E11: The Catholic Reformation & The Council of Trent

What is the historical background for the Protestant Reformation? 

Was Martin Luther actually right about some things, and if so, how much?

How did the Catholic Church respond to these problems?

What is the Catholic Reformation, and what does the Council of Trent have to do with all of this?

All this and more in this month’s episode of Catholicism 101!

Resources:
Did the Church Ever Sell Indulgences? | Fr. Mike Schmitz
Why the Reformation Was Necessary—But Protestantism Was Not | Catholic Answers
Not a Reformation but a Revolution | Catholic Answers
The History of the Council of Trent | Catholic Answers
From Great Evil God Brought Great Good | Catholic Answers
The Compact History of the Catholic Church | Dr. Alan Schreck

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Hi, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Catholicism 101, Forever Learning and Living the Faith. My name's Emily Gibson. I'm the director of Catechetical Formation and Young and Old Ministry at St. Mary the Woods Catholic Church in Whitesville, Kentucky. And I am so delighted to be back with you all. This time, you thought we were done with the Protestant Reformation. Oh, my friends, we are not. We are actually capping it off. We are wrapping it all up in a nice, neat little bow in this month's episode where we talk about the things that led up to the Reformation, you know, what was happening in the church. Um, a couple of highlights from the Protestant Reformation, like historical highlights. Um, and we're gonna especially touch on like Lutheranism, Calvinism, and the Anabaptists. And then uh finally, we're gonna talk about the Catholic Church's response to the Protestant Reformation and the convening of the Council of Trent. So buckle up. It's a good one. I um honestly had a lot of fun compiling all this information and doing some research. Took me a little bit longer than I expected, but that's okay. I uh learned a lot. And this is also my formal apology to my history teachers in high school, Mr. Shelton, Mr. Schneider. I am so sorry. I did I I I listened and I memorized for the tests. I didn't really remember it. And so I just did all the research now. But you'll be happy to know that now I know that it's important. So you were right. Thank you. Okay, let's get right into it. So for years leading up to the Protestant Reformation, the church was already in need of reform. The church was kind of between a rock and a hard place. Um, and there were people in positions of authority in the church that really should not have been. Um, and the that let's go down this series of unfortunate events and circumstances that led to the boiling point of Martin Luther's 95 Theses on the the door. Um so, first of all, there was this challenge of nationalism, and the countries that the church was very prominent in, um the rulers of these nations started forcing the church to negotiate with them and their governments. Um and like essentially the church had to pay the government to do what she needed to do to like function as a church. Um, and you know, the they pay they uh they they the charge just a hefty price. And so there was uh this caused a difficult financial situation in the church, um, which then the church did not really respond well to, the leaders of the church did not really respond well to, and they started actually selling church offices to secular rulers. And whenever I say church offices, I mean like positions. Like there were people who were like bishops and like chairs of things who really had no business being in those in those positions. So these people, obviously, they're they're they're secular people, they're not people of the church, and they don't really actually care about the people that they're supposed to be a shepherd to, that they're supposed to they're supposed to be serving. Um and to add to kind of like this building chaos that like there's a seed, there's not a good seed planted there. Um, the Pope offers a special indulgence to those who give alms that will go towards the building of St. Peter's Basilica. Now, this um we have people in the church who are in positions of authority who aren't people of the church. And so this gets very misinterpreted and miscommunicated on a wide scale. Um, and that like allowed people to capitalize on this and the this misunderstanding, they capitalized on it and um began selling indulgences. And that's probably the thing we all remember from history class is that there was the selling of indulgences, and that's like the one thing we all remember. Um, but that's that's kind of how that happened. And this is what uh Dr. Shrek, Dr. Alan Shrek, says in his book, A Compact History of the Catholic Church. He says, So the bishops of the church were often the wealthy or the nobility who had little care for the church of God's people, but used their office to their own advantage. When they needed to raise money, they would collect it from fees at pilgrimage sites or through the selling of indulgences. Now, I want to remind you that indulgences in themselves