My new addiction is podcasts (are podcasts? but then wouldn't it need to be addictions? I'm so confused, so early on in this post, that it doesn't bode well for any of us). Specifically, I'm addicted to Dan Carlin's Hardcore History. I know, I'm a dweeb of epic proportions. Let's just assume this is a given and move on, shall we?

The other day as I scrubbed baseboards, I was listening to this podcast about the plague, which happens to be one of my favorite subjects. Have I ever told you this? Apparently, I'm wildly morbid. I should have been goth, but I can't apply the eye makeup necessary pull the look off. I'm also allergic to even organic mascara these days, freak of nature that I am. Anywho, I love the plague. Don't get me wrong, I'm not hoping for a resurgence or trying to cook up a strain in my basement (I don't even have a basement), I just think it is a really interesting period of history because it had such a huge impact on Europe, and hence us. Or me, because really it's all about me.

Where am I going with this? No really, it's not a rhetorical question. I seem to have... oh wait, yes, here it is. So I'm scrubbing and listening, and Dan tells about some woman's theory put forth in a book he sites (he is not quite so generic in his referencing as I am today). Chick's theory, in SlushSpeak is as follows:

When the plague hit a village, the first people called were the priests, so they could pray and give last rites and what have you. Because of this, the priesthood (at least the lower tier/branch of them) was decimated. Poor fellas. So the church had a problem- no priests. Lots of suffering. And all these young men who had lost their entire families and were kind of lost souls wandering around. In their brilliance, the church turned these surviving young men into replacement priests. I'm guessing there weren't enough young women to go around either, so these guys didn't have all that many options. The new priests had no real calling to the church, and they didn't always do things with the mindset of a spiritual leader. And these guys, the lost boys of the plague, created a lot of the problems that led Martin Luther to nail his 95 thesis to that church door.

So- no plague, no reformation? It's an interesting theory. I think it would be great novel. Imagine a world where the plague never happened. The church never split, America was never home to religious rebels. Would we still be a colony, looking to Rome and Great Britain for government? Interesting. But I'm too lazy and untalented and unorganized to write it, so I gift it to you. You know, even though it wasn't technically, entirely my idea. But whatever- I give you leave to steal it and make it brilliant.