NationStates Jolt Archive

I'm not a Christian, that is for sure.
But if I'm made to look into the internal reasonings of Churches, their modes of action, their rethoric and mystical experience, Catholic Jesuitism has the higher ground over any Protestant dogma. Any.
Consider the paradox expressed in Lutheranism and Calvinism: practicalities over dogma, blind submission to the powers that be, and the unsustainable logic of predestination (well, the last one is just Calvinism, but Lutheranism comes close).
The Catholic Church Reformed dogmas have made it an intellectually respectable concept: by making what believers should consider priority truths remain unchanged, and by adapting institutions without losing their core.

This is not Protestants-bashing: I'll trust you'll consider what I posted, and not what you would say to a non-believer. Please, don't let this be about the more sordid details of religious practice.

As a catholic, I would say the Counter-reformation is a great accomplishment of the Catholic Church, but I believe the lutherian reform was better in some way. First of all, in the ages where Luther began the reform, it was a time when it take guts to challenge the Roman catholic authority, especially in the touchy theological ground. I mean, Middle Ages are full of heresies who've been eradicated, in many way, from Spanish Inquisition to excommunication. In a certain way, Luther could have been found guilty of heresy (In fact it's not impossible that he has been found guilty of that).

But I am not a theologian, neither a person with a lot of religious knowledge. I'm just a sort of "Independant catholic" who recognize the Pope as the legitimate leader of catholic christiandom, but I disapprove some of the Church positions, like on abortion or ordination. I have faith in God and its Church, and I think the whole concept of unified structure with a Pope was exactly the capacity to modernize or adapt the Church trought hardtimes like the Reform period. But I stick to my point : Reform was a couragous thing, counter-reform was just a pragmatic decision needed to be taken.

I'm not a religious person in any sense of the word, but from a historical and theological standpoint, I'd say that the Counter-Reformation kicks the Protestant Reformation anyday. No disrespect to Protestants, but the strands of Catholic theological thought are way more interesting. There is art, there is legend, there is politics, there is crime, there is sex. The Catholic church would make an amazing BBC mini-series. The Protestant Church? Not so much.

Martin Luther- 1
Catholic Reformation- Zip

The reason, despite my loathing for Christianity and all it's evil religious spawn, I do like Martin Luther in that he was a rebel (for his time at least) who risked it all to show people a new way of thinking and that you don't have to kowtow to the Pope the so-called "Infallable God on Earth" or some nonsense like that.

But what I can't forgive Martin Luther for is his anti-semetic views and writings. (hating jews is a big no-no in my book!).

Martin Luther- 1
Catholic Reformation- Zip

The reason, despite my loathing for Christianity and all it's evil religious spawn, I do like Martin Luther in that he was a rebel (for his time at least) who risked it all to show people a new way of thinking and that you don't have to kowtow to the Pope the so-called "Infallable God on Earth" or some nonsense like that.

But what I can't forgive Martin Luther for is his anti-semetic views and writings. (hating jews is a big no-no in my book!).
Much more risky things were said and done than Luther's. There was a Jan Hus, a Wycliff, there also was a Savonarola. Hell, even Erasmus took more risk.
In fact, Luther said things that were deeply mundane, and he was appealing to not-so-religious people out there - especially to independent-prone monarchs like the North German princes and, indirectly, Henry VIII.
His argument agains the Church was based on the passing trend that he interpreted as "corruption" - if it was indeed, and because of whom exactly remains to be debated objectively, not just asserted (remember that the Popes had just emerged from their French captivity, and that Italy was in the poorest of states). More important than that, you do not build a theology on just that! If you look through Luther's works, there's that as a main theme, and the "theological" questions have no fundament. Again, mundaine.
If it's corruption Protestants were condemning, how can a Protestant justify the fact that Henry VIII confiscated all Church lands for his own gains? And even this pales in comparison with the unbelievable gesture of the Teuton Knights' Order leader, who "secularised" a Catholic venture that he was in charge of, in order to become a monarch.
The notion of "infallability" of the Popes was not stated before Luther. Quite the contrary: there was, in theory, a Church Council overseeing the popes after the Council of Constance. Because of the political scene, it came into being after Luther, in 1540-60 (Council of Trent), when it basically voted itself out of office! Why? Because they had seen the opportunism of Church intellectuals such as Luther, who had been willing to abandon a complete, reasonable, and biblical interpretation of the human condition as "salvation through good deeds" (and not "through God's grace") in order to establish a distinct Church who lacked in purpose. Most of the scholars at the Council backed the infallability dogma, so as to establish what cannot be changed in the teachings.

Note: there is nothing in the infallability dogma to justify that the pope should be "a God on Earth".

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Neither.

As a Russian Orthodox Christina, from my perspective the various western protestant churches are arguably merely theological outgrowths of the Catholic church.

Both the reformation and the counter-reformation are merely two sides of the same coin.

Oh, you want theology to back that up?

I'm going to take the coward's way out and say that I don't have nearly enough time to deal with that right now since I'm typing this from work, but I'd recommend Timothy Ware's book _The Orthodox Church_ for anyone who wants a very different perspective on this thread's main question.

I guess it depends on your definition of "better".

The Protestant Reformation was far more politically influential than the Counter-Reformation. It created divisions between kingdoms and princes, formed new governments and alliances, and shaped Europe considerably.

Theologically, the Counter-Reformation probably accomplished more. Even Luther admitted toward the end of his life that a lot of the things being attributed to him weren't all that good. For example, even though Luther once advocated personal interpretation of the Bible, even he remarked that the range of off-the-wall interpretations had gotten out of hand. The Catholic Church stuck to her theology and went after the corruption, while one could say Luther threw the baby out with the bathwater.

I think Martin Luther could have become one of the Church's greatest saints. He stood up in the face of corruption and challenged the hierarchy to be responsible for the action of its members. If his movement hadn't gone to the theological extremes it did, the Reformation and Counter-Reformation might have been the same thing.

Much more risky things were said and done than Luther's. There was a Jan Hus, a Wycliff, there also was a Savonarola. Hell, even Erasmus took more risk.
Agreed.
In fact, Luther said things that were deeply mundane, and he was appealing to not-so-religious people out there - especially to independent-prone monarchs like the North German princes and, indirectly, Henry VIII.
If you were trying to obtain protection from someone pretty powerful, ie, the pope, who would you appeal to? Your neighbor? Doubtful. Most likely you'd appeal to someone else who was pretty powerful. In Luther's day, this happened to be aristocrats and monarchs.
His argument agains the Church was based on the passing trend that he interpreted as "corruption" - if it was indeed, and because of whom exactly remains to be debated objectively, not just asserted (remember that the Popes had just emerged from their French captivity, and that Italy was in the poorest of states). More important than that, you do not build a theology on just that! If you look through Luther's works, there's that as a main theme, and the "theological" questions have no fundament. Again, mundaine.
While he did condemn corruption, it was not the only thing that Luther spoke against the Catholic church. He saw the very structure of the Catholic church--the Bible being in Latin only, the doctrine of papal infallibility, and the sole authority of the pope to call councils--as lending itself to corruption. It was these three things to which he referred time and time again as things that needed change.
If it's corruption Protestants were condemning, how can a Protestant justify the fact that Henry VIII confiscated all Church lands for his own gains? And even this pales in comparison with the unbelievable gesture of the Teuton Knights' Order leader, who "secularised" a Catholic venture that he was in charge of, in order to become a monarch.
The answer is not to justify them, but to condemn them as corrupt, too. But just because Henry VIII and some Teuton Knight (and probably a lot of other people who later claimed to be Protestant) were commiting acts of corruption, that doesn't excuse the acts of corruption that were commited by popes, priests, and other people who claimed to be Catholic.
The notion of "infallability" of the Popes was not stated before Luther. Quite the contrary: there was, in theory, a Church Council overseeing the popes after the Council of Constance. Because of the political scene, it came into being after Luther, in 1540-60 (Council of Trent), when it basically voted itself out of office!
That doesn't make it correct, though. Just because you start an incorrect doctrine in response to something else doesn't make it any more correct. It was still an issue contemporary to Martin Luther, which is why he wrote about it.
Why? Because they had seen the opportunism of Church intellectuals such as Luther, who had been willing to abandon a complete, reasonable, and biblical interpretation of the human condition as "salvation through good deeds" (and not "through God's grace") in order to establish a distinct Church who lacked in purpose. Most of the scholars at the Council backed the infallability dogma, so as to establish what cannot be changed in the teachings.
For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.
-Ephesians 2:8-9
Yep, salvation by works is definitely the biblical view of the human condition. No matter how complete and reasonable you think it may be, it still is not biblical.
Note: there is nothing in the infallability dogma to justify that the pope should be "a God on Earth".
Duly noted. I think most people already know this. Please excuse the ignorance of the previous poster.

Olara']Yep, salvation by works is definitely the biblical view of the human condition. No matter how complete and reasonable you think it may be, it still is not biblical.
*Ahem*

"When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.' Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?' The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.' "Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.' They also will answer, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?' "He will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.' "Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life."
-Matthew 25:31-46

What use is it, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but he has no works? Can that faith save him? What use is it, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but he has no works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food, and one of you says to them, "Go in peace, be warmed and be filled," and yet you do not give them what is necessary for their body, what use is that? Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself. But someone may well say, "You have faith and I have works; show me your faith without the works, and I will show you my faith by my works." You believe that God is one You do well; the demons also believe, and shudder. But are you willing to recognize, you foolish fellow, that faith without works is useless? Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up Isaac his son on the altar? You see that faith was working with his works, and as a result of the works, faith was perfected; and the Scripture was fulfilled which says, "AND ABRAHAM BELIEVED GOD, AND IT WAS RECKONED TO HIM AS RIGHTEOUSNESS," and he was called the friend of God. You see that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone.
-James 2:14-24

It's not faith alone. It's not works alone. It's by God's grace alone. He gives the grace that lets us believe, and we show we believe by acting out our faith.

<snip>

It's not faith alone. It's not works alone. It's by God's grace alone. He gives the grace that lets us believe, and we show we believe by acting out our faith.
So you agree with me, then? Because I sure agree with you. Read the passage from Ephesians that I quoted again. I quoted it for a reason.

Would the Counter-Reformation have happened without the Reformation, or would the Catholic Church have continued on its existing path?

I would have to say the Reformation was "better".

Consider the paradox expressed in Lutheranism and Calvinism: practicalities over dogma, blind submission to the powers that be, and the unsustainable logic of predestination (well, the last one is just Calvinism, but Lutheranism comes close).
Are you saying here that "blind submission to the powers that be" characterizes only Protestants and not Catholics? Consider the canonical opinion of St. Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits and arch-soldier of the counterreformation: "To be right in everything, we ought always to hold that the white which I see, is black, if the Hierarchical Church so decides it... Because by the Spirit and our Lord Who gave the ten Commandments, our holy Mother the Church is directed and governed." (The Spiritual Exercises, Ignatius of Loyola)

Predestination is an article of faith, and is as arbitrary as the counter-reformation's faith that the church, being governed by God himself, is able to override the sensory experiences of the believer and determine a white object to be black.

In fact, Luther said things that were deeply mundane, and he was appealing to not-so-religious people out there - especially to independent-prone monarchs like the North German princes and, indirectly, Henry VIII.
Henry VIII was a nemesis of Luther before breaking away from Rome, and throroughly un-Lutheran after the event. Because of his vicious criticism of Martin Luther in the 1520s (politically motivated, of course), Henry was given the title "Defender of the Faith" from Pope Adrian. After falling out with Pope Clement over the annulment matter with the princess of Spain, Henry formed a new "Protestant" church, but in matters sacramental, this so called Church of England was nearly identical to existing Catholicism, from modes of prayer to vestments, to the belief that the apostolic church organization, and not mere individual faith, is the final arbiter of who goes to heaven and who burns in hell. In the high Anglican Church the notion that faith and good works constitutes salvation was kept, too.

