Did the Protestant Reformation do anything good?

[Contarini]

A lot of Protestants didn’t believe in evangelization, figuring that God already knows who He is going to save and who will be damned.

Very, very few ever took this approach.

Edwin

 

[Contarini]

She did. She invited every protestant leader. In fact that was the reason that the Council was held in Trent (on the border between the (often stridently anti-papal) Venetian Republic and the German Empire, rather than in the Papal States. They could get to Trent without passing through any Catholic-ruled territory.

That is false. The “German Empire” was certainly “Catholic-ruled.” Trent was in imperial territory. The Hapsburgs were the bloodiest persecutors of the sixteenth century, arguably (though the Valois and the Tudors–whether the latter called themselves Catholics, Protestants, or something in between–were not far behind).

I’m sure that in a different context you would be quick to point out that Catholic civil authorities were the ones who actually burned people. . . . . but here you seem to have forgotten the fact (or you just have your geography mixed up).

But not one protestant bothered to turn up. Luther was too busy vilifying the pope as “the anti-Christ” and the Catholic Church as “the whore of Babylon” etc.

It’s certainly true that by this point most of the Protestant leaders saw no point in working for reunion with the Papacy, but it’s also true that they had some genuine reason to fear that their safeconducts would not be respected, given what had happened to Hus at Constance more than a century earlier.

In between publishing the most vicious anti-semitic diatribes ever written by somebody claiming to be a Christian

I’m not sure about that. Plenty of late medieval Catholics, like St. Bernardino of Siena, could give him a run for his money on that score (and if it comes to that, Hitler claimed to be a Christian, though admittedly his claim may not have been sincere).

and his ringing endorsements of the German princes bloodily crushing the peasants who were demanding a fairer go.

That was a couple of decades earlier. Your chronology is as confused as your geography.

Edwin

 

[Contarini]

No it was not. Abuses are not mentioned in Luther’s “95 theses” or any of his other early writings.

It depends on what you mean by “abuses.” You don’t consider his accusation that St. Peter’s was being built up with the skin and bones of the Christian flock to be an expression of concern about abuses?

It was only years later that Luther began to rant (extremely exaggeratedly) about abuses in the Church to try to rationalise what he had done.

I would say the opposite, actually. Early on he got a lot of credibility from making common cause with a wider set of reformist impulses, but in later life, especially given the spotty record of Protestantism by that time, he played down the idea that the Reformation had anything to do with reforming abuses.

Edwin

 

[Contarini]

The Council of Trent was well on the way, the Reformation simply changed the Church’s priorities, thus speeding that process.

No, the Council of Trent was not on its way, and the Popes resisted the idea of calling a Council for years.

You can read all about the long and tortuous process in vol. 1 of Jedin’s *History of the Council of Trent. *The process was long not just because the Church takes a long while to do stuff but primarily because the Popes didn’t want a Council.

Edwin

 

[Contarini]

I think after this discussion so far that Luther didn’t care at all about clergy abuse.

Too strong, but it certainly wasn’t his main concern.

He was concerned about his own theological doctrines.

Agreed.

He wanted to put in place theological doctrines that would excuse him to be able to commit abuses of his own without feeling any contrition or remorse or repentance.

Nonsense. If you bothered to read some of Luther’s writings–his Small Catechism, for instance, or the 95 Theses, or nearly anything–you would see that the importance of repentance is constantly emphasized. You have no understanding of Luther’s theology whatsoever or you would never say such an outrageous thing.

Luther did want peace of conscience, since he was highly scrupulous and always worried that he wasn’t sufficiently penitent. So he created a theology that said that as long as you have faith you don’t have to worry about your sins at all, and he had to spend the rest of his theological career building safeguards against antinomianism back in (after initially claiming that such safeguards weren’t necessary because anyone with true faith would do what was good spontaneously).

That is what I seem to gather now. .

From what? What evidence has prompted you to such drastic conclusions?

Edwin

 

[Contarini]

I agree technically the Empire was in charge of the Diet of Worms but it was the influence of the Pope and their insistance Luther changed his 95 Thesies to cut portions out that were the reason he was arrested in the first place. You would agree with that correct?.

He wasn’t arrested. Certainly the Papacy was pushing for stern measures against him, but the Emperors understood themselves as champions of orthodoxy independently of papal initiative–so did the universities.

Edwin

 

[GKC]

No, the Council of Trent was not on its way, and the Popes resisted the idea of calling a Council for years.

You can read all about the long and tortuous process in vol. 1 of Jedin’s *History of the Council of Trent. *The process was long not just because the Church takes a long while to do stuff but primarily because the Popes didn’t want a Council.

Edwin

Yep.

