Was the Catholic Church successful in responding to the Protestant Reformation?

Answer 1

AnswerThe Protestant Reformation brought about the counter-reformation in the Catholic Church, by which that Church freed itself of many of the corrupt practices that had built up, as well as updating some of the doctrines that the Reformation leaders had found most objectionable. To this extent, the Catholic Church was successful. However, it was not successful in its primary goal of attracting the Protestants back into the Catholic Church.

Answer 2

Catholic Answer

It's just Catholic, not Roman Catholic. Roman is an epithet first commonly used in England after the protestant revolt to describe the Catholic Church. It is never used by the official Catholic Church.

The Catholic response to the abuses that the protestant revolutionaries protested against is called, by secular scholars, the Counter-Reformation.

from A Catholic Dictionary, edited by Donald Attwater, Second edition, revised 1957

The Counter-Reformation is the name given to the Catholic movement of reform and activity which lasted for about one hundred years from the beginning of the Council of Trent (q.v., 1545), and was the belated answer to the threatening confusion and increasing attacks of the previous years. It was the work principally of the Popes St. Pius V and Gregory XIII and the Council itself in the sphere of authority, of SS. Philip Neri and Charles Borromeo in the reform of the clergy and of life, of St. Ignatius and the Jesuits in apostolic activity of St. Francis Xavier in foreign missions, and of St. Teresa in the purely contemplative life which lies behind them all. But these were not the only names nor was it a movement of a few only; the whole Church emerged from the 15th century purified and revivified. On the other hand, it was a reformation rather than a restoration; the unity of western Christendom was destroyed; the Church militant (those still on earth) led by the Company of Jesus adopted offence as the best means of defence and, though she gained as much as she lost in some sense, the Church did not recover the exercise of her former spiritual supremacy in actuality.

from Modern Catholic Dictionary by John A. Hardon, S.J. Doubleday & Co., Inc. Garden City, NY 1980

A period of Catholic revival from 1522 to about 1648, better know as the Catholic Reform. It was an effort to stem the tide of Protestantism by genuine reform within the Catholic Church. There were political movements pressured by civil rules, and ecclesiastical movements carried out by churchmen in an attempt to restore genuine Catholic life by establishing new religious orders such as the Society of Jesus and restoring old orders to their original observances, such as the Carmelites under St. Teresa of Avila (1515-98). The main factors responsible for the Counter Reformation, however, were the papacy and the council of Trent (1545-63). Among church leaders St. Charles Borromeo (1538-84), Archbishop of Milan, enforced the reforms decreed by the council, and St. Francis de Sales of Geneva (1567-1622) spent his best energies in restoring genuine Catholic doctrine and piety. Among civil rulers sponsoring the needed reform were Philip II of Spain (1527-98) and Mary Tudor (1516-58), his wife, in England. Unfortunately this aspect of the reformation led to embitterment between England and Scotland, England and Spain, Poland and Sweden, and to almost two centuries of religious wars. As a result of the Counter Reformation, the Catholic Church became stronger in her institutional structure, more dedicated to the work of evangelization, and more influential in world affairs.

Answer 3

We generally consider the Protestant Reformation to have begun with Martin Luther. He objected to the Church's sale of indulgences and to what he saw as corruption in the Church. At first, Luther had no intention to leave the Catholic Church, merely to reform the sale of indulgences and eliminate corruption. The Church refused to compromise with Martin Luther or consider any of his proposals, and placed his life in danger. As a result, Luther demanded further reforms, none of which the Church was willing to meet, and he was excommunicated.

Answer 4

Catholic Answer

This is a huge subject, I shall try to highlight some things that you can look for, but Answers.com is hardly the suitable place to fully answer such a question. First of all, I would suggest two books, both excellent, Diane Moczar’s book, Ten Dates Every Catholic Should Know, and James Hitchcock’s book, History of the Catholic Church From the Apostolic Age to the Third Millennium.

There is much background material covered in both, especially concerning the “coldness” which had settled into society and religion for two centuries before the protestant catastrophe.

It wasn't so much the conduct of the Church, although the conduct of individuals - from Popes to laity - certainly played a part in it. But it was a whole host of factors including several major famines, the Black Death (starting around 1350), the Avignon Papacy ( 1378 - 1417: The Great Schism when the Pope moved to Avignon, and no one knew who the real Pope was. For most of this period there were two claimants to the Papal throne, near the end of it, three. This threw Christendom into crisis with the end result of greatly weakening the Papacy and contributing to the protestant revolt a hundred years later. That and the rise of heresies including those of the Bohemia, John Hus, the heresy of Nominalism. And then there was the rise of Renaissance thought. Originally Renaissance thought saw the good in the Greek and Latin classics and tried to bring them into the Christian present. Thomas Aquinas has done a magnificent job of this earlier in the 13th century with Aristotle, on whom he based his classic Summa Theologiae which is still used to this day in teaching theology. But later Renaissance intellectuals had a whole different mind set and through their fascination with pagan ideas, they adopted the worldly outlook of their writers. Finally there was the rise of the business culture and the love of money - the root of all evil according to the Sacred Scriptures. The love of money and business became prevalent in this era wiping out the great Age of Faith that had just ended.).

