words more important than actions

In a couple of recent posts I touched briefly on a subtle aspect of Catholic culture which, as I think about it, seems to me to be of decisive importance. This is the fact that in Catholic societies, as compared to Protestant ones, words are more important than actions.

When we look back on the history of Protestantism we realize that it was the freedom of speech against the authority of the Church that made the difference relative to those countries (such as Spain and Portugal) that remained Catholic. In my view, freedom of speech remains to this day a distinguishingly Protestant institution which Catholic countries, even under conditions of democracy, have a hard time to imitate. Actually, as I shall try to argue in future posts, freedom of speech in the Protestant or anglo-saxonic sense is a very destructive institution in Catholic countries.

The domain of freedom of speech is, and always has been, much wider in Protestant than in Catholic countries. This is in part because Catholicism believes in absolute truth - there is one way, and one way only, to reach truth -, whereas Protestantism with its multitude of different sects and beliefs, ended up relativizing, if not truth itself, at least the ways to truth. Toleration to different ways of looking at God, man, nature, life and society, and an ample sphere of freedom of speech, were the necessary consequences.

In Catholic countries is different. There is only one path to truth and that path is narrow. People cannot deviate from such path without deviating from truth itself. Thus, the greatest sin of all among Catholic peoples is deviation from this unique path to truth - that is, heresy. The Inquisition itself was first and foremost an institution to combat heresy. Its message was very clear: "You cannot speak out your mind against the doctrine established by the authority. If you do so, you are in trouble; if you don't, well, in that case, you can broadly do whatever you like".

This attitude, at the same time, made the domain of action much wider in Catholic countries than in Protestant ones. In Protestant countries people are not as free to do whatever they like as in their Catholic counterparts because in such countries people are supposed to read the Books and they are bound in their actions by the Scriptures. By contrast, in Catholic countries people are not supposed to read the Books - this is a matter left to the clergy. Thus, in their actions, they are not as bound by the Scriptures as Protestants are. If, in their actions, they actually sin, it is because they are either ignorant (they did not read the Books) or stupid (they did not learn the lessons taught them by the clergy). In any case, there is a margin of sinful actions which are tolerated in Catholic countries and forbidden in Protestant ones.