World dominated by the Roman Catholic Church

Blue Sun

Banned
What circumstances might a completely RCC dominated world become around? with every country professing to be Catholic and any dissenters of any kind are hounded down and killed. Not quite ASB if say they squashed protestantism and somehow conquered India and China and Islam never came to pass.
 

Zeldar155

Banned
ASB.
You can probably have a world where the Church dominates Europe and the Americas, possibly Africa. But never all of Asia.
 
ASB. Christian world is possible under certain conditions, e.g no Buddhism, no Islam, Christian Mughal Empire, Christianity accepted by the Chinese as much as Buddhism in OTL. There'd be many syncretic Christians and Protestants, and there'd likely be national churches so the RCC won't dominate.
 
Basically, it's the ol' world empire situation - to have a global unified religion, you need a global state to impose it. Global empires are unlikely - explicity theocratic ones even more so.

Bruce
 
for a long time the papacy talked up all kings being vassals of the pope. on occasion they actually managed the submission of rulers. it would require some sustained freaky good luck but a papacy-wins scenario could great a megalith Europe capable of slowly steam-rollering Asia. very, very slowly. of course, you'd need a way to get papal Europe access to firearms so they could outgun the Chinese a la OTL

I will admit its a bit of a stretch but its not entirely asb
 
Basically, it's the ol' world empire situation - to have a global unified religion, you need a global state to impose it. Global empires are unlikely - explicity theocratic ones even more so.

Bruce

I agree its ASB, but I think a religious-based identity for a state has more potential than an ethnic, linguistic or ideals based one.
 
Pavane...

Has no-one on here read one of the great AH novels, "Pavane" - based in England in 1968 ruled by the Catholic Church. It's a superb read and got me started in the whole world of AH and AH writing.

The POD is the assassination of Elizabeth I in July 1588 - the resulting internal chaos (the assassin, though mentally unstable, shouts pro-Catholic slogans before he is lynched by the mob) involving the massacre of Catholics at Walsingham, enables the Spanish Armada to rendezvous with Parma's forces unopposed.

The resulting invasion is successful and Philip becomes King of England. Buoyed by this, the House of Guise overthrows the Valois in France and what the book calls the "War of the three Henrys" ends with the Holy League triumphant and the primacy of the Catholic Church restored.

Over the following decades, the revived Catholic forces set about defeating the Lutheran states of Germany, the rebellion in Flanders is crushed and Holland falls to the Holy League. The European explorers spread Catholicism to North and South America, Africa and ultimately Australasia.
 
stodge

Ah but, don't you remember the last chapter or so? At least in the edition I read. It was all a set up to establish a universal state because the actual earlier [i.e. OTL, had ended in a destructive nuclear war].

Total tosh I think in that it would be virtually impossible to set up a situation like OTL 1588 then have it shift into a universal Catholic state in Europe. Furthermore how that would expand into a universal one across the world is difficult to explain. [Actually can't remember any mention of places beyond Europe apart from control of at least N America but if Europe was kept backwards as suggested and there are any memories of the pre-war situation you're likely to see an advanced civilisation arise elsewhere and overtake the Catholic Europe].

Also the suggestion that an extra 50-100 years or so for civilisation to mature enough to avoid a nuclear war, when several centuries have been lost in a monolithic state, I found fairly ridiculous.

Not a bad novel in terms of some of the characters and the way a case of adultary at the start of the novel leads to the building up of the factors that start the initial revolt in Britain against the empire but the overall background I found daft when I read it as a teenager.

Steve


Has no-one on here read one of the great AH novels, "Pavane" - based in England in 1968 ruled by the Catholic Church. It's a superb read and got me started in the whole world of AH and AH writing.

The POD is the assassination of Elizabeth I in July 1588 - the resulting internal chaos (the assassin, though mentally unstable, shouts pro-Catholic slogans before he is lynched by the mob) involving the massacre of Catholics at Walsingham, enables the Spanish Armada to rendezvous with Parma's forces unopposed.

The resulting invasion is successful and Philip becomes King of England. Buoyed by this, the House of Guise overthrows the Valois in France and what the book calls the "War of the three Henrys" ends with the Holy League triumphant and the primacy of the Catholic Church restored.

Over the following decades, the revived Catholic forces set about defeating the Lutheran states of Germany, the rebellion in Flanders is crushed and Holland falls to the Holy League. The European explorers spread Catholicism to North and South America, Africa and ultimately Australasia.
 
What circumstances might a completely RCC dominated world become around? with every country professing to be Catholic and any dissenters of any kind are hounded down and killed. Not quite ASB if say they squashed protestantism and somehow conquered India and China and Islam never came to pass.

Blue Sun

I think you would need ASB intervention to be honest. Christianity, like other monolithic faith systems tend to be by their nature so divisive and tend to lose any interest in their subjects so it's difficult to see how they could avoid splintering with multiple heresies and attempts to escape central control everywhere. Especially since with a pre-modern tech level there's no way of exerting control across Europe let alone in richer and more developed places. Plus you're suggesting a closed Catholicism, highly intolerant of any differences or disagreement. This is likely as it gets close to universal power but will totally screw up both internal unity even more and any cultural or technological advancement.

