Why did God allow the Reformation?

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Hi,

I’m posting this same question to the Non-Catholic Religions board, and I’m curious to see the results on each. My question is: why do you think that God allowed the Reformation? I think we can all agree that there some abuses that needed to be corrected in the Catholic church, and they were, and the Reformation played a part in that, but I think the bigger reason is that the gospel has been reached by so many more people, in so many different ways, than if the Reformation hadn’t happened. I know that concepts from the Reformation have helped bring me to a closer walk with Jesus and have deepened my Catholic faith.

But, I’d like to hear what you think. If you don’t believe that God did allow the Reformation (and everything that implies, that God is omnipotent, all-knowing and that He takes an active role in His church, and to follow on, that He knew, designed and there fore was please by the Reformation), that it happened in another way, I’d love to hear your thoughts on that, as well.

Thanks and God Bless!
 
God allows evil to occur (I’m sure that he is not pleased with rape, murder, torture, etc. but He allows THEM to happen, does He not?) because He gave humans free will. Somehow, then, the fact that we can freely choose good instead of being ‘programmed’ for it, and following a kind of script whereby nobody ever could choose evil MUST be worth ‘more’ than the fact that there has been untold suffering by millions throughout time due to the evil acts of themselves and others.

Do you really think that the Reformation caused the gospel to be reached by ‘many more people’ than if the world had stayed Catholic? How on EARTH did you reach that conclusion? Is it not true that the gospel was being spread throughout the Earth to Latin America and to Asia PRIOR to 1519 and Luther? Who was spreading it then? CATHOLICS. Who kept ON spreading it? Catholics. Protestants came and spread it too, but it was not only not complete, it was contradictory, and had there been a united Christendom, those same missionaries would have been CATHOLIC missionaries bringing a unified gospel.

No, the "Reformation’ is not the same ‘felix culpa’ (Happy Fault) of original sin. It is a deep and abiding wound. Not that the current Protestants (or Catholics) are horrible wrongheaded jerks simply by BEING Protestants (or Catholics), but the original Protestant leaders who led millions astray and whose pernicious influence is felt and has been the cause of much misery are deeply to blame.

Can God bring good from the tragedy of the “Reformation”? Assuredly. Could there have been MORE good had we remained united? Almost certainly.

Evils against God are always due to our own lack of good (for which we are responsible). If there is any good that comes from them it is when we perceive our own faults and turn aside from evil. The deeper the evil, the longer it lasts, the more are affected and the harder it is to turn, BUT God does not let us be ‘tested beyond our strength" if we seek His help. If there is any possible reason that can be glimpsed by humanity that God allowed the “Reformation” it might be that only in our sinking down into the worst possible, most fragmented, un-unified, internecine, un-Christlike and pitiful state of "Christianity’ will there be the possibility of our coming to our senses, rejecting the evil, and re-embracing the true Catholic faith.

Kind of like an alcoholic or addict having to ‘hit bottom’ and, if they then see the error of their ways, they become people like Bill W setting up AA and thus making it possible for thousands and thousands to have help coming out of addictions. (I know it’s going to seem kind of ‘mean’ to liken a Protestant to an alcoholic but consider them as alcoholics against their will; people who were given alcohol as babies, for example, and wind up addicted but not because they chose it themselves.)
We can pray!
 
God is a redeemer, profoundly. The fact that He has redeemed some of the errors of the Reformation does not really have any bearing on the worth of the Reformation. There are many things in my life that I am deeply ashamed of, but because they happened, I am in a better position to help others who may be facing the same temptations or find themselves in the same dire situations. In the mercy of God I accept my life has led me to be the person I am today. But do I wish those sins had never been committed? You bet I do!
So it is with the Reformation. Are there things which have come good since it began? Certainly. Would it have been better to reform the Church from within rather than attempt to pull it down and build something infinitely more divided in it’s place? Most emphatically.
 
Wow.

So, if I understand your position:
  1. The Reformation was pure evil (like rape and murder), but God allowed it, because he sometimes allows evil.
  2. Any good that came out of the Reformation was God making good out of an evil situation
  3. God did not have the Reformation as part of His design for HIs church at all.
  4. No one can bring people to Jesus except Catholics
Interesting. Thanks for sharing. Not sure this really helps me, though.
 
