Facts of Faith

The Reformation

Necessary Because The Church Had Fallen

THE Roman church was sadly in need of a reformation, but she refused to surrender the elements that corrupted her, and slew those who tried to save her. There were two papal ordinances which especially contributed toward the terrible and widespread depravity of her priesthood: (1) enforced celibacy (forbidding priests to marry), and (2) exemption of the clergy from the domain of civil law, so that government officials could not punish them for any crime. H. C. Lea says of the Roman Catholic clergyman: FAFA 159.1

“No matter what crimes he might commit, secular justice could not take cognizance of them, and secular officials could not arrest him. He was amenable only to the tribunals of his own order, which were debarred from inflicting punishments involving the effusion of blood, and from whose decisions an appeal to the supreme jurisdiction of distant Rome conferred too often virtual immunity.’ - “History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages,” Vol. I, p. 2. New York: 1888. FAFA 159.2

This author makes a further statement concerning a “complaint laid before the pope by the imperial Diet held at Nurnberg early in 1522.... The Diet, in recounting the evils arising from the ecclesiastical jurisdiction which allowed clerical offenders to enjoy virtual immunity, adduced, among other grievances, the license afforded to those who, debarred by the canons from marriage, abandoned themselves night and day to attempts upon the virtue of the wives and daughters of the laity, sometimes gaining their ends by flattery and presents, and sometimes taking advantage of the opportunities offered by the confessional ‘. It was not uncommon, indeed, for women to be openly carried off by their priests, while their husbands and fathers were threatened with vengeance if they should attempt to recover them. As regards the sale to ecclesiastics of licenses to indulge in habitual lust, the Diet declared it to be a regular and settled matter, reduced to the form of an annual tax, which in most dioceses was exacted of all the clergy without exception, so that when those who perchance lived chastely demurred at the payment, they were told that the bishop must have the money, and that after it was handed over they might take their choice whether to keep concubines or not.” — “An Historical Sketch of Sacerdotal Celibacy in the Christian Church,” pp. 431, 432, and Note 1. Boston: Houghton Mifflin and Co., Riverside Press, 1884. FAFA 159.3

Let the reader remember that those “complaints were made by the highest authority in the empire.” — Ibid. FAFA 160.1

Professor Philip Limborch records the same fact, and adds: FAFA 160.2

“Erasmus says: ‘There is a certain German bishop, who declared publicly at a feast, that in one year he had brought to him 11,000 priests that openly kept women’ : for they pay annually a certain sum to the bishop. This was one of the hundred grievances that the German nation proposed to the Pope’s nuncio at the convention at Nuremberg, in the years 1522 and 1523. Grievance 91’ - “History of the Inquisition,” p. 84.

H. C. Lea says: FAFA 160.3

“The extent to which the evil sometimes grew may be guessed from a case mentioned by Erasmus, in which a theologian of Louvain refused absolution to a pastor who confessed to having maintained illicit relations with no less than two hundred nuns confided to his spiritual charge.” — “An Historical Sketch of Sacerdotal Celibacy,” pp. 567, 568.

While the pope had ample machinery in the Inquisition for correcting his sinning priests, yet he was very lenient with them, except for “heresy.” In fact, heinous depravity seemed to have been worse where the Inquisition reigned supreme. H. C. Lea continues: FAFA 160.4

“It is rather curious that in Spain, the only kingdom where heresy was not allowed to get a foothold, the trouble seems to have been greatest and to have first called for special remedial measures.” — Id., p. 568. FAFA 160.5

Of the “remedial” laws enacted in 1255, 1274, and 1302, Lea says: FAFA 161.1

“However well meant these efforts were, they proved as useless in all previous ones, for in 1322 the council of Valladolid, under the presidency of the papal legate, [enacted still more laws]. The acts of this council, moreover, are interesting as presenting the first authentic evidence of a custom which subsequently prevailed to some extent elsewhere, by which parishioners were wont to compel their priests to take a female consort for the purpose of protecting the virtue of their families from his assaults.” — Id., p. 310. “The same state of affairs continued until the sixteenth century was well advanced.” — Id., p. 312.

“We have already seen ecclesiastical authority for the assertion that in the Spanish Peninsula the children sprung from such illicit connections rivalled in numbers the offspring of the laity.” — Id., p. 336. FAFA 161.2

Such conditions seem almost unbelievable. But, when in 1900 W. H. Taft was sent to the Philippines to establish civil government with a public school system there, he reported finding in those islands conditions similar to those described above. See Senate Document No. 190, 56th Congress, 2nd Session: “Message from the President of the United States, 1901 A. D.” FAFA 161.3

If some Protestants of today had known the conditions existing at the time of the Reformation they would not have judged Dr. Martin Luther so critically for his harsh statements. That the Reformation was the inevitable result of the fallen condition of the Catholic Church, was acknowledged by the speakers at the Council of Trent. H. C. Lea says: FAFA 161.4

“Even in the Council of Trent itself, the Bishop of St. Mark, in opening its proceedings with a speech, January 6th, 1546, drew a fearful picture of the corruption of the world, which had reached a degree that posterity might possibly equal but not exceed. This he assured the assembled fathers was attributable solely to the wickedness of the pastors, who drew their flocks with them into the abyss of sin. The Lutheran heresy had been provoked by their own guilt, and its suppression was only to be hoped for by their own reformation. At a later session, the Bavarian orator, August Baumgartner, told the assembled fathers that the progress of the Reformation was attributable to the scandalous lives of the clergy, whose excesses he could not describe without offending the chaste ears of his auditory. He even asserted that out of a hundred priests there were not more than three or four who were not either married or concubinarians - a statement repeated in a consultation on the subject of ecclesiastical reform drawn up in 1562 by order of the Emperor Ferdinand, with the addition that the clergy would rather see the whole structure of the church destroyed than submit to even the most moderate measure of reform.” — “An Historical Sketch of Sacerdotal Celibacy,” pp. 518, 519. FAFA 161.5