ABSTRACT

Vast areas of Western Europe were covered again with forests. There was no network of local parishes. Most priests were illiterate, barely able to say the key sacramental words. The laity were either warrior lords who were only a step above barbarians and for whom murder and mayhem were a vocation or peasants converted by force. In both cases Christianity was a veneer which overlay paganism and was itself infected by superstition. Catholicism lacked the resources to do any more than teach the central doctrines and a few prayers. Western Europe would improve in the next couple of centuries, even flourish and religion would improve too. Many social scientists assume that "organized religion" is in its last days, that the prophecies from Voltaire to Durkheim about the end of religion are at long last about to be fulfilled. One might remark that this expectation has been advanced before and religion somehow continued.