The Reformation, morals and doctrine

How the Protestants saved Roman Catholicism


I lately read online a Catholic apologist who said, in essence, that the Protestant Reformation went a bridge too far. He granted that the Catholic Church of the Reformation era had become corrupt in morals; the mistake of the Reformers was to believe it had become corrupt in morals and also in doctrine. The Reformers should have contented themselves with reforming the morals and left doctrine alone, and conducted a reformation from within rather than leaving the Church. In support, he pointed out that Protestants ever since have never agreed on just what the correct doctrine is, but have many variations, in a growing number of separate denominations. Against this I would note that freedom to inquire into doctrine is essential to what it means to be Protestant, so it is not surprising that the habit continues.

I do not think that Catholics, by and large, give Protestants enough credit. Protestants saved Catholicism. Without the existential threat of a rival view of Christianity, Catholicism would have continued its downward spiral into corruption and folly. The Catholic Church's reforms of the Counter-Reformation were directly spurred by Christian critics outside the church. Critics within it had been ignored for centuries.

Still, the idea of reforming morals without revisiting doctrine is interesting. It would have avoided the problem of doctrinal divergence, a problem very evident in Protestantism.  There are, today, too many Protestantisms, even granting that many denominations are only slightly different and quite friendly toward each other. There are various camps or broad schools of thought within Protestantism, but not so many as the number of denominations suggests. But it would all have been much simpler if the Reformation had endorsed Catholic doctrine, and at the same time attacked the way that the doctrine was used and abused in a corrupt Church.

That is not the way things looked from the Protestant side. To take Luther for our example, the problem was not only that indulgences had become a point of corruption, but that the Catholic doctrine of indulgences was in itself a self-serving distortion. Did he go a bridge too far in thinking so? If he was mistaken, one can easily understand his mistake. The doctrine stood in back of the corruption and was used to justify it. Correcting the practice without changing the doctrine looked, to Protestantism, like a half measure.

The Catholic solution was to say that indulgences were valid but that they could no longer be bought and sold. The problem here, according to the Catholic view, was not the idea of granting an indulgence, but that buying and selling gave the appearance, at least, of simony. I think there is a point of very great importance to be seen in this matter. Nothing like Catholicism's change in viewpoint would have happened (for nothing had happened for a very long time) if not for the Protestant revolt. Indulgences would have continued to be commercialized, and the rest of the corruption the Counter-Reformation addressed would have gone unaddressed. It is difficult to conclude otherwise in light of the very long lay dissatisfaction with corrupt practices in the Catholic Church, which had by the time of the Reformation simmered for centuries. What reform from within could not accomplish was achieved instead by a swift kick from without.

I think the Catholic apologist above-mentioned should thank God for the Protestants.