Catholics who know history: please answer

[The_Preacher]

St Francis of Assisi would be an example of someone who wanted reform. St. Dominic as well.

The Church has always and consistantly been in a process of self correction. That is what St. Paul (or his school in his name) was doing in the Letters. That is what the Catholic Councils were, have been, and will be about. The problem begins when people, particularly the third estate, the laity get impatient, faith fails and they try to take things into their own hands. Faith takes patience, and patience feeds faith.

 

[Hisalone]

St Francis of Assisi would be an example of someone who wanted reform. St. Dominic as well.

Both around 1200CE So what reform between 1200 and 1500?

 

[Metamorphoo]

Does that include the prophets, Mathew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, and Jesus? Particularly Jesus who delegated his authority to his Vicar Peter, to be passed down by anointing and laying on of hands, to Peter’s successors and delegated to his bishops, to delegate to his priests and deacons, to rule the Church and all the world? as Luther said: “Who is this maggot infested dung heap Luther?”

The reason I asked for names of specific reformers was that a poster said that reforms did address the abuses of the Church of that time. Reformers centuries before Luther did address the evils of their time–but obviously, the new evils of the 16th century (and resurgences of old ones) had not been adequately addressed in Luther’s day. As another poster said, people like John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila came along after the Protestant Reformation was underway. Certainly, these and other Catholic reformers positively impacted the RCC. But it is debatable whether their voices would have been heard if the Protestants had not so vehemently brought those abuses to the forefront of the RCC’s attention. Regardless of your perspective on the Protestant Reformation, I think God did use it as an external pressure upon the RCC to address the corruption in its ranks.

Even in the OT, there were individuals who came along and led reform and spiritual revival when Israel had strayed from God. The same has occurred in the history of Christianity. But that doesn’t mean God doesn’t apply pressures from without to get His People to repent. He did it to ancient Israel; He has done and will continue to do so in the Church when necessary.

 

[Hisalone]

Does that include the prophets, Mathew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, and Jesus? Particularly Jesus who delegated his authority to his Vicar Peter, to be passed down by anointing and laying on of hands, to Peter’s successors and delegated to his bishops, to delegate to his priests and deacons, to rule the Church and all the world? as Luther said: “Who is this maggot infested dung heap Luther?”

I beleive the original question was about reform during the most corrupt days of the RCC.

 

[The_Preacher]

Both around 1200CE So what reform between 1200 and 1500?

If I may; St. Francis and St. Dominic. Obviously. As I said above, patience, patience! The internal dialog of the Church is constant and quite intence. The Church clock has decade, century and mulinium hands, it’s not a drive through franchise. You have to wait faithfully until a decision is made. He who endures shall be saved.

 

[The_Preacher]

I beleive the original question was about reform during the most corrupt days of the RCC.

Sorry. The Church was never corrupt, just a bit taken aback when the world got through the doors. The system worked and we fixed that minor problem a long time ago. The present problem is that the world, drunk on humanist democracy continues to delude itself into thinking that it actually has a say in things. With appologies to Cool Hand Luke: What we have here is a failure to excommunicate.

 

[DebChris]

The Church has always and consistantly been in a process of self correction. That is what St. Paul (or his school in his name) was doing in the Letters. That is what the Catholic Councils were, have been, and will be about. The problem begins when people, particularly the third estate, the laity get impatient, faith fails and they try to take things into their own hands. Faith takes patience, and patience feeds faith.

Many of the heresies, however, began with clergy.

I can’t speak for all Protestants (being the diverse lot that we are)–but I know that many would agree that works are the by-product of faith. We’re saved by grace, through faith. The presence of good works, however, is the authentication that the faith a person has is a genuine, saving faith. I don’t see how this perspective would be problematic to anyone.

Thanks for the post.

As St. James says, “Faith without works is dead.”

 

[Hisalone]

If I may; St. Francis and St. Dominic. Obviously. As I said above, patience, patience! The internal dialog of the Church is constant and quite intence. The Church clock has decade, century and mulinium hands, it’s not a drive through franchise. You have to wait faithfully until a decision is made. He who endures shall be saved.

What of those souls during that 300 year period that remained in darkness because the clerics were so compromised? No empathy for those lost souls?

 

[The_Preacher]

What of those souls during that 300 year period that remained in darkness because the clerics were so compromised? No empathy for those lost souls?

Most of whome billed themselves as “reformers.” And do you really think God has no mercy upon the deceived? If so, then there is no hope for Protistants. Loosen up. God is good. And getting there is half the fun, though I must admit; looking at what I’ve suffered and lost these twenty years past for the Faith, it’s hard to convince some of the fact. But then it’s only two score and ten.

