The Dead Rabbits challenge Berg

Alright, Tom, let's go.  A battle for control of the Five Points.  =-)

I'm appreciate Tom's taking up my (good humored) "One Thesis", nailed to the door (sort of) of the Mirror of Justice.  And, Tom is so scrupulously fair, reasonable, and moderate, that I don't think there is much room for strong disagreement, just differences in emphasis, or different judgments about how to strike the balance -- and remember, in my original post, I asked whether "on balance", the Reformation was "a bad thing for political freedom."  I don't think my post could reasonably be taken by any reader (and I know Tom didn't take it this way) as Catholic "triumphalism," because nothing in my proposed thesis commits me to the view that all was (or is) well with the Church, or that the Reformation was without good effects.  So, when Tom writes the following, I do not really disagree:

  I think it would be way too easy to say that this was the determinative battle for institutional pluralism and freedom, and pass over the difficulties that the Church had over the next 700 years in acknowledging a similar freedom for any non-civil institution besides itself.  We can contextualize the Syllabus of Errors, "error has no rights," and the defenses of monarchy as against democracy --and it's important to do that contextualization -- but even after that's done, I think there remains an undeniable, irreducible sense in which the Church was formally negative for a long time about freedom for institutions other than itself, and sought arrangements in which (to oversimplify) there were not multiple sources of authority, meaning, and power in society, but two sources, civil authorities and the Church.

In any event, thanks again Tom.  Beers are on me next time.