Topic / Church History III Side notes/Questions/summary

Era/Centuries Modern and Contemporary Periods: 1517 up to the present (including Philippine Church)
Bibliography
1. Balthasar von, Hans Urs, Church and Word. Montreal: Palm Publishers, 1967.
2. Constantino, Renato, The Philippines: A Past Revisited. Quezon City: 1984
3. Hales, E.E.Y., The Catholic Church in the Modern World. New York: Hanover House, 1958.
4. Hardon, John A., Christianity in Twentieth Century. New York: Image Books, 1972.
5. McBrian, Richard P., Catholicism, Vol. Two. Minneapolis: Winston Press, 1980.
6. Shumacher, John N., SJ, Readings in Philippine Church History. Quezon City:
Loyola School of Theology, 1979.
7. Shumacher, John N., SJ, Revolutionary Clergy: The Filipino Clergy and The
Nationalist Movement 1850-1903. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University, 1981.

The Church in history The Church and History

The relationship between the Church and history is a theological one. It has to do with the
movement of the world, and the Church within the world, toward its destiny in the Kingdom of God, and
with the presence of God to the world here and now through the Church.

By the word Church we mean here not just the pope and the bishops, but the whole people of God. By
history we mean the whole process by which the world, and the Church within the world, is moving
toward the Kingdom of God.
History is also the interpretation of that process. God alone can interpret history without error:
comprehending all the data, knowing all the facts, and perceiving all the facts in their proper
relationships one with another to constitute the whole.
The Ancien Regime (Before 1789)
The greatest English historian of the 19th century, Lord Macaulay, writing his celebrated essay on the greatest
German historian of all time, von Ranke, has some interesting observations to make concerning the critical
juncture in the history of the Catholic Church which had been reached in the 18th century. Neither of the two
were Catholics, but both were highly perceptive, and both were fascinated by the mighty theme of the history
of the Church of Rome.
Although they could not grasp what it was that had enabled that Church perpetually to rejuvenate
herself while remaining outwardly unchanged, they could and did see, and marvel at, the spectacle of
her survival and growth amidst apparent disaster. Provided that we bear in mind what limited their sight,
we can with profit reflect upon what, with their immense intelligence, they observed.

“Four times,” Macaulay tells us, “Since the authority of the Church of Rome was established in Western
Christendom, has the human intellect risen up against her yoke. Twice that Church remained completely
victorious. Twice she came forth from the conflict bearing the marks of cruel wounds, but with the
principle of life still strong within her.
When we reflect on the tremendous assaults it difficult to which she has survived we find it
difficult to conceive in what way she is to perish.”

The first of the onslaughts described by Macaulay was the Albigensian heresy in the 12th century; in
reaction against it had arisen the Dominican and Franciscan Friars. The second was the Avignon Schism,
of the 14th century, together with the heresies of Wycliffe and Hus. The third was the “Reformation,”
more lasting in its consequences, in its “grievous wounds,” yet demonstrating the extraordinary vitality of
Rome.
In as much as the movement was not merely halted, but a part of what had been lost (notably in France,
Belgium, Germany, Austria, Hungary and Poland) was recovered. And the fourth onslaught was the age of
“enlightenment,” the 18th century.
In his own inimitable way Macaulay describes the onslaught of the Enlightenment:
“Orthodoxy soon became synonymous for ignorance and stupidity. It was as necessary in the character of
an accomplished man that he should despise the religion of his country as that he should know his
letters. The new doctrines spread rapidly through Christendom. Paris was the capital of the whole
continent. French was the mirror of the language of polite circles…the teachers of France were the
teachers of Europe…”
“The Church of Rome was still, in outward show, as stately and splendid as ever, but her foundation was
undermined. No state has quitted her communion or confiscated her revenue; but the reverence of the
people was everywhere departed from her.”
“Again, doomed to death, the milk-white hind was still fated not to die. Even before the funeral rites had
been performed over the ashes of Pius VI great reaction has commenced which, after the lapse of more
than 40 years, appears to be still in progress.”

1.The disintegration of Western Christian unity and the transition to a wider mission (1300-1750).
 The unity of the Christian West rested on two universally recognized forces: the papacy and the empire.
When the papacy fell from its position of temporal power and the empire was overwhelmed by the
growth of national states, the twin supports of “Christendom” buckled and collapsed. The process began
in the 14th century, continued in the 15th, and reached its climax in the Protestant Reformation in the
16th century. Not until the middle of the 18th century was it arrested.
a. Church and State in conflict
With the defeat of the Hohenstaufen emperors after the middle of the 13th century, the papacy found itself in
mortal conflict with the new dominant powers in France. Philip the Fair (d. 1314) claimed royal power to tax the
Church. Pope Boniface VIII (d. 1303) retaliated with a papal bull, or manifesto, entitled Clericus Laicos,
threatening excommunication upon anyone interfering with the collection of papal revenues.
The situation worsened when Philip demanded the degradation of the bishop of Parmiers, a demand that
was calculated as an open affront to ecclesiastical authority. Boniface issued another bull, Unam
Sanctam (1302), asserting papal authority over the French national state. It has been described as the
most absolute theocratic doctrine ever formulated:
“We are taught by the evangelical works,” the document declares, “that there are two swords, the
spiritual and the temporal, in the control of the Church… Certainly he who denies that the temporal
sword was under the control of Peter, misunderstands the word of the Lord when he said: “Put your
sword in the sheath.”
Therefore, both the spiritual and the material swords are under the control of the Church but the latter is
used for the Church and the former by the Church. One is used by the hand of a priest, the other by the
hand of the kings and knights at the command and with the permission of the priest… We therefore
declare, say affirm, and announce that for every human creature to be submissive to the Roman Pontiff is
absolutely necessary for salvation.” (Unam Sanctam)
Boniface was arrested by Philip at Anagni in September, 1303, and died soon thereafter. The action sent
shock waves throughout Catholic Europe. Boniface’s successors Benedict XI (d. 1304) and Clement V (d.
1314) came increasingly under French influence until the latter moved the papacy in 1309 to Avignon,
where it remained until 1378. The period was known variously as the Avignon Exile and as the
Babylonian Captivity of the Church. It was not a time of unrelieved disaster for the Church,
however. On the contrary, there was much evidence of renewed interest in missionary activity.
But this was also a period of intensified financial abuses, and perhaps more than anything else these
prepared the way for the eventual breakup of the Church at the Reformation. Those appointed to
ecclesiastical office were expected to pay a benefice tax. There seems to have been a price tag on
everything. In 1832, for example, Pope John XXII (d. 1334) announced in a public audience that he had
excommunicated, suspended, or interdicted one patriarch, five archbishops, thirty bishops, and forty-six
abbots for failure to make appropriate payments.
As the financial burdens rested more and more heavily on the so-called upper clergy, they, in turn, were
 forced to seek ways of supplementing their own income to pay these enormous taxes. The money came
somehow from the laity. Both groups, the upper clergy and the laity, developed a contempt for the
system of taxation. The laity became increasingly anti-clerical, and the clergy increasingly nationalistic.

The Avignon Exile

During the Avignon Exile period, the seat of the Papacy was moved from Rome to Avignon. Avignon is a small
provincial town next to the Rhone River in France. The Avignon exile took place between the years 1309 and
1378. Therefore, the Avignon papacy/Exile is the name given to this period in the Roman Catholic Church's
history, and it lasted between 1309 and 1378 during which the papacy operated from Avignon, France and not
from Rome, Italy, as it had traditionally since the first century AD.
In 1305, Clement V (a Frenchman) was elected as pope after the death of Benedict XI. After the election,
Clement refused to move to Rome and instead remained in France. His refusal was a result of the conflict
that had arisen between Boniface VIII and Philip IV. In 1309, Clement V moved to Avignon and
established his court there. Therefore from 1309 to 1378 the papacy remained in Avignon. It was during
this period that the papacy was referred to as being in exile (from Rome); hence the term "the Avignon
Exile."
Seven popes were in office while the papacy was in Avignon i.e. during the Avignon exile.
The following are their names and the years during which they were in office:
Pope Clement V (1305 – 1314), Pope John XXII (1316 – 1334), Pope Benedict XII (1334 – 1342), Pope Clement VI
(1342 – 1352), Pope Innocent VI (1352 – 1562), Pope Urban V (1362 – 1370) and Pope Gregory XI (1370 – 1378).
In 1378, Pope Gregory XI returned the papacy from Avignon to Rome, bringing the Avignon Papacy to an end.
However, this gave rise to the Great Schism which lasted from 1378 until 1417.
The Great Schism which followed the exile is a period during which there were great controversies
concerning who was to be elected as the Pope. Different parties within the Catholic Church were divided
on this issue until 1414 when the Council of Constance conveyed in order to resolve the controversy. The
Great Schism was finally resolved in 1417. During the Great Schism, France supported the pope in
Avignon while England supported the claim that the pope should live in Rome. After the controversy was
resolved in 1417, France and England had ceased most of their relations and this led to them being
established as different state powers of Europe; as they remained and still are in current day Europe.
During the Avignon exile, the Roman Catholic Church was perceived as a more political organization than
it had been beforehand. This was because the minions of the Church were seen as refugees who could
not execute their authorities due to their fear and limitations. The head of Catholic Church, ever since the
establishment of Catholic Church and papacy, had been known to operate from Rome. Therefore, moving
the papacy from Rome to Avignon seemed to be caused by external forces and not because of the
 interests of the Church.
b. Conflicts within the Church
Trouble began brewing as well on the theological front. Two major challenges were pressed against the
prevailing ecclesiological and canonical notions of ecclesiastical, and especially papal, authority: one by William
of Ockham (d. 1347), an English Franciscan, and the other by Marsilius of Padua (d. 1343), former chancellor of
the University of Paris.
Ockham accepted the pope’s authority over the Church, but only if exercised in a ministerial, not
dominational, way, and for the good of the whole Church, not for the temporal power of the papacy or
the ecclesiastical bureaucracy. Placing the pope above all law and placing everyone else under his
absolute authority is a direct violation of the principle of Christian liberty. Although the pope was now
elected by the College of Cardinals, that system could really be changed since the responsibility rests on
the entire body of the faithful.
Marsilius of Padua was even more radical in his opposition. In his Defensor (1324), which some
have characterized as the dividing line between medieval and modern notions of political and religious
theory, he argued that the Church is a spiritual and sacramental community, united by a common faith
and a common celebration of the sacraments. Relying on Aristotle, Marsilius argued that the clergy-laity
distinction had been overdrawn. Each cleric and each lay person is a citizen with inherent rights to
participate in the affairs of state.
Ordination has nothing at all to do with it. The Church should be governed by those closest to the scene:
local bishops and priests, rather than the pope. And sanctions such as excommunication should be
ignored since coercive power is alien to the Gospel. The pope is no more than the executor of the wishes
of the whole Christian community. Supreme authority rests with a representative council of all Christians.
However, despite his apparent democratic leanings, Marsilius seemed to hold that actual power in the
governance of the Church should be exercised by the civil ruler.
c. The Great Western Schism (1378-1417)
The papacy returned to Rome in 1378. In April of that year the College of Cardinals, long since predominantly
French in composition, elected the archbishop of Bari, Bartolome Prignano, who took the name Urban VI (d.
1389). Within a few months the same electoral body declared their previous decision null and void and
proclaimed a new pope, Clement VII (d. 1394). Now the Church had two claimants to the papacy, and schism
resulted. To resolve the terrible ambiguity, key churchmen turned to conciliarism, a theory originally
developed by canonists in the 12th century and carried forward by Marsilius of Padua in the 14th.
According to this theory, the Church is a vast corporation, with some members exercising leadership
roles. All power resides ultimately in the whole body of the faithful, but that power is transferred to
certain representatives, as in the case of the College of Cardinals in the election of the pope. There are in
effect two churches: the universal Church (the Body of Christ, in the New Testament sense) and the
Apostolic Church, the administrative arm of the Universal Church. The latter, however, is always
 subordinate to the former. The theory was later refined by such theologians as Jean Gerson (d. 1429),
who insisted that the pope is subject to the judgment and legislation of a general council, which is the
only true representative of the Universal Church.
