Why didn't Church band together during Reformation?

[aball1035]

During the so called Reformation, Protestantism gained a firm foothold in Northern Europe. My question is, why didn’t the Church’s forces join together the stop it before it was too late? I realize that Luther had the support of many German princes, but it seemed like the Church sat back and did nothing until it became serious.

Any thoughts?

 

[RobHom]

That my friend requires somewhat of a detailed answer…but its a little more than long winded so I’ll give you a reliable link to your answer:

newadvent.org/cathen/12700b.htm

 

[LilyM]

During the so called Reformation, Protestantism gained a firm foothold in Northern Europe. My question is, why didn’t the Church’s forces join together the stop it before it was too late? I realize that Luther had the support of many German princes, but it seemed like the Church sat back and did nothing until it became serious.

Any thoughts?

Pre WWII, why didn’t Europe’s forces join together and stop Hitler before it was too late and war had broken out?

Probably because they thought that appeasement and/or threat of war would be enough to persuade him either not to invade Poland or to be satisfied just with Poland once he had it. They misjudged his intentions - and his determination in followig through with them.

Sounds like it was much the same with the Church and Protestantism. There had been heresies, even popular ones, before - read up on Arianism, for example. The Church doubtless wrongly thought that, like Arianism, Protestantism would after a time be brought to heel. Mind you, it took several centuries to totally root out Arianism

 

[Garyjohn2]

During the so called Reformation, Protestantism gained a firm foothold in Northern Europe. My question is, why didn’t the Church’s forces join together the stop it before it was too late? I realize that Luther had the support of many German princes, but it seemed like the Church sat back and did nothing until it became serious.

Any thoughts?

It’s called the “counter-reformation,” and it strengthened the church in many areas. Read all about it!
I learned about it on Wiki, but I’m sure there are better sources.

 

[John_Martin]

During the so called Reformation, Protestantism gained a firm foothold in Northern Europe. My question is, why didn’t the Church’s forces join together the stop it before it was too late? I realize that Luther had the support of many German princes, but it seemed like the Church sat back and did nothing until it became serious.

Any thoughts?

Well, Luther had Prince Frederick III defending him. However, who led the Diet of Worms - why, it was Emporer Charles V of France that looked down at Luther.
It was governments established by men (with swords) who faced off against each other, convinced they were necessary to either sustain (on the Roman Catholic side) or reform (on the reformation side).

Neither side, Catholic nor Lutheran, took it to heart what Jesus said to Pilate: My Kingdom is not of this world, not established by men the way you establish your empires, if my Kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.”
Neither Catholic nor Lutheran understood that the Church was a different kind of Kingdom than Germany or Rome (or the United States, for that matter). Its defense and growth and life come from the proclamation of the Gospel. The Church does not kill people to stop them - it excommunicates, censures, excludes from fellowship. Nowhere in the Scriptures do you see the Church participating in an alliance with civil authorities to protect themselves or to grow. It is one thing to submit to civil authority, and quite another to partner with it, as if the civil authority were somehow now part of the Kingdom of God.

Civil participation rallied the people for Luther, because civil authority bears a different kind of power than the Gospel, just as civil authority rallied the people and the armies at the times of the Crusades. And civil authority maintained the Catholic and the Lutheran boundaries on the maps. Lutheranism would have fizzled out if there had been no civil authorty participating, because all the people in Saxony would have been free to listen and believe.

 

[PJY86]

A good read on precisely this subject is Hillaire Belloc’s How the Reformation Happened. He goes over all the causes in each of the main centers of the rebellion, as well as the obstacles to addressing the problem early on. For example, Luther’s errors had been largely ignored or taken lightly early on because of the immanent threat of the Mohammedans invading Austria. The infamous Diet of Worms was actually held to handle this issue, and Luther was dealt with there as a sort of local disruption; a side-issue. Even afterward, the political situation in Europe was such that none of the kings would allow an Ecumenical Council to be had in there land attended by enemy countrymen, or would allow their countrymen to attend a Council held in the enemy territory. A Council was finally held in 1545, after around 20 years of attempts to establish one. Even then, the Council suffered extremely poor attendance.

That’s just a very brief and inadequate summation of a very small portion of the book. You’ll enjoy the read, and I’m sure it will be helpful.

 

[manualman]

It is amazing how few Westerners know just how close Western civilization came to being suppressed (or annihiliated) by the Ottoman Empire. Until the naval battle of Lepanto in the 1570s, the Turks must have seemed nearly unbeatable to Europeans of the day. The muslim Turks of that day were as much or more of a threat than the Soviets of the 70’s and 80’s ever really were.

So cut them some slack if popes and catholic kings of the day worried more about being beheaded or made into galley slaves in muslim ships than about theological dissent on the western side of christendom.

 

[nordskoven]

The Church, acting in good faith, was negotiating with Father Martin Luther long after he and the German princes, including one who had his bigamous marriage blessed by Luther, had, unbeknownst to them, bailed. Luther, who decried the religious chaos he himself had spawned, had united the German states in one accord on only one issue: refuse to join with Catholic power to defend Europe against the invasion of the Ottoman Turks. The Battle of Lepanto, that miraculous change of wind and the escape of European slaves on Turkish ships, came under the intercession of Our Lady or else we’d all be Muslim.