Catholic Lutheran Anglican Calvinism

Protest Sale of
indulgences
Dynastic goals
over spiritual
Moral regeneration
of church and
community
Role of Bible Pope and priests
interpret
Read by
individuals and
helps towards
salvation,
ministers can
help explain
Same as
Lutheran, Book
of Common
Prayer
Bible must be read
by individuals to
help with salvation,
minster helps
explain
Church
Governance
Hierarchy: pope,
cardinal, bishop,
priest. Celibacy,
clergy oversees
sacraments
Rejects hierarchy,
kept bishops.
Married priests,
ministers oversee
sacraments.
Monarch is
supreme, reject
papal authority.
Bishops, clergy
oversees
sacraments
Church governed
by ministers and
elders
(Presbyterianism).
Married priests,
ministers provide
moral guidance
Salvation Faith and good
works
Faith Faith, some
believe in good
works
Predestination
Eucharist Transubstantiation Consubstantiation Various Memorial
Sacraments 7 (Baptism,
confirmation ,
Eucharist,
penance, unction,
holy orders,
matrimony)
3 (baptism,
penance,
Eucharist)
2 (baptism and
Eucharist)
Just baptism
Theocracy State subservient
to church
State controlled,
not theocracy
State controlled,
not theocracy
Theocracy


2. How does the Reformation affect women?
A. Protestant women: Luther believed that a womans occupation was in the home taking care
of the family. Calvin believed in the subjugation of women to preserve moral order. Protestant
churches had greater official control over marriage than did the Catholic church. Suppressed
common law marriages (which had been very common in Catholic countries) Catholic
governments followed the Protestant. Marriage became more companionate, emphasizing the
love relationship between man and wife. Martin Luther and his wife, Katherina von Bora were
good examples of this view. Luther: sex was an act to be enjoyed by a husband and wife; not
just an act of procreation. Increased emphasis on teaching people to read the Bible resulted in
an increase in womens literacy. Mothers were often expected to teach their children. Schools
for girls were developed. Protestant women, however, lost opportunities in church service that
many Catholic women pursued Women gradually lost rights to manage their own property or to
make legal transactions in their own name. Anabaptists did allow women to hold church offices.
B. Catholic women: Women continued to enjoy opportunities in the Church through religious
orders. Angela Merici (1474-1540) founded the Ursuline Order of Nuns in the 1530s to provide
education and religious training. Approved as a religious community by Paul III in 1544.
Established a foundation for the future of young girls within the church. Sought to combat
heresy through Christian education. Ursulines spread to France and the New World. Teresa de
Avila (1515-1582). Major Spanish leader of the reform movement for monasteries and convents.
Preached an individual could have a direct relationship with God through prayer and
contemplation.
3. What role did political and social factors play in the several reformations?
i. Luther: The years leading up to the Protestant Reformation were also plagued by moral
corruption and abuse of position in the Roman Catholic Church. The priesthood was
guilty of several abuses of privilege and responsibility, including simony (using ones
wealth or influence to purchase an ecclesiastical office), pluralism (holding multiple
offices simultaneously) and absenteeism (the failure to reside in the parish where they
were supposed to minister). The practice of celibacy which was imposed by the church
on the priesthood was often abused or ignored, leading to immoral conduct on the part
of the clergy. Secular-minded, ignorant priests corrupted their position by neglect or
abuse of power. During the fifteenth century the worldliness and corruption in the church
reached its worst. The problem of corruption reached all the way to the papacy. Luther
was disgusted by the sale of indulgences, authorized by Pope Leo XI. The effects of
Christian Humanism also helped paved the way for the Reformation. A central part of
this philosophy was reform, and the betterment of Christians through better education.
The printing press put potentially the whole of human knowledge at the hands of the
scholarly community in a new way, beginning with the publication of the bible. Erasmus
Greek text of the Bible was used when Martin Luther translated the Bible into German.