The Reformation led people away from the true Church and all the sacraments. It has led people into error. This saddens me deeply. Heresy is a sad thing. I do think God allowed it because he gave people free will. Though there is a reflection of the Catholic faith still remaining in some Protestant branches, some of these Protestant branches have disfigured the truth of the Church and have made Catholicism out to be the “Whore of Babylon” by misinterpreting the Bible. It is possible for people to find the truth of Jesus through Protestantism, but there will now be a large stumbling block they will have to go to to find the true Catholic faith. Many who become Protestant start to take on the Protestant ideas, (no need for confession, don’t call any man on earth Father, being born again, faith only, etc) that they begin to think Catholics have it wrong. They aren’t being told the contradictions these ideas have in the Bible.

This is why the Reformation was bad. Because it has caused a stumbling block for those seeking out the true faith.

God bless
 
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There have been a large number of very nasty schisms and related terrible events.

World War I and World War II.

The rise of Islam.

The rise of Communism.
 
The splitting of Christendom was evil. Those who did so caused great evil, though perhaps not intending to do so especially as they moved away from the original greatest evil and so were not directly involved. Do you really think that a movement which led to disunity was somehow ultimately conceptulalized as good? I don’t.

Yes, any good that came, came through God. The fracturing of Christendom was still evil. Christ called us to be One.

I do not attempt to speak ‘for God’ but if there was a design for the church to achieve unity, fracturing it first seems counter-intuitive. God is not stupid. One could say, "He foresaw that people would have itching ears and so allowed the Reformation in the hope that those who remained strong in the faith would, like St. Peter, strengthen their brothers, and those who fell away would, because they still remained in the love of God though not completely, would find completeness through the Church again.’ And please don’t make the mistake of thinking that because I say that Catholics have the fullness of faith that I mean that any given individual Protestant is somehow ‘less’ than any given Catholic, because I’m not. There are plenty of Protestants who work their faith 100%, and plenty of Catholics who barely work it 10%, so some individual Protestants are going to have much more of Christ in them than some Catholics.

But it’s like a bunch of people in a room with two meals set out. One is a 5 course banquet, the other is a Happy Meal. You can be well nourished with a Happy Meal especially if you choose things like milk and apples. And you could stand in front of that 5 course meal and choose to take only a few cocktail wieners, and wind up malnourished. But all things considered, if you are standing in front of a banquet you have more OPPORTUNITY to be well fed than if you were standing in front of a Happy Meal.

God chose the CATHOLIC CHURCH to bring people to Him. People might not recognize they were in the Church, they might think they were 100% say Baptist, or Mormon, or even proud atheists, but IF they are saved, they are saved through the Catholic Church. it’s a mystery.

Hope that clears up where you misunderstood me.
 
Luke 9:49-50

49 John answered, “Master, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him because he is not a disciple along with us.”
50 But Jesus said to him, “Do not stop him, for whoever is not against you is for you.”

Even in Jesus day they was preaching and using his name without authority.
 
There was a difference, though, because even with the divisions in the time of the earliest Christians, where some people would think they were ‘higher up’ because they were baptized by St. Peter, some thought being baptized by St. Paul made them better, etc., they were all unified in Jesus’ name. There weren’t any other type of Christians then, they were all ‘catholic’ or universal, whether they gave themselves that name or not. But there is a very large difference between a Baptist and a Universalist, between a Methodist and a Pentecostal, between a Bible-believing home church and a High-Church Episcopalian. Very large indeed. And it isn’t that these churches are setting themselves up kind of like a big tent with, “We all believe the same things but some of us like gospel music, some like lots of incense, some like a very plain service, but put us all together and you have a ‘universal’ group which just likes different STYLES.” Heck, we have that in Catholicism. We have Eastern rites, we have the Latin rite, we have Masses for teens, we have chant, we have folk, you name it.

BUT the difference is that, whether it’s said or just implied, all the Protestants are set up in opposition to the Catholic Church, not in union with it. When people in the early Church were going around speaking in the name of Jesus and casting out devils without checking first with say St. Peter, they weren’t saying, “Hey, look at us casting out devils and without St. Peter. Now come along with US and worship as WE tell you to, not as Peter tells you. We believe in some of that stuff, but not all. Leave St Peter and the apostles, ignore what they say, and listen to what WE say instead.”

