The Ecumenical Councils of the Catholic Church by Kelly Joseph

Author:Kelly, Joseph [Kelly, Joseph]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780814657034
Publisher: Liturgical Press
Published: 2010-11-03T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

The Council of Trent

The Protestant Reformation

Martin Luther (1483–1546) was a German Augustinian friar and theologian who taught at the University of Wittenberg, which had been founded in 1502 by the elector of Saxony, Frederick the Wise (1463–1525). Luther was and remains a controversial figure, but the rise of ecumenism in the latter part of the twentieth century has enabled scholars to take a broader and more objective view of him. It has also clarified our understanding of his protest against the Roman Catholic Church.

The Protestant Reformation centered on doctrinal matters and on which ecclesiastical authorities had the competency to judge in such matters. The Reformation was not about the abuses rampant in the Catholic Church (and against which many Catholic reformers also railed). Yet it was one of these abuses that forced Luther, who was a pastor as well as a university theologian, to reconsider his fidelity to Catholic teaching.

The Catholic Church teaches the existence of purgatory, a postmortem place of purging where the deceased make satisfaction for the transgressions committed during their earthly lives and for which God has forgiven them. After this purging, they will enter heaven. To use an everyday example, suppose I borrowed a wrench from a friend and then lost it. I would apologize to my friend, who would accept my apology and “forgive” me, but we would both understand that I had the obligation to make “satisfaction” for what I had done, that is, I would buy him a new wrench.

Purgatory is a place of punishment, and naturally Catholics wished their deceased relatives and friends to spend the shortest amount of time there. In the Middle Ages the church had established a system of indulgences, whereby people could do pious works and have the spiritual value of those works offered to God for the alleviation of the suffering of those in purgatory. Many medieval theologians testified to the value of this practice, but it contained potential for serious abuse. Suppose a Catholic were too ill or otherwise unable to perform pious works? She or he could make a financial donation to the church in lieu of the pious works. By the late Middle Ages, it had become far more common for people to obtain indulgences by making donations than by earning them, and to meet this need there arose the office of indulgence seller. Catholic reformers repeatedly warned against the harm of this practice, which they believed demeaned the image of purgatory and increasingly made helping the suffering souls there a matter of money.

In the early sixteenth century, the dominant family in Germany was the House of Habsburg, but an ambitious new family, the Hohenzollerns, hoped to replace them. At the time the Holy Roman Emperor, ruler of Germany and some lands beyond German borders, was chosen by seven electors, four secular (one of them Luther’s lord Frederick the Wise) and three ecclesiastical. The Hohenzollerns held a secular electorship, that of Brandenburg. In 1513 a second electorship, the archbishopric of Mainz, became vacant, and the Hohenzollerns wanted it to give them two of the seven electoral votes.

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