The Catholic side of responsibility for the disaster of the Reformation

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patricius79

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I know that the Reformers had many great faults. Luther, from what I’ve read, was a prideful, verbally abusive, lustful man who taught terrible things. God rest his soul.

But I want to know about the specific Popes who seriously failed to be Christlike, thus helping to weaken the Papacy of the Church, which was already weakened by the Avignon thing and the Western schism (two antipopes).

For starters, Leo X–the Pope who excommunicated Luther. What was his responsibility for the Reformation. What was his character and behavior like?
 
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May I ask what specifically you wish to know, and for what reason?

Do you think Leo X was being Unchristlike by excommunicating Luther?
 
I just want a better picture of this important and tragic historic event.

I know the Catechism says that often enough both sides were to blame for what happened. Do I think Leo X was being un-Christlike by ecommunicating Luther? I don’t know. I don’t know the sequence of events very well, or much about him. It sounds like he certainly was not a strong reforming Pope.

Do you know much about him?

It sounds like Alexander VI was one of the really bad Popes leading up the Reformation. And it sounds like most of the Popes of this time were putting more energy into promoting art than in addressing the spiritual crisis in the Church, such as the ignorance and immorality of the peasants, due largely to the failure of the clergy to teach them.

I also just read that Luther’s translation of the Bible excluded the book of James. Is that true?
 
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patricius79 said:
And it sounds like most of the Popes of this time were putting more energy into promoting art than in addressing the spiritual crisis in the Church,
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I think that is very much what Martin Luther was saying. Here is a summary of his 95 theses.


I think the Catholic church was in need of reforming, even if Martin Luther may not gone about it in the best way.
 
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If the previous Popes had listened to Savonarola instead of burning him at the stake, maybe whole thing with Luther wouldn’t have happened.

I know there was a movement to canonize Savonarola for a while, wonder what happened with that.
 
Thanks, Adam. I read it. One of the things I don’t understand is why it seems there wasn’t a major revival in Marian devotion, especially the Rosary. St. Dominic had defeated the great danger of Albigensianism through the Rosary. Yet it seems like people didn’t pray to Jesus through Mary when they most needed to, such as during the Black death, and prior to, during, and after Luther started the false reformation.
 
Eric_Hyom said:
I think the Catholic church was in need of reforming, even if Martin Luther may not gone about it in the best way.
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The chaos of the fifth and sixth centuries required the Church to assume a greater role in the affairs of the world. The collapse of the Western Roman Empire made the Church the only viable political and judicial system providing not only order, but also preserving and extending Graeco-Roman-Christian civilization to the invading barbarians. The fact that it was Pope Leo the Great, not the Emperor, who in 451 went out to persuade Attila the Hun to not ransack Rome testifies to the slippage of the imperial government in Italy and the emergence of the Bishop of Rome as its successor.

Fast-forward a millenium to December 1549—four years into the eighteen-year long Council of Trent called by Pope Paul III. The conclave of cardinals vote to choose the successor of this Farnese pope, a man of the Renaissance who fathered four children and three grandchildren (already made cardinals between the ages of fourteen and sixteen). The Church in the world, unfortunately, failed to remain unadulterated by the world. The Church’s hierarchy, the episcopacy and papacy, had become outrageously worldly. Pettiness, smugness and sloppiness characterized the institutional Church’s millenium long entanglement in the world. But the disorders in the Church had not affected it at the community level. Although pastors may have been poorly trained and may not have adequately tended their flocks, historian John O’Malley reports that the guilds across Europe were functioning quite well. Requiring no ecclesial sponsorship, the local guilds autonomously responded to the needs of their communities offering programs of sodality and confraternity caring for the poor and teaching the young. O’Malley emphasizes that the disorders in the Church were primarily institutional and focused on the clergy. The Church as community and servant continued to function well.

