Pedro de San Patricio
Gold Member
I listen to a lot of plainchant and read religious literature fairly often as a personal interest. Currently I'm reading The Pilgrim's Progress. It struck me recently while reading it how sad the institution of monasticism really is. It's generally only attracted the most intelligent minds - the same minds that could be advancing the human cause and leading their possessors to amazing success. Minds like those of Augustine, Bede, Bacon, and Mendel. It takes these minds and it locks them up in tiny cells and tells them to spend their entire lives praying to the air. It tells some of the intellectual crust of our species not to waste their time enjoying life in secular reality but to give themselves up to a fantasy and swear perfect and eternal obedience to a corrupt, decadent organization. Sometimes I kind of wonder where we could be had this church not actively prevented the most intelligent people from reproducing for the past two millennia...