are actually a good thing. Um, but the practice of buying and selling them, that really became rampant during this time, and that is actually highly immoral. And there's a really great video from Father Mike Schmidt's um that I've linked in the resources about this that explains it really, really well and really beautifully, and kind of like this misunderstanding kind of walks through how this got misunderstood. So I highly recommend that. That's linked in the resources. Now, you might find yourself asking, um, how did they not understand that this was not a good thing to do? That selling indulgences, like the practice of selling uh and buying spiritual goods and things like that, um, it's it's not really a good, it's not a good thing. Like selling offices and all that. That's not good. That's actually the Cinephsemone. But um, this is this is why and where reform in the church was especially needed. Uh, and that lies in the education and formation of our clergy. So this, of course, greatly affected the faithful laity, uh, as they were also uncatechized and honestly even wrongly catechized by uneducated priests and deacons. And so this chaos just started to really compile and just surmounted. And it was it was not it was bad news bears. So all of um these elements are kind of starting to come together and reach a boiling point, and so many start calling for an ecumenical council to reform the church, and Pope Leo X finally called the Fifth Lateran Council in 1512, and it concluded on um the eve of the Protestant Reformation in 1517. And this is what Dr. Shrek has to say about it in his book. He said the council passed many needed reform decrees that might have prevented the Protestant Reformation, but because of the short-sightedness and worldliness of Pope Leo X, most of the council's reform decrees were never put into effect. Also, some of the church's bishops had little interest in reform. So thus they conclude the council, they wake up the next day, and Martin Luther is hammering his his 95 theses into the chapel door. Now, Martin Luther, let's let's get into um a little bit of Martin Luther. He suffered from severe scrupulosity, and it eventually um he couldn't find peace in anything he did. He couldn't find peace until he came to the conclusion of sola fide, uh, which is the belief that we are saved by faith alone. He renounced the Catholic teaching of faith and works and therefore rejected the entire idea of indulgences. So episode two of the of this podcast uh covers what Catholics actually believe in mean when we talk about faith and works. There, there's a whole episode on that. And then actually episode eight on purgatory would be helpful to understand background information on the effects of sin that indulgences address. And again, I'm gonna quote from Dr. Shrek's book The irony of the Protestant Reformation is that much of what Luther believed and taught was authentic Catholic doctrine that had been distorted by abuses and incorrect practices in the church. Unfortunately, Luther's criticism of real abuses was not heeded. So after a hearing with a theologian um where he vehemently denied the authority of the popes, he denied the authority of ecumenical councils, and proclaimed scripture as the only source of divine revelation. Uh, he then went and burned some of his Catholic books and was issued um a formal warning, like in the form of a bull. And um, they warned him, and they're like, hey, you're falling into some serious doctrinal area errors. You need to kind of you need to kind of recant like what's going on here. Um he burned that and was then excommunicated in January of 1521. So he he really fell down a slippery, slippery slope and quickly strayed further and further away from um core Catholic beliefs and was just became very adamant about it. And like he he was he was an ordained priest, he was an Augustinian monk. Um, and he actually later on married. Like as time went on, people were kind of like, Luther, you're kind of losing it. Um but he he he was kind of he was he just really fell down a slippery slope and um preached and taught some really harmful untrue things. Well, he then this is where the blocks began to fall because then John Calvin comes along. And he was a Frenchman who converted to the principles of the Reformation. He had studied in Paris, uh, he studied theology and law, and he kind of encountered Luther's ideas and then was like, this is awesome, and formed a theocracy in Geneva, Switzerland. And then this other guy, John Knox, visited and he was like, This is awesome. And he took it back to Scotland and formed the Presbyterian Church. And then amongst all of this, the the thing that really sticks out with Calvinism that most people, you know, other than the theocracy, is his belief of predestination. So he falls even further from the church than Luther did. And he said that God determined at the beginning of time who would be saved and who wouldn't, and your free will means nothing, which is horrifically sad. So he's he's really fallen off the wagon there. And then um Ulrich Zwingli. I think I'm saying his