A Blog for Dallas Area Catholics

I love reading Dr. Warren Carroll, but…….. December 22, 2011

….I’ve been reading the fourth volume of his Christendom series, The Cleaving of Christendom, and it is killing me.  It is so painful to read about the protestant revolt revolution and how it came about.  There is no question that the protestants were not reformers, but revolutionaries bent on destroying the Church as it had, and continues to (in spite of thier best efforts and the heterodox “within” the Church) exist.   The effort to destroy the Church was doomed from the start as Christ promised us that He would always shield and defend the Church from destruction – but not individual souls and even civilizations wrecked on the rocks of pride and power. For the protestant revolution did more than simply damage the Faith, it destroyed a civilization, and paved the way for this “modern” world in which we are presently ensconced.

There is so much to say……the book is so incredibly difficult to read,while at the same time being very well researched, written, and riveting.  The heresies promoted and accepted by large numbers of people, even numerous priests and bishops who were weak in the Faith to start with, are simply incredible.  The idea that Scripture, and private interpretation thereof, would be the sole source of “faith” was such an amazing exercise in pride that it seems incredible to me that it caught on, but caught on it did, and hugely, because many people rightfully surmised that such license would allow them much greater freedom to behave in manners that were contrary to the Doctrine o the Faith.  That is why divorce quickly became “legal” in protestant areas, and even things such as bigamy were tolerated by Luther.  Luther himself lamented the fact that in protestant areas, church attendance quickly fell off, donations similarly, and drunkeness, whoring, gambling, and a whole panoply of sins became increasingly widespread.  There was actually a “reformation of the reformation” in order to try to curtail these behaviors (it was far from completely successful) in which many of the original revolutionary ideas were modified back more towards Catholic practice, in order to staunch the decay.

One of the main objectives of all the revolutionaries – Luther, Zwingli, Cranmer, Calvin- was the destruction of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.  They correctly surmised that the Mass was and remains the Source and Summit of the Faith, and that destruction of the Mass would allow all else to follow.  Here they had to tread carefully, because the people remained very attached to the Mass, but over the course of years they accomplished their objective – gone were the references to Sacrifice, gone was the concept of transubstantiation- The Real Presence, gone was reverence for the Blessed Sacrament, gone were Votive Masses and references to Saints and holy imagery.  All these things were cast aside.  I shudder with incomprehension and sorrow to think on how it could be that, in either their own revolutionary fervor or some misguided idea of “ecumenism” there have been such efforts by many individuals to enforce similar changes in the Mass and within the Church generally since Vatican II. The funny aspect of reading all this is how many times the protestants contradicted themselves, changing their own interpretations of Scripture as they went further and further down the path of revolution.  It was a forecast of things to come, where there are now literally tens of thousands of protestant “denominations,” each claiming the correct interpretation of Sacred Scripture.

How could all of this happen?  The protestant revolution was preceded by a period of great faithlessness on the part of numerous bishops and priests.  Corruption in the Church led many to have a great distaste for Rome and its Doctrines.  Bishoprics were bought and sold.  Incompetent, drunken, whoring priests were assigned, often as a form of political payoff, to parishes where the Doctrine of the Faith was trampled and ignored.  The Avignon Papacy had greatly undermined the prestige and allegiance to the See of Peter.  And the Church’s response to the initial waves of the revolt were limp and ineffectual, with Popes seeming to make every wrong decision possible, from Clement VII through Julius III and even beyond.  The Church was not prepared to deal with heresy on such a massive scale, both because of corruption within its ranks and because technological change made the Church’s glacial reactions obsolete by the time they were taken.  But most of all, the Council which could have averted much of the revolt, reformed the Church and re-confirmed the faithful was delayed and interrupted repeatedly.  It was nearly 50 years from the Luther’s beginning in 1517 until the Council of Trent was completed in 1563, during which time England, Scotland, Scandanavia, Denmark, and half of Germany was lost, along with dread threats to the Faith in France and other locales.  The Machiavellian concept of the tyrannical monarchical state, dominating all, was also part of the equation, with numerous sovereigns having a strong desire to have total authority over all aspects of life, even including the private and public practice of the Faith.

I have remarked in the past that the present crisis in the Faith is the greatest since the Arian heresy, if not the greatest ever.  Perhaps I’ve been wrong – perhaps the protestant revolution was still greater than the problems we face today.  But we’re in the same ballpark, I fear.  I fear what Church historians 500 years hence will write of our present times, and what follows in our wake.   It also causes me to examine many of my own beliefs and assumptions.  I was raised protestant.  There is much good there, but the Church is the Church Christ founded.  This country was founded on primarily protestant ideals.  As I said……….much to consider.

Get the book, but prepare to be frustrated, even weep.