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- The Catholic Church of the Counter-Reformation era grew more spiritual, more literate and more educated. New religious orders, notably the Jesuits, combined rigorous spirituality with a globally minded intellectualism, while mystics such as Teresa of Avila injected new passion into the older orders.
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The 16th century Protestant Reformation sent shockwaves through Christendom and the Catholic Church mounted a dynamic counteroffensive. This period, known as the Counter-Reformation, was a time of intense self-examination, fervent spiritual renewal, and bold institutional reform.
- Overview
- Council of Trent
The Counter-Reformation largely grew as a response to the Protestant Reformation and was a movement of reform within the Roman Catholic Church. The Counter-Reformation served to solidify doctrine that many Protestants were opposed to, such as the authority of the pope and the veneration of saints, and eliminated many of the abuses and problems that had initially inspired the Reformation, such as the sale of indulgences for the remission of sin.
Reformation
Learn more about the Reformation.
How were the Jesuits important in the Counter-Reformation?
The Jesuits helped carry out two major objectives of the Counter-Reformation: Catholic education and missionary work. The Jesuits established numerous schools and universities throughout Europe, helping to maintain the relevance of the Catholic church in increasingly secular and Protestant societies. With the colonization of the New World, Jesuits established missions throughout Latin America to win converts among the indigenous peoples. Jesuits were also among the first missionaries to East Asia of modern times, contributing to the spread of Catholicism around the globe.
To All Nations: 8 Fascinating Jesuit Missionaries
Early calls for reform grew out of criticism of the worldly attitudes and policies of the Renaissance popes and many of the clergy, but there was little significant papal reaction to the Protestants or to demands for reform from within the Roman Catholic Church before mid-century. Pope Paul III (reigned 1534–49) is considered to be the first pope of the Counter-Reformation. It was he who in 1545 convened the Council of Trent, which is hailed as the most important single event in the Counter-Reformation. The council, which met intermittently until 1563, responded emphatically to the issues at hand and enacted the formal Roman Catholic reply to the doctrinal challenges of the Protestant Reformation. It thus represents the official adjudication of many questions about which there had been continuing ambiguity throughout the early church and the Middle Ages. What emerged from the Council of Trent was a chastened but consolidated church and papacy, the Roman Catholicism of modern history.
Its doctrinal teaching was a reaction against the Lutheran emphasis on the role of faith and God’s grace and against Protestant teaching on the number and nature of the sacraments. The “either/or” doctrines of the Protestant reformers—justification by faith alone, the authority of Scripture alone—were anathematized, in the name of a “both/and” doctrine of justification by both faith and works on the basis of the authority of both Scripture and tradition. The privileged standing of the Latin Vulgate was reaffirmed against Protestant insistence upon the original Hebrew and Greek texts of Scripture.
No less important for the development of modern Roman Catholicism was the legislation of Trent aimed at reforming—and re-forming—the internal life and discipline of the church. Disciplinary reforms attacked the corruption of the clergy and affirmed the traditional practice in questions of clerical marriage. The council condemned such abuses as pluralism. There was an attempt to regulate the training of candidates for the priesthood. Indeed, two of its most far-reaching provisions were the requirement that every diocese provide for the proper education of its future clergy in seminaries under church auspices and the requirement that the clergy, and especially the bishops, give more attention to the task of preaching. Measures were taken against luxurious living on the part of the clergy, and the financial abuses that had been so flagrant in the church at all levels were brought under control. Strict rules requiring the residency of bishops in their dioceses were established, and the appointment of relatives to church office was forbidden. Prescriptions were given about pastoral care and the administration of the sacraments, and, in place of the liturgical chaos that had prevailed, the council laid down specific prescriptions about the form of the mass and liturgical music. Unlike earlier councils, the Council of Trent did not result in the diminution of papal authority.
Outside of the Council, various theologians—especially the Jesuit St. Robert Bellarmine—attacked the doctrinal positions of the Protestant reformers, but there was no one to rival the theological and moral engagement evident in the writings of Martin Luther or the eloquence and passion characteristic of the works of John Calvin. New religious orders and other groups were founded to effect a religious renewal—e.g., the Theatines, the Capuchins, the Ursulines, and especially the Jesuits. Later in the century, St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Ávila promoted the reform of the Carmelite order and influenced the development of the mystical tradition. St. Francis de Sales had a similar influence on the devotional life of the laity. The popes of the Counter-Reformation were largely men of sincere conviction and initiative who skillfully employed diplomacy, persuasion, and force against heresy. During this period of reform and reaction, Roman Catholic theologians and leaders tended to emphasize the beliefs and devotional subjects that were under direct attack by the Protestants—e.g., the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the Virgin Mary, and St. Peter.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Jun 25, 2019 · The Counter-Reformation was a period of spiritual, moral, and intellectual revival in the Catholic Church in the 16th and 17th centuries, usually dated from 1545 (the opening of the Council of Trent) to 1648 (the end of the Thirty Years' War).
May 31, 2022 · The Counter-Reformation succeeded in reforming abuses in the Church and affirming the sacraments and tenets of the Church as well as encouraging the Jesuits to spread Catholicism around the world. It did not succeed in supressing the Protestant sects.
- Joshua J. Mark
17 hours ago · The spectre of many national churches supplanting a unitary Catholic church became a grim reality during the age of the Reformation. What neither heresy nor schism had been able to do before—divide Western Christendom permanently and irreversibly—was done by a movement that confessed a loyalty to the orthodox creeds of Christendom and ...
Oct 30, 2017 · The Jesuits have been rightly described as the “shock-troops” of the Catholic Counter-Reformation—which should actually be called the true Reformation, since the Protestants did not reform...
The effects of the Council of Trent and the Counter-Reformation also paved the way for Ruthenian Orthodox Christians to return to full communion with the Catholic Church while preserving their Byzantine tradition.