name somewhat correctly. I know it's Zwingli, but I think it's like Uldric? Ulric? Something like that. Okay. Well, he's a Swiss priest, and this is in 1519 in Zurich. Um, he hears Luther's teachings, and he kind of falls off the wagon even further, uh, even to the point where like him and Luther debated. Uh, Luther still believed in the real presence of the Eucharist. His thing was, though, that he believed in consubstantiation rather than transubstantiation. So if you'll recall from episode 10, transubstantiation means that the substance of the bread and wine completely changes, no longer is bread and wine in the essence of the thing. It is now fully the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ. Luther believed that it was consubstantiation, whereas it was still the substance of bread and wine, but also the substance of Jesus Christ, body, blood, soul, and divinity. And so the church is like, hey, that's not it. Um, but Zwingli he disagreed on that. And he was like, no, the Eucharist, like communion, that's only a symbol. That's just a symbol. And so he it goes he falls off the wagon even further. Again, like I said, Luther debated him on this like vehemently. It was like, no. Um, but Zwingli's followers then um ended up like taking what Zwingli believed and taking it even further and falling falling even further off the wagon, and said that only adult baptisms were valid. And before he died, he actually like had a group of his followers, he like ordered them to be drowned because they were saying that only adult baptisms, like of people who chose to be baptized, um, that their baptisms were the only valid ones, and he was like, they need to be drowned. Um, well, anyway, they these people became known as the Anabaptists, aka the rebaptizers. So you can see episode four of this podcast um on the sacraments to learn why why re-baptism is a sacrilege. So clearly uh things got bad and quickly, quickly steered further and further away from Catholic beliefs. And this is what, again, he says once the Catholic principle of unity of faith was replaced by the Protestant principle of purity of faith, more and more splinter groups and churches formed, each claiming to be more pure and faithful to the gospel of Jesus Christ than other groups. And I talk a little bit about that. Um, and I mispronounced the word. So I addressed this in episode three on um all things scripture in reference to the Protestant Reformation and how most of these reformers are um they're they're falling on sola scriptura. They're saying scripture alone is the only source of divine revelation following Martin Luther's um trend. And they are all splintering off into different groups saying that the scriptures clearly teach this or that, but they all can't agree on what is so clearly taught. So that is that is perspicuity. I think I pronounced it in that episode as perpiscuity, but it's perspicuity. Anyway, so take take a listen to episode three on that one. Now, how did the Catholic Church respond? People actually didn't really take the reform efforts of the church, like Lateran, the Fifth Lateran Council, they didn't really take the reform efforts of the church seriously until all of these Protestants started just following like dominoes and leaving the unity of the church. So the church was like, oh no, it is getting bad news bears. We we should do something about this. And um, you know, the the the church moves slow because she she's gotta sort out the wheat from the weeds, she's gotta follow with the Holy Spirit. Um, and the church just tends to move slow. And there's kind of a beauty and a grace in that, honestly, to make sure that we're like, okay, we're really following the Holy Spirit and we're not just acting on our own human impulses. But uh the founding of religious orders in like leading up to the beginning of the Council of Trent, uh, founding of religious orders such as the Jesuits, the Capuchins, the Ursuline sisters, and the congregation of the oratory, these were all key for reform and authentic Catholic teaching, uh return to that authentic Catholic teaching as the Council of Trent was preparing to be convened. And after many delays, it finally opened in 1545. And the first thing the Council of Trent did was clarified and reaffirmed the core dogmas and doctrines of the Catholic Church. So the things they touched on and like really expounded were like the seven sacraments as instituted by Christ. We've talked about that, justification by faith, shown by the first fruits of faith in good works. We've talked about that too. Scripture and tradition. Mm-hmm. And then Christ won't sacrifice at Calvary. And you can actually listen to episode 10 on the Eucharist to learn a little bit more about that. So all of these things are re-emphasized as core dogmas and doctrines of the Catholic Church. Like this is what the church believes. People are getting misinformed, people are misunderstanding things. We're going to clarify it. So that's what she does. And then she moves on to correcting the abuses that were rightly criticized, beginning with Martin Luther and many