What practices and conditions in the Catholic Church were the protestants protesting?

Answer 1

The general abuses of the Church.

Lutherans didn't want bishops, because they believed in the 'Priesthood of all believers', aka it is not only Bishops who can communicate with God, it is everyone.

Also they didn't want the Pope, because he claimed the was divinely appointed by God. However as this was not written about in the Bible, Lutherans disagreed with this.

Mostly they disagreed with the sale of indulgences, because the Church said giving money would go towards ensuring salvation. Lutherans believed salvation could only be achieved through 'sola fide', or faith alone.

(Of course, the money the Church collected went to immoral things that were not to do with religion.)

Also they wanted the Bible to be available in all languages so that everyone could read it because they believed in 'sola scriptura', faith alone.

Overall, the Church believed in making people pay for indulgences and keeping the pesants illiterate.

Protestants didn't want indulgences, just the reading of the Bible and the simple belief in God.

Roman Catholic AnswerActually, the common people who ended up in the protestant church were not protesting anything, they were fine where they were. It was a few malcontents who could not deal with sin in their private lives who were blaming the Church for their problems. Two that come to mind are Luther and Henry VIII. In Luther's case, he had a horrible upbringing and the resulting psychological problems caused him to fear that he was damned to hell for his sins. He refused to hope in God, and so rewrote Scripture and theology to say that he could go right on sinning and God would save him anyway. He got the princes in northern Germany to go along with him as they wouldn't have to send money to Rome. Henry VIII had big problems with sex (actually the same problems that Luther had) and he wanted another wife, so, since the Church wouldn't allow him to put away his lawful wife, he got a new Church. However, there were some problems in the Church that they both uses as an excuse, they are covered in the article below:

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 licence 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. Its principal motives were: desire for the purity of religion and godliness of life which, from the state of the clergy, precipitated a violent and unreasoning anti-clericalism which degenerated into contempt for all spiritual authority; the national ambitions of secular princes which flourished in the break-up of the Catholic integrity of Europe; an appetite for spoil and, as in England, fear of having to give up looted ecclesiastical wealth; in some, a hatred of the Church and Faith which can be attributed only to the direct working of the Devil. The principal results of the Reformation were: the true reform of the Church "in head and members" effected by the Council of Trent and the revivification of Catholicism so thoroughly achieved that it remains vital to this day (The Counter-reformation); the putting of countless souls, notably in Great Britain, Scandinavia and the German parts of the Empire, in enmity to the Church and consequently outside those means provided by Christ for man to know and attain to God; the disappearance of any "higher unity" holding together the diverse peoples and nations of Europe, the inoculation of men with naturalistic and humanitarian (as opposed to theocentric) philosophy which is now the chiefest enemy of Christianity.

Answer 2

Catholic AnswerThere any number of conditions that existed that predisposed to the protestant revolt, but none that actually led to it, that was entirely the result of sin on the part of individuals who refused to tender obedience to Our Blessed Lord in His Church.

This is a huge subject, I shall try to highlight some things that you can look for, but WikiAnswers 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.

fromA 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 licence 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. Its principal motives were: desire for the purity of religion and godliness of life which, from the state of the clergy, precipitated a violent and unreasoning anti-clericalism which degenerated into contempt for all spiritual authority; the national ambitions of secular princes which flourished in the break-up of the Catholic integrity of Europe; an appetite for spoil and, as in England, fear of having to give up looted ecclesiastical wealth; in some, a hatred of the Church and Faith which can be attributed only to the direct working of the Devil. The principal results of the Reformation were: the true reform of the Church "in head and members" effected by the Council of Trent and the revivification of Catholicism so thoroughly achieved that it remains vital to this day (The Counter-reformation); the putting of countless souls, notably in Great Britain, Scandinavia and the German parts of the Empire, in enmity to the Church and consequently outside those means provided by Christ for man to know and attain to God; the disappearance of any "higher unity" holding together the diverse peoples and nations of Europe, the inoculation of men with naturalistic and humanitarian (as opposed to theocentric) philosophy which is now the chiefest enemy of Christianity.