Steve
 
What circumstances might a completely RCC dominated world become around? with every country professing to be Catholic and any dissenters of any kind are hounded down and killed. Not quite ASB if say they squashed protestantism and somehow conquered India and China and Islam never came to pass.

What about Eastern orthodoxy? Although the definite split only happened in 1054 they were never a united church before (as in the sense of the Roman Catholic church we know today). And if Islam never comes into existence, that probably means no Arab expansion, which would mean a stronger Eastern Empire even less willing to submit to the papacy. And of course no Islamic Maghreb probably means Arianism continues in Visigothic Spain, Northern Africa.

And unless you have a united global empire something like Protestantism is going to pop up eventually. Most common people didn't care about the theological differences between Luther and the pope and neither did the german princes who embraced them. They liked it so much because it gave them a good excuse to get control of the church in their land and to confiscate its riches for themselves.
 
Once thought up a TL for this:

POD is: Jesus meets a nice Jewish girl (let's call her Miriam), falls in love and marries her. Her father happens to be an influential rabbi, who joins the new movement. Later, Jesus will still be crucified, but that doesn't prevent an even earlier victory of Christianity: Almost all Jews convert to the new religion, and after the people of Palestine are spread over the world after an uprising against the Romans, they will start a tradition similar to the Talmudists - people will learn to read the Bible and discuss it in detail, so this Christianity will be rather pro- than anti-intellectual. And, since there are barely any Jews around, they can't blame anything on a defenseless minority, so they'll have to solve their problems in the real world. And, priests are allowed to marry (like Jesus himself), so the smartest people can procreate. Last but not least, the Christians in the diaspora didn't forget Jerusalem, and once they become powerful enough, they reconquer the area from the Muslims. Since they're way more scientifically advanced, they really manage to conquer the whole world and also administrate it so their state doesn't fall apart.

Like it?
 
I lived in A Catholic Theocracy And it Was Hell On Earth!

I lived in what was a theocratic state in all but name Ireland until 1990s and it was under their rule! It was a complete nightmare - schools where children were subjected to quite extreme physical violence by teachers, a constitutional ban on divorce, access for contraception only for married couples, no porn even 'Playboy' was banned, male to male homosexual acts illegal, though nobody was ever prosecuted thankfully, a constitutional ammendment equating a woman's life to that of a foetus was passed! Absolutely no possibility of getting laid before marriage unless you paid for it directly. Unmarried mothers were made severe outcasts upto the 1970s were often incarcerated for life to work in laundries known as Magdellan laundries in virtual concentration camp conditions which were run by nuns under the direction of priests. Paedophile priests being moved around to other parishes to protect them and the instituion from scandal and effectively giving them more access to new 'meat'! Like most institutions nothing was or is more important the instituion itself!
BTW most religeons seem to have 3 things in common
1 An intense hatred of women perhaps following from the old maxim that the only thing men and women have in common is that they both hate women.
2 A pathological detestation of children - the child is always wrong!
3 A frothing at the mouth detestation of gay people!
Some Christians ha?
Given the fact in particular that sex is one of my hobbies I would have been far better off as a teenager in the 80s to have been anywhere in Urban Czechoslovakia or Hungary or anywhere in the old DDR. I would have been worse off ironically in the good old USSR as I would have been conscripted to Afghanistan!
Economically perhaps from the hierarchical structures such a nation encourages and the chronic lack of self confidence it breeds in the lower classes we were a total basket case! Is it any wonder so many of our people ran from this hole!
 
for a long time the papacy talked up all kings being vassals of the pope. on occasion they actually managed the submission of rulers. it would require some sustained freaky good luck but a papacy-wins scenario could great a megalith Europe capable of slowly steam-rollering Asia. very, very slowly. of course, you'd need a way to get papal Europe access to firearms so they could outgun the Chinese a la OTL

I will admit its a bit of a stretch but its not entirely asb

The Pope as Caliph? But I doubt such a state would develop science, and you really can't keep a global empire together with pre-industrial tech and organization. Long before it conquered the whole world, let alone convert all of it, it would fission.

Bruce
 
Once thought up a TL for this:

POD is: Jesus meets a nice Jewish girl (let's call her Miriam), falls in love and marries her. Her father happens to be an influential rabbi, who joins the new movement. Later, Jesus will still be crucified, but that doesn't prevent an even earlier victory of Christianity: Almost all Jews convert to the new religion, and after the people of Palestine are spread over the world after an uprising against the Romans, they will start a tradition similar to the Talmudists - people will learn to read the Bible and discuss it in detail, so this Christianity will be rather pro- than anti-intellectual. And, since there are barely any Jews around, they can't blame anything on a defenseless minority, so they'll have to solve their problems in the real world. And, priests are allowed to marry (like Jesus himself), so the smartest people can procreate. Last but not least, the Christians in the diaspora didn't forget Jerusalem, and once they become powerful enough, they reconquer the area from the Muslims. Since they're way more scientifically advanced, they really manage to conquer the whole world and also administrate it so their state doesn't fall apart.

Like it?

Interesting premise. Maybe Jesus lives long enough to write or, perhaps dictate His own gospel so that we get the basic tennets of Christianity spelled out in clear and easily understandable language?
 
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