 

The "good works" of the Quakers or more generally the "Calling" of
Protestants to do good in the world, is a product of the reformation and
is not present in Catholic theology or Christian Antiquity. There is no
need or desire to do good in this world for a Catholic. because he is
not interested in this world, this mundane existence. The opposite is
true for the Protestant. Moreover, any sin that a Catholic commits can
be gotten rid of by his going to the medicine man or father confessor.
Not so for the Protestant, who not only accumulates wealth in this
world, does good works in this world--accumulates moral goodness or evil
but accumulates sins. The cycle, the life and death cycle of sin,
repentance, forgiveness, found in religions from Catholicism to Native
American religions to African religions, is absent from Protestantism
and the accumulation of wealth is morally sanctioned, provided, of
course, it is combined with a sober, industrious, life and not to
support the luxurious and conspicuous consumptions of self-indulgent
hedonists like the Pope and the Jesuits.