Furthermore you are inccorrect to assume that sacrilegous people primarily existed in the north. Politically motivated, ruthless princes and kings were everywhere, and contributed to the general state of violence. While religious matters became more and more starkly polarizing and uncompromising, secular politics was as morally ambiguous as ever. Consider the war between Catholic Spain and the Papal States in the 16th century that culminated in the Sack of Rome by Spanish troops, 1526. Luther observed that "Christ reigns in such a way that the emperor who persecutes Luther for the pope is forced to destroy the pope for Luther." The "emperor who persecutes Luther" is of course Charles V whose reputation against Lutheran was in reality always overshadowwed by his brutal imperialist ambitions against any enemy whether Lutheran or Catholic.

His argument agains the Church was based on the passing trend that he interpreted as "corruption" - if it was indeed, and because of whom exactly remains to be debated objectively, not just asserted (remember that the Popes had just emerged from their French captivity, and that Italy was in the poorest of states). More important than that, you do not build a theology on just that! If you look through Luther's works, there's that as a main theme, and the "theological" questions have no fundament. Again, mundaine.

Luther and Calvin were both eloquent theologians whose works are labors of faith, and it is unusual that a non-Christian like you would convince yourself that 16th century Catholicism is built on sound doctrinal ground while contemporaneous Lutheranism or Calvinism is not. All religions are based on articles of faith, and it is odd for any non-believing, neutral observer to say who is more right about salvation, heaven, and hell.

Furthermore - the grievances of Germans against "church corruption" were inspired not only by the attempts of foreign Italians to pry money from Germans' pockets. The Church as a whole, not just the Italian Church bureaucrats, was corrupt and reviled by many. The native German Church was not held in high esteem as is the example of COlogne where the Archbishop was expelled for good - starting in the 13th century - from his archbishopric by the city dwellers on account of his political heavyhandedness and incompetence. Napoleon restored the Archbishop of Cologne to his see in Cologne cathedral. The sale of church offices, the practice of one cleric holding multiple bishoprics resulting in lack of undivided attention for his various sees, all of these griveances were recognized as totally legitimate by the Trent Council, and steps were taken by the Catholic Counter-reformation to correct them. It was Luther who brought these problems to the attention of the powers that be.

And these problems did not just exist in the north - it existed everywhere, even Spain, and Italy too, thus accounting for the popularity of Lutheranism in those two nations in the early years of the Reformation, before the Inquisition got its act together and exterminated dissent in these areas which today are among the most Catholic in the world.

If it's corruption Protestants were condemning, how can a Protestant justify the fact that Henry VIII confiscated all Church lands for his own gains?

You miss the wide variability and nuance in opinions commonly categorized as "Protestant." Hell, the nuances between an Anglican "Protestant" and a Calvinist "Protestant" aren't even subtle by a long shot. Traditional Calvinists seeking to achieve doctrinal purity never considered Anglicans to be Christian. To an arch-Calvinist like William Bradford or Oliver Cromwell, the Church of England was another Roman-style hierarchical, greedy, evil entity, albeit influenced by satanitc mitered Englishmen and not satanic mitered Italians. These English dissenters condemned as much the corruption of Rome as the corruption of Canterbury. And of course everyone hated on the Anabaptists and the Servetuses etc.

The term "Protestant" is applied largely for historical reasons, and in no way reflects the doctrinal differences and incompatibility among the various sects so termed. For example orthodox Calvinists referred to themselves as simply Christians or "the religion" and everything outside their faith, including the vast majority of Lutherans especially conciliarists like Melanchthon, as no different, salvation-wise, from a Papist or a Muslim or a polytheist Hindu. SUch is the uncompromising clarity adopted by the various religious movements during the 16th and 17th centuries, which defies simple categorization as "Catholic vs. Protestant".

Because they had seen the opportunism of Church intellectuals such as Luther, who had been willing to abandon a complete, reasonable, and biblical interpretation of the human condition as "salvation through good deeds" (and not "through God's grace") in order to establish a distinct Church who lacked in purpose.
There is no duty for religious doctrine of any sort to be "reasonable." Blind faith in a particular doctrine is the starting point of any theology. Luther established "salvation through Gods grace" as his starting point doctrine, while the Catholic Church defined "salvation through faith combined with works" as its starting point and fundamental doctrine. It is futile to argue who is more "complete" or "reasonable" or "correct".

Neither.

As a Russian Orthodox Christina, from my perspective the various western protestant churches are arguably merely theological outgrowths of the Catholic church.

Both the reformation and the counter-reformation are merely two sides of the same coin.

Oh, you want theology to back that up?

I'm going to take the coward's way out and say that I don't have nearly enough time to deal with that right now since I'm typing this from work, but I'd recommend Timothy Ware's book _The Orthodox Church_ for anyone who wants a very different perspective on this thread's main question.

Beat me to it.. :)

Olara']If you were trying to obtain protection from someone pretty powerful, ie, the pope, who would you appeal to? Your neighbor? Doubtful. Most likely you'd appeal to someone else who was pretty powerful. In Luther's day, this happened to be aristocrats and monarchs.

The popes were not pretty powerful, and had to rely on authorities on the spot. For example, Jan Hus was executed by Sigismund of Luxemburg. It was a game between different police forces, and Luther speculated on the feelings of North German princes against Imperial authorithy, rather than popish.

Olara']While he did condemn corruption, it was not the only thing that Luther spoke against the Catholic church. He saw the very structure of the Catholic church--the Bible being in Latin only, the doctrine of papal infallibility, and the sole authority of the pope to call councils--as lending itself to corruption. It was these three things to which he referred time and time again as things that needed change.

To my knowledge, infallability was not strictly dogma when Luther started arguing for a schism (I think Luther interpreted it in a way convenient to him). It was a result of the Council of Trent, precisely because Luther's Reform had made it neccesary for a Catholic to believe that some things at the core would have to never be subject to interpretation. And this meant, as a minimal requirement, that you believe your leader to be right. Yes, right on most matters: since the Church has a body that deals with the changing world, how do you accept the relativism without having to swallow a new revelation.
Plus, the "infallabity" of the pope was linked to that of the Church and Councils. It came as an obvious step to Catholics: where does does truth reside, if not in the nominal head of the Church and Councils? Luther talked about it without presenting his followers the full implications of it. If you read Protestant propaganda of the time, you see loads of hearsay and verbal violence un-matched by the Counter-reformation. There was a lot of unfairnaess on both sides, and Luther did argue for his dogma. But he also twisted many things around, and he did it for a public whom he was also able to interest by depcting the Catholics in caricatures (and Melanchton did it even more: he depicted the pope as a monster with the head of an ass).
Latin would be connected to that issue. The Roman Church's doctrine did in fact reject commoners taking interest in the text of the Bible (which makes sense if you consider what happened everytime they did), but - although laymen were forbidden to own books, they had access to them (Erasmus). Also, any intellectual (which meant: step2 after having learned to read) could speak Latin.

Olara']The answer is not to justify them, but to condemn them as corrupt, too. But just because Henry VIII and some Teuton Knight (and probably a lot of other people who later claimed to be Protestant) were commiting acts of corruption, that doesn't excuse the acts of corruption that were commited by popes, priests, and other people who claimed to be Catholic.

I did not say that. Two things: Luther defined corruption the way it suited him. Those magnates who followed his lead did so only to be excused in exercising their own corruption (with Henry VIII as a parallel of his own device). Luther was blessing all that behaviour, for the prince had the upper hand over a "corrupt" Church. This is also connected to the Protestant Churches kneeling exercises in fron of the state, which have been instrumental in helping a lot of terrible things to happen.
Luther condemned corruption, but he also hated the pattern of Catholic piety (which leaves no choice in between the two). He disliked monasticism, he had a fear of mystical experience, he was disgusted by great works of art that were to serve God. He defined himself in reaction, which is to say that nothing the Catholics would have done, corrupt or sublime, would have had a chance in his book.

Olara']That doesn't make it correct, though. Just because you start an incorrect doctrine in response to something else doesn't make it any more correct. It was still an issue contemporary to Martin Luther, which is why he wrote about it.

My point was that the full body of the Church backed the pope on this. In fact, the initiative was theirs. Again, it corresponded with Luther's radicalism. If people want to be seen as parts of cohesive institutions, nobody should be far from imposing a single point of view, be it wrong or right (and this was not necessarily wrong - I mean, there's no moral imperative to do that, otherwise there would be an absolute imperative in becoming Lutheran). In fact, no Church is ever anything but infallability at the core of things - in Catholicism, it was a living person, in Lutheranism, anyway you look at it, it's Luther. In precisely the same terms: he may be wrong about some things, but those things were not dogma.
Luther did not really confront himself with even this dogma - he just speculated that that must've been the reality.

Olara']Yep, salvation by works is definitely the biblical view of the human condition. No matter how complete and reasonable you think it may be, it still is not biblical.

I didn't want to argue all about it in my original post. The issue is, as you point out, more complicated. But all the ambiguity is of the biblical sources themselves. And no Catholic would say that God is forced to get you into Heaven for doing good (at least not anymore, since the Jesuits have said it some point). God is independent, as Luther put it, but "good works" (which, of course, is not just "works" - it means all physical manifestations, right? even thought is "work") have to have a meaning. If they wouldn't, why would you listen to the text of the Bible? God doesn not value that. Why would you comment and sanction by the Bible? God doesn't value that.
I'm afraid that Luther was well aware of how complicated the the issues that he deemed simple in fact were. Which is not as bad as Calvin's bigotry and "predestination dogma" nonsense.

Are you saying here that "blind submission to the powers that be" characterizes only Protestants and not Catholics? Consider the canonical opinion of St. Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits and arch-soldier of the counterreformation: "To be right in everything, we ought always to hold that the white which I see, is black, if the Hierarchical Church so decides it... Because by the same Spirit and our Lord Who gave the ten Commandments, our holy Mother the Church is directed and governed." (The Spiritual Exercises, Ignatius of Loyola)

I think it is common sense for a believer to obey the scholarly authority of the Church personified. I think it makes all the sense in the world for a monk (which is what the Jesuits were). I think it is more than imperative for a missionary (which is what Ignatius was).
It was about political powers. The main argument about Catholicism's "evils" in the world (an analysis common to Luther, Henry VIII and Stalin) is that it is multinational and para-statal. Sorry, but that is what gives an extra character and intellectual strength. That is also what made it raise its voice on issues that were of common interest (from the working man's condition in Victorian times, all the way to the Holocaust) with several times the power of any Protestant denomination.

Predestination is an article of faith, and is as arbitrary as the counter-reformation's faith that the church is able to override the sensory experiences of the believer and determine a white object to be black.

Actually, I see nothing wrong in "overriding senses". It was illustrative of a dogma that wanted to be bullet-proof, and not relative. Lutheranism would come out with the same concept. Or is it: "No, we do not see things in the same way or the same light, we cannot agree on anything, we accept no one to come and tell us what it is we should all be trying to see, but we stick together 'cause we're not Catholics." Wait, that just might be the main feature of Protestant Churches - and when something does move so that they disagree without a way back, they go and found new Churches. And that's how you get the 40 000 denominations out there.
And Predestination is just a bewilderingly un-Christian concept. It's just grotesque.

Henry VIII was a nemesis of Luther before breaking away from Rome, and throroughly un-Lutheran after the event. Because of his vicious criticism of Martin Luther in the 1520s (politically motivated, of course), Henry was given the title "Defender of the Faith" from Pope Adrian. After falling out with Pope Clement over the annulment matter with the princess of Spain, Henry formed a new "Protestant" church, but in matters sacramental, this so called Church of England was nearly identical to existing Catholicism, from modes of prayer to vestments, to the belief that the apostolic church organization, and not mere individual faith, is the final arbiter of who goes to heaven and who burns in hell. In the high Anglican Church the notion that faith and good works constitutes salvation was kept, too.

I know very well what the Anglican dilemma was/is. I made the anology into what made Reform popular.