GKC

 

[RTully]

He wasn’t arrested. Certainly the Papacy was pushing for stern measures against him, but the Emperors understood themselves as champions of orthodoxy independently of papal initiative–so did the universities.

Edwin

I concede he wasn’t technically arrested but he was convicted at the Diet of Worms severley and if he would not have shown to defend himself he surley would have been arrested.

 

[hn160]

She did. She invited every protestant leader. In fact that was the reason that the Council was held in Trent (on the border between the (often stridently anti-papal) Venetian Republic and the German Empire, rather than in the Papal States. They could get to Trent without passing through any Catholic-ruled territory.

But not one protestant bothered to turn up. Luther was too busy vilifying the pope as “the anti-Christ” and the Catholic Church as “the whore of Babylon” etc. In between publishing the most vicious anti-semitic diatribes ever written by somebody claiming to be a Christian, and his ringing endorsements of the German princes bloodily crushing the peasants who were demanding a fairer go.

The first session of the Council of Trent was held Dec.13 1545, by Feb. 18 1546, Luther was dead. If the Council was held earlier, maybe both sides wouldn’t have harden. I don’t know why Catholics defend the practice of selling indulgences especially when it was used by the Archbishop of Manz to pay off debts the he incurred by buying his offices?

 

[Swiss_Guy]

No, the Council of Trent was not on its way, and the Popes resisted the idea of calling a Council for years.

You can read all about the long and tortuous process in vol. 1 of Jedin’s *History of the Council of Trent. *The process was long not just because the Church takes a long while to do stuff but primarily because the Popes didn’t want a Council.

Edwin

If I remember correctly there were some popes between 1555 and 1563 who helped make the council move along quicker, as they wanted a reform.

 

[Swiss_Guy]

I think this is shaky ground to stand on. As a Catholic, don’t you believe that the Catholic Church is always the true Church? Was that any less true in 1517 than it is now? And it’s not as if the Church isn’t full of scandal and corruption today as well.

Edwin

I think what he meant is that Luther saw the Church from a different perspective than we see the Church from back then now.

 

[GaryTaylor]

I don’t think there’s a question to the truth the church needed reform. However, what makes anyone believe this was the correct way to accomplish this? 2011 and this is its Fruit?

I fail to see one single answer to the 500-year old question? Except how it helped the CC reform. Great, thanks for the help. Now whats next?

Peace

 

[Holly3278]

The Protestant Reformation was the greatest tragedy this world has ever seen in my opinion. It was totally unnecessary. The Church could have reformed what was corrupt within Herself without all of the Protestant reformers doing what they did. I strongly feel that the Protestant Reformation was prophesied by these passages of Scripture:

For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myths.
(2 Timothy 4:3-4 RSV)

"Then they will deliver you up to tribulation, and put you to death; and you will be hated by all nations for my name’s sake. And then many will fall away, and betray one another, and hate one another. And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because wickedness is multiplied, most men’s love will grow cold. But he who endures to the end will be saved.
(Matthew 24:9-13 RSV)

I thought there were more verses but I can’t find them at this time.

 

[Nicea325]

I don’t think there’s a question to the truth the church needed reform. However, what makes anyone believe this was the correct way to accomplish this? 2011 and this is its Fruit?

I fail to see one single answer to the 500-year old question? Except how it helped the CC reform. Great, thanks for the help. Now whats next?

Peace

Better yet,if the Protestant Reformation was the remedy for the CC,I am curious to know when Protestanism is going to reform itself? I think the hundreds and hundreds of divisions should be an indicator somethings need reform?

 

[Swiss_Guy]

Better yet,if the Protestant Reformation was the remedy for the CC,I am curious to know when Protestanism is going to reform itself? I think the hundreds and hundreds of divisions should be an indicator somethings need reform?

How does becoming Catholic sound as a kind of reform?

 

[Edmundus1581]

Better yet,if the Protestant Reformation was the remedy for the CC,I am curious to know when Protestanism is going to reform itself? I think the hundreds and hundreds of divisions should be an indicator somethings need reform?

How does becoming Catholic sound as a kind of reform?

Well said, both of you.

 

[Swiss_Guy]

Well said, both of you.

Thanks.

 

[guanophore]

As I’ve said in response to other posts on this thread, I think that this is way overblown. Plenty of people were upset about abuses. The difference with Luther was that he came up with a theology that he identified with the Gospel, and judged the Church by that standard.

Yes, it would be more accurate to say that the clerics he observed in Germany in his day and age were doing something other than what he considered sound preaching of the Gospel. Luther was a tiny pebble, after all, and was reacting to things that existed in his own little corner of the world. None of the other 22 Rites of Catholicism were at all affected by the Reformation, nor the abuses that were evident in central European Latin Catholicism at the time.