The Protestant Revolt, instigated in part by Pope Leo X’s excommunication of Martin Luther in 1521, induced the Counter-Reformation or Catholic Reformation. Prior to the confrontation with Luther, the reform had only a moral focus. With Luther’s claim that the Pope suppressed the gospel by encouraging the “embezzlement” of heaven, the Counter-Reformation not only had to work to restore holiness to Church personnel but also had to address the doctrinal assertions made by Protestants. Purging itself of the worldly influences that corrupted its hierarchy, the Church began the process of making the occurrence of the worldly bishop and the ignorant priest a rarity. The Catholic reformation begins a process of detachment with the world and ushers in a new ecclesiology redefining the Church as over, and at times, against the world.
 
Like the councils before it, Trent’s work was dogmatic and disciplinary. Unlike the former councils, the object of Trent’s discipline was not the heretic—the Protestants had by now departed the Church, but the Church’s own hierarchy. And unlike Constantine’s unified Empire at the time of Nicea, the mid-sixteenth century is an era of emerging and often competing nation-states. Whereas Constantine pressured the Church to harmonize the faith for political reasons, the Germanic princes determined that disharmony could further their political agendas. Perhaps misreading the signs of the times and in a defensive mode, the council declared that historic tradition, as well as the Bible was to be taken as the basis of Christian religion and that the interpretation of the Scriptures belonged exclusively to the Church. The Protestant teachings about grace and justification by faith alone were condemned. The seven sacraments were pronounced indispensable. The miraculous and sacrificial character of the Lord’s Supper was reaffirmed. Belief in the invocation of saints, in the veneration of images and relics, in purgatory, and in indulgences was explicitly upheld, but precautions were taken to foreclose the pernicious practices that had been connected with these doctrines. The council clearly established the criteria for unity, but did so at the expense of catholicity.

While the work of the council did not produce ministerial changes overnight, the seeds sown at Trent produced fruit. A uniform catechism was prepared at Rome and used to systematically instruct laymen in the tenets and obligations of their religion. Seminaries were established for the proper (and uniform) training of priests. Bishops and other prelates now lived in their respective dioceses and, ordered to abandon worldly pursuits, devoted themselves to spiritual labors. Religious orders dedicated to special kinds of ministry flourished: the Jesuits, focused on battling Protestantism, enlightened and trained the young, the Theatines promoted personal piety, and the Capuchins ministered to the poor. Trent did much good for the Church. The council, to be sure, maintained its hierarchical authority, but also emphasized an ecclesiology that stressed the “servant” model of Church prompting a renewal and expansion of ministries and missions to the New World.

But rapprochement was not adequately stressed and multiple “true” Christian churches split Europe further apart.
 
o_mlly said:
Although pastors may have been poorly trained and may not have adequately tended their flocks, historian John O’Malley reports that the guilds across Europe were functioning quite well. Requiring no ecclesial sponsorship, the local guilds autonomously responded to the needs of their communities offering programs of sodality and confraternity caring for the poor and teaching the young. O’Malley emphasizes that the disorders in the Church were primarily institutional and focused on the clergy. The Church as community and servant continued to function well.
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o_milly,

This doesn’t fit with what I’ve read elswhere. I’ve read that the peasants were ignorant and immoral. I’m not saying you’re wrong. I’m just confused. What were these “guilds” exactly? Were they lay groups who helped other lay people, sort of like the Legion of Mary or the Knights of Columbus?
 
Not sure this is the best forum to start up this discussion. You can hear stories about Popes that would make your hair stand on end. True stories. Read Dante. And I firmly agree that the climate in the Church at the time of the Reformation as it took off under Luther, Calvin and others was ripe for just this sort of shake up or whatever you want to call it - refocus - which then came internally in the form of the Counter-Reformation after the Reformation took half the Church with it. Years ago I just assumed Catholics admitted all this - I think I got that from Vatican II documents, arguments, that era of Catholic theologians. I have learned in my time here at CAF, however, this is not always the case. The Catholic Church did no wrong; Luther was a madman - you can find that argument here. The old adage ‘Catholics never apologize, never admit fault’ rings true on occasion.
 
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FollowChrist34 said:
The Catholic Church did no wrong; Luther was a madman - you can find that argument here.
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People sometimes have difficulty accepting that a person or organization they dearly love and trust can be wrong sometimes. The worry is also that if one admits the Church was “wrong” about X then how can we trust it is correct about Y, Z and a host of other things?