others. So this obviously included the selling of indulgences. Um, and then another thing that was kind of rampant at the time of the Protestant Reformation and leading up to it was there was an improper devotion to Mary and the Saints. Uh, there was this growing idolatry of the devotion in and of itself, rather than using the devotion as something that is to be used to bring us closer to Christ. So they kind of restored at Trent the proper devotion to Mary and the Saints, which led to just really, really, really beautiful um saints that rose up during this time. And then the biggest thing, the biggest thing, we talked about how priests and deacons and laity, therefore, were very like uncatechized and mislike wrongly catechized. Miscatechized? Is that I don't know, we're gonna use it. You know what I mean. So they developed the seminary system for priests, for educating priests, and because you know, like I said, the clergy of the church, they were becoming reputable for corruption, lax morals, and being incompetent um of the actual authentic teachings of the church. And so Trent sees this and is like, we need to, um, we need to do this. And St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, he was especially influential in this. Um, because the Jesuits were um, they really focused on humanistic education alongside religious instruction. So they not only reaffirmed Catholic theology, but they revitalized it. And again, this was key for um the development of the seminary system. And then unlike the Fifth Lateran Council, the reforms of Trent were actually put into effect. How beautiful. Thank the Lord. Praise God. Now, a lot of really great saints came out of this time period, uh, such as Saint Teresa of Avila and Saint John of the Cross. And their mystical prayer experiences really provided a beautiful, tender balance to the rigidity that often had to accompany the implementation of the Reforms of Trent, as the reforms of Trent were heavily focused on devotion, discipline, and doctrine. And so we had fallen way too far off the path. And so the church had to be kind of rigid and correcting the the wrongs that had been done. Um, but the prayer, mystical prayer experiences and reflections of Teresa of Avala and John of the Cross really kind of provide a humanistic, beautiful balance to that rigidity that was truly needed. And so um, all of this together, we can kind of look at the Protestant Reformation, like, okay, yes, the Reformation was needed, but Protestantism was not. And you can listen to the past nine episodes to kind of understand that a little bit more. But um, I I think especially the saints that rose during this time and like the Jesuits and the Capuchins and all of this, um, I think they serve as a really great reminder for us that when the church and the world is in just utter chaos, the Lord will still write straight with our crooked lines. That doesn't give us permission to write our lines as crooked as we want. Um, but we have faith and we have trust that in times of great trial and tribulation, that the Lord is working to raise up some of our greatest saints. And I we see the same thing happen in the the time of World War II with St. Faustina and St. John Paul II. So, and he was actually heavily influenced, St. John Paul II. He was heavily influenced by John of the Cross, who was heavily influenced by Teresa Babla. So, shout out God. So, yeah, that's um that's that's this month's episode. What led to the Protestant Reformation? Um, what are some of the things that happened and how the church responded? What did she do? So, kind of a history lesson today. Um, I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you learned something new. Um, maybe you got a new perspective of what you already knew. But I wanted to point out those uh resources in the notes. I think they're really helpful. So, like I mentioned, that first video I have, or that first link I have is from Father Mike Schmidt's video on did the church ever sell indulgences? And he kind of explains um how there was a misunderstanding with that um papal indulgence for St. Peter's Basilica. There's an article on Catholic Answers. I have a few Catholic answers articles. One of them is called Why the Reformation Was Necessary, but Protestantism was not. Uh, not a reformation, but a revolution, the history of the Council of Trent, and then From Great Evil, God brought great good. And then finally, I have an Amazon link to uh Dr. Shrek's book, The Compact History of the Catholic Church, which was um my main source for this, as I quoted it three times. And it's it's honestly a very easy read, it's very concise, it's very, as he says, compact and just very understandable and a very enjoyable read, honestly. So I hope you all will check those out. And if you have any questions, um just don't forget that there's a question box linked in the in the show notes, and you can just ask any burning questions you may have. But that's gonna be it for me today. I hope you all have a blessed day, and I look forward to seeing you or really talking to you next month. Have a blessed day.