 

[Chancellare]

Most of whome billed themselves as “reformers.” And do you really think God has no mercy upon the deceived? If so, then there is no hope for Protistants. Loosen up. God is good. And getting there is half the fun, though I must admit; looking at what I’ve suffered and lost these twenty years past for the Faith, it’s hard to convince some of the fact. But then it’s only two score and ten.

Well said.

 

[benedictus2]

Metamorphoo:
(Sigh) And I don’t think you are hearing what I am saying. There are TWO separate issues being addressed here: (1) the sins of the RCC leadership; and (2) the sins of those who reacted to the sins of the RCC leaders. God deals with each separately. There are ALWAYS consequences to sin. There were consequences for the RCC, and there were consequences for Protestants as well.

But you can’t have your cake and eat it too. First you say that one is a result of the other and now you are saying they are different issues. If there is causality, then they are the same issue. If you claim that the reformation is a result of the corruption in the Church then you cannot now say that these sins have to be treated separately. By your first proposition you already have the two intertwined.

The whole problem with your premise is that Protestantism is playing Adam and Eve’s game. Adam blames Eve, Eve blames the serpent and neither one acknowledging culpability.

When will you accept the fact that the reformers got it wrong**? The only thing they got right was that something needed fixing**. But everything else from there went horribly wrong.

And to this day, this denial persists.

As I have mentioned before, the Catholic Church has acknowledged her failures. The protestants have not.

The sins of each continue to affect all Christians to this day. Many Protestants continue to distrust the RCC spiritually because of the abuses that occurred at the time of the Reformation. Trust that has been broken is VERY difficult to restore. That is an ongoing CONSEQUENCE of the sins of RCC leadership in the years leading up to the Reformation.

Many protestants distrust the Church because of the lies that they continue to get fed to this very day. Hisalone just a few days ago posted outright lies which with a quick google he himself found to be such and yet he will not admit that he was wrong to post it.

I know a former pastor who still believes that the Catholic Church was created by the edict of Milan.

Protestantism, for its part, is plagued by an ongoing mistrust of spiritual authority–and its consequent reluctance to submit to authority has resulted in split after split after split after split and wide divergences in doctrine. That is an ongoing CONSEQUENCE of its sins.

No, this is not an ongoing consequence of its sins. This is because devil divides. This is a sign that the reformation was not guided by the Holy Spirit.

The entire Body of Christ has suffered as a result. There are no winners here. SIN HAS CONSEQUENCES. Period. We reap what we have sown. Neither the RCC nor the Reformers were humble in their responses

. The Reformers did not have an ‘exclusive’ on the sin of pride. If RCC clergy had been humble enough to receive correction when initially confronted with their sin, there probably would never have been a Protestant Reformation.

Here you go. Adams’s he made me do it again.
What is so troubling about Protestantism is not so much that they sinned, it is that they try to justify their sin by blame shifting. Not only that, their pride goes beyond refusal to admit sin. It is in their puffed up ego, that they should think that they know better than the Fathers and Doctors of the Church who have gone before them so they make up their own doctrines. And what do they do when their own doctrines are not supported by the Bible? They try to chop up the Bible as well. This is the pride that I am talking about.

Sin has consequences true. But the split is not the consequence of the sins of some members of the Church…

 

[benedictus2]

I have two children. Sometimes the older one (my son) has come to me, crying, “Mom, B** hit me!” Knowing my children like I do, I know that the probability is pretty high that my son has teased his sister to the point of exasperation–and she lashed out at him in her frustration. Do I discipline my daughter for what she did? Absolutely! Regardless of what her brother did to provoke her, she is accountable for her response. But my son is disciplined, too (and typically, more severely than his sister) because he started the conflict by willfully antagonising her. I have told him more than once, “When your sister hit you, she was wrong. But you started the issue by provoking her. You reaped the fruit of your doings.”

But that analogy does not apply because in this case the brother was in fact provoking her to sin.

But the situation is more like the brother was caught doing something naughty but not actually provoking the sister to sin. But the sisters reaction to seeing her brother being naughty was to bash him up.

A more apt analogy would be to say that in a large family, the father and some other members were out and out scoundrels. The children were very unhappy about the state of affairs in the family. Some decided that the only way to fix it is to make war on the erring relatives and leave home and in the process beat up some of those who do not agree with their solution, The other members on the other hand decided that the only way to fix it is to pray and do penance for the whole family and to try to live as holy a life as they can in the hope that by their example the others would follow. They saw past the individual misdeeds to the beauty of the Church herself.

The ONE and ONLY point that I have been trying to make from my very first post on this subject

is this: I don’t think Catholics want to acknowledge the possibility that God’s rending of the Church was a consequence of the ongoing, grievous sins of many RCC clergy.

Of course she will not because that is a completely wrong proposition. Throughout the history of the Church there has always been sin. But only the reformers caused the split.