By 1409, the situation worsened. At a council held in Pisa a third pope was elected, Alexander V (d.
1410). Meanwhile, Benedict XIII (d. 1428) had succeeded Clement VII, and Gregory XII (d. 1415) was in
office in the Roman line. By the end of his reign, however, Benedict had no support outside a small
Spanish town where he lived, and Gregory had the allegiance only of certain Italian princes. The one who,
according to some, had the least claim on the papacy, Alexander V, actually had the widest support.
Upon the death of Alexander, the Pisan party elected Baldassare Cossa, who took the name John XXIII. He
proved such a poor choice that he alienated most of his original backers. The emperor Sigismund (d.
1437) forced John XXIII to call a new council, which met at Constance in November, 1414. More than one
hundred thousand people descended upon the city; one hundred eighty-five
bishops, three hundred theologians and canon lawyers, and vast numbers of priests, monks,
lay persons, and politicians.
Realizing that he was about to be condemned and deposed, John XXIII fled Constance but was arrested
and placed under guard while the council continued. On May 29, 1415, John XXIII was formally deposed
after a trial, and six days later he accepted his sentence. Meanwhile, the Roman Pope, Gregory XII, now
eighty-nine years of age, was still holding out at Rimini, where he refused the emperor’s invitation to the
council.
He decided to abdicate, but first sent his representatives to Constance formally convoking the council and
then formally announcing his resignation. The third claimant, Benedict XIII, was also condemned, but he
refused to accept the judgment and died, as one put it, “excommunicated and excommunicating.” On St.
Martin’s day, November 11, 1417, the conclave, consisting of twenty-three cardinals and five prelates
from each of the five nations represented at the council (Italy, England, Germany and Spain), elected a
new pope, Martin V (d. 1431). The schism was over.
d. Conciliarism
Two important pieces of legislation were produced by the Council of Constance, and they have been the subject
of much discussion and debate ever since. The one, Haec Sancta (1415), espoused the supremacy of a general
council and the collegiality of the bishops; the other, Frequens, decreed a kind of parliamentary government for
the Church, requiring the calling of general councils at specified intervals. Although the new pope generally
approved the decrees insofar as they were truly conciliar and did call a council at Pavia five years later, it was
obvious that he and his immediate successors were determined to
resist the onslaught of conciliarism in the Church.
In fact, Eugene IV (1447) suspended the next general council at Basle and transferred it to Florence in
1431. It was at Basle that conciliarism reached its highest development, inspired undoubtedly by the
work of a German priest, Nicholas of Cusa (d. 1464). In a work published during the council entitled De
 Concordantia Catholica (On the Catholic Concord), Cusa argued for the supremacy of a general council
over the pope. The council, in turn, governs the Church only through the consent of the faithful.
In 1460 Pope Pius II (d. 1464) issued a decree condemning the “deadly poison” of conciliarism and
forbidding under pain of excommunication any appeal beyond the pope to a general council. The
prohibition was repeated by Pope Sixtus IV (d 1484) and Julius II (d. 1513). Among the strongest
opponents of the pope’s negative stance toward general councils were members of the reformed
monastic groups, especially the Carthusians.
The pope’s resistance to the conciliar principle, they argued, was rooted in the Roman Curia’s fear of
being held to account for centuries of evil practices. That was not the first attack upon the Curia, nor
would it be the last, as the history of the Second Vatican Council shows.
e. The Reformation
The “Reformation” is an all-embracing term which describes the disintegration of Western Christianity in the
16th century. Like all other major developments in the history of the Church, including even the decision to
carry the Gospel to the Gentiles, this one did not occur in a single event and through the efforts of a single
person, such as Martin Luther (d. 1546). It was instead an extremely complex process in which religious,
political, intellectual and social forces converged.
The Latin term reformation (from reformare, to renew, give new form) was frequently used in Middle
Ages to designate attempts to change both the Church and society. With regard to the Church, the idea
implied a turn away from worldlines and a purification of doctrine and practice. It was sometimes linked
to a hope for a general “ rebirth” (“renaissance”). There had been a number of significant reform
movements throughout the Middle Ages; but the word has come to refer especially to the Reformation
of the sixteenth century in its various aspects.
Like earlier attempts at purification, this movements originally implied no intent of division of the Church;
but when Rome condemned the Reformers and the latter conclude that Roman Church was not only
corrupt in practice but was in theological error, the reform eventually led to the separation of large parts
of Christianity from communion with Rome and with each other. The term as used here includes also the
effort to reform the Catholic Church from within.
The “Catholic Reformation” (sometimes called the “Counter Reformation”) of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries was in fact a continuation of the impetus to reform that existed already before
Luther, which was intensified and given focus (especially theologically) as a reaction against
Protestantism.
Background and Causes of the Reformation
A number of factors contributed to the eruption and rapid success of the Reformation. Conditions in the
Church and society were probably not worse than in some previous periods. It was the particular
combination of these conditions with a new social and intellectual environment that made the
Reformation possible.
The Condition of the Church. The Church at the beginning of the sixteenth century stood in great need of
purification and reform at every level. The Renaissance popes frequently lived more like secular princes
than like spiritual leaders. Their personal lives were sometimes scandalous. Their position as rulers of the
Papal States involved them in warfare and political intrigue. Their political and artistic projects (like the
refurbishing of the Vatican by Italy’s leading artists and the building of the new St. Peter’s Basilica)
demanded the expenditure of enormous amounts of money. The Roman Curia, the central administrative
body of the Church, was top-heavy, inefficient, and corrupt; positions were frequently sold to raise funds
for a depleted papal treasury.
Most bishops came from the nobility, and had little contact with their flocks. In many places, secular
rulers had control of the appointment of bishops and the disposition of other Church offices; they used
them to reward their relatives and friends with lucrative positions. Some episcopal sees in the Holy
Roman Empire were also princedoms, combining in the bishop the spiritual and secular rule over vast
territories.
Frequently bishops and pastors had multiple “ benefices “ from which they drew income without
attending to their pastoral responsibilities or even residing in the place, while the actual care of parishes
was left to poorly paid and ill-educated curates. Celibacy was poorly observed; it was common for clergy
to have concubines or common-law wives. Discipline in the monasteries was lax.
Preaching was neglected, especially by the secular clergy. Not surprisingly, popular religion was riddled
with superstition and theological misunderstanding. Much devotion centered around relics (some of
them false) and their shrines. The “Real Presence” in the Eucharist was often understood in a
materialistic way, and the sacrament was seen more as something to be adored than to be received.
The Political and Social Situation. The political and economic structure of Europe was in a state of change
at the turn of the sixteenth century. The recent discovery of America had not yet had an appreciable
effect; but increased trade and the growth of a money-based economy were changing the nature of
economic power. In England, France, and Spain, the authority of the central government was increasing.
Monarchs attempted to curb the rival power of the Church by controlling Church appointments and
limiting the outflow of money to Rome (causing the papacy to depend more on the German states, which
lacked a powerful central authority.)
They resisted traditional Church privileges, like the freedom of clergy from secular jurisdiction. In the
Holy Roman Empire, on the other hand, there was great instability: the emperor, the great territorial
rulers, the lower nobility under them, and the free cities all sought to increase their power at the
expense of the others. Meanwhile, the eastern borders of the empire were constantly threatened by the
military expansion of the Turks. On the local as well as the national and territorial levels there was
expansion of civil power: town councils began to take over education, public morality, and the care of
poor, all at one time the domain of Church institutions.
The Intellectual Climate. The Renaissance movement of humanism ( literary culture based on the study of
Greek and Roman classics ) challenged the accepted authorities of the Middle Ages. Christian humanists
like Erasmus of Rotterdam studied biblical languages and attempted to produce reliable editions and
translations of the Scriptures. Erasmus’s influential book The Praise of Folly (1509) rediculed the abuses
in the Church and its decadent Scholastic theology. Erasmus also deplored the superstitions of popular
piety, and called for a return to the simple and pure religion of the Gospels. The use of the recently
invented printing press allowed for the wide-spread dissemination of such ideas.
Although there were instances of real, substantial advancements in this period (e.g., the establishment of
the Vatican Library by Pope Nicholas V, (d. 1455), it was also a period marked by nepotism, military
expeditions, financial manipulation, political intrigue and even murder. The year America was
“discovered” by Columbus (1492), the notorious Alexander VI (d. 1503) ascended to the papal throne.
Insofar as one can identify specific causes of the Reformation, they are as follows: 1) the corruption of
the Renaissance papacy; 2) the divorce of piety from theology, and of theology from biblical and patristic
tradition; 3) the aftereffects of the Western Schism; 4) the rise of the national state; 5) the close
connection between Western Christianity and Western civilization; and 6) the vision, experiences and
personalities of Luther, Ulrich Zwingli (d. 1531) and John Calvin (d. 1564).
1. The Renaissance (literally, “Rebirth”) of the 15th century tried to recapture the literary and artistic
achievements of the Latin and Greek antiquity. The focus was not upon idea but upon the aesthetic and
the emotional. The movement was, by many accounts, excessive in its celebration of the human. Not
only were the works of art of the ancient civilization brought forward, but so, too were the mores and
morals of those civilizations.
2. At the same time Catholic piety grew increasingly away from sound theology, and theology, in turn,
from its own best tradition. Religious art and spirituality appealed directly, almost blatantly, to the
emotions. Emphasis on the sufferings and wounds of Christ in excruciating physical detail became
commonplace. Statue of Christ with blood dripping down from his crown of thorns appeared
everywhere. Attention was riveted on the Last Judgment, not as the day of redemption but as the day of
reckoning and of error.
Catholic theology also drifted along anti-intellectual course. In reaction against the excessive
abstractions of Scholasticism, a new style of theology known as nominalism rejected all forms of
mediation between God and humankind: sacraments, Church authority, meritorious
deeds, and so forth. Nothing can bridge the gap between God and us except the mercy of God
manifested in Christ. Since we are utterly corrupt, justification is exclusively God’s work.
The rapidity with which this new theology approach spread through Europe – influencing Luther, Calvin,
Zwingli and others – indicates the intensity of dissatisfaction with the status quo of late medieval
Catholicism. There was an “alluring simplicity” to the Protestant message, and it caught on almost
immediately. And its Catholic counterparts – e.g., in the Imitation of Christ of Thomas a Kempis (d. 1471),
 who insisted, among other things, that “it is better to feel compunction than to be able to define it.”
3. The debilitating effects of the Great Western Schism are obvious enough. The pope’s ability to function
as a symbol and instrument of unity was seriously undermined even within the Church of the West. East-
West Schism had weakened the office’s credibility and effectiveness one or two centuries earlier.
4. The rise of the national states made independence from the influence of the papacy increasingly
possible, likely, and then certain. The new slogan was Rex imperator in regno suo (The King is emperor in
his own kingdom). That political perspective gradually widened to embrace even the authority over the
Church.
5. The insistence of the Western Church on tying its identity too intimately to Western Civilization denied
the Church a necessary measure of flexibility and adaptability. The papacy and ecclesiastical authority in
general, had taken on an imperial cast. The Church was less the People of God than a
hierarchical, indeed an absolutely monarchical society. Its rulers tried to impose as a matter of
culturally-conditioned political theory and church-craft.
(Compare, for example, Boniface VIII’s Unam Sanctam with the Second Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution
on the Church.)
6. In the final accounting, no one can ever ignore the direct impact of personalities themselves on the
course of the events, no matter how much we talk of larger social, political, and economic forces. The
Reformation took hold in Europe and in the forms it assumed because of the peculiar strengths and
weaknesses of specific men: Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli in particular.
Luther was a monk who, like most medieval Christians, took the “Last Things” very seriously: death,
judgment, heaven and hell. He was tormented by the thought of God’s judgment as he reflected on his
creatureliness and unworthiness. Traditional modes of mortification and penance did not work for him.
He was still without peace. He concluded that he had to relinquish all forms of self-reliance.
