Talk #4 AN OVERVIEW OF CHURCH HISTORY (PART II)

Introduction

Probably the worst state that the church has been in was the period just prior to the Protestant Reformation. On the other hand, the recent Second Vatican Council has again emphasized the fact that Christ established the Church for all men, and a new evangelical movement was initiated with the purpose of exposing the good news of the gospel to all mankind and to heal the breaches caused by the separations of previous centuries.

IEvents that Preceded the Protestant Reformation

As we have seen, from the 9th to the 12th century, the Church was confronted with the problem of power and authority between the ecclesiastical and civil government. The church experienced its “dark ages” when secular rulers got involved in some church offices through simony and lay investiture. The pendulum of power swung from one end to another, and consequently, the Church leaders were enmeshed in political powers and so did the political rulers with church affairs.

In the 13th century, the popes somehow regained independence in exercising their ecclesial role and authority and for the most part were freed from the control of secular rulers. The 13th century was the height of the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages. Many Christians became overzealous in their faith and resorted to violence to curb heresies. In order to restore order and provide due process to those victimized by this mob rule, Pope Innocent III provided the process of Inquisition so that only those proven to be truly heretic are punished. He declared heresy a civil offense. Courts of Inquisition were set up, and the Pope appointed Inquisitors for the various countries of Europe. Those accused of heresy were brought before them and were given a month's time in which to renounce their heresy and receive secret penance. If they refused, a public trial was held. When the heretics still remained obstinate, they were turned over to the civil authorities to penalize them, which usually meant death at the stake.

Many of the great leaders of the Church were opposed to the harsh penalties of the Inquisition. We must remember, however, that those were cruel times and the nations in the West were only a few generations removed from barbarism. It was the custom at that time to punish all crimes very severely. For instance, theft was punished with the cutting of hands. The harshness of the Inquisition was long remembered and was very much harped upon to justify the reformists’ protest against the Church.

The late middle ages (1300-1500 A.D.) were a period of difficulty for the Roman Catholic Church. In 1305, a French cardinal was elected pope and he was under so much political pressure from the civil rulers in Rome. In order to avoid this pressure, he moved to Avignon, France and the succeeding popes remained there for more than 70 years (from 1305-1377). This event did great harm to the Church. The rest of the world felt that the Pope was under the control of France and could no longer be trusted to act as a father of all Christendom. By God’s grace, the prophetic voices of St. Bridget of Sweden and St. Catherine of Siena persuaded Pope Gregory XI back to Rome but soon after his return to Rome, he died.

The authority of the Popes had undoubtedly been weakened through the long residence of the Papacy at Avignon. This was followed by an even worse tragedy from 1378-1417 in which two and later three men claimed to be the legitimate pope. After the death of Pope Gregory XI, the conclave of cardinals, most of whom were French, were intimidated to elect an Italian as pope, Urban VI. Thereafter, these same cardinals, claiming that the election of Urban VI was invalid, fled Rome and elected French “anti-pope”, Clement VII. Still later, since these two (2) popes claimed to be validly elected and were exercising authority, the cardinals of France and Italy decided to elect another pope, Alexander V and persuaded the two other popes to resign. But they refused to do so and the church hierarchy was in disarray. In order to prevent further division in the church, through the initiative of Marsilius of Padua, an ecumenical council of all bishops was called to elect another pope and invalidate all previous papal elections. The Council of Constance was convened and deposed two popes, persuaded the third to retire, and elected a new pope, Martin V, without the usual conclave of cardinals. Martin V’s election was hailed and recognized by the whole Church. The crisis that threatened western schism was averted!

Many Christians, however, began to view the ecumenical council as having greater authority than the pope. The papacy was losing its credibility. By God’s grace, the papacy was restored to its height in time. Christians realized that the Council of Constance was an exception, not the rule, designed to respond to a state of emergency in the Church.

Then we have the so-called Renaissance popes. The Church was caught up in the surge of renaissance art and culture. Not to be outdone, it decided to rebuild its churches and have renaissance arts adorn them. Pope Julius the II decided to include the rebuilding of St. Peter’s Basilica. In order to raise funds for this huge project, indulgences were made available to those who did good works and contribute to the church. Anyone who went to confession and communion and then contributed according to his means a sum of money for the erection of the church would receive a plenary indulgence, that is to say a remission of the entire temporal punishment that he deserved for his sins. After the death of Julius, his successor Leo X encouraged this indulgence. Secular rulers who became bishops or abbots by buying their office for a price abused the practice by collecting fees at pilgrimage sites and by selling indulgences. They were peddled like merchandise. During this time, corruption in the Church worsened. The ordinary Catholics were focused on gaining indulgences without an understanding of the more basic truths of the Catholic faith.