Erasmus was a critic of scholasticism (combination of religious dogma and mystical and
institutional traditions of Augustine and Aristotle). Christian humanists mocked popular
practices that were close to superstitious. Many of the top elites were educated as
humanists and/or directly supported them (Henry VIII, Charles V, Mary Tudor, and
Elizabeth Tudor). The Renaissance raised questions about the path to salvation by
instigating new ideas, particularly the belief in individualism, which was the conviction
that there is human ability to choose between right and wrong. The Catholic church,
vehemently pushed the idea that salvation would only be found within the church, but
when a Christian monk named Martin Luther interpreted a bible passage stating "just
shall live by his faith" to mean that faith alone would save their souls he began to
challenge the church. The Northern European Renaissance Ideas on Education
emphasized critical thinking. The proliferation of printing presses in the Germany's had
made printed material available and increased literacy. Humanist thinking and values
increased the focus on virtue
ii. Henry VII: Much of the English Reformation had to do with Henrys dynastic ambitions
rather than spirituality. He wanted his marriage to Catherine of Aragon annulled because
they could not produced a male heir who survived into adulthood, and Henry wanted a
son to secure the Tudor dynasty. Henry claimed that this lack of a male heir was
because his marriage was blighted in the eyes of God. Catherine had been his
brother's widow, and it was therefore against Biblical teachings for Henry to have
married her. A special dispensation from Pope Julius II had been needed to allow the
wedding in the first place. Henry argued that this had been wrong and that his marriage
had never been valid. In 1527 Henry asked Pope Clement to annul the marriage, but the
Pope refused (according to the Catholic Church, this went against canon law). Divorce
was not allowed by the Church, so Henry would have look for alternatives. Thomas
Cranmer convinced Henry that he could marry Anne Boleyn by breaking away from
Rome and establishing that the King had the ultimate authority, not the Pope, hence the
creation of the Anglican Church, which Henry presided over. As archbishop of
Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer annulled Henry's marriage to Catherine, allowing the king
to marry Anne Boleyn. Under Thomas Cromwell's direction Parliament passed the Act of
Supremacy (1534) fully defining the royal headship over the church. Although Henry
himself wished to make no doctrinal changes, Cromwell and Cranmer authorized the
translation of the Bible into English, and Cranmer was largely responsible for the Book of
Common Prayer, adopted under Henry's successor, Edward VI (Henry forbade those
below the rank of gentry from reading the bible, however). The gains that Protestantism
made under Edward (r. 1547-53) were lost under his Catholic sister Mary I (r. 1553-58).
The religious settlement (1559) under Elizabeth I, however, guaranteed the Anglican
establishment.
iii. Catholic: The standing of the church within the political order and the class structure of
Western Europe had been irrevocably altered in the course of the later middle Ages.
Protestantism arose to challenge the spiritual authority of the papacy; therefore, there
was no longer any way to invoke that political authority against the challenge. By the end
of the 15th century there was a widely-held impression that the resources for church
reform within Roman Catholicism had been tried and found wanting: the papacy refused
to reform itself, the councils had not succeeded in bringing about lasting change, and the
professional theologians were more interested in scholastic debates than in the nurture
of genuine Christian faith and life. The financial corruption and pagan immorality within
Roman Catholicism, even at the highest levels, reminded critics of "the abomination of
desolation" spoken of by the prophet Daniel, and nothing short of a thoroughgoing
Martin Luther asked an essentially medieval question: "How do I obtain a God who is
merciful to me?" He also tried a medieval answer to that question by becoming a monk
and by subjecting himself to fasting and discipline--but all to no avail. The answer that he
eventually did find, the conviction that God was merciful not because of anything that the
sinner could do but because of a freely given grace that was received by faith alone (the
doctrine of justification by faith), was not utterly without precedent in the Roman Catholic
theological tradition; but in the form in which Luther stated it there appeared to be a
fundamental threat to Catholic teaching and sacramental life. And in his treatise The
Babylonian Captivity of the Church, issued in 1520, Luther denounced the entire system
of medieval Christendom as an unwarranted human invention foisted on the church.