God alone would save him. All other devices of mediation, including indulgences (the remission of
a temporal punishment in Purgatory still due to sins which have already been forgiven), are contrary to
the simple, unadorned message of the Gospel. The charging of fees for indulgences brought the
matter to a head, and on October 31, 1517, Luther posted his now famous Ninety-nine Theses on the
door of the castle church at Wittenberg. The rest is history.
Zwingli was a Swiss humanist who became vicar of the cathedral at Zurich in 1519, whereupon he
announced that he would preach the entire Gospel of Matthew and not only the excerpts available in the
liturgy. He would thereby carry the Church back to its simpler, primitive, non-Roman origins. He
abolished fast days, removed images, and banned all church music. Zwingli’s system of church polity, not
surprisingly, was well suited to the city of Zurich, which had a representative government. His
ecclesiology was also considerably more democratic, anti-clerical and anti-institutional than Luther’s,
who was satisfied to introduce the vernacular into the liturgy and eliminate religious vows and celibacy.
 Calvin, a French theologian who left the Catholic Church in 1533, provided Protestantism with its
integrated doctrinal system: The Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536). Calvin was especially noted
for his theory of predestination. We can do nothing at all about our salvation. God has already
determined our destiny. Since the fall of Adam, all of us deserve to be damned. And God indeed allows
many to be damned to manifest divine justice. But some are saved to manifest divine grace. There are
signs in a person’s life by which one can tell if he or she is destined for salvation or reprobation:
profession of the true faith, an upright life, and attendance upon the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. The
Church, therefore, is the company of the elect.
Calvin’s ecclesiology was somewhere between the still essentially “Catholic.” Luther on the right and the
strongly “Protestant” Zwingli on the left. Where Luther still employed the crucifix (With the figure of
Christ upon the cross), and where Zwingli abandoned it altogether, Calvin allowed the cross but without
the corpus. Calvinism was to become the most international form of Protestantism.
Other Reformation movements included the Anabaptists on the far left (to the left even
of Zwingli) and the Anglicans on the right (to the right even of Luther). The Anabaptists movement is
often referred to as the “radical Reformation.” They were called Anabaptists (literally, “baptized
again”) because they held as invalid the Baptism of infants (‘dipping in the Romish bath”). For them the
Church is a completely voluntary society of convinced believers. Only those who are truly converted
and repentant can be baptized.
Anglicanism, on the other hand, is the result of fusion of nationalism and religious upheaval. The quarrel
with Rome was not over doctrine nor even over morality and finances, but over a royal wedding. Pope
Clement VII (d. 1534) refused to allow King Henry VIII (d. 1547) to divorce his first wife and take a second.
What followed was a moral course of action in search of theological justification. The writings of Marsilius
of Padua and others proved useful to this purpose. The state “acquired” the Church, and Henry became
in effect his own pope. Even today, the reigning monarch of Great Britain is at the same time the head of
the Church of England.
f. The Counter-Reformation
By the 15th century all of the , the British Isles, and much of Germany, Austria and France had served the bonds
of communion with Rome. In spite of the fact that Luther himself had called for a general council to
examine his doctrine, nothing of the sort was done until 1545. The reasons for the delay were for the most part
political.
The pope as a temporal ruler was caught between the territorial designs of the Hapsburgs, on the one
hand, and the king of France, on the other.
The threat of conciliarism still hung over Europe. There was a general fear in Rome that should a general
council be called, the very office of the papacy might be abolished. Another reason for the delay was the
simple failure of the Church’s leadership to recognize the seriousness of the Protestant movement, and
especially how much opposed it really was to traditional Catholic doctrine.
 Luther was looked upon at first as a sincere reformer who was merely expressing dissatisfaction with the
abuses in contemporary Catholicism.
From the start of the Reformation there were appeals for a general Church council to address the
doctrinal and practical issues it raised. The popes, however, remembering the Councils of Basle and
Constance, were afraid that a council might limit their authority.
If there were to be a council, they wished it to be held in Rome, under close papal supervision.
The emperor and German princes wanted the council in Germany. The French opposed anything that
would settle the turmoil in the empire. A council was called in 1536 by Pope Paul III, it began to meet in
1545 in the city of Trent (chosen because although in Italy it was still part of the empire).
2. The Council of Trent
Not until the election of Paul III (d. 1549) in 1534 did the situation begin to change. Surrounding himself with
bona fide reformers, he mandated steps to eliminate the abuses. A call was issued for the reform of the Roman
Curia, particularly its financial dealings. When a council finally convened in 1545 in the northern Italian town of
Trent, its attendance was skimpy: less than forty bishops, mostly Italian. There was a long debate about the
representative character of the assembly, and then about the relative importance of dogmatic over against
disciplinary issues. In early 1546 the opposed forces within the council reached a compromise, deciding to deal
simultaneously with both matters.
Although its composition was slight in comparison with Chalcedon (about 630 delegates) and Vatican I
(about 700, not to mention Vatican II (over 2000), and although its, proceedings were twice
suspended (from 1548 to 1551, and again from 1552 to 1561), the Council of Trent (1545- 1563) is
perhaps second only to the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) in terms of disciplinary decrees and the
clarification of Catholic doctrine. Until Vatican II, twentieth-century Catholicism was
shaped more by the Council of Trent than by any historically tangible event or force.
Doctrinal Clarification.
The council’s teachings were framed in a polemical context, and therefore emphasized those aspects of doctrine
that seemed challenged by Reformation theology. Bu the decrees were carefully worded to permit diverse
opinions within the general framework of their teaching.
As contemporary ecumenical dialogue has shown, they left a great deal more room for possible
agreement, once misunderstandings were eliminated, than was sometimes realized in the
hostile climate of the following years.
The council taught that the truths and practices of the Church have as their source both the Scriptures
and non-written apostolic tradition (without clearly defining what this tradition contains). It also defined
the canon (list of inspired books) of Scripture, including in the Old Testament not only the Hebrew Bible,
but also the Greek “apocrypha.”
With regard to the central question of “justification,” or how salvation takes place,
the council insisted that mere trust in God’s mercy is not sufficient. We must freely “cooperate” with
grace through love in order to be saved; that is, God’s freely given grace truly change us interiorly. It
insisted that no one is “predestined” by God to reject grace.
The council enumerated and discussed seven sacraments (while the Protestants recognized only two or
three). It taught that in the Mass the one sacrifice of Christ is truly present (but not repeated), and re-
affirmed the doctrine of transubstantiation in the Eucharist.
Disciplinary Reform.
It was obvious to all that reforms were needed in Church life; but there were disagreements about their
kind and extent. The disciplinary decrees of Trent became the main source of Catholic Church practice
until the Second Vatican Council. A major focus was the fostering of a well-educated and pure clergy.
The council for the first time created a system of regular education for candidates for priesthood,
instructing that a seminary should be established in every diocese that did not have a university.
The council described office of the bishop in terms of pastoral responsibility, including preaching, and
gave bishops more power of supervision in their dioceses, removing many of the exemptions that had
previously limited episcopal authority. It abolished the office of “quaestor” or purveyor of indulgences. It
called for synods of clergy.
Other reforms were aimed at doctrinal orthodoxy and uniformity of practice. Trent decided that the Mass
should normally be celebrated in Latin, and a new Roman Missal (1570) established its ritual.
In the Catholic Church, the reaction against Protestantism frequently
resulted in defensiveness and narrowness of perspective. Fear of heresy led to theological uniformity and
the loss of theological pluralism that had characterized earlier ages.
Authority was emphasized, and the Church structure became increasingly centralized in Rome. At the
same time, the Catholic Church has gradually absorbed many of the positive insights of the Protestant
Reformers, and in the contemporary era has come to acknowledge their contribution. The
Second Vatican Council explicitly refers to the Church as “always in need of reform.”
The council definitively articulated Catholic doctrine on the matter of faith and grace against Luther,
Zwingli, Calvin, and their followers. Following a middle course between Pelagianism (everything depends
on human effort) and Protestantism (everything depends on God), the council insisted that salvation
comes from God as a pure gift, but that it requires some measure of human cooperation.
It has been asserted that “had Trent’s decree on justification been decreed at the Lateran Council at
the beginning of the sixteenth century, the Reformation would not have occurred and the religious unity
of the Middle Ages would have endured.”
John P. Dolan, Catholicism, Page 149
The council also clearly and decisively defined the meaning and number of the sacraments, especially the
Eucharist, thereby confirming a tradition which first emerged about 1150 and achieved conciliar
formulation at Florence in 1439. Its decree on marriage, Tametsi, required that a wedding be celebrated
before a priest and two witnesses, and held as invalid marriages between Catholics and Protestants.
The council also created the Index of Forbidden Books (not abolished until the pontificate of Paul VI,
(d.1978) and established seminaries for the training of future priests.
Both of these actions, conceived as temporary measures, proved to have lasting effects on the life of the
Church: The first kept both the laity and the clergy separated from the major intellectual works of
modern times, and the second tended to sharpen the distinction between clergy and laity by encouraging
an academic and spiritual formation for priests in isolation from the ordinary workday world of the rest of
the People of God.
Again, those effects have only recently begun to change under the impact of Vatican II.
At the heart of the Catholic Counter-Reformation was the newly established the Society of Jesus, founded
by St. Ignatius of Loyola (d.1556), a former soldier, and approved by Pope Paul III in 1540.
Although it was only one of several new communities in the Church, the Jesuits stand out because of
their dedication to various forms of the apostolate, especially the education of the young and of future
priests, their sense of solidarity as a community and with the pope, their scholarship and learning, and
their rapid expansion, growing as they did to more than 13,000 within fifty years of Ignatius’ death.
To the extent that the Counter Reformation succeeded, it did so primarily through the worldwide efforts
and missionary imagination of the Society of Jesus.
There was a concurrent resurgence of art, piety, and theology in the so-called Baroque age (1550-1750).
Baroque scholasticism replaced the more obscure Pre-Reformation, nominalistic theology. Spanish and
Italian theologians like Bellarmine, Soto, Suarez, Cano, and others, distinguished themselves. Suarez
(d.1617) made a particularly strong impact, influencing every branch of theology and philosophy.
Theology become exceedingly systematized.
The authority of each theological position was precisely identified. Suarezianism had its spiritual
effects as well: especially on the Spanish mystics (St. Teresa of Avila, d. 1582, and St. John of the Cross, d.
1591), who, in turn influenced French spirituality.
But by and large the post-Tridentine Church continued to emphasize those practices which came under
particular attack by the Protestants: veneration of the saints, Marian devotions, and eucharistic
adoration. The first and second tended, unwittingly or not, to diminish the role of Christ, and the third,
the role of the laity in the Church and at the Eucharist.
The liturgy was still the affair of the clergy. In 1661 Pope Alexander VII (d. 1667) forbade any translation
of the missal into the vernacular under pain of excommunication.
The anti-vernacularists wanted instead to preserve the aura of “mystery”. Recitation of the rosary at
Mass became common, and preaching, when it occurred at all at the Eucharist, was divorced from the
biblical readings.
The reception of Communion took place after the Mass. The sacrament was primarily to be worshiped
rather than taken as spiritual nourishment.
Thus, this period saw the spread of eucharistic processions, forty hours devotions, and benediction of the
Blessed Sacrament. The baroque character of the age was also manifest in architecture and in sacred
music (the works of Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven, and the growth of poly-phonic song).
The liturgy became as much a grand spectacle as an act of community worship.
At the same time the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were marked by religious fervor and
holiness. The seventeenth century has been called the century of saints: St. Vincent de Paul (d. 1660), St.
Jean Eudes (d. 1680), Jean Jacques Olier (d. 1657), Jacques Bossuet (d. 1704), and others. Of particular
importance was St. Francis de Sales (d. 1622), bishop of Geneva, who was considerably ahead of his time
as an ecumenist, a pastoral leader, an encourager of the lay apostolate and of lay spirituality.
He gave particular expression to the latter in his Introduction to the Devout Life (1590). The section on
marriage is the very antithesis of the monastic prejudice which characterized so many earlier treatments
of the married state.
