What was the outcome of Counter-Reformation?

Religion

The Counter-Reformation, also known as the Catholic Reformation or Catholic Renaissance, in Christian history, was based on a time when the efforts of the Catholic Church were directed during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries both against the Protestant Reformation and for internal renewal. The Counter-Reformation took place during approximately the same period as the Protestant Reformation, actually beginning shortly before Martin Luther's act of nailing the ninety-five theses to the door of the church in 1517.

The Counter-Reformation was the response developed by Catholic Church to minimize the impact of Protestantism. It was a movement that helped to produce an ecclesiastical restructuring by introducing a series of changes in the liturgy. It was a movement that consisted in giving a new image to the church by reducing the influence of Protestant doctrines.

The Catholic Church had seen its credibility weakened by Martin Luther’s Reformation, and for this reason decided to implement its Counter-Reformation. This new movement began in 1545 with the Ecumenical Council of Trent and lasted until the end of the Thirty Years’ War in 1648; any act developed to counter Protestantism since then falls into the category of anti-Protestantism.

Characteristics

The main characteristic of the Catholic Counter-Reformation or reform was that it covered everything concerning the political and religious sphere that existed at that time. It was in charge of eliminating the sale of indulgences, the main reason why the governors of the time had given their support to Martin Luther. He also sought to reform the Catholic Church, to unite Christians, and to evangelize the territories of America.

It renewed and set new guidelines to eliminate and stop the corruption of the clergy with simple parameters and guidelines such as the defense of papal authority, the exclusive capacity of the church, the interpretation of sacred texts, and salvation by faith and works of charity.

The Counter-Reformation was charged with dividing the Catholic faith into two parts, one involving the idea of Paul IV who told us that God had a relationship with people through punishments and that for that reason we had to fear him, and the other basing religious experience on piety.

The background was based on the demands for the creation of a Church reform, in the face of the scandal of the Great Western Schism and against religious abuses. New religious orders such as the Theatines, Capuchins, Ursulines and Jesuits were promoted and created. The outstanding action of Paul III in convening the Council of Trent in 1545 was an important antecedent in dealing with doctrinal and disciplinary questions caused by Protestants.

History

By the Protestant Reformation, the Western world that had been Catholic was divided between Catholic Christians and Protestant Christians who did not follow Rome’s guidelines. Catholicism had lost ground and was no longer the official religion in many parts of Europe and there was an attempt to prevent the same thing from happening in the New World. For this reason there was a need for reforms in the Catholic Church in order to restructure and stop the Protestant advance.

In the Church there was the Ecumenical Council which was a meeting of the high representatives of the Clergy, to deal with matters of great religious importance. One of these meetings took place in Trent in 1545 and was convened by Pope Paul III, in view of the attacks of Protestantism.

When was it?

The Counter-Reformation took place during a period of rebirth in the Catholic religion that began during the Ecumenical Council of Trent in 1545; the pontificate of Pope Pius IV in 1560 until the end of the Thirty Years’ War in 1648.

The main representatives of the Counter-Reformation were:

• Giovanni Caraffa (Paul IV), founder of the Theatines and elected pope in 1555.
• Jacob Sadoleto, Italian who was elected as a reformist cardinal.
• Gasparo Contarini was appointed ambassador of Venice, England, Spain and Italy. He sought reconciliation with the Protestants.
• Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus and the Roman College in 1551.
• Roberto Bellarmino, Italian, professor of theology and was the greatest Catholic apologist.

We could say that the main cause was the series of reforms contained within the Council of Trent which had been implemented by the Catholic Church against the spread of Protestantism and which arose from constant complaints against officials who had a high rank within the Church.

Aims and Objectives

With the Counter-Reformation they mainly sought to renew the inner part of Catholic Church, to maintain the power of the Catholic clergy, and to fight against the ideas that had been given by Martin Luther and John Calvin.

It sought to condemn the ideas of the Reformation and to refute the heretical theses of Protestantism in Germany that were gradually spreading throughout Europe. It tried to reaffirm the principles of Catholicism and defend the authority of the church in the interpretation of scripture.

Consequences

Among the main consequences that occurred with the Counter-Reformation we can mention the following:

• There were important changes in the Church and in the practice of the Catholic religion.
• There was an increase in Protestant groups and churches in Europe and America, and anti-Semitism was highlighted.
• Religious conflicts between Catholics and Protestants occurred all over Europe causing civil or religious wars in England and France.
• In Germany there was the War of the Peasants, who rebelled against the authority of the Church and princes.
• The Thirty Years’ War was created with the Protestant rebellion against the Holy Roman Empire.
• There was persecution of Protestant religious groups in countries with a Catholic majority.
• Hundreds of people in Europe and America were executed or burned, accused of witchcraft or heresy during the 16th century.

Importance of Counter-Reformation

It was of great importance for the Catholic Church as it implemented a Catholic revitalization from the period of Pope Pius IV until 1560, when the Thirty Years’ War ended. The following points were reaffirmed:

• Rejection that the Bible was the only source of doctrine.
• Salvation was obtained by God’s grace through faith and works together.
• The Eucharist was dogmatically defined as the consecration of bread in the Body of Christ and of wine in his Blood which renews mystically and sacramentally the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the Cross.
• The veneration of iconographic images and relics of Christian worship were confirmed as Christian practice, along with the existence of Purgatory and the rites of the Western Catholic Church were united into one, the Tridentine Mass.

Written by Gabriela Briceño V.