Furthermore you are inccorrect to assume that sacrilegous people primarily existed in the north. Politically motivated, ruthless princes and kings were everywhere, and contributed to the general state of violence. While religious matters became more and more starkly polarizing and uncompromising, secular politics was as morally ambiguous as ever. Consider the war between Catholic Spain and the Papal States in the 16th century that culminated in the Sack of Rome by Spanish troops, 1526. Luther observed that "Christ reigns in such a way that the emperor who persecutes Luther for the pope is forced to destroy the pope for Luther." The "emperor who persecutes Luther" is of course Charles V whose reputation against Lutheran was in reality always overshadowwed by his brutal imperialist ambitions against any enemy whether Lutheran or Catholic.

It would've been non-sensical for me to say that they existed only in the North. The point was that Luther was not adverse to this type of behaviour if it justifyed the ends of his dogma. He did not even consider that corruption, since the Church was to have no property. It was ok, of course, for a German prince, Luther's careful guards from the long hand of the Emperor, to become richer. You see where I'm going with this?

Furthermore - the grievances of Germans against "church corruption" were inspired not only by the attempts of foreign Italians to pry money from Germans' pockets. The Church as a whole, not just the Italian Church bureaucrats, was corrupt and reviled by many. The native German Church was not held in high esteem as is the example of COlogne where the Archbishop was expelled for good - starting in the 13th century - from his archbishopric by the city dwellers on account of his political heavyhandedness and incompetence. Napoleon restored the Archbishop of Cologne to his see in Cologne cathedral. The sale of church offices, the practice of one cleric holding multiple bishoprics resulting in lack of undivided attention for his various sees, all of these griveances were recognized as totally legitimate by the Trent Council, and steps were taken by the Catholic Counter-reformation to correct them. It was Luther who brought these problems to the attention of the powers that be.

And these problems did not just exist in the north - it existed everywhere, even Spain, and Italy too, thus accounting for the popularity of Lutheranism in those two nations in the early years of the Reformation, before the Inquisition got its act together and exterminated dissent in these areas which today are among the most Catholic in the world.

The Church was in no way able to deal with many of its problems. How was it to do that between the Schism and Chales V, passing through the degenaracy of the office under the Humanist Prince-Popes? But you do not mention the facy that there was a "Devotio Moderna", a Religious Humanism, an "Oratory of Divine Love", several new paradigms of piety within the Franciscans and Dominicans; an the corruption was common knowledge, in its most intimate details - alas, the structure was paralized by precisely the aggressive interference of outsiders (from the captivity in Avignon onwards). The fact is that Luther was against the practice of what was considered piety, just as well as he was against corruption. He did not approve of any tenant of Catholic ideology, which meant that he saw no redeeming unless the Church was to give up several major aspects of it's practice, and none of them would we consider necessarily corrupt.
And the Inquisition did not "exterminate". While the trials resulted in the deaths of many people, something like 2 in 3 people would get no punisment (!) after arrest in the period that you call "getting their act together" in Spain. In fact, the number of people convicted of anything by the Inquisiton was always much less than the cliche asserts, and it did nothing but decrease since the 1530. This does not mean I condone it.

You miss the wide variability and nuance in opinions commonly categorized as "Protestant." Hell, the nuances between an Anglican "Protestant" and a Calvinist "Protestant" aren't even subtle by a long shot. Traditional Calvinists seeking to achieve doctrinal purity never considered Anglicans to be Christian. To an arch-Calvinist like William Bradford or Oliver Cromwell, the Church of England was another Roman-style hierarchical, greedy, evil entity, albeit influenced by satanitc mitered Englishmen and not satanic mitered Italians. These English dissenters condemned as much the corruption of Rome as the corruption of Canterbury. And of course everyone hated on the Anabaptists and the Servetuses etc.

No, I'm very aware of them. But, as I have said it, none of them were Catholics (not even Anglicans), and all see the superiority of state and the benefits of secularism. Sure that in Henry's case it meant that people did not approve of the resulting Church, but that did not mean that confiscating all Church lands was in any way wrong. (Plus, every Protestant denomination that made itself heard not just in the lower echalons - so, Anabaptists excluded - has had its Henry, be him a monarch or a burgher gathering).

The term "Protestant" is applied largely for historical reasons, and in no way reflects the doctrinal differences and incompatibility among the various sects so termed. For example orthodox Calvinists referred to themselves as simply Christians or "the religion" and everything outside their faith, including the vast majority of Lutherans especially conciliarists like Melanchthon, as no different, salvation-wise, from a Papist or a Muslim or a polytheist Hindu. SUch is the uncompromising clarity adopted by the various religious movements during the 16th and 17th centuries, which defies simple categorization as "Catholic vs. Protestant".

I agree. Give me credit: I did not oversimplify.

Luther and Calvin were both eloquent theologians whose works are labors of faith, and it is unusual that a non-Christian like you would convince yourself that 16th century Catholicism is built on sound doctrinal ground while contemporaneous Lutheranism or Calvinism is not. All religions are based on articles of faith, and it is odd for any non-believing, neutral observer to say who is more right about salvation, heaven, and hell.

There is no duty for religious doctrine of any sort to be "reasonable." Blind faith in a particular doctrine is the starting point of any theology. Luther established "salvation through Gods grace" as his starting point doctrine, while the Catholic Church defined "salvation through faith combined with works" as its starting point and fundamental doctrine. It is futile to argue who is more "complete" or "reasonable" or "correct".

I did not say that. I refered to intrinsic logic, i.e. being able to say something here that does not go against something there. Coherence, mainly. I am not implying that any is real, or with more chances of being real. I ask wether what is said respects the premises of the argument. Predestination and the absolute liberty left to God do make perfect sense. But, if they do, the need to argue for them, the mere sense in attesting and checking their validity, the purpose of the Faith (and not just the Church) are of no consequence. Sure, Reform may have thought otherwise: but what I see as the main trend in Reform is a desperate need to reconcile Man with religious texts, to the point where they forgot to argue for the meaning of Man in such a system.

bump.

I think it is common sense for a believer to obey the scholarly authority of the Church personified. I think it makes all the sense in the world for a monk (which is what the Jesuits were). I think it is more than imperative for a missionary (which is what Ignatius was).
It also makes all the sense in the world that a Calvinist truly passionate about his religion should believe in predestination. If Catholics may submit to powers that be, why do you single out for criticism Protestants who lived for the doctrines of Luther or Calvin?

It was about political powers. The main argument about Catholicism's "evils" in the world (an analysis common to Luther, Henry VIII and Stalin) is that it is multinational and para-statal.
Luther's main argument about the Catholic Church was based on his particular theological findings From reading his works and knowing the circumstances of his life, there is no doubt that Luther was passionately religious. That greedy princes rushed to assist him did not change this. In Henry and Stalin's case the greed they display is nothing unusual for a national leader. Few things in history has ever not been about political power, and the genuinely faithful Counterreformation itself served an important purpose which is increasing the political influence of the Pope and Catholic states. Henry's early writings against Martin Luther reflects his desire to use the static Catholic hierarchy as a control mechanism of peasants. The circumstances of his divorce ushered in the English Reformation, but we should not forget that the reason Clement VII refused Henry his annulment is also mostly political; Spain had invaded the Papal States in the past decade and it was not advisable for the Holy See to again alienate the powerful Spanish king by breaking up the marriage between his daughter and Henry. It is extremely difficult to say who is better or worse in such a morally ambiguous environment.

Sorry, but that is what gives an extra character and intellectual strength. That is also what made it raise its voice on issues that were of common interest (from the working man's condition in Victorian times, all the way to the Holocaust) with several times the power of any Protestant denomination.

The Pope lacked intellectual coherence or moral credibility prior to the breakdown of the Papal STates and the concurrent first Vatican Council. This is because as a major temporal prince in Italy, the Pope inevitably, and always, succumbed to political intrigues, frequently against fellow Catholic nations - thus debasing his credibility as a moral voice for a unified worldwide Roman communion.

For centuries few states acknowledged the Pope's authority to issue a serious political decree, due to the Papal States' history of political ruthlessness that was no different from Frederick of Saxony's unprincipled machinations. The Popes were realists; they were fully aware that their moral credibility was simply not there as long as the Holy See jealously guarded its function as a state, with all the cold Bismarckian diplomacy associated with any state. Therefore the Popes never bothered to make any morally weighty statementes, and the bulk of social activism in the Catholic church was grassroots level initiatives during this era (in the tradition of minor clerics like las Casas), and there were no impressive top-down directives and statements frmo Rome itself.

Of course, after the 19th century, the Popes moral stature logically increased when he was no longer an inherently unprincipled head of a large nation with a sizeable army and prestigious navy. A grey eminence like Leo XIII can issue an impressive statement of humane Catholic social values in the age of industrialization, but it is absurd to imagine a profound statement like that coming from a late 16th century Pope like Gregory XIII, who is too busy crushing peasant rebellions southern Italy. Even more absurd is to picture Rerum Novarum authored by the hand of Julius II; he would be far more interested in conquering Venice. Your post-Vatican Council idealized portrait of the Catholic Church is highly anachronistic in discussing the Reformation era. The universally morally authoritative character of the Holy See largely comes from its reaction to post-Napoleonic nationalism and not from its reaction to the protestant Reformation.

Finally, the very assumption that the pre 19th century Catholicism was multinational and 'para statal' is incorrect. The most populous Catholic Church in Europe - that of France - doctrinally objected to the concept of trans-national political activism by Rome. The French "Gallican" Church's position was codified by the Declaration of the Clergy of France (1682), giving the French king near-absolute power over the Catholic Church in France, in terms of investiture, and the French monarch also proposed a virtual guarantee that the Pope can never excommunicate him or any of his government. This fairly reeks of Anglicanism but was accepted into canon tradition de facto by the Pope until it was finally declared a heresy in 1870 council.

Actually, I see nothing wrong in "overriding senses". It was illustrative of a dogma that wanted to be bullet-proof, and not relative. Lutheranism would come out with the same concept. Or is it: "No, we do not see things in the same way or the same light, we cannot agree on anything, we accept no one to come and tell us what it is we should all be trying to see, but we stick together 'cause we're not Catholics." Wait, that just might be the main feature of Protestant Churches - and when something does move so that they disagree without a way back, they go and found new Churches. And that's how you get the 40 000 denominations out there.
If it is your personal opinion that there should be one religion and not 40,000 then I won't argue with you because it really doesn't matter to me. the apparent unity of Catholicism and apparently muddled mass of Protestant sects based on alliance of convenience has a logical explanation, and at another glance Catholics are as disunited as Protestants, and bicker amongst themselves just as often. The catholic unity owes mainly to the overwhelming monopoly power granted to the church by the Roman Empire, and this solidifed so that even though the empire fell the church sustained itself through force, coercion, as well as peaceful and diplomatic means. The Protestants simply could not maintain unity, because they don't have the infrastructure , and traditions of the Catholic church. Rome or Madrid can send inquisitors at any sign of heresy but nothing will stop a minor sect from breaking away from a Protestant church that is just a few decades old. Certainly someone as singleminded and ruthlesly violent as Calvin, if he had control of something with the magnitude of the CHurch's security apparatus, would have easily enforced his views on many many more millions.

Secondly the Catholic community of states was goverened by political considereations too, and disunity is bound to occur between two rival Catholic kings. This can be seen in France's alliance with the Protestant Union during the 30 yrs War, and the fact that the French church (controlled by the French King) refused to submit to the Council of Trent for 300 years. The counterreformation simply did not happen in France, and France's Protestants were dealt with in terms of the secular monarch extending more and more authority upon his farflung subjects, and not as some religiouus crusade.

And Predestination is just a bewilderingly un-Christian concept. It's just grotesque.
For a professed non Christian that is certainly a out of character opinion... your Catholic partisanship not withstanding, there is no reason to say Predestination is any more "grotesque" or "bewildering" than the immaculate conception of Mary, the virgin birth of Jesus, or any other Christian concept, whether derived from the bibliocentric tradition as in the case of Calvinism, or derived from the christocentric tradition as is the case of Catholicism and East Orthodoxy.