Jansenism
By the beginning of the seventeenth century, the papacy was as strong as it had been since the
thirteenth. But doctrinal controversy continued to hamper the Church’s quest for a unified missionary
effort. Michael de Bay of Louvain (d. 1589), also known as Michael Baius, considered grace, immorality,
and freedom from concupiscence as due to us and given in creation; they were not gifts freely bestowed
by God.
Thus, by Original Sin, we lost not only goods that were “extra” to begin with, but goods that are
constitutive of our human condition.
Therefore, the wound of Original Sin is radical.
Baianism was of less importance in itself than in a movement it influenced, namely, Jansen, Jansenism,
generated by one of Michael’s pupils at Louvain, Cornelius Jansen (d.1638). Jansen wrote a defense of
Baius entitled Augustinus, in which he attacked Thomism and the theology of the Jesuits and argued that
Augustine, not Thomas, is the true representative of Christianity.
The book appeared two years after Jansen’s death and evoked a strong reaction. Protestants were
pleased. Jansen had laid bare the Pelagianism of Rome. But Pope Urban VIII (d. 1644) placed the book on
the Index. Jansenism spread nonetheless, especially through France, where it influenced the training of
large numbers of priests. It promoted the theory of predestination and a morally rigorous style of
Christian life.
Since Original Sin has so radically corrupted human nature, everything purely natural is evil. Grace is
given only to be experienced only rarely, as an occasional reward for virtue. Since Jansenism was from
the outset an anti-Jesuit movement, its stand on reception of Communion was not surprising in view of
 the Jesuits’ promotion of frequent reception
Jansenism was carried to Ireland from France, and from Ireland to the United States. Much of pre-Vatican
II American Catholicism’s obsession with sexual morality and its relatively narrow eucharistic piety (e.g.,
infrequent reception of Communion and then only after “going to Confession” is directly traceable to this
Jansenist influence.
Gallicanism
The condemnation of Jansenism by Rome fueled the fires of independence in France. In 1682 the French clergy
declared that the pope had only spiritual.
Henceforth all of his pronouncements would have to be approved by the consent of the entire Church.
This latter point is especially important because it would be a matter of specific condemnation at the First
Vatican Council (1869-1870) when, on the matter of papal infallibility, the Church would officially declare
that a pope’s authoritative teachings are not subject to the consent of the entire Church.
Some Catholics in the twentieth century interpreted that to mean that the pope has absolute teaching
authority, that can in no way require the consent of the Church.
But as we shall see when returning to the question of papal infallibility in chapter 24, Vatican I meant
here to rule out the juridical necessity of some subsequent formal vote taken by a general council or
other representative agency in the Church.
Infallible teachings, on the other hand, do require the consent of the Church in the sense that what the
pope teaches must really be consistent with the actual faith of the whole Church.
Gallicanism (so-called because of its French, or Gallic, origins) persisted in France even beyond the
Revolution at the end of the eighteenth century. As transplanted to Germany it
was called Febronianism or Josephism (after the emperor Joseph II, d. 1790).
The Enlightenment
Conditions grew substantially worse as the intellectual atmosphere also changed. It was at this time that the
West was to undergo the most revolutionary of all movements in Western history.
The Enlightenment began in the Netherlands and in England in the mid-seventeenth century and reached
its high-water mark in France rationalism (Voltaire,d.1778, et al.) Its fullest philosophical
expression occurred in Germany (Leibniz,d.1716, Lessing, d.1781,and Kant, d. 1804). It
had relatively little effect in southern and Eastern Europe.
The Enlightenment was characterized by its confidence in reason, its optimistic view of the world and of
human nature, and its celebration of freedom of inquiry. It had a decidedly hostile attitude toward the
supernatural, the notion of revelation, and extrinsic authority of every kind.
It was chiefly in the Protestant countries that a distinctively Enlightenment Christianity took hold in the
form of dogmatic reductionism and an anti-sacramentalism. The reconciliation of science and culture, on
the one hand, and Christianity, on the other, was facilely achieved.
But there was also a Catholic Enlightenment which brought about a renewal of Church life as early as the
eighteenth century, particularly in the Catholic states of Germany. It took the form of advances in
historical and exegetical methods, improvements in the education of the clergy, the struggle against
superstition, reform of the liturgy and catechesis, and the promotion of popular education. In many ways,
its reforms paved the road for the renewal of the nineteenth century.
In the final accounting, the Enlightenment marks the division between an often pre-critical, authority-
oriented theology and a critical, historically sophisticated, and philosophically mature theology.
The fact that much Catholic theology was written after the Enlightenment does not mean that all of it
was truly a post-Enlightenment theology. On the contrary, much Catholic theology before Vatican II was
still largely unaffected by the Enlightenment.
The French Revolution (1789-1799)
It is remarkable, and eloquent of the state of opinion on Church matters in the year 1789, that the clergy
of France did not look to their own religious authority, that is to the Pope, to cleanse and renew their
lives; they looked first where everybody else was looking, to the French monarchy.
In the Cahiers (petition for reform) which the clergy, like the other Estates, drew up before the meeting of
the French-Estates-General in 1789, the French hierarchy, from the bishops down to the humblest cures,
were agreed in asking the King to make provision for Church reform.
Admittedly, some of the matters they raised concerned the relations between the
Church and state, in which the King was an interested party. Thus, they all wanted the Catholic Church to
remain the Established Church of France, with exclusive privileges, and some were critical of the moves
which the monarchy of a count had recently made in favor of the French Protestants, Jews and agnostics.
They also had a number of suggestions for strengthening the Church’s influence in the moral and cultural
life of a country, including stricter censorship of the press.
But even supposing these to be matters pertaining to the monarchy, as well as to Rome, what are we to
make of the suggestions, contained in the majority of these cahiers, that the monasteries be “reformed,”
the monks being made to do “useful work” and not allowed to devote themselves to prayer and
contemplation?
Such suggestions, made to the King, make it very evident that the Gallican theory has penetrated the
clergy as a whole, so that even the various religious rules, the rules of St. Benedict, Cluny, Citeaux, and
the rest, originally approved by Rome, were regulated as reformable, indeed as needing reform by the
Bourbon monarchy.
No doubt this attack, made by the secular priests upon the religious orders, should be viewed as one
more manifestation of the age-long conflict between the secular and the regular; but it is significant that
in 1789 the seculars, in their desire to reform the regulars, were invoking the power of the State.
The crisis that precipitated yet another qualitative leap in the Church’s historical course was the French
Revolution, the Enlightenment’s political carrier. It brought about the end of the feudal, hierarchical
society that had been so much a part of medieval Catholicism. But it tried to do more than that. It tried
to destroy Catholicism itself, and not just its organizational structure.
The French Revolution’s extremism generated a counterreaction among some
European intellectuals, who once again turned to the basic principles of Catholicism. The Revolution also
destroyed Gallicanism by uprooting the clerical system upon which it had been based. The clergy were
forced to look to Rome and the papacy for direction. In a few words, the French Revolution gave the
Catholic Church the “grace of destitution.” It no longer had much to lose. It was free once again to pursue
the mission for which it has existed from the beginning.
The higher clergy assumed that, when the Estates-General met at Versailles, their own Estate, which was
the “First Estate,” the Estate of the Church,” would deliberate and vote separately, and would submit its
proposals to the King for his approval. But, through the influence of the curѐs, matters turned out very
differently.
When the Estates of the clergy, the nobility, and the “Third Estate” assembled, it was found that out of
296 deputies representing the Estate of the clergy no less than 208 were curѐs; and these curѐs
proceeded to show their readiness to vote with the Third Estate, and many of them even insisted upon
taking their seats with that Estate.
They thus compelled the Crown to give way and abandon its original plan, by which the three Estates
were to have deliberately and voted separately, in favor of one single Assembly in which each individual
member had one vote. And by doing so they secured the triumph of the Third Estate, which was as
numerous as the other two Estates put together.
The Ultimate victory of the Revolution was thus assured; the higher clergy and the nobility had been
defeated by the parish priests of France. Unwittingly, they had made the French Revolution.
But it was a victory of which many of the curѐs were soon to repent. For rapid, indeed, was the progress
of the avalanche of destruction which followed upon their surrender of the Church in France to the whim
of a popular constituent assembly.
They had not realized that, once the new revolutionary authority had been allowed to assail the Church
in her discipline and in her property, it would soon invade the sphere of faith and morals.
Church Property and civil service of priests
As is common in anti-clerical campaigns, the first demands made upon the Church were for her money.
The Revolutionary Government was short of funds; what need had the Church of her extensive lands? Let
her surrender them to serve as security for the new paper currency, the assignats.
It was not enough that the clergy had voluntarily surrendered their tithes; the property of the Church
must be handed over in toto to the State.
The plea was made that the Church should retain sufficient property to provide at least a living for her
priests; but this plea was dismissed. If the Church retained any property, would she not remain a
distinct order within the State?
Let her priests rather receive a stipend from the government. Such was the reform decreed by the
Constituent Assembly, by 510 votes against 346, on November 2, 1789.
Then, if there were to be no Church property, how could there be religious orders? It was an easy step to
their dissolution, for not even the curѐs were interested in saving them.
The nuns, though shorn of much of their property, were allowed to remain in their convents; but the
monks, unless they were teaching, or running orphanages, or the like, must leave.
They might regroupthemselves in certain designated houses, but they were encouraged,
rather, to abandon their vows.
And since the State was now to salary a civil service of priests, it was natural that she should reorganize
their distribution to her liking. Let there be one bishop for each political department. This would reduce
the episcopacy by more than a third.
Let there be fewer curѐs. Let the bishops be elected by the departments, the curѐs by the electoral
bodies of their districts. Ten metropolitan would invest the bishops, and the pope need only to be
notified of elections; his approval need no longer be obtained in advance.
Such, in brief, was the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, voted by the Assembly on July 12, 1790. Ironically,
these dramatic innovations in the nationalization of the Church received the support of a large number of
the curѐs and many of the bishops.
Too soon it was now to become apparent how quickly the holder of the purse strings could interfere in
the entire sphere of Church discipline and even doctrine.
Civil Constitution of the Clergy: Constitutionalist and Roman Priests
At this juncture, the French bishop-deputies rose to the occasion and presented an united front, insisting
upon the incompetence of the temporal power in matters spiritual.
The only reply of the Assembly was to subject bishops themselves to investiture by order of the temporal
tribunals of the Departments, if the metropolitans should refuse to invest the “Elect of the People.”
Thus was a gulf dug between the Assembly and the French episcopacy too wide to be crossed, and many
of the lower clergy, too, recognized the impasse. It became necessary for the assembly to try to impose
upon the clerical deputies an oath of loyalty to this new Civil Constitution of the Clergy.
The Civil Constitution had divided the Assembly, and now it divided the Church in France for, alongside
those priests who accepted it, there were many “refractory” clergy, the name given to those who refused
the new oath of obedience which would make them civil servants.
Sometimes they said Mass secretly, sometimes, where the police were indulgent, openly. It now
appeared to some patriotic Frenchmen that the “Refractory” or “Roman” clergy were allies of the foreign
powers, that they were in alliance with the avowed enemies of the new France.
Although it had intended to turn the Church into a State department, it had nevertheless intended to
keep to keep her in existence, and it had hoped and expected to keep her in communion with Rome.
Otherwise, it only succeeded in producing a desperate schism.
The Sacraments
Yet the lot of the Constitutional Church became, before long, little better than that of the Roman Church.
And for these Constitutionalists life was the more depressing since they lacked the consolation of having
never yielded, of suffering for loyalty to truth, or of that secret respect which often came the way of the
‘good curѐs’ in prison or in hiding.
But they were consoled with the conviction that they were regenerating society and bringing about the
Kingdom of Heaven upon earth.
It was therefore impossible that they should believe that divine grace, or the sacraments, or a special
order – the priesthood – set apart by ordination, training, celibacy, and the rest, was any longer
necessary. Since the new apostles of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity were regenerating France, what
need had she of priestly absolution?
