Protestant and Counter-Reformations

Protestant and Counter Reformations

Martin Luther

Looking back over Church history, reformers started out with good aims-to counteract abuses and corruption, restore holiness but then twisted off into schism and division, while others produced great fruits of renewal. (1)  It is important for us to understand this crucial events, for Reformations really affect the Catholic Church even today. The Church on the other hand was not passive and provided solutions, though some people may say that the remedy was too late for the “virus”, had already spread throughout Europe.

I am referring to the Protestant Reformation which erupted during the time of Martin Luther (1483-1546). In fact, his religious idealism spread throughout Europe in lesser or greater degrees. The Calvinist Church was primarily focused their attention on moral rigor and personal discipline, not on the theological content or doctrine. (2) Zwingli’s Anabaptist Church also announced their doctrine of rebaptizing adults and that only adult baptism (believer’s baptism) is valid (3), while King Henry’s Anglican Church was established for a moral or political reason. (4)

King Henry VIII

                                         

Zwingli

The four major protestant churches gave birth to more than twenty thousand denominations with a net increase of 270 denominations each year (five new ones a week). (5) And because of Protestant Reformation, a large part of Europe’s nobility broke away from the Catholic Church. The great damage that Reformation brought to the Church was that, they progressively undermining and demolishing the catholic faith, leading to devastation visible today in the multitudes of men without religion or hostile to religion. (6) On the other perspective, we can see that the actions the Protestant leaders/founders were not actually Reformation, but it was really a Revolt. They did not reform anything. If they had actually tried to reform the Church, much grief could have been avoided. It would, in fact, be reformed and would lead to new glories within just a few years. But instead they revolted against existing authorities, both spiritual and temporal. (7) Pride and sensuality, whose satisfaction is the pleasure of pagan life actually give rise to Protestantism. Pride begot the spirit of doubt, free examination, and naturalistic interpretation of Scripture. It produced insurrection against ecclesial authority, expressed in all sects by the denial of the monarchical character of the Universal Church, that is to say, by a revolt against Papacy. On the moral plane, the triumph of sensuality in Protestantism was affirmed by the suppression of ecclesiastical celibacy and by the introduction of divorce. (8) 

Protestant revolt was not the main objective of the reformers. They are just one of the stages of years and years of processing, a revolution against the Catholic Church rooted in pride and egalitarianism. (9)

Meanwhile the Catholic Church being the true defenders of the faith were far from being idle. Nothing was left undone to stem the tide of error that was sweeping over Christendom. In particular, the Sunday School and the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine were organized, and a great number of catechisms were at once published to counteract the baneful influences of those proceeding from heresy. In Germany alone we find twenty or more different writers of such manuals. One of the most famous of these, published at Vienna in 1555, was the Catechism of Peter Canisius, S.J. which was soon translated into a dozen different languages. (10)
Pope Paul III opened the Council of Trent (1545) to respond to the Protestant reformation by clarifying and defining exactly what the Catholic Church taught, especially those points being challenged by them. (11)

St. Ignatius of Loyola

St. John of the Cross

St. Teresa of Avila

In the intellectual level, the foundation of Religious Communities most especially St. Ignatius’s Society of Jesus was very instrumental to bring about true reforms. They were the best defenders, equipped not only with sound theological training and a solid spiritual foundation, but also with a practical skill in the use of language that made them masters of a classic modern style. (12)

St. Charles Borromeo

St. Charles Borromeo leads the episcopal reformation; while St. John of the Cross together with St. Teresa of Avila set an example on the religious reformation.

When we consider the history of the Church at a decisive turning point in the sixteenth century, we cannot but fix an admiring gaze upon the popes who summoned the Council and gave effects to its decrees, upon the Fathers responsible for those decrees, upon the bishops who applied them throughout the Catholic world, and upon all those saints, both men and women, who expended whole treasuries of courage and faith in the reform of ecclesiastical institutions and of souls. Thus the work of unification was at the same time a work of purification and rejuvenation. There was indeed, in 1563, a new Catholic Church, and just a “new look”, and more sure of her dogma, more worthy to govern souls, and more conscientious of her function, and of her duties. (13)

Reference:

  1.       Ivereigh, Austin, The Great Reformer, Francis and the Making of Radical Pope, page 93

  2.       Vidmar, John, O.P., The Catholic Church Through the Ages, page 201

  3.       Schreck, Alan, The Compact History of the Catholic Church, page 66

  4.       Ibid.  page 67

  5.       http://www.philvaz.com/apologetics/a120.htm

  6.       Correa de Oliviera, Plinio, Nobility and Analogous Traditional Elites, page 80-81

  7.       Carroll, Anne W., Christ The King Lord of History (A catholic History from Ancient to Modern Times), Revolt not a Reformation, page 220

  8.       Correa de Oliviera, Plinio, Revolution and Counter-Revolution, on The Pseudo-Reformation and the Renaissance, page 16

  9.       Correa de Oliviera, Plinio, Revolution and Counter-Revolution, on Pride and Egalitarianism, page 47

 10.   From the introduction of The Catechism of Council of Trent, TAN, Books and Publishers, Inc. 1982, page, xxvii-xxviii

 11.   Schreck, Alan, The Compact History of the Catholic Church, page 71

 12.   Hughes, Philip, A popular History of Catholic Church, page 210

 13.   Rops, H. Daniel, The Catholic Reformation, page 131