Is Nestorianism un-Christian? What about Monophysitism? Is the refusal of the Constantinople Patriarchate to submit to Rome un-Christian? All of these creeds, including Orthodox autocephaly, Catholic ultramontanism, and Calvinist predestination, are extremely influential in the internal development of Christianity... calling it grotesque does not help the discussion.

No, I'm very aware of them. But, as I have said it, none of them were Catholics (not even Anglicans), and all see the superiority of state and the benefits of secularism. Sure that in Henry's case it meant that people did not approve of the resulting Church, but that did not mean that confiscating all Church lands was in any way wrong. (Plus, every Protestant denomination that made itself heard not just in the lower echalons - so, Anabaptists excluded - has had its Henry, be him a monarch or a burgher gathering).
No nation was ever secular in this era. Religion was used for political purposes and politics advanced religion. The Catholic Church also never had sovereign power over any state except for the Papal States. It was up to the kings and queens to determine the role of the Catholic Church in their land, and the opportunism of most Catholic kings was no different than most Protestant ones. Felipe II conveniently used Catholicism to excuse his expulsion of the Morisques and Marranos, while the French bishops, completely in the pocket of the King, always insisted on French royal supremacy over the church and refuting the idea of Papal Infalibilty. Papal infallibility itself was of course only formally codified in the 19th century vatican council.

I agree. Give me credit: I did not oversimplify.
In a way. Instead of asking how Protestants can justify the shameless opportunism of Henry VIII, it is worthwhile to note that Calvinists came closer to destroying Henry's legacy than anyone. Amid the unprincipled mass of political Protestants there were plenty of doctrinally-minded Christians who do not sell out their strict beliefs. And amid the unprincipled mass of political Catholics, the uncompromising Counter-reformation movement was a noble exception.

The fact is that Luther was against the practice of what was considered piety, just as well as he was against corruption. He did not approve of any tenant of Catholic ideology, which meant that he saw no redeeming unless the Church was to give up several major aspects of it's practice, and none of them would we consider necessarily corrupt.
That is beside the point. I don't think that for purposes of this discussion, there is any objective reason to criticize Luther's his characteristic theology any more than we are criticizing Jesus for his doctrinal opposition to 1st century Pharisaic Judaism. The bureaucratic and financial corruption in the Church fueled spport for Lutheranism among princes and peasants, and that is what is pertinent.

It would've been non-sensical for me to say that they existed only in the North. The point was that Luther was not adverse to this type of behaviour if it justifyed the ends of his dogma. He did not even consider that corruption, since the Church was to have no property. It was ok, of course, for a German prince, Luther's careful guards from the long hand of the Emperor, to become richer. You see where I'm going with this?
As I've said, political intrigues were the rule, whether a state is Catholic or Protestant. I;'ve also addressed the corruption point. It is extremely difficult to look at the mass of information about this age and conclusively praise one side and condemn the other.

The Church was in no way able to deal with many of its problems. How was it to do that between the Schism and Chales V, passing through the degenaracy of the office under the Humanist Prince-Popes?
Instead of plunging itself into imperialistic schemes in northern Italy, the Papal States could spent its resources to improve the discipline of the Catholic communion. Internal reform movements already began among local Catholic clerics, and instead of explorign the ideas of men like Savonorola, Pope Julius II stamped out all windows of opportunity in order to concentrate on ultimately disastrous military adventures. The humanist prince popes brought the Protestant Reformation upon themselves, and the Luther;s opportunistic princely protectors look downright tame compared to the corruption rampant in the Church.

But you do not mention the facy that there was a "Devotio Moderna", a Religious Humanism, an "Oratory of Divine Love", several new paradigms of piety within the Franciscans and Dominicans; an the corruption was common knowledge, in its most intimate details - alas, the structure was paralized by precisely the aggressive interference of outsiders (from the captivity in Avignon onwards).
The Church has to take responsibiltiy for its actions too. The 12th century papal states' excessive involvement in politics certainly left a bad taste in everyone's mouth, and after the captivity the late 15th century Popes were indisputably decadent and powerhungry. There was little attempt for selfimprovement in that age, outside interference or not.

And the Inquisition did not "exterminate". While the trials resulted in the deaths of many people, something like 2 in 3 people would get no punisment (!) after arrest in the period that you call "getting their act together" in Spain. In fact, the number of people convicted of anything by the Inquisiton was always much less than the cliche asserts, and it did nothing but decrease since the 1530. This does not mean I condone it.

The threat of death was enough to convince most people. Furthermore the Inquisition did not decrease in its influence, especially in Spain, althoguh in later centuries targets were more likely to be alleged witches and political enemies of the crown insteaed of bona fide heretics. Certainly the Protestants during this time engaged in equally ruthless measures, with expulsions, executions, descration of icons, and mssacres of Catholics,Jews, Anabaptists, and other non-conformist sects.

I did not say that. I refered to intrinsic logic, i.e. being able to say something here that does not go against something there. Coherence, mainly. I am not implying that any is real, or with more chances of being real. I ask wether what is said respects the premises of the argument. Predestination and the absolute liberty left to God do make perfect sense. But, if they do, the need to argue for them, the mere sense in attesting and checking their validity, the purpose of the Faith (and not just the Church) are of no consequence.
I don't know what you mean by "checking their validity." Calvinism's coherence is rather clear to me. They attribute everything to God - the existence of doubters on earth are part of God's "unknowable plan." Conversion and preaching is part of the plan. Blind faith like that is no different, no better or worse, than a blind faith in the Church's teachings.

Sure, Reform may have thought otherwise: but what I see as the main trend in Reform is a desperate need to reconcile Man with religious texts, to the point where they forgot to argue for the meaning of Man in such a system.
The Reformed movement will probably agree with you, and proudly. Although not with charged words like "desperate need." To the Calvinist God's omnipotence overwhelms any individual experience and man's only meaning is to conform to God's word as laid down in the Bible.

not reading all that theological stuff

they were both great

first. the protestant revolution is the reason fro the counter reformation

the counter reformation put the catholic church back on track.

thirdly, the protestant reformation allows for freedom of belief and alternative views of christianity that bring more people to the belief in jesus

win/win

I mean, Middle Ages are full of heresies who've been eradicated, in many way, from Spanish Inquisition to excommunication. In a certain way, Luther could have been found guilty of heresy (In fact it's not impossible that he has been found guilty of that).


Interestingly the most heresies took place outside Spain, outside the Spanish Inquisitions jurisdiction, and before it was set up IIRC. Also they were pretty much set up at the tail end of the Medieval period.

I'd recommend Timothy Ware's book _The Orthodox Church_

Hmm, it's in the university library so I might take a look at it, though I do have essays to do.

Thanks for the suggestion, and damn you for the dilemma you have put me in :p


I think Martin Luther could have become one of the Church's greatest saints.

But instead he became one of the gargoyles on a church I used to go to :)

Olara'] that doesn't excuse the acts of corruption that were commited by popes, priests, and other people who claimed to be Catholic.


Interesting turn of phrase that.

Would the Counter-Reformation have happened without the Reformation, or would the Catholic Church have continued on its existing path?

I would have to say the Reformation was "better".

Almost exactly like a question I got at A-level.

But there are plenty of books out there which argue a far more accurate term for the Counter-Reformation iis the Catholic-Reformation. Historians who argue it should be the Catholic-Reformation tend to point out that the Church started its period of reform well before Luther appeared on the scene.

Unfortunately it has been several years since I studied this topic so I cannot suggest and historians or books like The Archregimancy.


Also, John Ball pwns Martin Luther ;)

It also makes all the sense in the world that a Calvinist truly passionate about his religion should believe in predestination. If Catholics may submit to powers that be, why do you single out for criticism Protestants who lived for the doctrines of Luther or Calvin?

The powers that be are political. Catholicism did not service them - if anything, it was the political structure.

Luther's main argument about the Catholic Church was based on his particular theological findings From reading his works and knowing the circumstances of his life, there is no doubt that Luther was passionately religious.

Passionately religious, but practical and anti-mystical. He rejected any notion of spiritual exercise and more symbolic interpretation of the biblical text (which was, as well, a gut reaction: mysticism was the characteristic of Catholic reform, not conservatism; it was the result of Humanist, Erasmian, inside-reform to say that the Bible is ambiguous, which it is - Jerome or no Jerome).

That greedy princes rushed to assist him did not change this. In Henry and Stalin's case the greed they display is nothing unusual for a national leader. Few things in history has ever not been about political power, and the genuinely faithful Counterreformation itself served an important purpose which is increasing the political influence of the Pope and Catholic states. Henry's early writings against Martin Luther reflects his desire to use the static Catholic hierarchy as a control mechanism of peasants. The circumstances of his divorce ushered in the English Reformation, but we should not forget that the reason Clement VII refused Henry his annulment is also mostly political; Spain had invaded the Papal States in the past decade and it was not advisable for the Holy See to again alienate the powerful Spanish king by breaking up the marriage between his daughter and Henry. It is extremely difficult to say who is better or worse in such a morally ambiguous environment.

Sure, but anti-thesis should at least try and be better than thesis.

The Pope lacked intellectual coherence or moral credibility prior to the breakdown of the Papal STates and the concurrent first Vatican Council. This is because as a major temporal prince in Italy, the Pope inevitably, and always, succumbed to political intrigues, frequently against fellow Catholic nations - thus debasing his credibility as a moral voice for a unified worldwide Roman communion.

Not inevitably. And, in this sense, Luther improved nothing. Lutheranism fought at the forefront of the new intrigues, and then became the source of new bloody wars. It takes two to tango. The solution that Luther had for preserving the Church was the more shadowy thing, in the long term: he made his church bow to the civil authority and society as believers. In my oppinion, this meant that Lutheranism abandondened the necessary conflict of dogma (any dogma) and sinning world, eventually leading to the brutal version of the burgher society that gave us Social Darwinism.

For centuries few states acknowledged the Pope's authority to issue a serious political decree, due to the Papal States' history of political ruthlessness that was no different from Frederick of Saxony's unprincipled machinations. The Popes were realists; they were fully aware that their moral credibility was simply not there as long as the Holy See jealously guarded its function as a state, with all the cold Bismarckian diplomacy associated with any state. Therefore the Popes never bothered to make any morally weighty statementes, and the bulk of social activism in the Catholic church was grassroots level initiatives during this era (in the tradition of minor clerics like las Casas), and there were no impressive top-down directives and statements frmo Rome itself.
Of course, after the 19th century, the Popes moral stature logically increased when he was no longer an inherently unprincipled head of a large nation with a sizeable army and prestigious navy. A grey eminence like Leo XIII can issue an impressive statement of humane Catholic social values in the age of industrialization, but it is absurd to imagine a profound statement like that coming from a late 16th century Pope like Gregory XIII, who is too busy crushing peasant rebellions southern Italy. Even more absurd is to picture Rerum Novarum authored by the hand of Julius II; he would be far more interested in conquering Venice. Your post-Vatican Council idealized portrait of the Catholic Church is highly anachronistic in discussing the Reformation era. The universally morally authoritative character of the Holy See largely comes from its reaction to post-Napoleonic nationalism and not from its reaction to the protestant Reformation.

I am aware of what the institution meant during the age, from the Realpolitik to the yoke that the Spanish wanted to place on it. But, even there, you have two characteristics that Luther was quick to ignore: the fact that the Church still had a body outside its politics (and it mattered that the Church carried politics for itself, the evil in them being largely determined by their precariousness after Avignon) and the fact that revendications against the Church had been voiced inside the Church (and were to keep on being voiced and heard: for example, the Augustine order held an un-orthodox view on salvation, and one almost Lutheran, up until the Jansenite crisis).

Finally, the very assumption that the pre 19th century Catholicism was multinational and 'para statal' is incorrect. The most populous Catholic Church in Europe - that of France - doctrinally objected to the concept of trans-national political activism by Rome. The French "Gallican" Church's position was codified by the Declaration of the Clergy of France (1682), giving the French king near-absolute power over the Catholic Church in France, in terms of investiture, and the French monarch also proposed a virtual guarantee that the Pope can never excommunicate him or any of his government. This fairly reeks of Anglicanism but was accepted into canon tradition de facto by the Pope until it was finally declared a heresy in 1870 council.