Consideration of this kind led, at an early stage in the campaign of “de-Christianization,” to a step which
was to place the Constitutional clergy in a cruel quandary: marriage was made a civil contract
(September 20, 1792); the ceased to recognize it as a sacrament.
From this it soon followed that the marriage of priests, of members of religious orders, or of divorced
persons, was legitimate. The restraints previously laid upon them were of a kind unrecognized by the
new State faith.
By July 1793, it was necessary for the whole clergy to decide where it stood in this cardinal doctrinal
matter or else face imprisonment or deportation.
Some forms of Reconciliation
From the time when the French Revolution decided, in the year 1789, to confiscate the property of the
Church in France and to turn her priests into elected and salaried officials, conflict with Rome was
inevitable. But what gave peculiar poignancy to the conflict was the genuine uncertainty in the minds of
some even the best French clergy as to where the duty lay.
The schism between Constitutional and Roman priests, a little later, the schism between the two groups
of Roman Clergy themselves, those who stayed and those who went abroad weakened the witness of
Catholicism and disturbed the consciences of the faithful. The second schism could be found likely in
Rome.
If we are inclined to apportion the blame we shall find it in the shoulders of the papacy, since it would
appear to have been for the papacy to make clear where the duty of the French clergy lay.
1. Spring of the year 1794 – the ascendancy of Robespierre in the Committee of Public Safety. He, though
an anti-Catholic himself, regarded the anti-Christian campaign as a folly.
In law, however, if not in fact, there was now an appearance of improvement with a Treaty at last, in
February 1795 of La Jaunaye, specifically granting religious toleration in some affected regions of France,
a concession which the government found it absolutely necessary to make if the civil war were to be
brought to a close.
This was followed with an Edict of Toleration for the whole country but it was not as a whole granting
general return to normalcy.
Still, they could not use the Churches. They could not even advertise, so much as by a notice on a door.
They could not raise money, form no associations, ring no bells, hold no processions. Such remain their
status until Napoleon appeared on the scene.
2. Napoleon (1799-1815) - Napoleon, by then a young French general, concluded his Concordat with
Pope Pius VII in the year 1801.
Nevertheless, it was toleration of a kind, and queues formed outside the little rooms where Mass was
known to be being said. He was campaigning militarily in Italy in 1796 and 1797 and was interested in
furthering religious peace.
He knew very well that an understanding with Rome would make for stability in France and security for
the new regime, but then, the regime in Paris was not to his taste, and already he intended to supersede
it by placing himself in power.
So his policy was to let the religious sentiment with Rome wait until he himself was in a position to make
it along lines of his own choosing; he would not make a present of it to those whom he regarded as his
rivals.
Nevertheless, a French military occupation of Rome soon followed. It has been argued notably by
most historians, particularly A. Aulard, that Napoleon, by making a concordat with Rome, suppressed a
flourishing and fruitful diversity of cults, all enjoying toleration, because he wanted a unified political
system which he could control in his own interests and it is extremely significant that when Napoleon was
looking for the widest measure of support he could find for his regime he looked to those who were
obedient to the Roman Priests.
The fact was that he chose the religion which he knew to be most deeply embedded in the French and
western European conscience.
There has seldom been a more convincing tribute to the underlying strength of the Church than that it
was recognized and accepted by most people.
The Concordat was a treaty between “His Holiness Pius VII and the French Government.” Though not
recognized as the official religion of France, the “Catholic and Roman” religion was recognized in the
Preamble as the “religion of the great majority of the French people.”
It was to be exercised freely and openly, but subject to such police regulations as the government might
judge necessary for maintaining public order – this was the proviso invoked on many later occasions as
an excuse for renewed governmental interference.
The cathedrals and churches were to be handed back to the clergy, and the bishops and beneficed clergy
were to be paid a suitable salary. There was, however, no provision for seminaries of for cathedral
chapters.
It is important to remember how desperate was the position from which the Concordat with Napoleon
saved the Catholic Church; it may be that it was one more ominous than any to which she had been
driven throughout the centuries of her history, since the time of the persecutions under the Roman
Empire.
In May 1804 a grateful Senate decreed that Napoleon was now Emperor of the French and that his
position was hereditary. He was Emperor “by the grace of God and the Constitution of the Republic.” It
was a new title and not one which was to make a profound impression.
And it would certainly appear much more impressive if the Pope were to give it his blessing by coming in
person to Paris and crowning him.
So, with this end in view, Napoleon invited Pius VII to his capital. It was not easy for the Pope to accept
the invitation. There was no precedent, over more than a thousand years, for the Pope travelling to
crown a King. And, were he to do so now, the affront to His Christian Majesty, King Louis XVIII, to the
bishops still in
exile, must be cruel.
And in any case, was this a moment to bestow a special favor and honor upon France, the country which
had launched the modern persecution of the Church, and some of whose bishops had still not made their
submission to Rome since their acceptance of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy.
For three months he hesitated, he agreed to make a long journey, accompanied by six cardinals, ten
bishops, and a company comprising altogether more than a hundred persons, and conveyed in more than
coaches.
Thus did the simple Benedictine monk, who personally preferred to make his own bed and mend his own
clothes, travel in state over the Mont Cenis pass, in a convoy drawn by a hundred horses, and just ahead
of the winter snows.
All went well except for some issues regarding the civil marriage of Napoleon to Josephine. The
sacrament was performed by the Pope in the last minute.
Then there was the difficulty about the crowning itself; here Napoleon had his way and it was agreed, at
the last moment, that since he refused to receive the crown from the hands of the Pope, he should place
it on his own hand, receiving only the anointing from Pius.
And finally, he would neither go to confession beforehand, now would he receive communion at the
ceremony.
This honeymoon afterwards was short-lived. Savona and Fontaineblue were witnesses to such atrocious
acts Napoleon had committed against the old Pope. Things between the Emperor and
the Pope spiraled downwards mostly on the State’s encroachment on Church’s affairs.
But forgiveness was always the word of the Pope to his oppressor. In May of 1814, Pope Pius emerged
from exile and returned to Rome.
If, in these conditions, Rome had to strive as best she might for the renewal of the life of the Church in all
her different members, the only way in which she could accomplish this, after the year 1815, was to
make concordats with the different governments, mostly monarchical, which was restored as a result of
the Congress of Vienna.
Napoleon, many called him the “usurper,” escaped from Elba and was defeated at Waterloo.
It is of profound wisdom though painful in its entirety that in the settlements of 1815 there was no
attempt made to recover the extensive lands and properties which had been alienated from the church,
all over Europe, during the time of troubles.
And the ecclesiastical principalities, which had been a feature of 18th century Europe, and notably of the
Rhineland, were never restored.
But the Papal Estates proper, extending from the mouth of the river Po down as far as south as Ancona,
on the Adriatic coast of Italy, and down to more than 60 miles south of Rome, on Italy’s western shore,
were recovered in toto; thanks to Cardinal Consalvi, a great statesman during this episode.
Events in Spain and Portugal, and in their colonies were a further cause of concern of the hardening of
the Pope to favor monarchies.
First Vatican Council
On December 8, 1869, Pope Pius IX solemnly convened the First Vatican Council, the 20th ecumenical
council in the Church’s history. A lengthy agenda faced the seven to eight hundred cardinals, patriarchs,
archbishops, bishops, and heads of male religious orders assembled for the solemn opening, but events
beyond their control were to ensure that only a fraction of it would be completed.
The council, which was held in the basilica of St. Peter, Rome, was interrupted on September 1, 1870,
leaving behind much unfinished business.
On December 6, 1864, Pope Pius IX had announced his intention to summon an ecumenical council,
having sounded a number of bishops, and he appointed a Central Preparatory Commission the following
March.
Theological sub-commissions were given the task of preparing draft documents for the council, dealing
with the following subjects: dogmatic theology, discipline, religious communities, apostolic missions and
the Eastern Churches, politico-ecclesiastical matters, and ceremonial.
On Jube 29, 1868, the Pope, in the Bull Aeterni Patris, formally summoned to the council
patriarchs, archbishops, bishops, and abbots and all others entitled to take part.
Separate communications were sent to Orthodox and Reformed Churches, inviting them to look upon the
council as an opportunity for returning to the true fold, but these did not elicit a positive response.
Aeterni Patris stated that the objective of the council was “to provide a remedy for present evils in
Church and society.” It went on: ”the ecumenical council, after the most careful consideration, is to
determine what is to be done in these calamitous times for the greater glory of God, for the integrity of
belief, the splendor of worship, the eternal salvation of humanity, the discipline and the solid instruction
of the secular and religious clergy, the observance of ecclesiastical laws, the reform of morals, the
Christian education of youth, and peace and universal concord.”
Even though the preparatory sub-commissions had produced a total of fifty-two draft documents at the
council, only six of them reached the council floor and of these only two were adopted, after extensive
revision.
One was the constitution Dei Filius: “The Son of God,” which was solemnly promulgated on April 24,
1870. It contained four chapters and dealt with (1) God, the Creator, (2) the possibility of knowing God
and the need for revelation, (3) the nature of faith, and (4) knowledge acquired by reason.The other
document promulgated by the council was the constitution Pastor Aeternus: “The Eternal Pastor,” which
defined the infallibility of the pope.
In January 1870, some 500 bishops signed a petition to have the teaching on Papal infallibility defined.
A counter petition was signed by only 136 bishops. A text was prepared and was debated in the council
between 13 May and 13 July.
More than 150 of the participants spoke, most of them in favor of definition.
A formula was devised which the majority of the assembly accepted as an accurate expression of the
nature and extent of papal infallibility and on July 18, at the solemn session presided over by Pius IX, the
constitution Pastor Aeternus, which contains the definition of papal infallibility, was adopted by 433 votes
to 2. The constitution Pastor Eaternus consists of a prologue and four chapters: 1. The institution of the
primacy of the pope; 2. Its constitution; 3. Its extent; and 4. The definition of papal infallibility.
The following is a translation of the definition of infallibility:
“with the approval of the sacred council we teach and define as divinely revealed dogma that the Roman
Pontiff, thanks to that divine assistance promised him in blessed Peter, when speaking ex cathedra – that
is, when, as pastor and teacher of all Christians and with his supreme apostolic authority, he defines a
teaching on faith and morals to be accepted by the universal Church – is endowed with that infallibility
which the divine Redeemer wished his Church to have when defining a teaching on faith and morals. For
this reason, such definitions of the Roman Pontiff are irreformable of themselves, and not by the consent
of the Church.”
Social questions starting in the 18th century: The second phase of the Enlightenment occurred at the
economic level. Just as the first phase had disclosed how conditioned our thinking is by extrinsic
“authorities “(revealed or otherwise), the second phase disclosed how conditioned our very lives are by
extrinsic economic and social forces. With the rapid development of industrialism in the nineteenth
century, the condition of the workers worsened. Marxism stepped into the gap.
The workers were now alienated not only from the fruits of their labor but from their historic faith as
well. Religion, Marx had warned them, was but an opiate, designed to make them forget their oppressive
situation. By the time the Church responded at the official level in 1891, especially in Pope Leo XIII’s (d.
1903) encyclical Rerum Novarum (On the Condition of the Workingman) it was for many already too late.
With the accelerated growth in the population, the move to the industrial cities, the increase of literacy,
the dissemination of news, and dramatic improvements in health care, especially in the decline of infant
mortality, the Church found itself unable to meet the pastoral needs of its pastoral needs of its people
and to reiterate, without provoking dissent, its traditional moral teaching on birth control and divorce.
The change in official Catholicism is evident in the encyclicals that were produced during this period. The
liturgical movement was given a major push in Pius XII’s Mystici Corporis (1943) and Mediator Dei (1947),
and in the restoration of the Easter Vigil (1951) and the rites of Holy Week ( 1955 ).
The biblical movement, as we just noted, received remarkable endorsement in Pius XII’s Divino Affanti
Spiritu (1943) -remarkable certainly in the light of the exceedingly restrictive directives of the Pontifical
Biblical Commission at the turn of the century.
The social action movement and the lay apostolate in general were warmly endorsed in John XXIII’s
Mater et Magistra (1961) and Pacem in Terris (1963) and in Paul VI’s Populorum Progressio (1967).
