How Did Louis Ménéra Criticize Religion

: This document was written at the same time as the enlightened period. It is a journal of Jacques – Louis Ménétra, a master glazier, who went to Paris to start his own business and at that same time, he met Rousseau, one of many enlightenment thinkers, and discover that he had a sense of adventure and criticism just like Rousseau. In these part of his journal he describes a conversation with a curate, about many issues of the time, but mostly about the religious problem. It seems that in this document, Ménétra has an intellectual way of thinking about the Roman Catholic Church, that it was a strong characteristic of people that participated in the enlightenment period. He criticizes the church way of teaching people. His journal describes a day in Paris with a friend, where Ménétra was challenged to play tennis. After the tennis match, he was invited for a drink by the priest.
After a long time of talk, the subject of religion came in. He speaks about how a man who has a strong belief in God suffered in the past. How they were tricked by the mystery of the indulges, and how they spend money for a piece of paper that has no meaning. Ménétra truly believes that
God was not capable of doing such a thing as give forgiveness the sins, sell freedom from the purgatory in exchange for money, and punish people who do not have the same belief as the Catholic Church people. He believes that religious faith should be voluntary, that the state should promote tolerance, and that’s the only way that humanitarianism would bring progress to all – state, church, and community. These thoughts of him is a significant challenge against the Christian Church teaching and beliefs, however the priest answer in a sarcastic way that he is enlightened.
2. Content: The main point of this document is religious. The text describes a discussion where the subject of how the Roman Catholic Church educated people, and how the Church made their minds, came in. Jacques-Louis Ménétra discusses how the Church was selling indulges, for innocent people, that had a dogma in the Catholic Church. The Church made innocent people believe that if they do not pay for their sins, pay for a place in heaven, or pay for these pieces of paper that were containing “a way out” of the purgatory, for their lovely ones that were already dead and for their own. In other words, they could not be doomed for their life after death if they had paid for their indulges. However, these indulges were not cited in the bible, and the Church was just getting money from innocent people for their own wealth.
Consequently, some people were starting to have some doubts about these indulges, and also how the church teaches people, they started to challenge what the Catholic Church was saying, how church leaders, like the pope, were misleading people to a bad situation, and since the translations of the bible, to languages that people could understand, a lot of people were starting to see that indulges were not written in the bible, and Christ had never mentioned anything about these “way out” of the purgatory.
These people that started to challenge the Church were philosophers, writers, physicists, and even priests that started to published their thoughts against the Church, they began to change the population minds, started some revolutions, and also to illumined people that thought they were in a dark
situation.
3. Connections: As the priest said, Jacques-Louis Ménétra is an enlightened person because Ménétra has some thoughts just like Voltaire, Baron de Montesquieu, and John Locke. These people were one of the first thinkers from the enlightenment era. Voltaire was a writer that made a lot of criticism writing about the Christian Church and the government in a humor way; however, one of his major focus was on the idea that the government should be separate from the Church, he believed in religious freedom. Montesquieu focus idea was in the separation of powers, the government should have an executive part of the government (presidency), a legislative (congress), and jurisdiction part of the government. This three parts of the government should be balanced and checked by all of them. John Locke believed in the natural rights of people, that would be life, their liberty, and property. Locke thinks that the role of the government was to protect these natural rights.
Although these philosophers believed in all of these natural rights, and new ideas to rule the state. Jacques – Louis Ménétra believed in these thoughts from Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Locke. However, the absolute monarch from the enlightenment era did not believe in that because they had it absolute power over their state, they controlled the population mind saying that the king was sent it by God to rule everything and no one has the right to do things against it. But these thinkers were acting against their kings and people were starting to not believe in anything that the king and the Church said so. These thinkers encouraged people to fight for their rights and with these new beliefs, people started to revolt against their King.