Do you honestly believe that Christ will punish His own Body for the sins of some of its members? The Body of Christ is bigger than its errant members.

The example you give of Israel does no apply because they did not have the promise of Christ and Israel is not the Body of Chist.

While I think the Reformers certainly have to bear their share of the blame for what happened during the Reformation, it seems like you want to cast blame for the split exclusively on the Protestants.

Because it mostly is. As I have said before, Others were able to achieve real reform by remaining in the Church. These men and women are truly holy men and women.
The reformers did not do any “reforming” so it really is a misnomer. What did they reform. Nada. They established a separate church. Is that reform? To reform something is to make it better. Did they make the Catholic Church better? No. Can you call their solution reform? No. If the Catholic Church was not divinely instituted, with the upheaval brought about by the reformation she would be history by now. But instead she remans standing because she is Christ’s Church

That’s not fair.

• To me, it’s like my son blaming his sister for hitting him–and not wanting to acknowledge that she hit him because he had greatly provoked her. While you acknowledge that there was abuse in the RCC, you don’t seem to think the RCC has to take responsibility for the mistrust and anger its sins incited in the sheep that it was supposed to be caring for–and the fact that those provocations were major factors as to why people rejected the RCC and papal authority.

But the good sheep reacted differently, didn’t they? Because they did not have inflated egos.

 

[benedictus2]

You are conveniently forgetting that the Israelites did not have Christ’s promise of not letting the gates of Hell prevail. They did not have Christ’s promise that He will send the Holy Spirit to guide His Church into all truth.

The New Testament states that judgment begins with the Household of God. It is not merely an OT concept. Christ’s promise does not exempt the Church from discipline for sin–whether individual or corporate.

And I am not saying it is exempt. But what I am saying is that God will punish the individuals sins, but He will not punish His own Body. The Church is His Body**. This is where your entire reasoning goes off track. Because you are equating the sinful members of the church as being the Church herself.** The Church will always be Holy because it is the Body of Christ even though some of her members may be mired in corruption.

During this entire time, there were many holy men and women. The greater portion of the Churches members were good. This is where Luther got it all wrong. He started off attacking some members of the Church and ended up hacking the Body of Christ.

And this is why I love the Catholic Church. In the days when I am ill, when I cannot pray, someone else is praying for me. And when I can, I pray for those who can’t. We are all caught up in this communion of saints. Notice that it is called the communion of Saints. And that phrase was the same even during the darkest hours of the Catholic Church.

Christ raises up saints for the times because He loves His Bride.

It is simply His means of bringing repentance and restoration of holiness. While the Holy Spirit’s job is to bring conviction for sin, God will exert as much pressure as necessary to get His message across to those who do not respond. Sometimes His People are stubborn–and that pressure becomes intense, out of necessity.

God’s discipline of His People for sin has nothing to do with “the gates of hell prevailing.” In all honesty, I don’t understand the point you are trying to make by referencing this verse.

All addressed in my above answers.

 

[benedictus2]

Both around 1200CE So what reform between 1200 and 1500?

I can’t believe it! A politically correct Christian. What, you cannot even use A.D. now? The dates from 1 to now is referenced back to Christ.

It is not C.E. common era. It is A.D. Anno Domine, the year of the Lord.

So much for being Christian, huh?

 

[benedictus2]

What of those souls during that 300 year period that remained in darkness because the clerics were so compromised? No empathy for those lost souls?

The darkness is only in your spin. There was no darkness.

 

[benedictus2]

I beleive the original question was about reform during the most corrupt days of the RCC.

But the reformers did not “reform”. That is a misnomer. No reform happend because of them. The reform was accomplished by the saints of the era.

In actual fact, the “reformers” hindered reform.

Setting up separate churches, which then became thousands of churches is NOT REFORM.

IT IS DEFORMATION.

 

[benedictus2]

As another poster said, people like John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila came along after the Protestant Reformation was underway. Certainly, these and other Catholic reformers positively impacted the RCC. But it is debatable whether their voices would have been heard if the Protestants had not so vehemently brought those abuses to the forefront of the RCC’s attention…

Is that how you console yourself? The reform happened in God’s time. Luther wanted it in his time. He thought he was better than the Body of Christ.

Luther cannot even compare with the greatness of Theresa, Ignatius and John of the Cross.

Read their lives and their approach to reform. Completely different to Luther’s. That is why the fruits are completely different.

They achieved reform. Luther, Calvin and Zwingly only achieved deformation which to this day is becoming worse.

 

[John1]

When I read through the history books about what was going on at the time in Europe, I get the feeling that Luther and many of his contemporaries felt let down by the Roman Catholic Church, and after the Great Schism of 1054 (when the Eastern and Western Churches split), the idea of splitting with the Church was already considered a viable option. Especially since most of the people felt that they had no say in Church affairs and no power to say anything against any Church policies. The Church was quick to defend it’s doctrines and anyone who questioned the Church was labled a heretic and executed. With this sort of pressure, going through the “proper procedures” must have seemed an insurmountable task. The feeling of the Reformers was that the Church had become to politically motivated and worldly.