The ecumenical movement had to await the pontificate of John XXIII before it could surface with official
blessing. John XXIII established in 1960 the Secretariat for the Promotion of Christian Unity and invited
non-Catholic Christians as official observers at Vatican II.
The missionary movement, and particularly the need for adaptation and enculturation, was strongly
approved in Pius XII’s encyclicals Summi Pontificatus (1939, Evangelii Praecones (1951), and Fidei Donum
(1957). Finally, the theological renewal, after a glaring setback in Pius XII’s Humani Generis (1950), found
itself at the center, not the margin, of the deliberation of the Second Vatican Council.
The Philippine Church
The history of Christianity in the Philippines can scarcely be understood without speaking first of the
great movement, political and religious, of renovation and new life in the mother country, and of Spain’s
empire in the Indies.
(J. Shumacher, SJ, Reading in Philippine Church History, 1979)
The movement which led Spain and the Spanish Christianity to the Indies and ultimately to the
Philippines begins with the great spurt of energy which filled the Iberian Peninsula in the latter part of
the 15th century. In 1479 the Kingdoms of Aragon and Castille had finally been united under Fernando
and Isabel.
A few years later the centuries-long crusade against the Muslim overlords of the peninsula was
completed with the conquest of Granada, finally part of the now-united Kingdom of Spain in 1492.
It is no coincidence that the same year which saw the completion of the crusade to rescue Christian
Spain from the infidel likewise saw the beginning of the great overseas enterprise in America with
Columbus’s voyage to the New World. For in motivation and in spirit there is much to connect the
Spanish overseas empire of the late 15th and 16th centuries with the crusade against Islam completed in
1492. The combination of struggle for power, for the glory of
God, and for the glory of Spain, which animated the conquest of Granada, was to be a part of the
conquest of America and of the Philippines.
A Brief Profile of the Philippine Church and the Archdiocese of Ozamis
The Church in the Philippines can claim its roots upon the arrival of Magellan in 1521. His novel
persuasive words, probably in sign language, were preached to Cebuanos that led to the baptism of
Humabon and some of his nobles by Fr. Pedro Valderrama. Unfortunately, their presence was short lived
and was plagued with misfortunes.
Accounts contained in the second letter of Fr. Andres de Urdaneta sent to King Philip II on May 28, 1560
mentioned 4 more expeditions to the Moluccas via the Philippine Islands.
These expeditions suffered loss of lives and liberty. Many Spaniards perished either by illness or by the
sword. While some were either kept as hostages or were hiding in some unknown places
Rescuing these Spaniards (or their children) was one of the reasons for such expeditions to the
Philippines aside from looking for spices, discovering a short return route and locating a good port for
trade and barter. In all of these, Fr. Andres de Urdaneta was tapped for his expertise.
It was only in this journey in 1564 that the same Fray Andrés de Urdaneta accompanied the group of
Miguel Lopez de Legazpi and some friars from Mexico that a more systematic evangelization and
colonization was carried out as contained in the instruction to Legazpi from the Royal Audiencia.
Subsequently, a Christian settlement flourished in Cebu. But not long after, the Spanish administration in
the Philippines was transferred to Manila, a move that was followed by the Church.
On February 6, 1579, the Diocese of Manila was erected as a suffragan of Mexico. Almost 18 years later,
Manila was established as archdiocese and Cebu as a diocese with the latter covering the whole of
Mindanao in terms of jurisdiction. On May 27, 1865, the Diocese of Jaro was then founded, taking over
the jurisdiction of Mindanao.
A Christian settlement was established in Misamis with the building of a Fort by a Jesuit priest Fr. Jose
Ducos in 1756.
When Zamboanga became a diocese on April 10, 1910, the Misamis became part of it. Then, on July 4,
1933, the Diocese of Cagayan de Oro was created.
Its jurisdiction covered Ozamis until it was made a prelature on January 27, 1951 (Supremum nobis of
Pius XII), erected as a diocese on February 17, 1971 (Qui in Apostolico of Paul VI) and as an archdiocese
on January 24, 1983 (Quo majus quidem of John Paul II).
Against this environment of overwhelming vast territories, rustic transportation, primitive
communication tools, cultural differences and numerical advantage of the Filipinos, episcopal visitation
was close to impossibility if not due to the assiduousness to duty and sheer determination of the bishops
themselves.
Antolin V. Uy wrote: “Mindoro, for all its proximity to Manila, could be visited again by the archbishop
only after 18 years, and Zambales after 15.” This would have pastoral implications in matters of
doctrinal and sacramental formation and discipline in many parts of missionary districts in the
Philippines.
The first missionaries who arrived in the district of Mindanao were the Jesuits in 1596 in Butuan. On
September 8, 1597, a small Church was dedicated but not long after, they absconded the mission due to
very unfavorable conditions and lack of personnel.
In 1599, the Augustinians replaced the Jesuits but in a matter of time, they also left their mission for
reasons probably similar. In 1622, the Bishop of Cebu, entrusted to the Recollects the whole of
Mindanao. The Jesuits returned and served in Western Mindanao in 1624.
In 1756, a fort was constructed in the Misamis by Fr. Jose Ducos, S.J. named “El Triunfo de la Cruz” after
the very name given to his ship heading the flotilla charged to defend the Misamis sea coasts from Moro
raids.
The establishment of this fort, facing the Bay of Migpangui, proximate to the coasts of Lanao of the
Maranaos, signalled the establishment of a Christian community in the Misamis entrusted to the
Triumph of the Cross under the intercession of the Blessed Mother Mary of the Immaculate Conception.
In 1768, by the decree of King Charles III of Spain, Misamis and Iligan were given to the care of the
Recollects. In this year also, a Church and convent were built inside the walls of the fort.
The years after witnessed the growth of the Christian community in the district of Misamis now known as
the province of Misamis Occidental.
In 1796, the Jesuits were expelled from the Philippines and their departure created a vacuum in the
Philippine Church. It necessitated a rearrangement of the mission territories including Misamis and Iligan.
Those in Mindanao were assigned to the Recollects.
In 1838, many visitas (mission stations) were known to have been established in the towns located in
Misamis district. In 1852, the Jesuits returned and, in a decree, replaced the Recollects who in turn
transferred their house to Cagayan de Oro until their return to Cebu in 1919.
Bishop Santiago Hayes of Cagayan de Oro entrusted Misamis in 1938 to the care of the Columbans who
were members of the society of secular priests from Ireland, not a religious congregation.
The arrangements and circumstances of the mission activities since in their inception up to the arrival of
the Columbans give us a glimpse of the disinterested service and courage of these missionaries for
evangelization.
Some may not agree readily to their noble intentions as recorded and attested to by some official
documents but a look at their missionary footprints point to their achievements in forming the hearts
and minds of many natives to the values of the Gospel through education, promotion of justice,
defending rights, charity, health, engineering and even military expeditions.
Many may admittedly agree that the missionaries did noble things to build communities, to celebrate
with the people in joy and to comfort them in grief, to be examples of modesty and moderation, and to
uplift their souls from damnation of sin to the mercy of a loving God.
To say the least, these noble efforts have been continued by the Columbans till their departure from the
Archdiocese of Ozamis to Manila in the early part of 2000.
On November 30, 2016, Archbishop Martin S. Jumoad, DD, was installed as the second metropolitan
Archbishop of Ozamis, Archbishop Jesus A. Dosado, CM, DD, being the first. There are 44 diocesan priests
and 6 guest priests working in Ozamis.
The Archdiocese has 9 religious priests, 5 religious brothers and 42 religious sisters. There are 5 diocesan
divisions or deaneries, 22 parishes, 1 quasi-parish, 3 mission areas and 1 Filipino-Chinese community.
In 2018, there were 2,115 recorded Funeral Masses. The population estimate of the Archdiocese is
619,031.
Catholics number around 424,544. The figures in here may have differed from 2016 as the population
and vocation have increased up to the present day.
A Brief Recollection of Events:
One great source of the vitality of Spain in the 16th century was the Spanish Church, which played so
intimate a part in the life of the nation. The Spanish Church had a character all its own, which, for better
or worse, it was to imprint on the nations in America and Asia to which it brought the Christian message.
It was, first of all, a reformed Church. Long before Luther had raised the demand for reform in Germany
against the corruption in the Roman Church, the Spanish Cardinal Jiminez de Cisneros, as delegate of
Fernando and Isabel, had reformed the Spanish Church.
The religious orders had received a new vitality in Spain at the very time when they were decaying in the
rest of Europe. The Episcopate had been purged of its worst abuses, though in the process brought
almost completely under the royal control.
But this reform movement of the Spanish Church led to a great outburst of spiritual energy that
manifested itself not only in the missionary zeal of the older orders once the New World was open to
their efforts, but also in such movements which would affect the whole Church, as the largely Spanish
newly founded Society of Jesus and the reform of Carmel under Santa Teresa and San Juan de la Cruz.
It was likewise an age when Spanish theologians who were to set the tone of the theology of the Catholic
Reform. The religious vitality which manifested it self in the missionary zeal of the orders was closely akin
to the ancient crusading spirit. Just as the Spanish conquest of Granada had been the fruit of a religious
zeal which sought to free the Christian lands from the infidel, so a similar crusading zeal often animated
the missionaries who went to the New World to bring the life of the Gospel to the infidels in the newly
discovered lands.
Much of the institutional structure, the organization, and the ideology which were to accompany and
inspire the Spanish military and religious conquest of the Philippines were formed in the years of the
conquest and settlement of America. It will be useful then to look briefly at the establishment of the
Spanish Church in America in order to understand the background of the Philippine Church.
Basic in the foundation of the Church in America and to the justification of Spain’s rule in the lands she
conquered were the papal bulls granted by the Popes of the 15th and early 16th century.
Spain entered into the picture later than Portugal. It was natural just like what Portugal did to make an
appeal in 1492 by Fernando el Catolico of Spain to Pope Alexander VI to adjudicate to Spain the lands
newly discovered by Columbus.
The result was a series of Papal Bulls, chief among which was the Inter caetera of Pope Alexander VI in
1493, by which he delimited the respective spheres of influence of Spain and Portugal. The Philippines
originally fell on the Portuguese side of the line.
The bull of Alexander VI was important for the conclusions drawn from it by Spain both with regard to
the justification for her sovereignty over the newly discovered lands and likewise the basis deduced for
her missionary role as delegate of the papacy.
Both its grant of sovereignty over the infidel lands and its commission to the king to bring the Christian
faith to the inhabitants of these lands were destined to become the subjects of bitter controversy
between conquistadores and missionaries.
When the Spanish right to take away the lands and freedom from the Indians was first questioned in
1510, the answer given was to recur to the bull of Alexander VI and to declare that by it head given the
right to the kings of Spain to complete jurisdiction over all infidel peoples in the new world.
Basing themselves on this theory, in an effort to answer the denunciations by the Friars, especially the
one made by Dominican Friar Bartolome de las Casas, against the cruelty of the Spanish conquest of
America, the requerimiento was introduced in 1514.
It was a proclamation supposed to be read to the Indians (naturally through interpreters), calling upon
them to submit to the all-powerful king of Spain.
Once the Indians heard the proclamation, if they failed to make their submission, so the theory ran, it
was then just to make war on them for refusing to accept the authority of the Spanish king and
consequently that of the pope, lord of the whole world. Of course, such proclamation could have little
meaning to the Indians who heard it, even if they understood it.
Las Casas et al, made theological treatises against this principle and made profound treatment o the
natural rights of all men and the conditions of a just war, they were to influence later debates in the
Philippines in which the missionaries defended the rights of Filipinos against the Spanish conquistadores.
The second feature of Spain’s conquest of America which was to affect the Church in the Philippines
profoundly was the establishment of the Patronato Real de Indias. Though the 1493 bull of Alexander VI
had already conceded in principle certain rights to the Spanish rules over the Church in the Indies, these
were extended and made more explicit by subsequent bulls of Alexander.
