Catholic Reformation and Renewal

"Counter" or "Catholic" Reformation?

Historians used to call the Catholic response to Protestantism the "Counter-Reformation," as if Catholicism were only reacting. Simon Ditchfield's chapter in the Oxford Illustrated History of the Reformation, titled "Catholic Reformation and Renewal," reflects a broader view [check]. Catholic reform had its own roots before 1517. It continued long after, and it was a global movement. The historian John O'Malley suggested the neutral term "Early Modern Catholicism." Of course, Catholic renewal was also shaped by the fight against Protestantism. Both things are true.

Reform before Trent

Even before Luther, reform was stirring. In Spain, Cardinal Francisco Ximenes de Cisneros reformed the clergy. In Italy, the Oratory of Divine Love (founded in Rome around 1517) gathered clergy and lay people for prayer, frequent Communion and charity work, especially in hospitals for the incurable. New orders appeared:

• the Theatines (1524), co-founded by Gian Pietro Gian Pietro Caraffa (Paul IV), to raise the standard of parish clergy;
• the Capuchins (1528), a strict, bearded reform of the Franciscans, famous popular preachers. Their name comes from their pointed hood, and from it, eventually, the word "cappuccino";
• the Ursulines (1535), founded by Angela Merici to educate girls, who became the most important teaching order for women.

Some Catholic humanists, the spirituali in Italy, including Cardinal Gasparo Contarini, held views on justification surprisingly close to Luther's. At the Regensburg Colloquy (1541), Contarini and Protestant theologians, including Melanchthon and Bucer, actually reached a compromise formula on justification. But both Rome and Luther rejected it, and they failed to agree on the Eucharist and papal authority. It was the last real chance for reunion. Afterward, positions hardened.

Ignatius and the Jesuits

The most important new order was the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits. Its founder, Ignatius of Loyola of Loyola (1491–1556), was a Basque nobleman and soldier. In 1521, defending Pamplona against the French, his leg was shattered by a cannonball. During a long, painful recovery, he asked for romances of chivalry. The only books available were a life of Christ and lives of the saints. Reading them, he noticed that dreams of worldly glory left him empty, while thoughts of serving Christ left him joyful. He began to learn to "discern spirits."

After his recovery Ignatius lived as a penitent at Manresa, where he had intense spiritual experiences. Out of them he wrote the Spiritual Exercises, a four-week program of guided meditation on sin, the life of Christ, his passion and resurrection, designed to help a person make a wholehearted decision to serve God. The Exercises remain one of the most influential books of Christian spirituality.

Ignatius then went back to school, eventually studying at the University of Paris. There he gathered six companions, including Francis Xavier. In 1534 they took vows together, and in 1540 Pope Paul III approved the Society of Jesus. Its features were new:

• Mobility: no fixed monastery and no chanting of the daily office in choir, so Jesuits could go anywhere.
• A special vow of obedience to the pope regarding missions: to go wherever they were sent.
• Long, rigorous training, often 10–15 years.
• The motto Ad maiorem Dei gloriam, "for the greater glory of God," and the ideal of "finding God in all things."

The Jesuits grew astonishingly fast. By Ignatius's death in 1556 there were about 1,000. By 1615 there were over 13,000. They became famous for three things:

1. Education: They founded hundreds of schools and colleges across Europe, free of charge, offering the best humanist education available. Catholic and even Protestant elites sent their sons to them.
2. Winning back Protestant regions: In Poland, Austria, Bavaria and Hungary, Jesuit preachers, teachers and royal confessors helped restore Catholicism.
3. Global mission: Jesuits went to India, Japan, China, Brazil, Paraguay and Canada (see The Reformation Goes Global).

Where does authority lie? Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant compared

	Roman Catholic	Eastern Orthodox	Protestant (classic)
Highest authority	Scripture and Tradition, interpreted by the Magisterium (pope and bishops)	Holy Tradition, including Scripture, the councils, the Fathers and the liturgy	Sola scriptura: Scripture alone is the final authority
Who interprets?	The church's teaching office; the pope can define doctrine infallibly (1870)	The whole church, especially through ecumenical councils	Scripture interprets Scripture; every believer may read it, guided by preachers and confessions
Church government	Pope and bishops in apostolic succession	Bishops in apostolic succession; self-governing national churches	Varies: bishops (Anglican, Lutheran), elders (Presbyterian), congregations (Baptist)
Salvation	By grace, through faith working with love; sacraments essential	Theosis: sharing God's life through grace, sacraments, prayer	By grace alone through faith alone (sola fide)
Sacraments	Seven	Seven ("mysteries")	Two (baptism, Lord's Supper)
Bible	Includes deuterocanonical books	Includes them, plus some others	Hebrew Old Testament canon (66 books)
Mary & saints	Venerated; invoked in prayer	Venerated; icons central	Honored as examples; not prayed to

The Council of Trent

Protestants had demanded a general council, and so had many Catholics. But popes, remembering conciliarism (see The Late Medieval Crisis), delayed. Finally Paul III summoned one to Trent, an Italian-speaking town within the Holy Roman Empire. The Council of Trent met in three periods between 1545 and 1563. Attendance was often small, sometimes only a few dozen bishops, mostly Italian. Protestants attended briefly in 1551–52 but left. Nonetheless, Trent shaped Catholicism for four hundred years.