As far as if the Reformation movement was justified would be relative to your position. When Jesus railed against the Jewish scribes and Pharisees, calling them hypocrites for not praticing what they preached, he said to follow what they said, but not follow their example. I’m sure that the scribes and the Pharisees would say that Jesus was a rebel with and his arguments against them were not justified, but as Christains we can see that He was telling the absolute truth. Someone with a noose around his neck for reading or passing out copies of the Bible would defintely see the justification, as would some who was teaching that the earth was round and not flat, but to someone who saw this as an attempt to tear down the Church that was established by Christ would see their position as unjustifiable. It is worth stating that at no time were the Reformers attempting to separate themselves from Jesus or the Body of Christ and I beleive that most of the people that stayed in the Roman Catholic Church firmly believed that they were aslo doing God’s will.

Blessing and I hope your Thanksgiving was great!

 

[benedictus2]

When I read through the history books about what was going on at the time in Europe, I get the feeling that Luther and many of his contemporaries felt let down by the Roman Catholic Church, and after the Great Schism of 1054 (when the Eastern and Western Churches split), the idea of splitting with the Church was already considered a viable option. Especially since most of the people felt that they had no say in Church affairs and no power to say anything against any Church policies. The Church was quick to defend it’s doctrines and anyone who questioned the Church was labled a heretic and executed. With this sort of pressure, going through the “proper procedures” must have seemed an insurmountable task. The feeling of the Reformers was that the Church had become to politically motivated and worldly.

As far as if the Reformation movement was justified would be relative to your position. When Jesus railed against the Jewish scribes and Pharisees, calling them hypocrites for not praticing what they preached, he said to follow what they said, but not follow their example. I’m sure that the scribes and the Pharisees would say that Jesus was a rebel with and his arguments against them were not justified, but as Christains we can see that He was telling the absolute truth. Someone with a noose around his neck for reading or passing out copies of the Bible would defintely see the justification, as would some who was teaching that the earth was round and not flat, but to someone who saw this as an attempt to tear down the Church that was established by Christ would see their position as unjustifiable. It is worth stating that at no time were the Reformers attempting to separate themselves from Jesus or the Body of Christ and I beleive that most of the people that stayed in the Roman Catholic Church firmly believed that they were aslo doing God’s will.

Blessing and I hope your Thanksgiving was great!

How can those who hacked the Body of Christ be doing God’s will?

Christ prayed for unity for his Church. How can those who sowed disunity be doing it in accordance with Christ’s will.

Is this Christ’s will or man’s will. Man’s will to power. Take a look at what the reformers hoped to achieve. The subjugation of the Church to the state and that is why the Anglicans have the king as its head. There was a lot of politics going on in the sidelines.

As I have mentioned, time and time again. Reform happened. It just was not achieved by the reformers. Because of their humongous egos they thought that what needed to happen, had to happen their own way and their own time.

The others did not think so. Study the lives the Saints. The reason they were able to effect reform was precisely because in seeing that there was something rotten about some parts (remember only some parts) of the Body of Christ they put emphasis on prayer and penance. It is interesting that the likes of St Theresa, St John of the Cross and St Ignatius was born around this time. They did not strive to reform others. Rather they reformed themselves and in the process attracted many people to their cause. It was because they never lost ther focus on Christ that so much good came out of them.

God knows how to provide for his Church.

It was, is and will be Christ’s Church. And that is something that the “reformers” forgot. They looked at the problem, anger and pride took over and the rest is history.

We can see the same thing happening now in the feminist movement and the liberal left who are trying to remodel the church according to their own image.

They are classic examples of errors in discerning spirits.
This is why I posted some of the Rules of Discernment of the Spirit by St Ignatius.

It is so easy for the devil to use our good intentions and use it for his own ends if we are not careful. I think this is what happened with the “reformation”.

 

[hoi_polloi]

I find all these posts very interesting, I see two different views being expressed, so I would like to pose a question to both view points, to the Catholics, Are you Christian first or Catholic first.
To the Non Catholics, do you think, that Catholics are going to heaven? This I think, and I may be wrong, is where both views seem to me, to take a different turn. Looking to Christ as the common thread we might be able to come together. It does not matter what happened with the reformation, to me, it happened, and we must accept it, if for no other reason then the ones that don’t believe in Christ. Our mission should be the same, point those that don’t know Him, to Him. If just one is brought into the church, we should rejoice and do everything we can to bring another into the family. May His Grace Become A Daily Thought As We Interact. Much Love, Hoi Polloi