His successor Julius II further extended and explicitated these grants, particularly by his bull Universalis
ecclesiae regimini of 150u, in which the Church in the Indies was effectively brought under the complete
control of the Spanish Crown.
It was not long before the royal jurists evolved a theory by which not only did the king have full rights as
conceded to him by the bulls of the 16th century popes, but he was to be considered as an apostolic
delegate himself, with full papal powers of the Indies. Removed from his jurisdiction were only those acts
which required the power of orders, such as administering the sacraments. T
Though the papacy was never conceded such an apostolic vicariate on the part of the king, the doctrine
became firmly embedded in the manuals of the Spanish colonists as early as the 17th century, as may be
seen from the manual for the use of religious superiors.
Symbolic of the intimate connection between the preaching of the faith and Spanish colonization is the
fact that it was Magellan, not Father Pedro Valderrama, the secular priest who accompanied his
expedition, who preached to Humabon and the Cebuanos with whom he had just made his treaty of
alliance in 1521.
The account of Magellan as missionary preserved for us by the chronicler Pigafetta gives an insight into
the ardent religious spirit of the Spanish conquistador and at the same time his rather imperfect
understanding of what a commitment to Christianity meant.
One wonders what went through the minds of the Cebuanos who received baptism at the word of
Magellan.
When Spain finally decided to make a permanent settlement in the Philippines, Miguel Lopez de Legazpi
was accompanied by a group of Augustinian friars from Mexico who were to carry on the work of
evangelization in more thorough and more systematic fashion than Magellan.
These missionaries, headed by Fray Andres Urdaneta, carried with them instructions which show how
they conceived their mission – to pass on the same faith which centuries before had been given to
Europeans, the faith of Christianity in union with the Pope in Rome.
Though Spanish accounts of pre-Hispanic Filipino religion differ somewhat in details, and one must make
allowance for misinterpretations due to language problems and cultural preconceptions, the general lines
seem clear, at least for the major lowland peoples of Luzon and the Visayas.
Typically, the early missionaries interpreted it all as the work of the devil, whose influence, and even
presence, they felt themselves to perceive very tangibly.
To what extent Bathala was a supreme being in the Christian sense is somewhat doubtful, given the fact
that we possess only Spanish accounts, proceeding from answers given to questions put from a Christian
frame of reference, and hence perhaps eliciting replies implied in the questions. Acculturation due to
Muslim influence likewise is a possible explanation of the monotheism that the Spanish perceived, a
phenomenon apparently not present even in later
times in many mountain peoples.
In any case, the multitude of nature spirits known as anitos and their deceased ancestors played a far
more important role in the pre-Christian religion of the Filipinos, even among those Tagalogs described
by the conquistador Miguel de Loarca, who had to some extent adopted Islam shortly before the coming
of the Spaniards.
When Legazpi’s expedition arrived in Cebu in 1565, it met with resistance. In the subsequent sack of the
town, as Legazpi tells the story, one of the soldiers found an image of the Infant Jesus, almost certainly
the gift left by Magellan in 1521.
Seeing in it a sign of God’s favor, Legazpi chose to name the city Santisimo Nobre he Jesus, the name
which the archdiocese of Cebu bears even today. The Santo Nino has remained a symbol of Cebu being
the cradle of Philippine Christianity.
If the Spanish king took very seriously his rights as royal patron of the Church in the Philippines in
determining its organization, he likewise took seriously his obligation as patron to provide for the building
and material support of churches in the area of his jurisdiction as the one being done by king Philip II in
1579.
It has often been said that the conquest of the Philippines by the Spaniards was peaceful and had little of
the cruelties that America had experienced. But it had its fair share of abuses. One of them is the Spanish
war on Filipinos, in particular the abuse of a fundamental Spanish colonial institution, the encomienda.
Though the abuses of the encomederos denounced by the Augustinians were certainly real, the theory
behind the encomienda was quite different.
Not a land grant, as is often said, but a grant of the royal jurisdiction over the inhabitants of a certain
territory, the encomienda not only conferred the right to collect tribute, but likewise imposed on the
encomendero a series of obligations – to bring peace, security and justice to the people entrusted to him,
as well as instruction in the Catholic faith, as may be seen from a typical encomienda grant of the 16th
century.

Evangelization:
Prior to the early 1580s baptisms were relatively few outside the immediate environs of Manila and a few
other major Spanish settlements where large number of Filipinos were settled.
There are 2 main reasons:
1) the missionaries themselves were still few in number
2) the abuses of the conquest, as yet scarcely finished, prevented any serious mission work from being
done.
One common pattern among the orders done was the prime need to gather together scattered barangays
into villages of some size in order to make possible instruction for baptism and effective post-baptismal
instruction. This was seriously done sometime in the early 1580s as being done by the order of Governor
Santiago de Vera to Juan Bustamante, the alcalde mayor of Camarines in 1585. This is called reduction
policy.
This might not be all that practical since majority of the people depended on their agricultural labors for
their subsistence.
Still, it has often been said that baptism in this era in the Philippines was given freely without serious
instruction in the evangelization, a claim that must be weighed fairly considering the many circumstances
surrounding the missionary effort.
One of these might be the situation of Spanish secular clergy who were entrusted territories but were
unable to speak the language of the people. Such a case occurred in the town of Tanay in Cebu as related
by the Jesuit priest, Father Gabriel Sanchez in November of 1600.
Post-baptismal instruction was strengthened to include the recitation of the Doctrina
Christiana which contained the Lord’s prayer, the Ave Maria, the Creed, the commandments and the
duties of Christians as well as sermons done during Sunday liturgy.
In more clearly settled towns with resident missionaries, things were different and
instructions were readily available for converts especially when schools were established to train children
thoroughly in the foundation of Christian doctrine and life. In turn, these children became instructors for
the elders back in their homes.
Soon, seminarios de Indios or boarding schools for boys were also stablished close to religious
monasteries for those who were coming from neighboring towns. Instructions in reading and writing
accompanied religious instructions and music played a large part in the curriculum, as it would likewise in
the liturgy. Their influence on their families had been that effective for evangelization of Filipinos.
More important was the work of hospitals. For not only did the sick receive help and comfort but also the
living witness of unselfish charity of the friars was often more powerful than any sermon or instruction
for making Christ known. Foundations were established which developed eventually into today’s
hospitals of San Lazaro and San Juan de Dios.
In the provinces, this work of Charity by the religious opened the hearts of many Filipinos to the Gospel
of Christ. The Franciscans were in the forefront in this charitable work.
Some Filipinos dedicated themselves in helping the missionaries in the work of evangelization and were
found to be more effective than the missionaries in bringing the faith to their countrymen. Most
powerful of all for conversion was the witness given by the missionaries themselves in their own lives.
The people among whom they worked were keen enough to see the disinterestedness with which the
Fathers worked for their conversion.
Several factors were serious obstacles to conversion:
1) custom and traditions irreconcilable with Christian moral teaching,
2) practices of usury and slavery, 3) slavery,
4) drunkenness,
5) bad examples of some Spaniards,
6) serious practices among the religious themselves, and
7) strength of ancestral beliefs and clandestine practice of old religion.
Solutions:
1) adaptation and translation of basic Christian terms to local dialect,
2) substitution of Christian ceremonies to fulfill the same functions as previously have been fulfilled by
those of paganism,
3) confraternities and social groups as guardian of the faith and
4) incorporating Christian teaching and practice into the indigenous structure.
Later major obstacles and setbacks:
Though the Church was substantially established in most lowland areas by about 1620, countervailing
forces had meantime arisen which were to interrupt the peaceful and orderly development of
the Christian Filipino community:
1) the Dutch threat, with the spices in the Moluccas, and
2) the Moro wars where in Mindanao the priests were not only spiritual leaders but also military ones.
The third one was non-implementation of the decrees of the Council of Trent in 1564 providing that the
post of parish priest should be entrusted only to the secular clergy, who would be subject to the
jurisdiction of the local bishops and the Patronato Real.
 Philip II requested and obtained from Pope St. Pius V the derogation of the Trent decree for the Churches
in new world for reasons as to the lack of number of secular clergy to adequately administer parishes.
Pius V’s bull of 1567 restored the concessions to the religious found in the Bull of Pope Adrain VI on May
10, 1522 called “Omnimoda”.
In general, neither the episcopate nor the religious nor the civil authorities considered seriously the
possibility of training an adequate Filipino secular clergy and it would take another few generations
before the logic of events would force this question to be considered.
Today, it seems obvious that any missionary enterprise which does not develop a native clergy is gravely
deficient, that it is had to imagine how missionaries otherwise so deserving of admiration could have failed so
seriously in the Philippines.
It is true that the Holy See has emphasized the role of an indigenous clergy as early as 19th and 20th
centuries. However, as early as 1626 the Sacred Congregation de Propaganda Fide had insisted on the
ordination of Japanese and Vietnamese priests.
Why the different attitudes in the same group of missionaries? Some reasons can be alluded: 1) the
Philippines was under the Patronato while they were under the Propaganda and 2) there had been a
different stage of cultural development into which Christianity was first introduced.
The cultural development needed for the development of a native clergy was dependent not on an
abstract notion of the priesthood, but on the concrete requirements for the priesthood set op by the
Council of Trent and inculcated by the Catholic Reformation.
Hence, it would be futile to compare the policy of the missionaries in the Philippines in the 16th century
with that of older centuries in the Church, an example is celibacy which is not an operative word in the
ancient Christianity.
The Catholic Reformation was engaged in creating a new type of reformed priest, and no desire to
reproduce in the Philippines the plague from which the 16th century Spanish Church was attempting to
rid herself.
Priestly celibacy is specifically a Christian value of the Gospel, not to be found in the pagan cultures with
which the missionaries came into contact and something which could not be immediately demanded by
baptism.
This realization came into being with their experience of failure in Mexico as being too premature to
ordain native men to the priesthood. A legislation in 1585 promulgated in the Third Council of Mexico
was theoretically applicable in the Philippines.
But why no effort on the part of the missionaries especially when higher education and formal training
were already operative in the Philippines in later years of evangelization? It would appear generally that
the religious orders saw no need for a native clergy.
A measure taken simply to avoid overlapping jurisdiction in the 16th century became a permanent
obstacle to the creation of a native clergy.
This problem had become obvious during episcopal visitation to parishes administered by the religious
but less effort had been done about it. In 1782, an international seminary was established in Manila
named San Clemente with 80 students from all over Asia.
Filipinos were admitted and a few were ordained but due to the contravention of the Patronato the
building was destroyed and the students were dismissed. San Felipe seminary was restored but it didn’t
appear that Indios were admitted, only criollos.
Even if a few Indios were ordained priests before 1708, a regular policy seems to have instituted only in
the 1720s. a certain number of priests were ordained over the next 30 years.
It was known that there have been 32 Indio priests in the archdiocese of Manila in 1760. Even if late, it
seemed that at last the Philippine Church was on the way to achieving its full establishment and
indigenization which only an adequate native clergy could affect.
With the exile of the Jesuits in 1767, almost 130 towns in Visayas and Mindanao with a population of
more than 212,153 were now to be administered by the limited numbers of the Philippine Clergy. The
French Revolution had a fair share of contributing to the diminishing number of religious volunteering to
come to the Philippines. More Filipino priests were given parishes once administered b religious on an
interim basis.
The question of qualification or adequacy resurfaced with huge consequences in later years as they were
looked down upon by the Spanish clergy.
Though there is little evidence of anything beyond this spark of proto-nationalism, Spanish suspicions of
the political unreliability of the Filipino clergy had now begun to grow rapidly. There were several
measures tending to nullify their influence in the political scene. The process of secularization of parishes
was in reverse.
And the nationalist movement among the secular clergy was now beginning. Unfortunately, they have
been seen by the government as potential enemies of Spain
Most acclaimed names were: Fr. Pedro Pelaez and Fr. Jose Burgos. When a mutiny broke out in the Cavite
arsenal on January 20, 1872, Fr. Jose Burgos and his colleague at the Cathedral, Fr. Jacinto Zamora, the
aged Fr. Mariano Gomez, a number of other priests, lawyers and businessmen were arrested.
