Hello, and welcome. My name is Bob Wilson and I am glad to present lesson 4 of module 2 of the Online Basic Evangelization Training. The module is “One Good Reason,” and the lesson is “One Good Reason for Protestant Christians.”
A priest friend of mine, Father Charles, told me about some of his first encounters with non-Catholic Christians. Father Charles was raised in a Catholic family, was devout from an early age, and had eight years of Catholic elementary education. But, as a freshman in a large public high school, he was surprised to hear more than one of his non-Catholic friends ask him, “Are you a Christian?”
Since he was known by many to be a Catholic who took his faith seriously, he thought such a question strange. What he didn’t know then was that the question came from a particular Protestant Christian perspective in which “being a Christian” had little or nothing to do with your church affiliation or receiving the Sacraments. Encounters like this led him to a lifetime professional interest in understanding how Protestants understand discipleship in Jesus, and what this means in relationship to the Catholic Church, which Jesus founded.
Who are Protestants? One may think right away of the familiar congregations that are across the country, and throughout much of the world: Lutherans, Presbyterians, Baptists and so forth. These groups represent a form of the Christian faith originating in Central and Northern Europe in the early to mid-sixteenth century. There are also many—perhaps the majority of all Protestants—whose remote origins trace back to the Anglican Reformation in the 16th and 17th centuries: the Episcopalians, Methodists and many Evangelical groups. There are also Pentecostal churches which grew from this final Protestant group, and were well established by the early 20th century. And, finally, there are Protestants who have little connection to “mainstream” Protestantism, such as the Quakers, the Church of the Brethren, along with the Amish and Mennonites, which originated in non-Lutheran German and Dutch Protestant reform movements.
Protestant Christians have a number of beliefs in common with other Christians, such as we Catholics and our Orthodox brothers and sisters. They share the ancient Church’s belief in One God, consisting of Three Persons – the Father, Son and Holy Spirit; they believe that Jesus Christ, who was born in human history as a man, is also the Son of God; that he suffered and died for our salvation, He rose from the dead as true God and true man never to die again, and He will return visibly to judge the human race, the just going to eternal life and the unjust going to eternal punishment.
Beyond these and other commonalities, there are some teachings which are particular to Protestants. These can be summed up in three basic teachings of Martin Luther. Luther is usually considered the “founding father” of the Protestant movement. He was originally a Catholic priest and friar of a religious order called the Augustinians, in what is now central Germany. He was also a university professor.
When Luther first came onto the public scene in the early 1500s, the Catholic Church had been dealing with many internal problems. The laity were poorly instructed; they lacked a proper understanding of Catholic teaching and virtuous living. Many clergy were also severely slack in observing their pastoral duties, and they themselves were not often sufficiently formed before ordination. Also, many bishops and large monasteries had become more concerned with acquiring money, property and political power than caring for the People of God.
In the midst of this situation, Luther wrote his historic document, the 95 Theses, officially dated October 31, 1517. It contained 95 propositions opposing what he considered errors in certain teachings of the Church, especially those regarding Purgatory and Indulgences, and expressing his disdain for abuses in the Church, some of which we just mentioned. In June of 1520, many of the teachings Luther presented in this document were condemned by the Church under Pope Leo X, leading to Luther’s excommunication several months later in January, 1521.
In February of 1546, almost thirty years after Luther sent his historic 95 Theses to his Archbishop, his life on earth came to a close. The movement he ignited in Central Europe, however, lived on and eventually spread across the world. Its effects are strongly present among us five-hundred years later. We see this not only in the hearts of those who accept his beliefs and those of the other Reformers, but also with innumerable Protestant congregations, missions, schools, hospitals and charitable institutions. Within a generation, his movement had accelerated already existing and desperately needed reform in the Catholic Church—the very thing which Luther and the other founders of the Reformation had sought from the beginning. However, authentic Catholic renewal came at a very high cost.
The Protestant Reformation—while attempting to renew a truly Christ-centered faith and greater familiarity of Sacred Scripture among the faithful, promoted many false doctrines regarding both revealed truth and the practices of the Faith. Long before the close of the sixteenth-century, the Reformation, itself, had splintered into numerous doctrinal camps opposed to one-another. It also resulted in religious factions among the civil authorities throughout Europe, causing convulsions of persecution by one Christian body against another, even leading to decades of all-out war.
Yet the Catholic Church itself established and supported numerous programs of lasting reform. Many of these had actually already been underway as the Reformation raged on. This period came to be known as the Counter-Reformation. Its goal was to bring about authentic and significant reform “in head and in members;” a goal which popes and councils had tried—yet failed to accomplish—for over two hundred years prior. Unlike previous efforts, which were sincerely undertaken, the Counter-Reformation was successful. Why? Because Western Christianity was within years or even months of falling apart. Reform was now imperative. The Protestants, while splitting the Church, had forced their own type of reform. But the Catholic Reformation finally accomplished what was needed — and unlike the Protestant Reformers, the Catholic Reformation held steadfastly and faithfully to communion with the true Church and its authentic doctrines and disciplines.
Among the many “stars” of this period, we can count Sts. Robert Bellarmine and Charles Borromeo for the defense of Catholic doctrine; Sts. Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross for reforming the Carmelite Order; Father Mattéo DeBassi, the founder of the Capuchins, for reforming the Franciscans, as well as St. Ignatius Loyola who founded the Jesuits. The first seminaries for clergy formation were also founded in this period.
Perhaps the single greatest institutional vehicle of reform was the Ecumenical Council of Trent, which lasted from 1545 to 1563. This great gathering of the world’s Catholic bishops clarified Catholic doctrine against the errors of the Reformation, corrected the abuses by bishops and clergy, and also worked to the consolidation and renewal of sacred Liturgy in the Western Church. The length and proven value of these reforms was powerful, and providentially came at the same time as the Age of Exploration, when Catholics were just beginning to evangelize entire portions of the globe that were previously unknown.
These true Reforms of the Church in the West were so effective that, by God’s grace, they directly contributed to reform and renewal movements into our own time, especially through Vatican Council II and the work of great pope-saints John XXIII, Paul VI and John Paul II.