The Church is run by humans. Sometimes humans make mistakes. St. Peter himself got things wrong or slightly off many times, yet the Lord built the church on him. The important thing is to correct and learn from one’s mistakes.

There is a huge tradition of Catholic saints who spotted something “wrong” in the then-church and worked internally to address and correct it. There are cases where the Church took an approach to something, such as dealing with clergy sex abuse or suppressing the Divine Mercy devotion, that was later corrected by future church leaders. It’s not likely or necessary that the Church always do every single thing absolutely right. But those who are looking for very black-and-white rules can’t always accept shades of gray.

Also, Luther did go way too far and do many things out of his own motivations. You can’t blame it all on the Church.
 
I started this thread to learn more about the abuses of Catholics–particularly Popes and other Bishops–around the time of the Reformation.

So please do share any accurate information about these scandals.
 
patricius79 said:
This doesn’t fit with what I’ve read elswhere. I’ve read that the peasants were ignorant and immoral. I’m not saying you’re wrong. I’m just confused. What were these “guilds” exactly? Were they lay groups who helped other lay people, sort of like the Legion of Mary or the Knights of Columbus?
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We must trust historians and we know that all historians read other people’s mail.

An historian who has written prolifically about Trent is John W. O’Malley. I recommend:
Trent: What Happened at the Council
By John W. O’Malley
 
Here is what St. Vincent de Paul said in the midst of it all–he blamed the ruining of so much of the Church by the “Reformation” (ie heresy) on the evil conduct of priests:

St. Vincent de Paul:
“Ah! Gentleman, and my brethren, how earnestly should we pray to God for that spirit, and make some effort to meet the needs of the Church, which is being ruined in many places by the evil conduct of her priests, for it is they who are ruining and destroying her; and it is only too true that the depravity of the ecclesiastical state is the chief cause of the ruin of God’s Church…So it is we priests, then, yes, we priests who are the cause of the scourge which is ravaging the Church, of the deplorable losses she is suffering in so many places; for she has been almost entirely ruined in Asia and Africa, and in a great number of places in Europe, such as Sweden, Denmark, England, Scotland, Ireland, Holland, and the United Provinces, as well as in a great part of Germany. And how many heretics may we not see in France! And now look at Poland, which, already deeply infected with heresy, is at this very moment in danger of being entirely lost to our holy religion by the invasion of the King of Sweden! Does it not seem, Gentlemen, as if God intends to transfer His Church to other lands? Yes, if we do not change, it is to be feared that God may remove her entirely from our midst.”

Conference 141, extract from a discourse on priests.
 
When I decided to become a Christian I spent a couple of years reading Catholic and mainstream Protestant (Anglican/Lutheran) histories of the Church, Church Fathers, the Bible, I read Orthodox literature, Fathers too. This is not the stuff of a CAF thread. It should be a serious intellectual, spiritual engagement. Good luck!
 
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I am not blaming it all on the Church. I agree that is wrong. My point is that there is unfortunately a longstanding negative stereotype of Catholics as proud, arrogant, in denial about anything wrong in the Church - I have been lectured (unfairly to my mind) as a representative of this by Protestants, Orthodox - including their clergy I might add. It remains, on occasion, a sore spot for millions and millions of Christians - our separated brethren we like to call them. Sometimes you do see this kind of arrogance/extremism in Catholic attacks against the Reformation - recently we have had some of that on CAF. That was all I was referring to.

On the other hand…I was in a liberal Catholic Church recently - Luther was on the front of the bulletin - I did a double take at that I don’t mind telling you. And I am quite a defender of Luther. I find the liberal embrace of Luther in the Catholic Church to be a bit odd. I call it, rightly or wrongly, the ELCA mentality (in Catholics). Could not be further from Luther. I personally believe if the RCC wants to learn from the Reformation, it perhaps should look at, I don’t know, maybe the importance of the Word of God as doctrine AND mercy…IMHO. That Luther would commend.
 
Always start with the Bible and St. Augustine - and don’t neglect the East in spite of their failure to grasp original sin. Hear them out. Aquinas and Luther are essential. Church Fathers / saints. Desert Fathers. I respect Anglican scholarship too, very much.
 
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