IIThe Protestant Reformation

Because of corruptions that crept into the Church, the need for reforms was strongly felt. Many bishops were more temporal rulers than spiritual fathers and were no longer submissive to the authority of the Pope. Many of the lower clergy were ignorant and otherwise unfitted for their calling. As a body, Christians had grown ignorant, superstitious and indifferent. Civil governments were encroaching on the rights of the Church in ever increasing measure. Social unrest was prevalent, due principally to the disintegration of the feudal system. The invention of printing made possible the rapid diffusion of subversive views among people. In a word, everything seemed to conspire in favor of those who, urged on by selfish and worldly motives, wished to usurp the religious authority of the Pope and confiscate the property of the Church.

Pope Leo X tried his best to introduce these reforms by calling the Fifth Lateran Council in 1512. The council did pass many needed reform decrees but most of these reform decrees were never put into effect. Meanwhile, a strong independent reformation movement led by Martin Luther was becoming very popular. It turned out, however, to be more of a revolution against authentic apostolic Christianity.

Let us know more about this reformer. Martin Luther was an Augustinian monk and professor of Scripture in Wittenberg, Germany. From the book, “Here I Stand”, Protestant author, Roland H. Bainton, had this to say about Luther:

“He is painted as a monk without vocation, and the vow is interpreted not as a genuine call, but rather as the resolution of an inner conflict, an escape from maladjustment at home and at school” Luther is reported to have said – “My mother caned me for stealing nut, until the blood came. Such strict discipline drove me to the monastery. At school, I was caned in a single morning fifteen times for nothing at all.” The book further describes Luther as being severely depressed. Here’s more excerpts from the book - “He was a young man on the verge of a religious collapse over religious problems.” His condition tallies so well with a recognized type of mental malady that again one is tempted to wonder whether his disturbance should be regarded as arising from authentic religious difficulties or from gastric or glandular deficiencies.” He was quoted exclaiming – “I was myself more than once driven to the very abyss of despair so that I wished I had never been created. Love God? I hated him!”

Martin Luther was deeply and chronically troubled by a combination of doubts and despair about his salvation and a sense of utter impotence in the face of temptation and sin. He practiced the greatest penances and mortifications. For instance, he would lay upon himself vigils and prayers in excess of those required in the monastery. He would cast off the blankets permitted him and well nigh froze himself almost to death. He would climb the church’s stairs on hands and knees repeating a Pater Noster for each one and kissing each step. All such drastic methods gave no sense of tranquility. The purpose of his striving was to compensate for his sins but to no avail. His conscience tortured him continually. He concluded that it was impossible for anyone to be good since original sin had completely spoiled human nature and that only by faith can man be saved and good works are useless. He thus formulated the doctrine of Sola Fide, or salvation by “faith alone” and found himself diametrically opposed to the teaching of the Catholic Church regarding salvation. He renounced the Catholic dependence on good works of any sort, including indulgences, to gain salvation or the remission of sin. His original problem with the Church stemmed from aberrations connected to indulgences. He posted his 95 Theses on Indulgences in 1517. He raised three main points: an objection to the avowed object of expenditure, a denial of the powers of the pope over purgatory, and a consideration of the welfare of the sinner. He charged that the revenues of all Christendom were being sucked into the building of the insatiable basilica instead of pouring them to charity. He charged that indulgence is an absolution for sin that could only be obtained in the sacrament of penance.

Luther took no steps to spread his theses among the people. They were intended only for professional theologians but others surreptitiously translated these theses into German, printed and given to all Germany. Thus, although Luther initially had no intention of leaving the Catholic Church, when his cries for reform went unheeded, the German nobility and people responded by forming the “Lutheran” Church, with the Bible alone as their guide in doctrine, and the belief in justification by faith alone. Consequently, at the Diet of Worms in 1521, Luther was formally excommunicated by the Church. When Luther received the document of excommunication, he laughed at it, burned it publicly, and thereby no longer pretended to have any respect for the authority of the church. He wrote a number of pamphlets in which he denied the divine foundation of the Church and attacked the priesthood. They were written in popular language and contained many vulgar expressions. Luther urged all priests, monks and nuns to get married, and only too many listened to his advice. He himself disgusted his friends by marrying a Cistercian nun by the name of Catherine Bora. He held that every pope was Antichrist even though personally exemplary, because Antichrist is collective; an institution, the papacy, a system that corrupts the truth of Christ.