I don’t think that’s fair to early-sixteenth-century Catholicism. There are all sorts of things about the religion of that era that make me cringe, but there was also plenty of solid piety, as in any era.

What I am trying to say is that from Luther’s point of view, the gospel was not reaching the people. This is what he observed in his immediate environment, insulated though it was.

I will certainly stipulate that there were plenty of faithful teachers, preachers, pastors, etc.
Some of these were heavily involved in his own spiritual formation.

I think it’s highly unlikely that this affected him that much. He would have been a very strange early-sixteenth-century German if he hadn’t gone to Rome with some rather lurid ideas of the corruption to be found there. No doubt he saw things that confirmed his stereotype, and no doubt this was additional confirmation to him later when he developed the view that the Papacy was Antichrist for theological reasons.

He was very idealistic, especially in his early years. He longed for a Holy Father and a Church that met his ideals of holiness. He did not find it in Rome.

Yes, I agree with your point about the theology, but the fact that corruption in the heirarchy being rampant did not help.

The whole anti-Tetzel business was more or less a sideshow for Luther. He had come to conclusions that contradicted the standard theology regarding penance and indulgences quite independently of Tetzel.

Tetzel was the straw that broke the camel’s back, I think. He personified Luther’s notion that the true Gospel was hidden behind rhetoric and misinformation. Most of his theses were directed toward these issues. He was right, too, which is why some of them were not condemned.

I think this is shaky ground to stand on. As a Catholic, don’t you believe that the Catholic Church is always the true Church? Was that any less true in 1517 than it is now? And it’s not as if the Church isn’t full of scandal and corruption today as well.

Edwin

Yes, so perhaps I am not expressing myself clearly. By “reality”, I mean Luther’s reality, his world, his village, his small slice of the universe. In his small world, he saw the Church full of scandal and corruption. In reading his works, I cannot tell that he separated the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church from the pope, bishops,a nd other visible leadership. It seemed to him that when these persons fell short, then the Church was falling short. For Catholics, this is not possible. Since the Body of Christ has Himself as her Head,a nd she is ensouled by the HS, she cannot err, and neither is she ever in need of “reform”. Only the sinful men who are members of her can err, and as such, are always in need of reform.

 

[CopticChristian]

Do you think the Protestant Reformation did anything good? I personally thing it was one of the greatest tragedies in the history of the human race, but could’ve been avoided. And if it were avoided, things would be a lot better off today. Why did it happen, and what could have been done to stop it, and what can be done now to reverse the damages wrought by it?

Yes. I concluded this by reviewing Hilaire Belloc. This is what he says.

clerus.org/bibliaclerusonline/en/ba1.htm#j

Chapter Six: What Was the Reformation?

The movement generally called “The Reformation” deserves a place apart in the story of the great heresies; and that for the following reasons: 1. 1. It was not a particular movement but a general one, i.e., it did not propound a particular heresy which could be debated and exploded, condemned by the authority of the Church, as had hitherto been every other heresy or heretical movement. Nor did it, after the various heretical propositions had been condemned, set up (as had Mohammedanism or the Albigensian movement) a separate religion over against the old orthodoxy.

Rather did it create a certain separate which we still call “Protestantism.” It produced indeed a crop of heresies, but not one heresyand its characteristic was that all its heresies attained and prolonged a common savour: that which we call “Protestantism” today.

1. 1. Though the immediate fruits of the Reformation decayed, as had those of many other heresies in the past, yet the disruption it had produced remained and the main principlereaction against a united spiritual authorityso continued in vigour as both to break up our European civilization in the West and to launch at last a general doubt, spreading more and more widely. None of the older heresies did that, for they were each definite. Each had proposed to supplant or to rival the existing Catholic Church; but the Reformation movement proposed rather to dissolve the Catholic Churchand we know what measure success has been attained by that effort! The most important thing about the Reformation is to understand it. Not only to follow the story of it stage by stagea process always necessary to the understanding of any historical matterbut to grasp its essential nature.

The Reformation, unlike all the other great heresies, led to no conclusion, or at least has led to none which we can as yet register, although the first upheaval is now four hundred years behind us. The Arian business slowly died away; but the Protestant business, though its doctrine has disappeared, has borne permanent fruit. It has divided the white civilization into two opposing cultures, Catholic and anti- Catholic.

The good that it produced was that it did not and could not destroy that which it set out to destroy. It has set up a culture of comparison. It proved that the OHCAC will prevail and has prevailed and no human institution could do that. It has to be the Body of Christ.

 

[Petergee]

You understand the Pope had him excommunicated,

You seem to be suffering from the common miscvonception that Catholic excommunication is a declaration that someone is irredeemable. Quite the contrary, it is a medicinal remedy intended to bring the excommunicatee to his senses.