Gallicanism fell with Jansenism, mainly. Its exercise was ever-contested by Rome (and the immense presence of the Orders, with their total education system, which monopolised the education of all in the ecclesiastiacal hierarchy). The monarchs named bishops out of what they had: priests made in seminaries (well, except for Henry IV's audacity when he named a Protestant head of three dioceses), many of them representing the as-important-as-Gallicanism doctrine of Ultramontanism. There was a stalemate up until the "Constitution civile de clerge", and the condemnation of Gallicanism followed completely different events: La Mennais had decided to equate liberalism with ultramontanism, and the popes decided not to allow the ambiguity to go on. At no point did the Church lose France, at no point did nationalism overwhelm the Church.

If it is your personal opinion that there should be one religion and not 40,000 then I won't argue with you because it really doesn't matter to me.

It doesn't to me either. But it should be within the expectations (not to say demands) of Christianity.

the apparent unity of Catholicism and apparently muddled mass of Protestant sects based on alliance of convenience has a logical explanation, and at another glance Catholics are as disunited as Protestants, and bicker amongst themselves just as often. The catholic unity owes mainly to the overwhelming monopoly power granted to the church by the Roman Empire, and this solidifed so that even though the empire fell the church sustained itself through force, coercion, as well as peaceful and diplomatic means. The Protestants simply could not maintain unity, because they don't have the infrastructure , and traditions of the Catholic church. Rome or Madrid can send inquisitors at any sign of heresy but nothing will stop a minor sect from breaking away from a Protestant church that is just a few decades old. Certainly someone as singleminded and ruthlesly violent as Calvin, if he had control of something with the magnitude of the CHurch's security apparatus, would have easily enforced his views on many many more millions.

This may be another debate altogether, To shorten it: Christianity is a history of tral and failure. It is dead clear that the original message was catered to the illitarate, and that its generic aspect in the IVth century would have little to do with what is considered norm today. 300s, they have to make a dogma - and they do improve on the ambiguity, but then comes Arius and says "I've worked it on paper, and it doesn't work". Each redefinition, each nuance added and rejected by Luther has had an intrinsic purpose. Each one has contributed to a message that established the unity more than any institution or collective pressure. Calvin would just not have worked within this tradition. Any of the Reformers after Hus and Wycliff rejected the Church on visceral proof, as something that had failed on principle.

Secondly the Catholic community of states was goverened by political considereations too, and disunity is bound to occur between two rival Catholic kings. This can be seen in France's alliance with the Protestant Union during the 30 yrs War, and the fact that the French church (controlled by the French King) refused to submit to the Council of Trent for 300 years. The counterreformation simply did not happen in France, and France's Protestants were dealt with in terms of the secular monarch extending more and more authority upon his farflung subjects, and not as some religiouus crusade.

Again, what you should say is: "the counterreformation simply did not happen to France's ruling family", and only up to the 1620s or so. What had happened in fact is precisely against your point. The clergy declared itself autonomous from the King's decisions in 1615. The kings did not pursue the matter. There is the case of Louis XIII granting huge powers to the Jesuits, and the Parlement in Paris reacting with a lot of noise; there was speculation that Louis had become a member of the Marial Congregation - he probably wasn't. The Jesuits educated and dictated developpments. Sure, the relationship could be quite icy, but the Kings needed the Church to mute the rebellious nobility and to give them a purpose in fighting the Huguenots (sure they were allied with Sweden, but the Protestants in France were being kicked all over the place after Richelieu took La Rochelle).

For a professed non Christian that is certainly a out of character opinion... your Catholic partisanship not withstanding, there is no reason to say Predestination is any more "grotesque" or "bewildering" than the immaculate conception of Mary, the virgin birth of Jesus, or any other Christian concept, whether derived from the bibliocentric tradition as in the case of Calvinism, or derived from the christocentric tradition as is the case of Catholicism and East Orthodoxy.
Is Nestorianism un-Christian? What about Monophysitism? Is the refusal of the Constantinople Patriarchate to submit to Rome un-Christian? All of these creeds, including Orthodox autocephaly, Catholic ultramontanism, and Calvinist predestination, are extremely influential in the internal development of Christianity... calling it grotesque does not help the discussion.

Well, my oppinion is that it goes against the essential point of Christianity as meaning placed in individual salvation. It was with this in mind that I called it grotesque.

No nation was ever secular in this era.

Secularism in its strict sense: confiscation of Church's property.

Religion was used for political purposes and politics advanced religion. The Catholic Church also never had sovereign power over any state except for the Papal States. It was up to the kings and queens to determine the role of the Catholic Church in their land, and the opportunism of most Catholic kings was no different than most Protestant ones. Felipe II conveniently used Catholicism to excuse his expulsion of the Morisques and Marranos, while the French bishops, completely in the pocket of the King, always insisted on French royal supremacy over the church and refuting the idea of Papal Infalibilty. Papal infallibility itself was of course only formally codified in the 19th century vatican council.

We agree.

In a way. Instead of asking how Protestants can justify the shameless opportunism of Henry VIII, it is worthwhile to note that Calvinists came closer to destroying Henry's legacy than anyone.

In retrospect, yes. That doesn't make Henry's gesture less of a condoned and approved as such. Better the state, that is the common attitude in all Reformed dogmas.

Amid the unprincipled mass of political Protestants there were plenty of doctrinally-minded Christians who do not sell out their strict beliefs. And amid the unprincipled mass of political Catholics, the uncompromising Counter-reformation movement was a noble exception.

Good point. However, I see the C-R stance as the rule in Catholicism, and what was depicted as higher moral ground as oversimplification in Protestant discourse. But that's just me.

That is beside the point. I don't think that for purposes of this discussion, there is any objective reason to criticize Luther's his characteristic theology any more than we are criticizing Jesus for his doctrinal opposition to 1st century Pharisaic Judaism. The bureaucratic and financial corruption in the Church fueled spport for Lutheranism among princes and peasants, and that is what is pertinent.

I've been saying that to stress that Luther would have under no means accepted the logic of reform from within. He rejected the character of Church thinking and exegesis. So, his stance on corruption was biased.
No, noy at all the peasants. The anabaptist rebellion received its bad press and ruthless suppression from Reformed hands. The princes and the burgers - judging from case to case. That's XVIth century Lutheranism in a nutshell.

As I've said, political intrigues were the rule, whether a state is Catholic or Protestant. I;'ve also addressed the corruption point. It is extremely difficult to look at the mass of information about this age and conclusively praise one side and condemn the other.

I hope I did not appear to be paying useless lip-service to Catholicism. My purpose was to say that Lutheranism was not The Solution, and that Catholicism was even less of The Problem. Luther took the easy way out.

Instead of plunging itself into imperialistic schemes in northern Italy, the Papal States could spent its resources to improve the discipline of the Catholic communion. Internal reform movements already began among local Catholic clerics, and instead of explorign the ideas of men like Savonorola, Pope Julius II stamped out all windows of opportunity in order to concentrate on ultimately disastrous military adventures. The humanist prince popes brought the Protestant Reformation upon themselves, and the Luther;s opportunistic princely protectors look downright tame compared to the corruption rampant in the Church.

I've expressed my view on that.

The Church has to take responsibiltiy for its actions too. The 12th century papal states' excessive involvement in politics certainly left a bad taste in everyone's mouth, and after the captivity the late 15th century Popes were indisputably decadent and powerhungry. There was little attempt for selfimprovement in that age, outside interference or not.

What I see is a lot of attempts. They are usually ignored in retrospect. You have Geert Groote, you have Thomas a Kempis, Erasmus, you have the Oratory. You have Dominicans, Franciscans and, later, Capucins.

The threat of death was enough to convince most people. Furthermore the Inquisition did not decrease in its influence, especially in Spain, althoguh in later centuries targets were more likely to be alleged witches and political enemies of the crown insteaed of bona fide heretics. Certainly the Protestants during this time engaged in equally ruthless measures, with expulsions, executions, descration of icons, and mssacres of Catholics,Jews, Anabaptists, and other non-conformist sects.

The Inquisition was not dedicated to the destruction of heretics, but to that of heresy. Not just a nuance: a different reality. When the Protestants engaged in suppresion, they did it from a much less remediable stance. There was a need for establishing that you can't go back, basically.

I don't know what you mean by "checking their validity." Calvinism's coherence is rather clear to me. They attribute everything to God - the existence of doubters on earth are part of God's "unknowable plan." Conversion and preaching is part of the plan. Blind faith like that is no different, no better or worse, than a blind faith in the Church's teachings.

The purpose of being gets lost in the process. People are already chosen, already weighed. Precisely that everything is a confirmation: the one that believes has no need to doubt (compare with believing that "a crow is white" because the Church says so - a rather astute judgement on the justifying of doubt in the World, and not a confirmation of privilege. As such, Calvinism was the base of more "scientific" prejudice - the notion that some people are just born wrong, that sin is not even a disease, but rather a birth scar).

The Reformed movement will probably agree with you, and proudly. Although not with charged words like "desperate need." To the Calvinist God's omnipotence overwhelms any individual experience and man's only meaning is to conform to God's word as laid down in the Bible.

Let's agree that there is no need for religion itself is this can be read as its core meaning. Plus, when coupled with predestination, it can only lead to insurmountable dogmatic boundries between the believer in this and the believer in something else. Bigotry is a requirement, not an accident.

I'm going to take the coward's way out and say that I don't have nearly enough time to deal with that right now since I'm typing this from work, but I'd recommend Timothy Ware's book _The Orthodox Church_ for anyone who wants a very different perspective on this thread's main question.
I'm baptised Romanian Orthodox and I soooooo not agree with you.

bump

Alright, hopefully you will put up with my long ramblings which consists of several short essays that took all afternoon to right. Probably the longest post ever.:D
The powers that be are political. Catholicism did not service them - if anything, it was the political structure.
Catholicism and Counterr-eformation did get tied up in power struggles and politics. I will get to this in more detail further down, in discussing the use of Catholicism as a political tool. The Coutnerreformation sought to transcend nationality and brign Catholics closer together, but this ideal was quickly submerged in dishonorable political intrigues among both the non-Counterreformed (France) who of course felt absolutely no compunction in persecuting fellow Catholics, or the ostensibly Counterreformed (Spain and Austria) who proposed religious catholicity as a justification for political catholicity under Habsburg overlordship, i.e. imperialism against the Catholic and Protestant alike.
Passionately religious, but practical and anti-mystical. He rejected any notion of spiritual exercise and more symbolic interpretation of the biblical text (which was, as well, a gut reaction: mysticism was the characteristic of Catholic reform, not conservatism; it was the result of Humanist, Erasmian, inside-reform to say that the Bible is ambiguous, which it is - Jerome or no Jerome).
True, Luther had a visceral discomfort in the cloister, but as an agnostic on this matter, I think his almost mechanical biblical literalism is no better or worse or more unusual than Catholic musings and doctrine.
Sure, but anti-thesis should at least try and be better than thesis.
I don't know which doctrine is true in the grand scheme of things, but from all the historical evidence, the practical execution of Lutheranism and Counter-reformed Catholicism is by and large the same - there are truly virtuous and genuine followers of these confessions, there are opportunistic exploiters of religion, there is everything in between.