Although Luther in his opposition to the practice of selling indulgences was unsparing in
his attacks upon the moral, financial, and administrative abuses within Roman
Catholicism, The cult of the Virgin Mary and of the saints diminished the office of Christ
as the sole mediator between God and the human race. Thus the pope was the
Antichrist because he represented and enforced a substitute religion in which the true
church, the bride of Christ, had been replaced by--and identified with--an external
juridical institution that laid claim to the obedience due to God himself. The challenge of
the Protestant Reformation became also the occasion for a resurgent Roman
Catholicism to clarify and to reaffirm Roman Catholic principles; that endeavor had, in
one sense, never been absent from the life and teaching of the church, but it came out
now with new force. Against the Protestant elevation of the Scripture to the position of
sole authority, they emphasized that Scripture and church tradition were inseparable and
always had been. Pressing that point further, they denounced justification by faith alone
and other cherished Protestant teachings as novelties without grounding in authentic
church tradition. And they warned that the doctrine of "faith alone, without works" as
taught by Luther would sever the moral nerve and remove all incentive for holy living.
The Catholic Reformation or the Counter Reformation was a strong reaffirmation of the
doctrine and structure of the Catholic Church, climaxing at the Council of Trent, partly in
reaction to the growth of Protestantism. Even before the posting of Martin Luther's
Ninety-Five Theses in 1517, there had been evidence of internal reform within the
Church, combating trends that heightened radical demands to fundamentally alter the
doctrine and structure of the Medieval Church and even contributed to the anticlericalism
of figures such as John Huss and John Wycliffe in the late fourteenth century. The
Catholic Reformation, aimed at correcting the sources of the Reformation, and
pronounced since the pontificate of Pope Paul III, was both retaliatory, committed to
protecting Catholic institutions and practices from heresy and Protestantism, but also
reformist, committed to reform the Church from within to stem the growing appeal of
Protestantism. Broadly speaking, the Catholic Reformation, represented a three-sided
strategy: an autocratic church at the top linked to the individual by the parish church. The
Catholic Reformation was a strong reaffirmation of the doctrine and structure of the
Medieval Church, presiding over reforms that would preserve its effectiveness. Rome
was vulnerable, Charles V sacked Rome.
4. Why did the theological ideas of Martin Luther trigger political, social, and economic
reactions?
i. Political: Religion becomes a public affair, majority rules in the sense that only very few
individuals believed in religious liberty. Official rules, practices, observations of holidays,
festivities, etc. established by whomever held jurisdiction (civil authority prince, etc).
Luther appeals to anti-Roman feelings, intellectual aspirations of humanists and patriotic
feelings of nationality as New Testament translated to German.
ii. Social: Some people began to apply Luthers revolutionary ideas to society. In 1524,
German peasants, excited by reformers talk of Christian freedom, demanded an end to
serfdom. He translated the Bible into the language of the people and translated the mass
into the vernacular. The desire to read the bible resulted in a need for education. He is
also credited with increased literacy for the common man, the popularization of public
schooling and the education of women. He translated the Bible into colloquial German
so it could be understood by everyone. Gutenberg Bibles were available. Luther made
the laity question the Church's authority by criticizing the churches power over the
temporal sphere. He had long condemned vows of celibacy on Biblical grounds.
Protestant Thought begins to form. The Pope did not speak for God. The Church and the
Priesthood where not necessary for salvation. Luther held that salvation comes by faith
alone. Gods Grace was given to all to sought it freely.
iii. Economic: For centuries preceding the Reformation, the Catholic Church would raise
money by selling indulgences and imposing tributes on all the nations of Catholic
Christendom. This would result in much of the money and gold of Europe leaving non-
Papal states and concentrating in Italy; impoverishing European states in the process.
With the separation of the Church of England from the Roman Catholic Church, Rome
was unable to tax/levy England for money to finance its operations on the European
continent. This resulted in money and gold being retained in England, much to the
benefit of English merchants and other men of commerce; helping to expand and grow
the English economy. Secondly, with separation came the transfer of control of much of
English territory from the Catholic Church to the English monarchy. England, much like
all of Western Europe, was still largely physiocratic and agrarian; most wealth was
derived from the control and use of land. Prior to the Reformation, much of England's
land was under the control of Rome; preventing the English from using it to improve their
own wealth and prosperity. However, with the Reformation, most of this land was
transferred to the English monarchy, allowing for the English to use English land for
English interests.