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Flash Epistle Number Sixteen
In the beginning was The Church, the Roman Catholic Church. It controlled The News, specifically the Good News of the Gospels. The news necessary for salvation. It held a monopoly on the interpretation and dissemination of that news that gave it nearly complete domination over men’s minds. Literacy was the province of priests. Books were hand copied and few. The News was whatever The Church said it was.
Then, in the 15th and 16th centuries, two utterly revolutionary events occurred: the invention of the printing press and the rise of Protestantism.
Protestantism demanded a personal understanding of scripture, which brought about a huge increase in literacy. The printing press made cheap Bibles, and then other books, available to that new reading public. It allowed the dissemination of any version of the news that anyone dared to print.
The news became anything that could be concocted and printed. Now there was no News, but many variations of it. Instead of one Church there were many churches. Instead of one Truth there were many competing truths. The imaginations of Europe woke up and began asserting themselves.
The Church fought back and many years of wars, bloodshed, and Inquisition followed. But the genie could not be forced back into the bottle.