After a military trial whose records were never found and was later declared illegal by the Spanish
Supreme Tribunal, the three above-mentioned priests were executed by the garrote. What was a scene
for injustice was noted that the religious were a means to control the Philippines while the Filipino clergy
were a danger and should be eliminated in due time.
After 1872 the Filipino clergy had been crushed. Its leaders executed or sent into exile in Guam. No one
dared to speak out publicly again. The baton was passed to students or relatives of the executed
priests who would carry out the nationalist struggle, names such as Jose Rizal, Marcelo del Pilar and
many others.
There were two seeds sown at the moment:1) seeds of the later schism and 2) seeds of revolution
against Spain. One of the main reasons for these put-up fronts was religious ignorance during this time
which gave rise to folk Catholicism.
Such must the case of Cofradia de San Jose founded by Apolinario de la Cruz, known as Hermano Pule, a
lay helper in the San Juan de Dios hospital in Tayabas in 1849s. They were condemned, violence erupted
and many were killed.
The Katipunan of Andres Bonifacio, which made the Revolution of 1896, was the offspring of the
Propaganda Movement, and Bonifacio shared the anti-friar and anti-religious ideas of the Propagandists.
Such sentiments, however, were not shared by the majority of the rank and file in the like of Aguinaldo.
It is to be noted that the clergy of Cavite were part of the revolution.
However many anti-clerical sentiments were precluded n the Malolos constitution in 1898 such as the
separation of Church and State and a Republic was proclaimed.
In a rather twist of fate, one priest whom Mabini was able to win over was Fr. Gregorio Aglipay who,
though an Ilocano, belonged to the archdiocese of Manila and was in close relations with Aguinaldo was
appointed military chaplain in June 1898 and sent to Ilocos to raise funds. He had been appointed a vicar
general.
By this illegitimate exercise of ecclesiastical jurisdiction on the strength of an appointment by civil
authority, Aglipay incurred automatic excommunication, he called on the Filipino clergy to throw off their
allegiance to a Spanish bishop and accept as a superior himself, just named Vicario General Castrense by
the government of Aguinaldo.
Many priests obeyed him but many retracted after his excommunication became public. Though the
schism had not actually been consummated the foundations had been laid. Aglipay surrendered to the
Americans in 1901 but he was regarded as a legendary hero among the revolutionists for funneling
church funds to the revolution. Ultimately, Aglipay completed his schism by establishing the Iglesia
Filipina
Independiente with Isabelo de los Reyes on August 3, 1902.
The schismatic church made repeated attempts to obtain episcopal consecration from Anglicans and old
Catholics. Only after his death and the subsequent split in the church would one faction obtain episcopal
consecration from the American Epsicopalians.
The normal life of the Church suffered disastrously during the years following 1898, and in certain
respects it would be decades before a condition approaching normalcy would be reached again.
The Established Church: 1620-1760
It would be a mistake to take these noisy and rancorous disputes as representing the life of the Philippine
Church in the period of the first evangelization. Rather they were merely sensational episodes in an
otherwise constructive building up of the Christian community on many levels.
One of the more significant aspects of the life of the Church was its work of education. From the
beginning of evangelization, education, in the form of primary schools had played a large part in the work
of the missionaries.
However, with the establishment of the Church in most lowland Philippines by the early 17th century,
attention was turned more away from the purely catechetical function of education, so
necessary in the first generation of evangelization, and rather to the
development of the Chrisitan community as a whole.
Indeed, the development of higher education in the Philippines had begun to occupy the minds of at
least a few from as early as the time of Bishop Salazar, when in 1583 he wrote to the king, emphasizing
the need of a Jesuit college to provide for the needs of the colony.
Due to the benefaction of Archbishop Miguel de Benavides in 1611 a similar college was founded by the
Dominicans now known as the University of Santo Tomas, a pontifical charter was obtained in 1645
through a bull of Poe Innocent X.
One further college was opened under the Dominicans auspices known as the San Juan de
Letran which was later integrated with the UST for secondary education.
Only in the 19th century would the government attempt to create a government supported system of
schools, and begin to make Spanish the medium of instruction on the primary level. No doubt the Filipino
community was more sophisticated and more Hispanized. Though juridically recognized, formal religious
life remained closed to women until the end of the Patronato Real, they managed to create what was
equivalent in all but name and law in the beaterio movement that would
evolve into a true indigenous form of religious life.
By the end of 18th century, a notable sense of Christian community was evident in the entire social and
cultural life of the ordinary urban and rural Filipino bound by the bond of Christian brotherhood. In this
sphere of evangelization, the role of parish priests was very important as they were called the “Fathers of
Christian life” in the parish.
The contributions of the Church to the human and socio-cultural development of the Filipino people have
been manifold especially in the field of written literature making use of the universal handier Roman
alphabet.
From the beginning the Church had interested itself not only in the spiritual needs of the Filipinos, but
also in their material welfare. Right down to the 19th century the Church played the major role in helping
the ordinary Filipino to improve his methods of agriculture, so as to be able to live a more decent human
life. The iron plow driven by a carabao as well as a large number of food and other crops were
introduced.
Truly, achievements in many respects is very admirable in the development of Filipino Christianity in the
18th and 19th centuries and has only few parallels in the history of the Church.
Thank you Mirjam Nilsson
mirjam@contoso.com
www.contoso.com
The Origin of Freemasonry in the Philippines
The first wave:
In 1856, Freemasonry was first introduced to the Philippines when a Spanish naval officer organized a
lodge in Cavite under the auspices of the Portuguese Gran Oriente Lusitano.
Soon, other Lodges under the jurisdictions of the British, Germans and more particularly under the Grand
Orients of Spain gained their footholds thus making the Philippines a melting pot of plural jurisdictions.
Freemasonry therefore has existed in the country for almost161 years. However, native Filipinos,
generally referred to as Indios, were not allowed membership in the early decades of Freemasonry in the
country.
II Second Wave
What may be considered the roots of true Philippine Masonry sprouted in 1889 when Logia Revolución
was organized by Filipino nationalist Graciano Lopez-Jaena in Barcelona, Spain under the auspices of the
Grande Oriente Español.
This was in an era when Filipinos who went to Spain either to escape persecution or as students were
advocating social and political reforms for the Philippines.
Foremost among this group were Graciano Lopez-Jaena, Jose Rizal, Mariano Ponce, Galicano Apacible,
Jose Ma Panganiban, Antonio Luna and Marcelo del Pilar.
Graciano Lopez-Jaena was initiated in 1882 at Logia Porvenir No. 2, and later served as its Worshipful
Master. He became the Master of Logia Revolución, with Mariano Ponce as Secretary.
Marcelo del Pilar was also member of this lodge. It was here where Ariston Bautista, Galicano Apacible,
Jose Alejandrino and many other Filipinos were initiated.
The founding by Filipino Masons of Logia Revolución in Spain was the first concrete step towards the
formation of true Philippine Freemasonry.
Lopez Jaena, with Marcelo del Pilar and other Filipino Masons organized a second lodge in Madrid, Logia
Solidaridad No 53, chartered on May 15, 1890 also under the Grande Oriente Español .
When Logia Revolución was dissolved, this lodge, Logia Solidaridad No. 53, became the lodge for Filipino
expatriates in Spain. Marcelo del Pilar succeeded Llorentein in 1891.
With the idea of propagating the teachings of Masonry, at the same time providing a unifying force for
the Filipino society, Marcelo del Pilar sought authority from Grand Master Miguel Morayta, to establish
Filipino Lodges in the Philippines.
Antonio Luna and Pedro Serrano Lawtaw were commissioned to return to the country and to organize
Filipino lodges.
Pedro Serrano Laktaw, with the help of Moises Salvador (initiated in Madrid) and Jose A. Ramos (initiated
in London), organized Logia Nilad.
Ramos was its first Master, Salvador its Senior Warden and Serrano Laktaw, Secretary.
The First Filipino Mason Lodge in the Philippines established by Filipinos
This first lodge was constituted on January 6, 1892 and duly approved by the Grande Oriente Español as
Logia Nilad No. 144 on March 20, 1892.
In July 1892, after his return to the Philippines, Jose Rizal was appointed as an Honorary Worshipful
Master of the Lodge.
By special authority of the Grande Oriente Español it exercised certain supervisory powers over all other
lodges, and was also known as Logia Central y Delegada. Being the first Filipino Lodge from which others
were organized, it was called
Mother Lodge. A year later over 100 new members were added to its original founders.
Years 1892—1893 were a period of growth for Philippine Masonry but its members paid a heavy price.
As the Fraternity grew, both in size and prominence, the Spanish friars became more and more alarmed.
Indiscriminately, they branded all Masons as insurrectos and with the government under their influence
and control, pursued a terrifying campaign of terror and persecution.
Masons were arrested, tortured, exiled to the remotest regions of the world or executed.
Philippine Masonry became a campaign for freedom and democracy.
Rizal upon his return in 1892, with his explosive novels Noli Me Tangere and El Filibustersimo, after he
organized La Liga Filipina, a patriotic
and civic organization largely House of Rizal in Dapitan. composed of Masons, was exiled to
Dapitan.
La Solidaridad, the official organ of the Filipino propagandists in Spain published:
“Masonry will exist as long as there is tyranny, for Masonry is but an organized protest of the oppressed.
And tyranny will prevail in the Philippines as long as the government remains in the hands of the friars at
the service of their interests. For that reason tyranny in the Philippines is synonymous with oligarchy of
the friars, and to fight against tyranny is to fight the friars.”
By 1896, the Spanish government had totally banned Masonry, and with the revolution that followed, all
lodges ceased their labours.
Masons who were members of the Liga Filipina would later suffer the fate of Rizal who was executed on
 December 30, 1896.
Many leading Filipino Masons who survived the waves of persecution took to arms and joined the 1896
revolution.
It was on July 6, 1892, barely three days after forming the Liga Filipina, when Jose Rizal was arrested.
In the evening of July 7, the Katipunan was founded by six Masons: Ladislao Diwa, Andres Bonifacio,
Teodoro Plata, Valentin Diaz, Jose Dizon, all from Logia Taliba and Deodato Arellano of Logia Lusong.
Emilio Aguinaldo was initiated on March 14, 1896.
Katipunan was “Huwad sa Masonerya” (Modeled after masonry): the system of an initiate’s progression
into three degrees, the use of passwords, signs of recognition, certain symbols and officers’ jewels.
Radical aim of Katipunan: separation from Spain not just reformation.
On the sideline, this report would like to point out the subsequent facts:
First was the relation between masonry and Filipino activism which gave rise to the birth of a revolution.
Second was nationalistic sentiments within the Church itself:
1. their open support of the call for the Filipinization of the clergy;
2. secularization of parishes led by Filipino priest Fathers Burgos, Gomez and Zamora (executed February
17, 1872).
Third was the exemption from the polo y servicio (forced labor) and paying of tributes by Filipinos.
Then came the American conquerors that hounded the self-proclaimed Philippine President Emilio Aguinaldo
and his ragtag band to the countryside.
The surrender of General Aguinaldo effectively ended the armed insurrection against the Americans and
also resulted in a field day for the different Grand Lodges and appendant bodies of the Masonic
fraternity.
In four years time starting in 1918, thirty-eight lodges were established in the Philippines.
Most of the Americans who came were masons.
Filipinos that were elected Grand Masters, alternating with the Americans every two years, was led by Manuel
L. Quezon.
M. Quezon was followed by Rafael Palma, Quintin Paredes, Wenceslao Trinidad, Francisco Afan Delgado,
Teodoro M. Kalaw and Vicente Carmona, in succession.
These illustrious gentlemen were also quite active in the corridors of power. At this point and time, most of the
notable political figures were Freemasons.
The 1935 Constitution led to the granting of the country's Commonwealth status and ultimately her
independence.
This Philippine independence was gained largely through the efforts of Masons.
It is a truism that after the war there is peace.
After WWI, lodges were rehabilitated, new ones were added and, progressively, the tenets of the Craft were
indelibly imprinted in the country's history unnoticed by many as it vaulted through the 21st Century.