In terms of practical consequences, pre-Reformation Catholicism, the Reformation itself, and the Counter-reformation were not distinguished from each other. The violent and political strife remained as vigorous as ever; you have not shown how one religion of this time could be better than the other. I will elaborate on this throughout the post.
Not inevitably. And, in this sense, Luther improved nothing. Lutheranism fought at the forefront of the new intrigues, and then became the source of new bloody wars. It takes two to tango.
Humans fought at the forefront of the new intrigues, not Lutheranism. It is uninformed to suggest that Lutheranism ushered in an era of unusual violence or corruption. Corruption and greed had caused bloody wars since the beginning of time and the pursuit of power will remain as unabated no matter what religion is being practiced. People have fought wars since the dawn of civilization and if Lutheranism did not exist and did not justify new wars, clever statesmen would undoubtedly have found something to justify their imperialist greed.
The fundamental problems with Europe at this time were not that between Protestants and Catholics, but was a problem with the entire balance of power being threatened by an increasingly powerful and centralized Habsburg empire. THe 16th and 17th century wars, in particular the 30 Years War, were inevitable, if you look at it as the ultimate and decisive battle between the Habsburgs and the rest of Europe. Because in the 16th and 17th century the overriding theme of European politics was the growth of Habsburg power and the rest of Europe's reaction to this growth. The importance of religious politics had been declining for quite some time now, and although a country would make a purely symbolic attempt to ally with co-religionists, all the kings and princes of Europe were far more motivated by pure greed for land and power without paying overriding attention to religious considerations. This pattern is illustrated in events like the brutal Italian Wars perpetrated by Catholics against Catholics and devastating northern Italy even while the Lutheran controversy was wracking Germany, or when the new Protestant nations engaged in fatal and violent intrigues against fellow Protestants in nearly any princeling dispute of the era.

THe habsburgs had many political enemies of all religions - it is clear that the Saxon princes protected Luther it was only to make their countries more independent from the Empire and not out of religious devotion, but this illuminates the political rivarly between the Empire and its independent-minded vassals that had resulted in several civil wars and power struggles throughout the medieval period from the moment Charlemagne died. The German princes tried any scheme to distance themselves from the Holy Roman Emperor, and when Luther came along, they took advantage of the opportunity to escape Imperial authority; the religious opportunism here is fundamentally no different from the power-hungry opportunism of the Habsburgs, who had been consolidating his power over the local magnates. Habsburg power is most notably expressed by the eminent pre-Reformation H.R. Emperor Frederick III Habsburg, who repetaedly imposed feudal taxes on his vassals to fund his ultimately successful intrigues and imperialist wars against the the frontier Catholics in Bohemia and Hungary. Certainly the Empire was not some ideal consisting of the righteous Catholic imperial father and his vassal sons who maliciously rebelled and disobeyed. The Emperors' greed should be considered in any discussion of his vassals' greed; the selfishness of people and states transcends all religion and culture. Even the Counter-reformation was used to justify Imperial centralization and intrigues against Catholic German princelings. And of course the Catholic French were completely obsessed with destroying Habsburg power years before the Reformation, having watched the Habsburgs slowly surround the country over the past few decades. King Francois I failed to defeat Spain, Francois' heirs failed to defeat Spain (due to the French religious civil war), but France tried again and again until Spain was finally beaten through Richelieu's and Mazarin's ferocious anti-Habsburg policy.

Even if the Reformation didnt' happen at all, sooner or later, the Habsburgs would have to confront all of these enemies, and bloodshed would be inevitable. Austria's own Catholic HRE vassal-allies defected the Habsburgs when the Emperor attempted to centralize authority over the course of the Thirty Years war, thus proving that self-preservation and power were the overwhelming concerns, while peaceable reconciliation and religious piety were distant pipe dreams. Most notably Bavaria defected from the Habsburgs, and for the next 200 years Bavaria was a reliable ally of France.

Again, all this contributes to the pan-European wars' inevitability regardless of whether Augsburg solved any religious issues. The end of the 30 Years War or any comparable hypothetical war would have to resolve the balance of power issue sooner or later. History shows us that after more than 150 years of systematic anti-Habsburg warfare starting in the 1490s, Habsburg power was destroyed, and France would emerge as the next great power that everyone loves to hate, and the next 200 years was a series of systematic anti-French warfare.
The solution that Luther had for preserving the Church was the more shadowy thing, in the long term: he made his church bow to the civil authority and society as believers. In my oppinion, this meant that Lutheranism abandondened the necessary conflict of dogma (any dogma) and sinning world, eventually leading to the brutal version of the burgher society that gave us Social Darwinism.
Lutheranism never became a relativistic religion, and evil always existed in their worldview. Even though I don't know the nitty gritty details and statistics on sociological theories of northern capitalism, it is clear that individualistic social darwinism, whatever its undeniably complex influences, has ill effects matched by feudalistic social stratification that heierarchical Catholic religion has promoted. Falangism, and Catholic corporatism where a local church (often sanctioned by the Pope) serves a particular state and landed interests by teaching the masses to accept their station in life, have fostered brutal societies that promote tremendous inequality and alienate the vulnerable. Interestingly both northern capitalists (like Germany) and Catholic corporatist states (like Mexico or historical Brazil) have both attempted to correct their social problems through nearly similar communalistic ideologies; in Europe this adjustment takes the form of Social Democracy (which developed from secular Marxism and in reaction to rampantly self-centered Social Darwinian ideology) while in Latin America Liberation Theology seeks to correct hierarchical injustices. Thereofre the presence of Social Darwisnism is mirrored by similar developments in Catholicism and other world cultures in general; I think Social Darwinism could just be the particular Protestant manifestation of greedy self-justification that is inevtiable in any school of thought including Catholicsm.
Secondly, religion has bowed to civil authority for centuries and Catholicism is certailny not an ecception. National churches, both PRotestant and Catholic, were instruments the monarch's policies as much as an army or navy is. In Catholic corporatist nations like Francoist Spain, conservative 19th century Mexico, or Brazil, the church was a highly effective conduit of government propaganda, promoting social stratification by emphasizing religion as primarily oriented toward a better afterlife ("Jesus, Our Redeemer") instead of emphasizing "Jesus, Our Liberator" and the Church as a liberating force on this world from spiritual and physical oppression (as is the Liberation Theology view). Past Catholic churches effectively preached the national governments' position, including promoting a war against the enemy even if the enemy is Catholic.
Only recently has this changed; as witnessed by the Papacy's opposition to the Iraq War even though Italy is a strong supporter of the war effort, or the Anglican Primate's opposition to the Iraq war even though England is of course invovled in the war. THe full divestment of spiritual from temporal interests have occurred only extremely recently in Chrsitian history, and among nearly al sects including Catholic and Protesants.
I am aware of what the institution meant during the age, from the Realpolitik to the yoke that the Spanish wanted to place on it. But, even there, you have two characteristics that Luther was quick to ignore: the fact that the Church still had a body outside its politics (and it mattered that the Church carried politics for itself, the evil in them being largely determined by their precariousness after Avignon) and the fact that revendications against the Church had been voiced inside the Church (and were to keep on being voiced and heard: for example, the Augustine order held an un-orthodox view on salvation, and one almost Lutheran, up until the Jansenite crisis).
The body of the Church outside politics was simply pastoral care for the people. For the Lutheran faithful evangelical religion took care of their spiritual needs.
Also, the Papacy after returning to Rome started off strongly, both in the political and moral sense. There was a sense of a new beginning, among Popes themselves and among kings and laymen; the other Christian states accorded the Papacy due respect, and were pleased that no longer was the Pope under French domination. The first few post-Avignon Popes worked hard for Christian and Catholic interests, especially in light of the Byzantine Empire's painful last years, which had a dispiriting effect on all Christians; contemporary Popes' took very seriously what they veiwed as their new moral responsibility as the only Christian patriarch independent of Islamic rule. Although not as powreful as the 11th-12th century Popes who entertained the ambition of a pan-European autocracy, both spiritual and temporal, under supreme Papal sovereignty, diplomatically the post-Avignon Popes were extremely strong and well-connected. The Popes were successful in brokering peace between Catholic monarchs and even got the French King to renounce Gallicanism (at least for a while). The problem arose when several Popes appointed family members or illegitimate sons to the governments of the Papal State’s northern Italian feudal vassals; eventually, the military, economic, and political resources of the Papal State were devoted to assisting the imperialistic ambitions of the Popes’ princely relatives, thus leading to the brutality and treachery of the late 15th century Italian Wars.

Gallicanism fell with Jansenism, mainly. Its exercise was ever-contested by Rome (and the immense presence of the Orders, with their total education system, which monopolised the education of all in the ecclesiastiacal hierarchy). The monarchs named bishops out of what they had: priests made in seminaries (well, except for Henry IV's audacity when he named a Protestant head of three dioceses), many of them representing the as-important-as-Gallicanism doctrine of Ultramontanism.

Those would be in a minority. Richelieu, in all his domestic and foreign policies, strongly affirmed the tenets of Gallican independence from Rome, and Gallicanism only increased in strength under his legacy of autocratic centralization perpetuated by his successors Cardinal Mazarin, and Louis XIV. Royal autocracy knew the usefulness of Gallicanism, as a propaganda tool to promote monarchical concetration of power, and patronized it: Jesuits and ultramontanist theologians were kept on a very short leash, while French bishops, parlements, theology faculties, all of course on the payroll and good graces of the royal treasury, defended Gallicanism against any foreign or internal dissenters. The French government censored ultramontane literature at every opportunity; in the kingdom, French Jesuits and foreign ecclesiastical visitors were encouraged to keep their mouth shut about controversial matters like these. Furthermore, most important church positions in France were granted largely for political purposes; when they were still seminarians and bishops, the famously unscrupulous pro-Swedish Cardinals Richelieu and Mazarin both owed their high ordinations to their connections with the French royal court whose recommendation to the Pope on their behalf finalized matters. The rapid advancement in hierarchy that both Richelieu and Mazarin enjoyed were highly irregular and less-than-canonical. Again, it is through their sympathy with the French monarchy, and not through any exceptional piety, that men like these were able to hold high civil and religious office in the kingdom.

Finally, Jansenism and Gallicanism were very different doctrinally, and the contrast in their practical success strongly highlights the peculiar relationship of Gallicanism with the rest of Latin Catholicism, and the relationship of France with the rest of Catholic Christendom. Jansenism directly paraleled the 16th century Refromation, and has a highly evangelical flavor that de-emphasized Catholic canon traditions and emphasized God's eternal saving grace, while Gallicanism evolved since Charlemagnes time and was really a purely political school of thought that accepted all tenets of traditional Catholic sacramental practices and was only distinguished by its bureaucratic allegiances, which were to the king of France and not the Pope. That Gallicanism should be favored by the most powerful and influential monarch in all of Europe is the sole reason for its prosperity; the Pope could not for centuries touch Gallicanism based only on political considerations. Jansenism, 18th century German Gallicanism - Febronianism, and other unorthodox schools of thought all failed because they lacked patronage from a comparably powerful secular court.

There was a stalemate up until the "Constitution civile de clerge", and the condemnation of Gallicanism followed completely different events: La Mennais had decided to equate liberalism with ultramontanism, and the popes decided not to allow the ambiguity to go on.

The demise of Gallicanism resulted from a series of momentous events that bred plenty of thinkers like La Mennais, so he was likely not indispensable to the inexroable trend toward ultramontanism in the grand scheme of things. The successful French Revolution indeed crippled Gallicanism by destroying its biggest supporter - the autocratic King. The King of France, who was the de facto governor of his domain's church in the same way that the Brithis monarch is the Supreme Governor of the Church of ENgland, supported the Gallican Church with cash, privileges, and land. When the Revolution confiscated church properties and attempted to impose rampant atheism, individualism, and paganism on the nation, the clergy became alienated wit the new government. With their former royal patron beheaded, the clergy logically looked to Rome for support and thus ultramontanism spread among the nation. People like La Mennais objected to an egalitarian and atheist-friendly state controlling the Church's finances and limiting its affairs; with the flare-ups of secular republicanism and the future of Catholic French monarchy in a precarious state during the early 19th century, the French clergy community as a whole would rather ally itself with the Pope, whose institution although not traditionally valued in France, was at least characterized by permanence as compared to the Bourbon restoration's fragility. It was feared that at any time, and such times were common in the 1800s, that the monarchy would again suddenly collapse and be replaced by a republic.

