The Catholic church and a national question

Having described the situation after the Roman empire fell, it is now time to explain the position of the catholic church towards nations. In this article I will address only the catholic church, as the protestant churches have been founded on a slightly different bases and its position towards the existence of a nation might differ. The catholic church has also been, and it is until now the biggest religious political subject, which still influences the politics all around the world.

Decline of nations in Middle Ages

In the previous article I described that nations has existed for thousands of years and the national identity and even national cleanliness was a very important factor amongst developed antique states. The idea that nations are merely a social construct of the 19th century is therefore completely mistaken. Yet it seems that after the fall of the Roman Empire the national awareness disappeared only to be found again centuries later. Aim of this article is to describe the social situation during the Middle Ages in order to understand, which players shaped the form of a society back then and why the national awareness almost completely disappeared.

The Decalogue myth

Christianity brought many things to the life of our ancestors. Witch hunts, restriction of freedom of speech and even thoughts, crusades or antisemitism. I, however, consider it’s greatest succes the fact that the christian leaders have persuaded us to believe that the Decalogue is the base of our civilization and that we are living in a civilized society thanks to it. This widespread statement is, however, totally wrong, as I will explain in this article.

Is nation a modern social construct?

Nation being merely a social construct is a popular opinion amongst left-wing supporters. Most widespread claim is that all nations emerged in the middle of 19th century after the end of feudalism. The people supporting this idea however, either out of uneducation or deliberately, forget that there had been a long period of humanity before the era of feudalism commenced. And in this thousand-years long period of time lies the proof that nations exist much longer than 150 years.