The followers of Luther retained many Catholic practices and beliefs, but later reforming groups, such as those led by John Calvin in Geneva, Switzerland, who founded the Presbyterian Church, Huldreich Zwingli in Zurich, and the Anabaptists, each rejected more radically the heritage and tradition of Catholicism. Soon, more splinter groups or churches were formed including the Anglican Church. This Church was established for political reason by Henry VIII of England. When he decided to divorce his wife, Catherine of Aragon, mainly because she bore him no male heirs, Pope Clement VII refused to grant Henry a divorce. He then proclaimed that the king alone is the supreme head of the Church of England in 1534.

Luther, Calvin and the other Protestant leaders had proclaimed the doctrine of private judgment and denied the right of the Church to demand obedience from her children. They declared that in religious matters every man is a law unto himself. Consequently, even before Martin Luther’s death, people would rise up and preach publicly the most ridiculous kind of doctrines that they claimed had come to them from the reading of the Bible. Radicals and cranks of every kind started religions of their own. Their logic was flawless, however: “If you can place your interpretation of Scripture over that of the Pope and the entire Christian Tradition of sixteen centuries, then why can’t we question you?”

IIIThe Counter-Reformation of the Council of Trent

One positive result of the Protestant Reformation is that it began a more diligent effort of reform and renewal within the Catholic Church. In order to counter Martin Luther’s reformation movement, the Council of Trent was convened in 1545 by Pope Paul III. In this council, the Church defined more clearly Catholic doctrine, tightened discipline, and established the seminary system to provide for holy, educated priests. It began by clarifying, and defining exactly what the Catholic Church taught, especially points challenged by Protestantism. The Church affirmed the necessity of both Scripture and Tradition, the importance of good works aided by grace, the seven sacraments, the hierarchical Church, the divine institution of the priesthood, transubstantiation and the sacrificial character of the Mass. It re-stated Catholic doctrine on points controverted by the Protestants; it suppressed abuses, prescribed specialized training for the clergy, and in general imposed a thorough reform.

St. Pius V in 1567 issued a decree which states that the Church “permanently revoke, void, invalidate, and annul and render profitless each and every indulgence . . . for the gaining of which an alms must be offered, and contains in any way permission to make collections.” Out of the depths of its many problems in the late fifteenth century, the Catholic Church, by the grace of God, returned once again to strength and virtue marked by discipline, devotion, and clear doctrine. Reforming popes and bishops became the rule, not the exception, and many great saints emerged such as St. Francis Xavier, St. Teresa of Avila, and St. John of the Cross. Ignatius of Loyola founded the Jesuits. St. Peter’s Basilica was built, crowning the exuberant outpouring of Renaissance art, architecture, and music.

IVThe Age of Enlightenment

The 17th and 18th century is marked by the emergence of science and technology often called the Age of Enlightenment. The Catholic understanding of the Book of Genesis at his time appeared to be in conflict with the astronomical findings of Galileo. The Catholic Church condemned Galileo’s findings since he went as far as concluding that everything can be explained by science alone. The Catholic Church had not yet drawn the distinction that we do today between scientific and historical propositions in the Bible and the biblical teachings regarding religious faith. Today Catholics recognize that the Bible was not intended by its authors to explain scientific phenomena, nor to depict actual events from a merely historical perspective. However, the biblical teaching regarding religious truth – about mankind’s relationship with God and neighbor – are always infallibly true and inerrant. The Church’s earlier confusion about this is understandable since modern science and critical historical studies were just beginning to emerge.

A new approach to philosophy, based solely on reason, became popular. Philosophers engaged in frivolous philosophical discussions designed to learn the meaning of truth but actually diverted attention from their own unwillingness to be guided by it. The French Revolution (1789) abolished Christianity altogether and set up instead a religion of reason. Western civilization was shocked by all of this and took a more conservative stance in the beginning of the 19th century. The modern world also experienced great political upheavals as new experiments in various forms of government were consciously undertaken by rulers. The idea of a king who governed by divine right or authority was rejected. The Christian churches played less and less an active role in directing and shaping the political life of nations. Religion was relegated to the private sphere of one’s personal life.

VThe First Vatican Council

The 19th century began with the rise of representative governments granting freedom of speech, the press, conscience, and religion. This trend was soon to replace the age of kings and absolute rulers. This meant that the alliance of Church and state that had existed in Europe since the time of Constantine was coming to an end. The Church is separated more and more from the State and the Church became more independent of temporal rulers. In the face of all these, the First Vatican Council (1869-70) was called by Pope Pius IX. The council affirmed the primacy of faith over reason and defined the teaching infallibility of the pope in certain clearly defined instances. He published his “Syllabus of Errors” to point out exactly the errors of sole reliance upon the human mind. The Pope wanted people to remember that God’s revelation of the truth was given assuredly to the Church, not to public opinion or to the new ideas of scholars.