Thus the decision to end the ambiguity was in reality not the Pope exercising his will and timeless sovereign power over the Church as a whole, because such soverignty did not yet exist until the 19th century. Only when the royal soverign of the Gallican Church and its most important defender - the King - had lost his temporal authority over church matters could the Pope exercise full Papal administartive power in France, and the violent means by which the King lost his authority over his church was percipitated by the revolutionaries and not by the Roman Church. In 1868, wIth the opposition gone, the ultramontanist movement can finally make an undisputed argument against Gallicanism, resulting in this thousand- year old French tradition becoming anathema at the First Vatican Councel. It is probabl that if the Bourbon monarchy successfully crushed the Revolution early on, Gallicanism would likely survive for far longer guranteed by the survival of its monarchical patron, and French Catholicism today would possible resemble Easstern Orthodoxy in terms of canonical boundaries being co-extant with national boundaries instead of universalist political administration coming from the Vatican.

At no point did the Church lose France, at no point did nationalism overwhelm the Church.

For all practical purposes, political Christendom expired as a credible idea centuries before the Reformation time period, so whether the Church strictly speaking "lost" France to another confession is not an issue, because states have in their self-interest long functioned against the ideals and interests of Catholicism as a whole while avoiding breaking away from the Catholic communion. Where in the 12th century kings and princes still attempted to uphold the idea that the Pope and Holy Roman EMperor spoke for the political and not just the religious interests of all Christians, this concept of Christendom being a unit quickly succumbed to political realities and local jealousies. Dating to even before the 4th crusade, the Papal State's petty politicking and practice of sacramental imperialism against fellow Christians set a very bad example which encouraged Catholic nations to make war against each other without any guilt; excommunication and anathema lost their moral authority. When the Pope excomunicated enemy commanders for purely petty political reasons during the Italian Wars, it was clear to all that sacramental appearances cannot hide Papal greed, so the anathematized targets remained acceptable to fellow Crhistians. The religious prerogatives of the Catholic communion were being actively devalued and abused from within, and Catholicism therefore did lose France, if we realize that during that era, the Catholic communion itself was rendered meaningless on this earth. Francois I's or Charles V's wars against the Papal States could have thrown France and Spain into turmoil if the wars occurred in the first millenium and if the monarchs were excommunicated, but by the 16th century, the Papal office had earned such disrespect that the Popes didn't even bother with the futile sacramental maneuvering.

Also, France's peculiar Church is not as much a symptom of nationalism in the modern sense as defined around shared ethnicity and culture among populations, as much as being the consequence of royal "statism" practiced by the government. The state-oriented autocracy of France did in fact engulf the Gallican church and run counter to the general well-being of Western European Catholicism through the French monarchs' dalliances with Protestants, Muslims, and other politically convenient allies.

It doesn't to me either. But it should be within the expectations (not to say demands) of Christianity.
In any traditional Christian sect whether Catholic or not, anyone can potentially join the communion, should join the communion, anyone must join the communion if they want to go to heaven. However, those who are doctrinally incorrect cannot be part of the communion. Therefore the demands of Christianity are the same for any Christian sect - catholicity and orthodoxy. No traditional Protestant would want 39,999 heretical sects spouting falsehoods in addition to the truths promoted by his own sect. As I've stated, I think Catholicism's success in maintaining a farflung but unified communion is a result of Roman imperial patronage and not because Catholic doctrine is inhrently unifying; church history suggests that the only thing that can enforce strict long-term unity is an army, other physical power, or some form of coercion. The major reason that the Armenian church was able to maintain its independence was because Armenia was outside of the empire, and Roman authorities were not able to enforce Chalcedonic Christianity. The other monophysite heretic churches of the east maintainted their schisms too, because under the rule of the Muslims and Persians, they were away from the long arm of the European Chalecdonian authorities. The East West schism also reflected different temporal jurisdictions. Schism is inevitable in any gathering of humans, and heresies were just as prevalent in medieval Catholic Europe as in Orthodox Europe or Protestant Europe, although with dfferent long term success reflecting differences in tradtions, power structures, etc.

Again, what you should say is: "the counterreformation simply did not happen to France's ruling family", and only up to the 1620s or so. What had happened in fact is precisely against your point. The clergy declared itself autonomous from the King's decisions in 1615. The kings did not pursue the matter. There is the case of Louis XIII granting huge powers to the Jesuits, and the Parlement in Paris reacting with a lot of noise; there was speculation that Louis had become a member of the Marial Congregation - he probably wasn't. The Jesuits educated and dictated developpments. Sure, the relationship could be quite icy, but the Kings needed the Church to mute the rebellious nobility and to give them a purpose in fighting the Huguenots (sure they were allied with Sweden, but the Protestants in France were being kicked all over the place after Richelieu took La Rochelle).

I am not familar with the 1615 decision, and any decision like that would have little consequence, as they are contradicted by far more important events in French church-state relations. France, its kings, and its clery, in the 17th and 18th centuries repeatedly chipped away and wounded the very spirit of Counterreformation.

Trent's doctrinal judgents emphasized unity and discipline among Catholics and the Pope saw to it that Catholic kingdoms would transform doctrinal strength into practical action - political, economic, and military solidarity against Protestants; ultimately, the goal of reclaiming the land lost to northern Protestantism loomed large and irresistable. For a moment, it seemed as if this goal could be realized in a generation; Augsburg bought the church time and breathing space while the Jesuits and other soldiers of faith, in addition to actual national armies, were mobilized for the fight ahead. Unfortunaately it was the short-signthed greed of the Habsburgs, the greed of France, and the overriding greed of other Catholic nations, in direct alliance with the opportunistic greed of the Protestant nations, which would unravel all these plans far more effectively than the most zealous Calvin or Cromwell could by themsleves.

The early 16th century represented the pinnacle of Gallicanism, through the regencies of Richelieu and Mazarin, no less Princes of the Church yet ardent champions of French regal supremacy. Jesuits in the service of the French King were just that - in the service the king and Gallican church as administrators or bureaucrats, and not necessarily making their big ideas heard. The theory that the Society of Jesus answers only to the Pope, and ultramontanism in general, was buried in the kingdom by autocracy.

Richelieu's Huguenot policy also reflected his temporal goals, and does not suggest that he iis a religious zealot. Henry IV, the opportunistic Bourbon dynastic founder and who was baptizde a Calvinist and over the course of his life switched between Calvinism and Catholicism several times depending on the political climate, took the French throne as a Catholic when the 16th century French war of religion ended, but guaranteed Calvinist freedom of worship, thus making the French kingdom unique among western Europe in that it resolved its religious troubles through religious freedom, at least for a few generations. Henry IV's Edict of Nantes guranteeing Calvinist rights specifically stated in a clause that Calvinist will not be compelled to give up their faith, and the monarchy used its power to keep the Roman INquisition from converting Protestants in France. Richeleiu's subsequent policies, which were in reaction to rebellions of Huguenots and feudal noblemen and not a proactive concerted anti-Protestant policy, did not alter the fundamental makeup of Nantes' religious freedoms. After he reduced La Rochelle, Richeliu forbade Huguenots from political activity and holding private armies, but he still left them to their own devices economically and spiritualy, continuing to shield them from the Roman INquisition and profitting from the economic activity of their largely burgher constituency. This is obviously in line with the character of Richelieu, whose interests and work to centralize royal authority are consistently temporally-oriented instead of religious like the Counter-reformation movement. The well known ban by Richelieu against Huguenots' construction of castles was accompanied and paralleled by his simultaneous requirement that the Catholic feudal lords also demolish their castles and disband their private armies, symbols of autonomy from the crown. The King therefore did not really need the hierarchical Roman church per se in the royal struggle against the Huguenots, aristocrats, and other centrifugal forces. Instead, Richeleiu made it very clear that all power in the French domain, whether religious administrative authority practiced by Catholics and Hugenots or governmental administrative authority practiced by local magnates, derived only from the whim of the one and only sovereign King - in this autocracy, the royal personage gives and takes as he pleases. This view of course was epitomized by Mazarin's scion Louis XIV, the ostensibly anti-reformationist king who while eradicating French Protestantism, said "l'etat c'est moi" and proceeded to further undermine the old idea of unified Catholic Christendom by engaging in several wars with Catholic Spain and Catholic Austia (both of whom repeatedly allied with Anglican England and Lutheran Prussia). In that era the Pope will lay his apostolic hand to consecrate, but that was as far as Rome's political involvement got in the internal affairs of the French church or for that matter the churches of any other Catholic nation.

This may be another debate altogether, To shorten it: Christianity is a history of tral and failure. It is dead clear that the original message was catered to the illitarate, and that its generic aspect in the IVth century would have little to do with what is considered norm today.
That earl Christianity should be largely illiterate is irrelevant and contrasts with the second part of your sentence, which correctly observes that church institutions and civilization in general will not tend to remain static.
300s, they have to make a dogma - and they do improve on the ambiguity, but then comes Arius and says "I've worked it on paper, and it doesn't work". Each redefinition, each nuance added and rejected by Luther has had an intrinsic purpose. Each one has contributed to a message that established the unity more than any institution or collective pressure.
Unlikely; the unification of Roman Christianity was a direct result of imperial patronage of the early ecumenical councils; heretical nuances were rejected and orthodox nuances were accepted not in a political and social vacuum. Perfect doctrinal accord is unlikely to be reached over the long geographic distances and cultural diversity within the late Roman Empire through mere conversation. Nestorius, the Arian missionaries, and other heretics were banished from the Roman Empire by the civil authorities, and if the Emperor had gone a step further and condoned their execution, we would have far less diversity in eastern Christianity. The unity of a church – or any religion – is not inherent and requires constant vigilance from all angles – theological, social, political, and often military.

Calvin would just not have worked within this tradition. Any of the Reformers after Hus and Wycliff rejected the Church on visceral proof, as something that had failed on principle.
In the case of Calvin or Luther, the outright rejection of tradtion was purely through a faith based theological system and does not comment on the inherent practicality of their religion; a religion is as good as its followers, and evidence shows that 16th century Protestantism was no better or worse than Catholicism.
Well, my oppinion is that it goes against the essential point of Christianity as meaning placed in individual salvation. It was with this in mind that I called it grotesque.
We will not be able to define a standard as to what is “essential” to Christianity. Minute theological disputations can be twisted arbitrarily; one can easily argue that if God’s omnipotence is an essential point of the Christian religion, it follows that the suffering and evil on this world that God allows is grotesque, and therefore all of Chrsitainity is grotesque. Theology is for another debate, but in terms of our discussion here, words like “grotesque” should probably not be thrown around.
Secularism in its strict sense: confiscation of Church's property.

Confiscation of church property is rather irrelevant in practice; all nations of the time whether Catholic or Protestant supported religious initiatives, with similar results, often bloody.
In retrospect, yes. That doesn't make Henry's gesture less of a condoned and approved as such. Better the state, that is the common attitude in all Reformed dogmas.
Can you clarify what you mean by "gesture less of a condoned and approved as such."?
I've been saying that to stress that Luther would have under no means accepted the logic of reform from within. He rejected the character of Church thinking and exegesis. So, his stance on corruption was biased.
No, noy at all the peasants. The anabaptist rebellion received its bad press and ruthless suppression from Reformed hands. The princes and the burgers - judging from case to case. That's XVIth century Lutheranism in a nutshell.
The Popes didn't even accept the logic of reform from within, until the northern rebellions jolted them into action. It would be extremely difficult and unlikely for any Catholic reformer to fix the early 16th century church because entrenched powers, the indulgence revenue collection or powerful bishops, were far too lulled by the power they owed to the current situation and strenuously opposed any reformer before Luther. We will not know whether internal reform could have happened any time soon, but chances are no; the Pope was in a rush to finish St. Peter's Basilica and eager to finance his wars. The existing goals and ambitions of the Roman Church strongly encouraged doing things the old way.

Luther was indeed biased because his personal faith precluded the fundamental assumptions of Catholicism. But his personal bias does not actually put the truly grave situation facing Catholicism in better light. As I've said, the Church and the powers that be within the church brought an inevitable situation upon themselves.