The Counter-Reformation was a period of spiritual, moral, and intellectual revival in the Catholic Church in the 16th and 17th centuries, usually dated from 1545 (the opening of the Council of Trent) to 1648 (the end of the Thirty Years' War). While it is normally seen as a reaction to the Protestant Reformation, the Counter-Reformation has roots going back to the 15th century, and is therefore sometimes called the Catholic Revival or the Catholic Reformation (and occasionally the Catholic Counter-Reformation).

With the waning of the Catholic Middle Ages and the dawn of an increasingly secular and political modern age in the 14th century, the Catholic Church found herself affected by trends in the broader culture. Through a series of reforms of religious orders, such as the Benedictines, Cistercians, and Franciscans, in the 14th and 15th centuries, the Church tried to elevate the preaching of the gospel and to call laypeople back to Catholic morality.

Many problems, however, had deeper roots that affected the very structure of the Church. In 1512, the Fifth Lateran Council attempted a series of reforms for what are known as secular priests—that is, clergy who belong to a regular diocese rather than to a religious order. The council had a very limited effect, though it did make one very important convert—Alexander Farnese, a cardinal who would become Pope Paul III in 1534.

Before the Fifth Lateran Council, Cardinal Farnese had a longtime mistress, with whom he had four children. But the council pricked his conscience, and he reformed his life in the years immediately before a German monk by the name of Martin Luther set out to reform the Catholic Church—and ended up sparking the Protestant Reformation.

Martin Luther's 95 Theses set the Catholic world on fire in 1517, and nearly 25 years after the Catholic Church condemned Luther's theological errors at the Diet of Worms (1521), Pope Paul III attempted to put out the flames by convening the Council of Trent (1545-63). The Council of Trent defended important Church doctrines that Luther and later Protestants attacked, such as transubstantiation (the belief that, during the Mass, the bread and wine become the true Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, which Catholics then receive in Communion); that both faith and the works that flow from that faith are necessary for salvation; that there are seven sacraments (some Protestants had insisted that only Baptism and Communion were sacraments, and others had denied that there were any sacraments); and that the pope is the successor of Saint Peter, and exercises authority over all Christians.

But the Council of Trent addressed structural problems within the Catholic Church as well, many of which had been cited by Luther and other Protestant reformers. A series of popes, particularly from the Florentine Medici family, had caused grave scandal through their personal lives (like Cardinal Farnese, they often had mistresses and fathered children), and their bad example was followed by a significant number of bishops and priests. The Council of Trent demanded an end to such behavior, and put into place new forms of intellectual and spiritual training to ensure that future generations of priests would not fall into these same sins. Those reforms became the modern seminary system, in which prospective Catholic priests are trained even today.

Through the council's reforms, the practice of appointing secular rulers as bishops came to an end, as did the sale of indulgences, which Martin Luther had used as a reason to attack the Church's teaching on the existence of, and need for, Purgatory. The Council of Trent ordered the writing and publishing of a new catechism to make it clear what the Catholic Church taught, and called for reforms in the Mass, which were made by Pius V, who became pope in 1566 (three years after the council ended). The Mass of Pope Pius V (1570), often regarded as the crown jewel of the Counter-Reformation, is today known as the Traditional Latin Mass or (since the release of Pope Benedict XVI's Summorum Pontificum) the Extraordinary Form of the Mass.

Alongside the work of the Council of Trent and the reform of existing religious orders, new religious orders began to spring up, committed to spiritual and intellectual rigor. The most famous was the Society of Jesus, commonly known as the Jesuits, founded by St. Ignatius Loyola and approved by Pope Paul III in 1540. In addition to the normal religious vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, the Jesuits adopted a special vow of obedience to the Pope, designed to ensure their theological orthodoxy. The Society of Jesus quickly became one of the leading intellectual forces in the Catholic Church, founding seminaries, schools, and universities.

The Jesuits also led the way in a renewal of missionary activity outside of Europe, especially in Asia (under the lead of St. Francis Xavier), in what is now Canada and the Upper Midwest of the United States, and in South America. A revitalized Franciscan order, meanwhile, devoted many of its members to similar missionary activity in South America and Central America, the southern portion of the current United States, and (later) in what is now California.

The Roman Inquisition, established in 1542, became the chief enforcer of Catholic doctrine in the Counter-Reformation. St. Robert Bellarmine, an Italian Jesuit and cardinal, became perhaps the best known of all those involved in the Inquisition, for his role in the trial of Giordano Bruno for heresy and his efforts to reconcile Galileo's views that the earth revolves around the sun with the Church's teaching.

The Counter-Reformation had political effects as well, as the rise of Protestantism went hand-in-hand with the rise of nation-states. The sinking of the Spanish Armada in 1588 was the defense of the Protestant Elizabeth I against the effort of Philip II, the Catholic king of Spain, to reinstate Catholicism by force in England.

While there are many important figures who left their mark on the Counter-Reformation, four in particular bear mentioning. St. Charles Borromeo (1538-84), the cardinal-archbishop of Milan, found himself on the front lines as Protestantism descended from Northern Europe. He founded seminaries and schools throughout Northern Italy, and traveled throughout the area under his authority, visiting parishes, preaching, and calling his priests to a life of holiness.

St. Francis de Sales (1567-1622), the bishop of Geneva, in the very heart of Calvinism, won many Calvinists back to the Catholic Faith through his example of "preaching the Truth in charity." Just as importantly, he worked hard to keep Catholics in the Church, not only by teaching them sound doctrine but by calling them to the "devout life," making prayer, meditation, and the reading of Scripture a daily practice.

St. Teresa of Avila (1515-82) and St. John of the Cross (1542-91), both Spanish mystics and Doctors of the Church, reformed the Carmelite order and called Catholics to a greater life of interior prayer and commitment to the will of God.