gusano:
I recently posted a thread in another forum asking ;
Is there any evidence that Any of the Reformers were sent from God ?"
there were many posts attempting to discredit the Roman Catholic Church
but none presented evidence that the Reformers were sent by God.
not one.
I am wondering if anyone here has some knowledge on the subject that those other guys don’t know ?
In the Peace of Christ
gusano
What, for your question, what you consider as evidence ?
I think the Reformation was two things:
A rebuke to the CC for the abuses in it, and for its other shortcomings
A healing for at least some of those shortcomings.
Israel had to learn that God’s Righteousness was more important than His election of Israel: that He is Righteous first & last, and Israel could play fast & loose with God, could not mock God, by pleading that God had chosen Israel as His own. Election, IOW, is not an excuse or a cloak for misbehaviour: it brings the privilege of being God’s, only because it also brings responsibility - responsibility to live a holy life, and liability to punishment for disobedience; punishment which would be all the heavier, as Israel had been so highly favoured, more than any people.
As God is changeless & faithful, God’s severity towards His chosen might leave open the possibility of restoration (not all the Prophets have that hope) - and because He is, it seems not unreasonable to suppose that the Church has to reckon with the same facts. God is as righteous as ever, and man is as ungrateful & forgetful of God as ever: so it’s not clear that God will not raise up men to scourge a disobedient Church for its sins and faithlessness. God has no favourites.
That’s my guess. Whatever the Reformers may have done wrong, they were reacting to genuine scandals, and they did something to satisfy real hungers and thirsts when the CC was not.
From another POV, the CC had been making noises about reform in head & members at least since 1418, when the Council of Constance ended; in 1517, when Lateran V ended, those who were meant to govern in the Church were still doing little more than shuffling deck-chairs on the Titanic. It took an almighty kick in the rear, like the Reformation, to get any thing substantive done - and by then, it was too late. When it was decided to hold a council in 1535, it was impossible to do so because of the difficulty of finding a place where either the Pope or the Emperor would not be in the political control of the other.
That is what happens when men who are unfit to mind a flock of sheep are given high positions in the Church: there were far too many bishops of utterly unsuitable character - teenage cardinals, absentee bishops, bishops who held several benefices at once, bishops more interested in hunting & carnivals than in their functions as churchmen, bishops who were more usually at court than anywhere else, bishops with mistresses (and illegitimate sons, who would then be provided for by being given a position in the Church: it was a money-spinner, it was secure, it brought no duties that couldn’t be skipped & handed down to some miserably paid clerical prole).
A vocation was not needed - elder sons inherited property, second sons made do with becoming something relatively cissy like a monk or an archdeacon. Not surprisingly, there were swarms of clerics - it was a good way of evading the law, because clerics could not be tried except by church courts; it was an incitement to lawlessness.
For a picture of just how bad things were, read Father Philip Hughes; his description in “The Reformation in England” (volume one) of Cardinal Wolsey’s shenanigans is enough to make one sick to the stomach; & volume three of the same author’s “History of the Church”.
For an account of the state of the German clergy, read Father James Brodrick’s biography of “Saint Peter Canisus”: a major Reformation-era Saint and catechist is hardly likely to be “anti-Catholic”. Calling every last unflattering remark about the CC during the Reformation “antiCatholic” is just not good enough; not unless those Catholics who adopt so hopeless a defence are prepared to call their own Saints, Popes,and councils liars.
Luther alone is not even nearly adequate to explain the Reformation: rottenness in the Church had a lot to do with it; and so had economic conditions in Germany - among the peasants, for instance. Rome did not help by draining money away: there was plenty of loathing for Roman avarice without Luther.