Also, the Anabaptist suppression was also a far more complicated situation than that. Both Catholics and Protestants hated adult baptism and even though the most notable anti-Anabaptist perscution was the "Dutch Inquistion," there is no doubt that Catholics were as willing as Portestants to destroy Anabaptist heretics. Notable is the Imperial death decree against all Anabaptists. It happened to be that early on, the Lutheran princes were the ones most frequently executing this Imperial order, only because Anabaptists were most common in the Lutheran north. The Catholic south executed Anabaptists when it could although the sect was smaller in upper Germany. Most decisive for Anabaptist policy was the infamous Munster incident in the 1530s when militant Anabaptists seized control of the Rehnish city of Munster, and massacred both Catholics and Lutherans. A combined army of Catholic and Lutheran soldiers, commanded by the Catholic Bishop of Munster, regained the city and executed the Anabaptists. Henceforth Anabaptists were seen as completely lawless and malicious; all Catholic and Lutheran nations vigorously killed off any Anabaptists, although ironically 1.) Anabaptists from here on out were strictly pacifist and 2.) Calvinists, the Anabaptists' most famous enemy, did not even exist, because Calvin's Institutes had not even been written.
Later in the 1550s Calvinists, opposing heresy and familiar with the bad press written about Anabaptists by Catholic and Lutheran authors, vigorously persecuted Anabaptists, although the Spanish Inquisition in the Spanish Netherlands did the same, and with the same efficiency and zeal against this widely despised people (who were mostly residing in the low countries and the northern Rhine).
I hope I did not appear to be paying useless lip-service to Catholicism. My purpose was to say that Lutheranism was not The Solution, and that Catholicism was even less of The Problem.Luther took the easy way out.
This might be lip-service to Catholicism along with the implication that French anti-Huguenot policies are symptomatic of the Counter-reformation's beneficient influence contrasting with your simultaneous condemnation of Calvinist persecution of non-Calvinists. Greed and selfishness was the problem; religious doctrines really had little to do with the whole affair. It just happened that Lutheranism was the result of Church greed and evangelicalism had the positive (in my opinion) effect of encouraging layman education, and forcing the Church to examine its own problems and corruption, while Lutheranism itself simultaneously spawned and encouraged more greed. The Counterreformation fixed problems in Catholicism but the discipline of the new faith was nonetheless abused by future temporal rulers similar to Lutheranism's abuse by the German princelings. The great suffering wrought by the hierarchical church after Trent certainly existed. Problems were and are endless and solutions come up, resulting in more problems and more solutions. Whether Luther took the easy way out or not is difficult to discuss without a context, although we know that LUther himself certainly was a faithful man and personally believed his views to be right, whether easy or not.
The Inquisition was not dedicated to the destruction of heretics, but to that of heresy. Not just a nuance: a different reality. When the Protestants engaged in suppresion, they did it from a much less remediable stance. There was a need for establishing that you can't go back, basically.
Protestant religious persecution was nearly identical to the Inquisition; Catholic Inquisition had been highly effective for centuries and even though Protestant sects rarely had the resources of a national Catholic church, similar anti-heretical practices were adopted by Protestants on account of inquisitional methods' doctrinal logic and practical effectiveness. There is no difference between the destruction of heretics and heresy; the practical definition of a heretics is simply someone who refuses to renounce heresy; both Catholics and Protestants considered heretics who recanted to be immediately innocent and forgiveable, and destroying a truly stubborn heretic amounted to destroying true heresy. like in Catholic nations, examples of Protestant inquisitions, when carried out "correctly," doctrinally speaking, was extremely similar to a Catholic inquisitorial trial. To take the example of the anti-trinitarian heretic, Michael Servetus executed in Calvin's Geneva, the Calvinists begged him to renounce his beliefs and win instant freedom but his refusal to do so resulted in his being burned at the stake. This is almost identical to the Catholic procedure. Sometimes those who recant to the inquisition, whether Protestan t or Catholic, would nevertheless be put to death, most often by strangling, especially if they have a long history of heresy and offenses against local civil authorities. However, mercy was still the ideal component of 16th century sectarian persecution, as unusual as that sounds. Often fanatical Catholics or Protestants will go on massacring sprees, although this is most often associated with war crimes committed by soldiers who run rampant looting and pillaging after a battle.
The purpose of being gets lost in the process. People are already chosen, already weighed. Precisely that everything is a confirmation: the one that believes has no need to doubt (compare with believing that "a crow is white" because the Church says so - a rather astute judgement on the justifying of doubt in the World, and not a confirmation of privilege. As such, Calvinism was the base of more "scientific" prejudice - the notion that some people are just born wrong, that sin is not even a disease, but rather a birth scar).
Let's agree that there is no need for religion itself is this can be read as its core meaning. Plus, when coupled with predestination, it can only lead to insurmountable dogmatic boundries between the believer in this and the believer in something else. Bigotry is a requirement, not an accident.
From a strictly fundamentalist Calvinist perspective there is no room for doubt, but I am not sure why that would have worse consequences.
Also, a strict believer may convince himself that it is not the confirmation of any privilege but for practical purposes the Church does in fact adopt a rash and arbitrary authoritativeness for some time, as seen in the Galileo controversy. If the Church should decree black to be white then that orthodoxy would undoubtedly be enforced with the same zealousness as transubstantiation is.
If religion were defined simply as a faith in some supernatural force, as it comonly is, then Calvinism is certailny a religion, no matter how potentially severe and strict the lifestyle is. To answer the second point, bigotry is rarely intrinsic to religion. Debating whether religion is inherently violent and bigoted in no way captures the full gamut of human emotion and thoughts that are present in a diverse body of believers. A nominal Calvinist can be sadistic, unscrupulous,, non-offensive, or good. The great emphasis on God's unknowable and sovereign plan is the theme in Calvinism, and perhaps a particular Calvinist individual who simply feels good when doing charity will convince himself that God's plan is for him to do good on this world. Another Calvinist might convince himself that killing Catholics is his divinely-ordained task. This is their unbreakable faith, and even though we would approve of one situation as good and condemn the other as evil, we are likely not able to convince the wrong indiviudal that his actions are wrong. In the end, what matters is the practical application of the religion or lack thereof. Therefore blanket judgments of an entire population based on assumptions of scant knowledge and assumptions of collective belief tend to be highly innacurate.
Trhough history Calvinists have participated in many destructive activities and many positive works like the crusade against slavery and countless other heartfelt and postive endeavors. Dogmatic boundaries were hardened for all the extremist factions, not just strict Calvinists; obviously many Catholics would never dream of interacting with a heretic, and heretics were put to death everywhere you went in Europe at that time. The ST. Bartholomew Massacre in Paris shows this (although the motives had a distinct political component too). The presence of those who recognize "insurmountable dogmatic boundaries" are not new in religion, and every sect will include members who will zealously translate doctrinal delineation into practical bigotry and worse.
Furthremore a Calvinist in the truest sense will not claim that he knows who is saved and who isn't; theoretically only God knows (although a Calvinist by human nature would likely comfort himself in allowing that he himself is saved, as are his loved ones). THereforeCalvinist communities sent out many missionaries to probe the non-believing population, spreading their ideas so that more people will have a conversion experience and believe themselves to be saved. New England Calvinists preached to the Ameican Indian tribes for the same reason. Calvinists would implore a potential convert to accept these beliefs but repeated rejection would possibly create an air of mutual suspicion that is not uncommon among Catholics or Lutherans and their respective non-believers. Calvinism in its practical form has never resulted in proportionally more systematic hatred, and Catholicism as practiced has also never resulted in proportionally more unconditional love. Perhaps it is your personal interpretation that Calvinism leads to automatic bigotry, but historical experience refutes that; besides other countless examples, the widespread religious tolerance in the Dutch Republic after the mid 17th century, extended to Catholics too, refutes any allegation of inherent bigotry. Interpretating religious doctrine tends to be a irregular and unreliable source that gets more and more unreliable as the resulting interpretation becomes more stark and confident. Gray areas abound.
Good point. However, I see the C-R stance as the rule in Catholicism, and what was depicted as higher moral ground as oversimplification in Protestant discourse. But that's just me.
Oversimplification of the Reformation into a righteous crusade is definitely problematic and widespread. oversimplification is a common mistake in any time period, and even in the religious wars where moral clarity seems most likely, the usual human afflictions like greed, selfishness, and downright criminality becomes more and more apparent upon closer inspection. I hope I have shown that at this time Catholic nations' agendas in general were by no means governed by the ideals of the Counterreformation's devotion to the Catholic Church as a whole. Every Catholic nation openly undermined the Counterreformation ideal. Similarly, Lutheran nations' agendas were not governed by any sincere belief that heaven is had by faith alone. In a perfect world the principles of Lutheranism or Calvinism applied would be for the betterment of all, and when we are all perfect Catholicism and Counterreformation would also provide world peace. However noble were the intentions of a few men like Luther, Calvin, or Ignatius, and however fervent and true their personal beliefs, their doctrines were abused to no end for political gain. France under Richelieu can let in some Jesuits to appease the pope but in reality the self-centered nature of their foreign policy never changed. France under Louis XIV gave a few more token concessions to the Counter-reformation ideal of doctrinal purity but then simultaneously unleashed the age's most destructive and unscrupulous wars against both Catholic and Protestant, permanently burying the concept of Counter-reformation as an effective anti-Protestant force. Thhe Habsburg empire attempts to claim to be the most devout Catholic nation in the world, but its endless determination to extend imperial power over their co-religioinists in Italy or fellow Catholic states in south Germany shows that the main thing that mattered for these monarchs was power. Ferdinand of Austria and Maximilan of Bavaria could not possibly use religion to justify their intrigues against each other and the Bohemian feudal lords, although both were outwardly devout Catholics and supporters of the Counter-reformation. It is safe to say that, in practice, Catholic unity and virtue is as much a myth as Protestant unity and virtue. In summary, I don't think it is so simple to say which ideology is better, especially in such starkly contrasted terms as you do. In a practical sense both the Reformation and Counterreformation started off with the best of intentions and degraded into the usual political squabbling among temporal kings and princes of Europe. Even Loyola’s severely maintained and impeccable personal virtues did not prevent a good portion of his Jesuit successors from corruption and decadence. What started as Luther's sincere determination to save humanity ended as a greedy powergrab against Catholics, and what started as the Catholic church's attempt to impose discipline and unity among the communion resulted in more Habsburg imperialism against the German princes and did not change, and in fact exacerbated the age old Catholic mortal rivalries between France and Spain or Austria and her Catholic vassals.

I'm baptised Romanian Orthodox and I soooooo not agree with you.

I think that the "orthodox Orthodox" perspective will agree that neither the Reformation nor the Counter-reformation is up to any good. The erratic and impulsive nature of evangelicalism, rising and ebbing unpredictably from era to era, is contrary to an apostolic church like in Eastern Orthodoxy that considers itself timeless. But every Orthodox Christian layman or cleric I've talked to, and every major Orthodox source, would consider ultramontanism to be a most dire anathema and fatal heresy. The fiercely indpendent ethnically-oriented religious traditions, the history of Catholic conflicts with Orthodox, and the recent aggressive Catholic missionary activity into the canonical territory of historical Orthodoxy will not win sympathy for Catholicism for a long time from easterners. The recent Papal attempts at ecumenism with the east, including the historically meaningful removal of filioque from Latin creed, will nevertheless always fail until papal administrative supremacy is relinquished.

bump

If it's corruption Protestants were condemning, how can a Protestant justify the fact that Henry VIII confiscated all Church lands for his own gains?

You're confusing the Brittish Monarch's creation of the Anglican church as part of the Protestant Reformation... The Anglican Church was created by a change of heads (The King of England replacing the Pope as the "Head" of the Church)... Actual protestants (like the emerging Presbyterian Church [a transplant of the Swiss Reformed Church] in Scottland) were not sided with the Anglicans... Anglicans, for all intensive purposes ARE Catholics...

Counter-reformation was pretty cool. Cause if you win a war beeing counter-reformation you can force the loser in the oeace treaty to turn his state religion back to catholicism.