Why did many people think that the Catholic Church was in need of reform around A.D. 1500?

Answer 1

Another answer from our community:

The Catholic Church propably wanted to minimize the damage caused by Protestant reformation by making itself more popular, defining its dogmas and fixing its alleged internal problems. This process is called the Counter-Reformation. Wikipedia has a good article on the subject.

Answer 2

This may have had a great deal to do with a growing concern about the attitude of the church as is related to giving (tithe) and redemption. There seemed to be a great deal of confusion at the time about how a person could be in good standing with God and it would seem that the Catholic church had a reputation for connecting monetary gifts to redemption. This was challenged by theology experts of the day such as Martin Luther.

Answer 3

The Catholic Church is the Body of Christ, and, of itself, never stands in need of "reform". However, it is comprised on earth of many sinful human beings, and, from that perspective, is *always* in need of reform.

It wasn't so much the conduct of the Church, although the conduct of individuals - from Popes to laity - certainly played a part in it. But it was a whole host of factors including several major famines, the Black Death, the Avignon Papacy (The Great Schism), the heresy of Conciliarism, according to which a Church council was a higher authority than the pope. Then there was the coldness that was seeping into religious life, which was first noticed by St. Francis of Assisi. The collect from the Tridentine liturgy for the Feast of St. Francis on September 17 refers to this growing coldness:

O Lord Jesus Christ, Who, when the world was growing cold, didst renew the sacred marks of Thy passion in the flesh of the most blessed Francis, to inflame our hearts with the fire of Thy love, graciously grant that by His merits and prayers we may continually bear the cross and bring forth fruits worthy of penance.

There, of course, are many more reasons in these two centuries that led to the protestant revolt, I would suggest that you pick up Diane Moczar's book, Ten Dates Every Catholic Should Know, and read chapter the chapter headed 1517 AD The Protestant Catastrophe.

Probably the single biggest behavior that effected the Church in the Late Middle Ages was the Great Schism, which ran from 1378 to 1417. This was known as the Avignon Papacy, when the Pope moved to Avignon, and no one knew who the real Pope was. For most of this period there were two claimants to the Papal throne, near the end of it, three. This threw Christendom into crisis with the end result of greatly weakening the Papacy and contributing to the protestant revolt a hundred years later.

That and the rise of heresies including those of the Bohemia, John Hus, the heresy of Nominalism. And then there was the rise of Renaissance thought. Originally Renaissance thought saw the good in the Greek and Latin classics and tried to bring them into the Christian present. Thomas Aquinas has done a magnificent job of this earlier in the 13th century with Aristotle, on whom he based his classic Summa Theologiae which is still used to this day in teaching theology. But later Renaissance intellectuals had a whole different mind set and through their fascination with pagan ideas, they adopted the worldly outlook of their writers. Finally there was the rise of the business culture and the love of money - the root of all evil according to the Sacred Scriptures. The love of money and business became prevalent in this era wiping out the great Age of Faith that had just ended.

from A Catholic Dictionary, edited by Donald Attwater, Second edition, revised 1957

The Great Schism, otherwise know as the Schism of the West was not strictly a schism at all but a conflict between the two parties within the Church each claiming to support the true pope. Three months after the election of Urban VI, in 1378, the fifteen electing cardinals declared that they had appointed him only as a temporary vicar and that in any case the election was invalid as made under fear of violence from the Roman mob. Urban retorted by naming twenty-eight new cardinals, and the others at once proceeded to elect Cardinal Robert of Geneva as Pope Clement VII, who went to reside at Avignon. The quarrel was in its origin not a theological or religious one, but was caused by the ambition and jealousy of French influence, which was supported to some extent for political reasons by Spain, Naples, Provence, and Scotland; England, Germany, Scandinavia, Wales, Ireland, Portugal, Flanders and Hungary stood by what they believe to be the true pope at Rome. The Church was torn from top to bottom by the schism, both sides in good faith (it was impossible to know to whom allegiance was due), which lasted with its two lines of popes (and at one time three) till the election of Martin V in 1417. It is now regarded as practically certain that the Urbanist popes were the true ones and their names are included in semi-official lists; moreover, the ordinal numbers of the Clementine claimants (who, however, are not called anti-popes,) were adopted by subsequent popes of the same name.

Extracted from What Every Catholic Wants to Know Catholic History from the Catacombs to the Reformation, by Diane Moczar, c 2006 by Our Sunday Visitor Publishing Division

The five key elements that made up the "medieval synthesis" were:
- The harmony between Faith and reason.
- The balance of power among nation-states as parts of Christendom
- The balancing of the authority of the king with local self-government.
- The harmony between the goals of individual self-fulfillment and those of society.
- The equilibrium - and an uneasy one, it is true - between Church and state.

In the fourteenth century everything started to fall apart beginning with famine and plague. Cold, wet weather between 1315 and 1322 brought ruined crops in northern Europe and the resulting famine produced mass starvation, the mortality rate was as high as ten percent. But within 25-20 years the Black Death struck Europe. Between 1347-1350 an estimate average of thirty percent of the population on the continent died. In some cases, the death toll was much higher. It returned again in 1363 and would recur periodically for the next three centuries. All of this caused social friction and rebellions, not to mention some bizarre heresies. In addition to all of this the Hundred Years's War began, the Ottoman Turks began their onslaught of Europe, and the Papacy was going through many troubles beginning with the Avignon papacy. All of this set the stage, so to speak for the protestant catastrophe.

