Jimmy Akin - 20 Answers - Protestantism (20 Answers Series from Catholic Answers Book 34)

Every age in history has a mix of saints and sinners, and the Middle Ages (c. 500c. 1500) were no exception. The period is one of great accomplishments and triumphs, but it also contained great tragedies, including a worldliness and corruption that affected the Church.

In response, some individuals sought to break with this worldliness and reform unspiritual practices. Individuals who did this while staying within the bounds of Church teaching include St. Francis of Assisi (c. 11811226) and St. Catherine of Siena (13471380).

However, other reform-minded individuals went beyond criticism of the state of the Church in their day to also deny different aspects of its teachings. These included figures such as Peter Waldo (c. 1140c. 1205), John Wycliffe (c. 13251384), and Jan Hus (c. 13691415). They served as precursors of the Protestant Reformation, and movements springing from themthe Waldensians and the Hussite churchesare part of the Protestant community in Europe today.

Another factor contributing to the Reformation was the Western Schism (13781417). This was an event following the election of Pope Urban VI, when one and eventually two antipopes were elected. Different regions in Europe sided with different papal claimants, and a period of great confusion resulted. The situation was finally resolved at the Council of Constance (14141418), which elected Pope Martin V, effectively ending the schism. However, significant damage had been done to the Church and its reputation. In his Principles of Catholic Theology , Joseph Ratzinger explains:

For nearly half a century, the Church was split into two or three obediences that excommunicated one another, so that every Catholic lived under excommunication by one pope or another, and, in the last analysis, no one could say with certainty which of the contenders had right on his side. The Church no longer offered certainty of salvation; she had become questionable in her whole objective formthe true Church, the true pledge of salvation, had to be sought outside the institution. It is against this background of a profoundly shaken ecclesial consciousness that we are to understand that Luther, in the conflict between his search for salvation and the tradition of the Church, ultimately came to experience the Church, not as the guarantor, but as the adversary of salvation.

Technology also contributed to the Reformationspecifically, the invention of the movable-type printing press by Johannes Gutenberg (c. 14001468). Since writing was invented around 3400 B.C., books had to be handcopied by scribes, which meant an enormous investment of human time and energy. Consequently, books were fantastically expensive and could be owned only by the rich. For example, in the first century a single copy of the Gospel of Matthew would have cost the equivalent of more than $2,000. Prior to the invention of the printing press, only institutions, such as churches or monasteries, or very wealthy individuals could have afforded a complete Bible. That changed when Gutenberg produced the first printed Bible in 1455. The new movabletype system allowed Bibles to be printed for a fraction of the former cost, making them available to a much wider audience.