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accidentally called Protestants. Basically, he was protesting against the power of the pope, not so that the power should be distributed, but so that he should be given the power. And just to show that he does not care about the pope, he married a nun and he translated the BIBLE into the living languages.
The pope was against both: a monk should be a celibate, and the pope was not willing to have the BIBLE translated into the ordinary languages which people use. The reasons are clear -- it is not only the pope, all the religions in the world have resisted having their holy scriptures translated into the living languages which people speak. The fear is that if they can understand what is written in the holy scripture, they will pass through a great shock -- because there is nothing much holy in it.
And there is so much unholy in it ...
these so-called holy scriptures cannot even be considered great literature. Their standard is so mundane, so mediocre that all the religions of the world have thought it is better that they should remain in languages which nobody understands anymore.
When you hear somebody chanting sutras in Sanskrit, it seems they must have meaning of tremendous significance -- particularly all old languages are very musical. They had to be, because writing came into existence very late, and people had to remember. And it is easier to remember poetry than to remember prose. So all holy scriptures are poetic, and all old languages -- Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, Arabic, Persian, Chinese -- are all very musical. If you don't understand them, they sound great. It feels like there must be a secret hidden meaning in these musical, beautiful words.
Translated, they fall flat on the ground; there is nothing much in them. They are so ordinary that sometimes one feels ashamed -- this is my holy scripture? Many of the holy scriptures are full of obscenity, full of pornography. The HOLY BIBLE has five hundred pages of sheer pornography. The pope was afraid because to bring the BIBLE into ordinary living languages, which people know and use, was dangerous. And celibacy was the fundamental attitude of all religions, not only of Christianity.
Martin
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