See the difference? All of us as Christians can ‘cast out the devil in Jesus’ name’ and in that sense, anybody who is ‘with us’ is not against us. But if a man came to St. Peter and said, “That whole ‘eat my flesh thing’ is a big holdback to the faith. I’m going to proclaim Jesus as Lord, King and Savior, but I’m going to make clear that when he said ‘eat my flesh’ it was a SYMBOL, man, not literal”. . .do you think that this man was proclaiming the real Jesus? He wasn’t. If Jesus is who He is, then He either taught that His flesh was to be truly chewed, or He didn’t. If He taught it WAS, and a bunch of people are going around preaching 'in His Name" and saying that his words above are ‘just figurative’, then they aren’t proclaiming what Jesus REALLY did and said, are they? (Of course they might honestly believe what they think but people can be honestly WRONG, and in this case, they certainly would be). So if we are ‘for Jesus’ we have to be for the TRUE and complete Jesus; if we aren’t, we aren’t really working in His name, but in the name of a man-made creation which might have some of the ‘traits’ of the real Jesus, but doesn’t have all of them, and flat out denies some of them. (Again, honestly believed and all, but wrong.)
 
Good points. There was no Church at the time this incident happened. You must understand that both the desciples and the man in question were Jews. This man was not “setting up his own denomination”. The point is about not being a member of the group that was following Jesus. It really was a question of authority rather than being a religious renegate or anything of the sort. Remember all the people in question were Jews, they were not heretical sect or anything of the sort
 
I don’t think Protestants are evil, and I wouldn’t even call Protestantism evil. Misguided perhaps (to be fair many protestants likely see Catholics as being misguided as well), but not evil.

Yet even if the Reformation itself wasn’t evil there were terrible things that accompanied it. The persecution and murder of Protestants in Catholic Countries, the persecution and murder of Catholics in Protestant Countries, and of course the savagery of the Thirty Years’ War. Based on their character it’s safe to say that Martin Luther and John Calvin wouldn’t have wanted any of these tragedies to occur, but these things still happened.

Now to answer your question, I think the Protestant Reformation was ultimately good for Catholicism and for Christianity as a whole. It resulted in the translation of Bibles and Masses into local languages, spreading the faith further and faster than it might have otherwise.
 
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Ouch. Do you not realize that the Catholic Church was translating the Bible into the vernacular well before"the Reformation"? The “Reformation” didn’t mean that the stupid old Catholics who ‘only did Latin’ would have taken ages to get Bibles translated into vernacular!!! The “Stupid” Catholics were already translating. What the Reformation did was confuse the issue --Protestant Bibles in many sects do not include the so-called “Apocrypha” which the Catholic bibles do. So now you have Protestants arguing that the Catholics “added stuff” and the Catholics that the Protestants "took stuff out’. How is that unifying, positive, or helpful?? And the ways that the vernacular translations were made resulted in some Bibles being mistranslated as well, to suit the Protestant viewpoints. That was another sad result.
 
Some would say that that God not only allowed the Ref. but willed it. There were evils like the sale of indulgences, but in the broader picture, the Pope seemed to have more secular concerns, about the ruling of state, rather than spreading of the gospel.
 
For precisely the same reason He allowed the fall in the garden of Eden. Freedom! Human love must be created in an atmosphere of freedom to love or not to love.
 
So somehow the “Reformation” stopped indulgences? The Church, which had always been against it, didn’t manage to finally get through to the disobedient prelates who were going against Church teaching on their own?

Oh yes, secular concerns. And so in order to stop said things, instead of the Pope over a united group of Catholic Christian nations, we have nations which are rampantly atheistic, militantly secular, Christian in name only, etc.

The 'some who would say" would be incorrect.
 
I didn’t say that the Reformation forced the Catholic Church to jettison indulgences, I was pointing to the later action of the Church to stop the practice of “selling” indulgences.

My “some would say” remark was a reference to myself, mainly. So, it’s not incorrect; it’s my opinion.
 
to expand, there is a verse or two in scripture about how God chastens his child when he needs it, to bring about a positive change. And, the Reformation may have been just that nudge to force a more rigorous formulation of Catholic believe (ala the Council of Trent) and to make other changes inside the church.

Not only was the Pope too preoccupied (it is said) to deal with the objections of Martin Luther, but later, when the Council of Trent was called, there weren’t enough bishops who showed up to constitute a forum for dealing with the exigent problems. And the opening speech of the council was a strong rebuke to the bishops for letting thing go so astray.
This is described in an old book: “A Popular History of the Reformation” by Philip Hughes, doubleday books, 1960.

What we know as the Countil of Trent was a profound updating of Catholic belief, even though it was formulated by a relative small number of bishops, to address the Protestant heresies which had exploded on the scene.
 
God gave us free will.

Although it pains Him at times to see what we do with it.
 
Hii
The Protestant Reformation is a term used to describe a series of events that happened in the 16th century in the Christian Church
 
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