Then the heresy of Conciliarism (following the Great Schism, Council of Pisa 1409 (which did not end the Schism), Council of Constance (1414-1418 which did end the Schism but claimed superiority over the Pope), Council of Basel (1431-1449), according to which a Church council was a higher authority than the pope (this Council “fell apart”) and finally the Fifth Lateran Council (1512-1517) which ended the heresy of Conciliarism and started modest Church reform. Then there was the coldness that was seeping into religious life, which was first noticed by St. Francis of Assisi. The collect from the Tridentine liturgy for the Feast of St. Francis on September 17 refers to this growing coldness:

O Lord Jesus Christ, Who, when the world was growing cold, didst renew the sacred marks of Thy passion in the flesh of the most blessed Francis, to inflame our hearts with the fire of Thy love, graciously grant that by His merits and prayers we may continually bear the cross and bring forth fruits worthy of penance.

There, of course, are many more reasons in these two centuries that led to the protestant revolt, I would suggest that you pick up Diane Moczar's book, Ten Dates Every Catholic Should Know, and read chapter the chapter headed 1517 AD The Protestant Catastrophe.

Probably the single biggest behavior that effected the Church in the Late Middle Ages was the Great Schism, which ran from 1378 to 1417. This was known as the Avignon Papacy,

from A Catholic Dictionary, edited by Donald Attwater, Second edition, revised 1957

The Great Schism, otherwise know as the Schism of the West was not strictly a schism at all but a conflict between the two parties within the Church each claiming to support the true pope. Three months after the election of Urban VI, in 1378, the fifteen electing cardinals declared that they had appointed him only as a temporary vicar and that in any case the election was invalid as made under fear of violence from the Roman mob. Urban retorted by naming twenty-eight new cardinals, and the others at once proceeded to elect Cardinal Robert of Geneva as Pope Clement VII, who went to reside at Avignon. The quarrel was in its origin not a theological or religious one, but was caused by the ambition and jealousy of French influence, which was supported to some extent for political reasons by Spain, Naples, Provence, and Scotland; England, Germany, Scandinavia, Wales, Ireland, Portugal, Flanders and Hungary stood by what they believe to be the true pope at Rome. The Church was torn from top to bottom by the schism, both sides in good faith (it was impossible to know to whom allegiance was due), which lasted with its two lines of popes (and at one time three) till the election of Martin V in 1417. It is now regarded as practically certain that the Urbanist popes were the true ones and their names are included in semi-official lists; moreover, the ordinal numbers of the Clementine claimants (who, however, are not called anti-popes,) were adopted by subsequent popes of the same name.

Extracted from What Every Catholic Wants to Know Catholic History from the Catacombs to the Reformation, by Diane Moczar, c 2006 by Our Sunday Visitor Publishing Division

The five key elements that made up the "medieval synthesis" were:

- The harmony between Faith and reason.

- The balance of power among nation-states as parts of Christendom

- The balancing of the authority of the king with local self-government.

- The harmony between the goals of individual self-fulfillment and those of society.

- The equilibrium - and an uneasy one, it is true - between Church and state.

In the fourteenth century everything started to fall apart beginning with famine and plague. Cold, wet weather between 1315 and 1322 brought ruined crops in northern Europe and the resulting famine produced mass starvation, the mortality rate was as high as ten percent. But within 25-20 years the Black Death struck Europe. Between 1347-1350 an estimate average of thirty percent of the population on the continent died. In some cases, the death toll was much higher. It returned again in 1363 and would recur periodically for the next three centuries. All of this caused social friction and rebellions, not to mention some bizarre heresies. In addition to all of this the Hundred Years's War began, the Ottoman Turks began their onslaught of Europe, and the Papacy was going through many troubles beginning with the Avignon papacy. All of this set the stage, so to speak for the protestant catastrophe.

Which brings us to the Fifth Lateran Council (1512-1519) the first serious, official attempt to reform the Church. Giles of Viterbo, the general of the Augustinians was the most prominent Church member and he took the popes to task for most of the current abuses in the Church, although he put great hope in Leo X (1513-1521) who had succeeded Pope Julius II (who had called the Council).

The Lateran Council issued a whole laundry list of abuses that they wanted to end, including “worldly prelates, bishops neglecting their responsibilities, and cardinals living away from Rome. The Council Fathers castigated the clergy for irregular ways of attaining benefices, nepotism, and unchastity. It condemned Averroism . . and even established Catholic pawn shops under Church auspices, to provide affordable loans to the poor.”

For a complete detailing of the Catholic reformation please see Chapter 9 from Hitchcock’s book History of the Catholic Church.