Doctrine: answering the Protestants

• Scripture and tradition: God's revelation is found in Scripture and in the unwritten traditions handed down in the church. The church alone interprets Scripture. The Latin Vulgate is the authoritative text, and the canon includes the deuterocanonical books (the "Apocrypha").
• Justification: Trent's decree, often considered its finest, taught that justification begins with God's grace, which humans cannot earn. But grace transforms the person inwardly, and people must cooperate with grace through faith, hope, love and good works. It rejected "faith alone" in the sense of a merely external declaration.
• Sacraments: There are seven. The Mass is a true sacrifice. Transubstantiation is reaffirmed.
• Purgatory, the saints, relics, images and indulgences were all reaffirmed, though abuses such as selling indulgences were condemned.

Discipline: reforming the clergy

• Every diocese should have a seminary to train priests. This was perhaps Trent's most important reform.
• Bishops must live in their dioceses, preach, and visit their parishes.
• Priests must preach on Sundays and holy days.
• Pluralism, holding many offices at once, was restricted.
• Marriage required a priest and witnesses, ending secret marriages.

After Trent, the papacy issued a Roman Catechism (1566), a standard Roman Missal (1570, the "Tridentine Mass" used until 1969), and a revised Vulgate. Model bishops like Charles Borromeo of Milan (1538–1584) put the reforms into practice. He visited every parish, founded seminaries, and personally nursed plague victims.

The golden age of Spanish mysticism

Catholic renewal produced some of history's greatest mystics. Teresa of Ávila (1515–1582) was a Carmelite nun who, after years of half-hearted religious life, experienced a deep conversion in her late thirties. She founded seventeen reformed ("Discalced," meaning barefoot) Carmelite convents, traveling constantly in rough carts despite poor health and opposition. Her writings, especially The Interior Castle, describe the soul as a castle with seven sets of rooms, through which one journeys toward union with God at the center. She was practical, funny and down to earth: "God walks among the pots and pans." In 1970 she became the first woman declared a Doctor of the Church.

Her younger collaborator John of the Cross (1542–1591) reformed the Carmelite friars and was imprisoned by his own order for it. In his tiny cell he composed sublime poetry. His Dark Night of the Soul describes how God leads the soul through periods of dryness and seeming absence into deeper union.

In Rome, the joyful Philip Neri (1515–1595) founded the Oratory, mixing prayer, music (the word "oratorio" comes from his gatherings), humor and service. In France, Francis de Sales (1567–1622) wrote the Introduction to the Devout Life, teaching that holiness was for lay people in ordinary jobs, not just for monks and nuns. Vincent de Paul and Louise de Marillac founded the Daughters of Charity (1633), sisters who served the poor in the streets rather than in enclosed convents, a new model for women's religious life. The Englishwoman Mary Ward tried to found an active order of women modeled on the Jesuits. She was imprisoned by the Inquisition for it, but she was eventually vindicated.

The hard edge

Renewal also came with repression. In 1542 Paul III established the Roman Inquisition (the Holy Office) to fight heresy in Italy. Under Caraffa, who became the severe Pope Paul IV (1555–1559), and the Dominican Pius V, it suppressed Italian Protestantism and the spirituali. The Index of Forbidden Books (from 1559) banned the works of Protestants, many humanists including Erasmus, and later some scientific works. It was abolished only in 1966. Paul IV also confined Rome's Jews to a walled ghetto.

Catholic reform relied heavily on Catholic monarchs, especially Philip II of Spain and the Austrian Habsburgs, whose armies and laws enforced religious conformity.

The Baroque: faith made visible

Where Protestants whitewashed walls, Catholic renewal celebrated the senses. Baroque art and architecture, dramatic, emotional and full of movement and light, aimed to overwhelm viewers with the glory of God and the drama of faith. Think of Bernini's sculpture The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa, the Jesuits' great church of the Gesù in Rome, Caravaggio's paintings, and the soaring music of Palestrina and later composers. Trent had said that art should teach and inspire devotion, and the Baroque took that mission and ran with it.