Answer 4

It wasn't so much the conduct of the Church, although the conduct of individuals - from Popes to laity - certainly played a part in it. But it was a whole host of factors including several major famines, the Black Death, the Avignon Papacy (The Great Schism), the heresy of Conciliarism, according to which a Church council was a higher authority than the pope. Then there was the coldness that was seeping into religious life, which was first noticed by St. Francis of Assisi. The collect from the Tridentine liturgy for the Feast of St. Francis on September 17 refers to this growing coldness:

O Lord Jesus Christ, Who, when the world was growing cold, didst renew the sacred marks of Thy passion in the flesh of the most blessed Francis, to inflame our hearts with the fire of Thy love, graciously grant that by His merits and prayers we may continually bear the cross and bring forth fruits worthy of penance.

There, of course, are many more reasons in these two centuries that led to the protestant revolt, I would suggest that you pick up Diane Moczar's book, Ten Dates Every Catholic Should Know, and read chapter the chapter headed 1517 AD The Protestant Catastrophe.

Probably the single biggest behavior that effected the Church in the Late Middle Ages was the Great Schism, which ran from 1378 to 1417. This was known as the Avignon Papacy, when the Pope moved to Avignon, and no one knew who the real Pope was. For most of this period there were two claimants to the Papal throne, near the end of it, three. This threw Christendom into crisis with the end result of greatly weakening the Papacy and contributing to the protestant revolt a hundred years later.

That and the rise of heresies including those of the Bohemia, John Hus, the heresy of Nominalism. And then there was the rise of Renaissance thought. Originally Renaissance thought saw the good in the Greek and Latin classics and tried to bring them into the Christian present. Thomas Aquinas has done a magnificent job of this earlier in the 13th century with Aristotle, on whom he based his classic Summa Theologiae which is still used to this day in teaching theology. But later Renaissance intellectuals had a whole different mind set and through their fascination with pagan ideas, they adopted the worldly outlook of their writers. Finally there was the rise of the business culture and the love of money - the root of all evil according to the Sacred Scriptures. The love of money and business became prevalent in this era wiping out the great Age of Faith that had just ended.

from A Catholic Dictionary, edited by Donald Attwater, Second edition, revised 1957

The Great Schism, otherwise know as the Schism of the West was not strictly a schism at all but a conflict between the two parties within the Church each claiming to support the true pope. Three months after the election of Urban VI, in 1378, the fifteen electing cardinals declared that they had appointed him only as a temporary vicar and that in any case the election was invalid as made under fear of violence from the Roman mob. Urban retorted by naming twenty-eight new cardinals, and the others at once proceeded to elect Cardinal Robert of Geneva as Pope Clement VII, who went to reside at Avignon. The quarrel was in its origin not a theological or religious one, but was caused by the ambition and jealousy of French influence, which was supported to some extent for political reasons by Spain, Naples, Provence, and Scotland; England, Germany, Scandinavia, Wales, Ireland, Portugal, Flanders and Hungary stood by what they believe to be the true pope at Rome. The Church was torn from top to bottom by the schism, both sides in good faith (it was impossible to know to whom allegiance was due), which lasted with its two lines of popes (and at one time three) till the election of Martin V in 1417. It is now regarded as practically certain that the Urbanist popes were the true ones and their names are included in semi-official lists; moreover, the ordinal numbers of the Clementine claimants (who, however, are not called anti-popes,) were adopted by subsequent popes of the same name.

Extracted from What Every Catholic Wants to Know Catholic History from the Catacombs to the Reformation, by Diane Moczar, c 2006 by Our Sunday Visitor Publishing Division

The five key elements that made up the "medieval synthesis" were:
- The harmony between Faith and reason.
- The balance of power among nation-states as parts of Christendom
- The balancing of the authority of the king with local self-government.
- The harmony between the goals of individual self-fulfillment and those of society.
- The equilibrium - and an uneasy one, it is true - between Church and state.

In the fourteenth century everything started to fall apart beginning with famine and plague. Cold, wet weather between 1315 and 1322 brought ruined crops in northern Europe and the resulting famine produced mass starvation, the mortality rate was as high as ten percent. But within 25-20 years the Black Death struck Europe. Between 1347-1350 an estimate average of thirty percent of the population on the continent died. In some cases, the death toll was much higher. It returned again in 1363 and would recur periodically for the next three centuries. All of this caused social friction and rebellions, not to mention some bizarre heresies. In addition to all of this the Hundred Years's War began, the Ottoman Turks began their onslaught of Europe, and the Papacy was going through many troubles beginning with the Avignon papacy. All of this set the stage, so to speak for the protestant catastrophe.

Answer 5

The Catholic counter-reformation was not merely a response to the Protestant Reformation, although this was a partial stimulus to Catholic reform.

Pope Clement VII had become involved in a messy series of wars with the Emperor and lost, with Rome itself sacked. Rather than risk a vacuum by destroying the papacy, Emperor Charles offered to remove his troops from Rome and return the States of the Church to Clement, on condition that he would give hostages, agree to a council for the reformation of the Church, and remain politically neutral. Clement agreed to all these terms, but with no intention of calling the council. He knew that any effective council, in examining the morality and structure of the existing system, could not have failed to take into account Clement's own career and pronounce him unfit for office. Clement decided he would rather die than carry out this part of the agreement, so procrastinated until his death.

Pope Paul III succeeded Clement in office and, under continuing pressure from the Holy Roman Emperor, fulfilled the pact, calling the Council of Trent. The achievement of reforms was not the result of any desire within the Church to reform itself, but was the outcome of pressure from the Emperor.