Why was the church critized in 1500?

Answer 1

Roman Catholic AnswerTo the best of my knowledge, people's attitude about the Church in the sixteenth century was no different than in any other century until the protestant revolt when rulers started telling people that they could no longer belong to the Catholic Church but now had to worship in a new church that they started. Martin Luther, however, did not like the Catholic Church because it was requiring morals of him, including honesty, living according to his vows, which included chastity, poverty, and obedience - none of which he was able to live up to. Henry VIII's problems with the Church were similar, he couldn't live by the moral code of Our Blessed Lord as taught by the Church, either.

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"People" in general were NOT dissatisfied with the Catholic Church, as a matter of fact, nearly all of the history of the era points to the fact that people were very unhappy with their rulers making impossible for them to attend the Catholic Church, receive the sacraments they had grown up with, and participate in the various pious activities that Catholics have always been so fond of. In England, people were very unhappy with Henry VIII and his "English Church", please read The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400-1580, by Eamon Duffy. In Germany, the unhappy Germans had to contend with their princes latching onto Martin Luther's insane philosophy so they didn't have to pay tithes to Rome.

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 AnswerThe usual answer from most textbooks is that there was corruption in the Church, and the sale of indulgences. There is sometruth in these, but very little. Both of them were blown out of proportion. The main problem was that there was a growing "coldness" in society towards religion, and people were centering their lives on business instead of previous generations which had centered their whole lives around God.

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.　

from the Catholic Encyclopedia article on Pope Leo X

The most important occurrence of Leo's pontificate and that of gravest consequence to the Church was the Reformation, which began in 1517. We cannot enter into a minute account of this movement, the remote cause of which lay in the religious, political, and social conditions of Germany. It is certain, however, that the seeds of discontent amid which Luther threw his firebrand had been germinating for centuries. The immediate cause was bound up with the odious greed for money displayed by the Roman Curia, and shows how far short all efforts at reform had hitherto fallen. Albert of Brandenburg, already Archbishop of Magdeburg, received in addition the Archbishopric of Mainz and the Bishopric of Hallerstadt, but in return was obliged to collect 10,000 ducats, which he was taxed over and above the usual confirmation fees. To indemnify him, and to make it possible to discharge these obligations Rome permitted him to have preached in his territory the plenary indulgence promised all those who contributed to the new St. Peter's; he was allowed to keep one half the returns, a transaction which brought dishonour on all concerned in it. Added to this, abuses occurred during the preaching of the Indulgence. The money contributions, a mere accessory, were frequently the chief object, and the "Indulgences for the Dead" became a vehicle of inadmissible teachings. That Leo X, in the most serious of all the crises which threatened the Church, should fail to prove the proper guide for her, is clear enough from what has been related above. He recognized neither the gravity of the situation nor the underlying causes of the revolt. Vigorous measures of reform might have proved an efficacious antidote, but the pope was deeply entangled in political affairs and allowed the imperial election to overshadow the revolt of Luther; moreover, he gave himself up unrestrainedly to his pleasures and failed to grasp fully the duties of his high office.

Answer 3

Answer from a Roman CatholicMost of the people that I know who have been critical of the Catholic Church are doing it out of ignorance of what the Church actually believes or of fear of what they think the Church believes. Or there is a large body of protestants who have been brought up to believe that the Church is evil and they are just repeating what they have been taught. All of these things are very sad, as, in each case, Satan has won, whether through ignorance, fear, or misinformation.

Answer 4

people criticied the church because they didnt think that it was right for what Henry Vlll was doing.