What happened during the conflict between Catholics and protestants in the 15th - 16th century?

Answer 1

The protestant revolt was when individuals decided that they did not want to follow Christ's Church but wanted to worship God in their own way, not following the only way that He laid down for them. The rebelled against the Church, supported by local princes who wanted the power and money for themselves, that they saw going to Rome. It rent the Body of Christ asunder, and has kept millions of peoples for centuries from Christ's Sacraments and saving grace.

from A Catholic Dictionary, edited by Donald Attwater, Second edition, revised 1957
The Protestant Reformation: the revolt from the Catholic Church in Western Europe begun and carried to its height in the 16th century. It differed from all previous heretical movements in that it was not concerned with one or a few definite points of doctrine but was directed against the whole complex and system of Christianity as then understood; it gave license to the human self in the spiritual and religious order. Its principal causes were: the excessive temporal power, wealth and privilege which accrued to the higher clergy, the wicked, worldly and careless lives of many of the clergy, secular and regular, and the decay of philosophy and theology (these resulted partly from the Renaissance) with consequent low standard of spiritual life among the people generally; the weakening of the authority of the Holy See, following the Great Schism, increased by the humanistic corruption of the papal court; the parallel insurgence of secular princes.

Answer 2

It surely can not be true that the only way that Jesus laid down for Christians was to follow a Church that had become corrupt in selling indulgences, supposedly intended to remit time in Purgatory. At first, Martin Luther merely intended to reform the Catholic Church, especially in its use of indulgences, not break away, but the intransigence of the Church hierarchy made communion impossible. Luther won support among the ordinary people in Germany, where the Roman Catholic Church was deeply unpopular. Then the Reformation spread across Europe.


If the Protestants can be accused of venality, then the Catholic Church accuses itself of the same sin: "the excessive temporal power, wealth and privilege which accrued to the higher clergy, the wicked, worldly and careless lives of many of the clergy, secular and regular, and the decay of philosophy and theology ... the humanistic corruption of the papal court ..."

Conflict was the result of the intolerance of the sixteenth-century Church, which held to itself the right to kill and persecute Christians who left the Catholic Church. This was, in turn, often matched by the intolerance of the Protestant Churches, which killed and persecuted Catholics found in territories under their sway.

Answer 3

The movement reformed many of the major abuses that were in the Catholic church.