What practices of the Catholic Church led to the Reformation?

Answer 1

A:

The Protestant Reformation was probably inevitable, with or without Martin Luther. His concern was the sale of indulgences, a practice which he at first tried to reform but eventually decided must be abolished.

Nepotism, immorality at all levels in the church hierarchy, excessive reservation of ecclesiastical appointments to the Roman Curia, intellectual and moral unfitness of many priests, the wealth of some of the monasteries and dissension in their ranks, and even the prevalence of superstition and ignorance among the laity were all practices that led to the Reformation.

Answer 2

The Roman Catholic reformation was led by priests who opposed what they termed as false doctrines and ecclesiastic malpractice in the church.

Catholic AnswerIt's just Catholic, not Roman Catholic. Roman is an epithet first commonly used in England after the protestant revolt to describe the Catholic Church. It is never used by the official Catholic Church.

The Catholic reformation, better known as the Catholic reform, has its roots back in the Renaissance, where a growing coldness had crept into religious life. People were becoming increasingly secular and marginalized their religion to a Sunday affair as opposed to the fervent religious life of the Age of Faith (known to protestants and seculars as the Dark Ages) when people ruled their entire lives around their religion and were fervent Christians.

There was a new philosophical outlook that turned to classical ideas and neglected revelation that tended to neglect the Church and look back to classical Rome and Greek culture. This philosophical outlook gave rise to new ideas in religion which tended to downplay Christ's incarnation where He asked us to take up our cross daily and follow Him.

Along with that in the late 14th century, there was the Great Schism in which the popes resided at Avignon and split Europe in warring parties over whom they considered the real pope. The Church suffered greatly from this time, and the papacy never really recovered its prestige that it had formerly held.

All of this combined - the secular outlook of the culture, the philosophical outlook, and the degraded prestige of the Church - to give rise to new religious heretics like Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin who basically denied free will and man's loving cooperation with God, and said that God actually created people to be eternally damned - that they were predestined from the instant they were created to an eternity of hell. The new heresies combined the current disasters in the world with the old, old Gnostic heresies to give rise to Protestantism.

The Church saw this insidious heresy grow, and increasing numbers of people, due to the Peace of Westphalia, denied the sacraments and access to the Church that Christ had established for their salvation:

extracted from Ten Dates Every Catholic Should Know by Diane Moczar, c 2005 by Diane Moczar, Sophia Institute Press, Manchester, NH 03108

The high point of the Renaissance was (late Renaissance) was the 14th to the 17th centuries. It was a broad and complicated movement all throughout Europe that actually extended its beginning back to the 12th century. Some things which characterized the Renaissance were an interest in classical forms, both in art, architecture, and language; and new ideas based more on Science to the exclusion of faith. Before the Renaissance, there had been great developments in science, but they are were all by people of faith who were guided by their belief in God. As a matter of fact, there had been glorious developments in most fields before the Renaissance, but they mostly fell into disfavor with the advent of the Renaissance.

There were also factors, not directly related to the Renaissance in bringing classical ideas and languages into the present, that contributed to the disaster known as the Renaissance. Bad weather contributed to the famine of 1315 to 1322 and caused mass starvation in northern Europe with some areas experienced a death rate of ten percent.

These was followed in France by seven other famines during the same century. Less than 30 years later, the greatest plague the world had known - the Black Death - took millions of lives in a particularly gruesome fashion. Throw in the Hundred Years War between England and France and you have a setting for major disaster. St. Francis of Assisi had noted a growing coldness, a lack of fervor and devotion that had invaded society, the love of God had grown cold. This was even noted in the Collect for the Feast of the Stigmata of St. Francis in the traditional liturgy (on September 17):

O Lord Jesus Christ, Who, when the world was growing cold, didst renew the sacred marks of Thy passion in the flesh of the most blessed Francis, to inflame our hearts with the fire of Thy love, graciously grant that by His merits and prayers we may continually bear the cross and bring forth fruits worthy of penance.

Another sign of this spiritual chill is the fact that the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 was obliged to require reception of Holy Communion at least once a year under pain of mortal sin!Two other things which contributed to this were that late medieval society was growing greedy, becoming more business minded, concentrating more on making money than saving their souls. And the new philosophy characterized by William of Ockham whose philosophy of Nominalism subverted the great scholastic synthesis of faith and reason by destroying its philosophic foundation in Aristotelian realism. All of this, put together, set the state for what would become the most horrific catastrophe of Christianity in centuries, if not forever: the protestant revolt:

"All the water of the Elba would not provide enough tears to weep over the disasters of the Reform: the ill is without remedy." -

quote from one of the major players in the protestant revolt, and one of Martin Luther's staunchest allies and friends: Melanchthon. Even Luther, shortly before his death, wrote of his distress at the chaos and proliferation of sects that his teachings had unleashed:

"I must confess that my doctrines have produced many scandals. I cannot deny it, and often this frightens me, especially when my conscience reminds me that I destroyed the situation in which the Church found itself, all calm and tranquility, under the Papacy."

from A Catholic Dictionary, edited by Donald Attwater, Second edition, revised 1957

The Counter-Reformation is the name given to the Catholic movement of reform and activity which lasted for about one hundred years from the beginning of the Council of Trent (q.v., 1545), and was the belated answer to the threatening confusion and increasing attacks of the previous years. It was the work principally of the Popes St. Pius V and Gregory XIII and the Council itself in the sphere of authority, of SS. Philip Neri and Charles Borromeo in the reform of the clergy and of life, of St. Ignatius and the Jesuits in apostolic activity of St. Francis Xavier in foreign missions, and of St. Teresa in the purely contemplative life which lies behind them all. But these were not the only names nor was it a movement of a few only; the whole Church emerged from the 15th century purified and revivified. On the other hand, it was a reformation rather than a restoration; the unity of western Christendom was destroyed; the Church militant (those still on earth) led by the Company of Jesus adopted offence as the best means of defence and, though she gained as much as she lost in some sense, the Church did not recover the exercise of her former spiritual supremacy in actuality.

from Modern Catholic Dictionary by John A. Hardon, S.J. Doubleday & Co., Inc. Garden City, NY 1980

A period of Catholic revival from 1522 to about 1648, better know as the Catholic Reform. It was an effort to stem the tide of Protestantism by genuine reform within the Catholic Church. There were political movements pressured by civil rules, and ecclesiastical movements carried out by churchmen in an attempt to restore genuine Catholic life by establishing new religious orders such as the Society of Jesus and restoring old orders to their original observances, such as the Carmelites under St. Teresa of Avila (1515-98). The main factors responsible for the Counter Reformation, however, were the papacy and the council of Trent (1545-63). Among church leaders St. Charles Borromeo (1538-84), Archbishop of Milan, enforced the reforms decreed by the council, and St. Francis de Sales of Geneva (1567-1622) spent his best energies in restoring genuine Catholic doctrine and piety. Among civil rulers sponsoring the needed reform were Philip II of Spain (1527-98) and Mary Tudor (1516-58), his wife, in England. Unfortunately this aspect of the reformation led to embitterment between England and Scotland, England and Spain, Poland and Sweden, and to almost two centuries of religious wars. As a result of the Counter Reformation, the Catholic Church became stronger in her institutional structure, more dedicated to the work of evangelization, and more influential in world affairs.

Answer 3

Roman Catholic AnswerThe "Reformation" usually refers to the protestant revolt against the Church. As such, the Church did not lead it at all.

Answer 4

The sale of indulgences.