Victor R. Claveau, MJ
To a great extent, the religious disposition of a community governs its morals and manners. Unity of faith, a uniform mode of worship and a firm reliance on the truths, which Christ communicated to the apostles and their successors, are important barriers against immorality. Man, though naturally inclined to self-indulgence, is still a creature of habit and education. His moral being is formed by the influences that surround him. If the restraints of true religion are removed and he is deprived of the grace-giving sacraments, he is like a sailor at sea, without chart or compass, at the mercy of treacherous wind and waves.
The fearful error of the German revolutionists consisted in the fact that they abandoned and attacked the very Church of God itself, instead of attempting to reform the erring members of the Church. They were all brothers and children of a great Christian family, bound together by sacred ties, owing allegiance to the same God, subject to the same divine laws, striving to achieve the same heaven. They were “eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”[1] They believed “There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all, who is above all and through all and in all.”[2]
It was an evil hour for Christianity when this sacred compact was rudely ruptured and the raging fires of schism were lighted within the Catholic community. It was a sad time for humanity when the marvelous labors of so many ages were trampled upon by a handful of rash innovators.
No arguments are necessary to show the deterioration of morals and manners, which everywhere followed in the footsteps of the Reformation in Europe. The simple admissions of the leading innovators contain the most pregnant and conclusive testimony on this point. Under the pretext of liberating mind and conscience from the rigid discipline of the Church, from the tyrannies of the priesthood, a loose rein was given to all the evil tendencies and passions of the heart. Under the banner of “religious freedom” every sort of crime and depravity was committed. Indifference and skepticism replaced religious faith and the natural concupiscence of men dominated actions and lives. All the beneficial checks and restraints of the Church were set aside and each person reserved to himself the office of interpreter, censor and judge of everything sacred and profane. Nearly all respect for the Christian religion was lost. Churches were repeatedly desecrated or destroyed. The portraits and statues of the Savior, of his beloved mother, the apostles and saints, and the symbols of the crucifixion were torn from their places, ridiculed and destroyed. All the objects and ceremonials which had been used by the Church to remind the faithful of the life and extraordinary life of Christ on behalf of fallen mankind were mocked. Bishops, priests, monks and nuns were driven from their churches, monasteries and convents, forced from place to place at the point of a bayonet, or summarily murdered in cold blood. As time passed, these fanatical passions became more and more to the fore. Gradually the powers of evil advanced. Day by day the violence increased until the final climax was a bloody civil war. Numerous facts might be cited from the writings of all the leading Reformers to prove that wherever the Reformation became established, a universal deterioration and civil wars occurred. Fornication, adultery, greed, drunkenness, conflict, and divorces became so common among the followers of the new religionists that modesty and virtue were scoffed at as antiquated and popish weaknesses calculated to repress and enslave the tender emotions of the heart. The Catholic superstitions of priestly celibacy, of sticking to and bestowing affections on one spouse, were denounced as priestly devices to enslave the human heart. Luther, Melancthon and others all practically sanctioned polygamy. The loose views of the marriage relationship led to widespread incidents of divorce, beginning with Philip, the landgrave of Hesse and Henry VIII, King of England. Divorce soon pervaded all classes of Protestant society, shaking the very foundations of the fundamental principles of virtue and morality.
In illustration of the assertions we have made concerning the influences of the Reformation upon society, we cite the following extracts. Our limits enable us to present only a few of the vast number of facts bearing on the subject; but they are mostly from the mouths of the innovators themselves, their authenticity should not be questioned and may be regarded as representative of the period.
Indeed, the connection between the progress of Lutheranism and the corruption of public morals could not be put more strikingly than in the words of Luther himself. Luther saw the seeds of the revolt he initiated grow to fruition and he was appalled.
“Our evangelists,” says Luther “are now sevenfold more wicked than they were before the Reformation. In proportion as we hear the gospel, we steal, lie, cheat, gorge, swill, and commit every crime. If one devil has been driven out of us, seven worse ones have taken their place, to judge of the conduct of princes, lords, nobles, burgesses, and peasants—their utterly shameless acts, and their disregard for God and his manaces. Under the papacy, men were charitable, and gave freely; but now under the gospel, all alms-giving is at an end, everyone fleeces his neighbor, and each seeks to have all for himself. And the longer the gospel is preached, the deeper do men sink in avarice, pride, and ostentation. The peasants, through the influences of the gospel, have become utterly beyond restraint, and they think they may do what they please. They no longer fear neither hell or purgatory, but content themselves with saying, ‘I believe, therefore I shall be saved; and they become proud, stiff-necked mammonists, and accursed misers, sucking up the very substance of the country and the people.”[3]
Luther continued to write in a similar manner up to the very last year of his life.
Writing to a friend in 1542, he assures him ‘that he had almost abandoned all hope for Germany, so universal had avarice, usury, tyranny, disunion, and the whole host of untruth, wickedness, and treachery, as well as disregard of the word of God and the most unheard-of ingratitude, taken possession of the nobility, the courts, the towns, and the villages.”[4]
In March 1542, he again writes “that his only hope is in the near approach of the last day—the world has become so barbarous, so tired of the word of God, and entertains so thorough a disgust for it.”[5]
In October 1542, he declares “that he is tired of living in this hideous Sodom; that all the good which he had hoped to effect has vanished away; that there remains naught but a deluge of sin and unholiness, and nothing is left for him but to pray for his discharge…Alas,” he cried, “We live in Babylon and Sodom. Everything is growing worse and worse each day.”[6]
Just before his death Luther wrote to his wife:
“Let us fly from this Sodom (Wittenberg). I will wander through the world, and beg my bread from door to door, rather than to embitter and disturb my poor old last days by this spectacle of the disorder of Wittenberg, and the fruitlessness of my bitter toil in its service…” “The world,” again writes Luther, “grows worse and worse, and becomes more wicked every day. Men are now more given to revenge, more avaricious, more devoid of mercy, less modest and more incorrigible—in fine, more wicked than in the papacy…. One thing, no less astonishing than scandalous, is to see that, since the pure doctrine of the gospel has been brought to light, the world daily goes from bad to worse.”[7] “Since the downfall of popery, and the cessation of its excommunications and spiritual penalties, the people have learned to despise the word of God. They care no longer for the churches; they have ceased to fear and honor God.” “The noblemen and the peasants,” he again declares, “have come to such a pitch that they live as they believe; they are, and continue to be, swine; they live like swine and they die like real swine.”[8]
Christopher Dawson notes the influence of this on education in Protestant countries, and he quotes the nineteenth-century German historian and theologian Johannes Döllinger to the effect that the new generation of schools and universities of the Reformation period:
“…were taught to despise past generations and consequently their own ancestors as men willfully plunged in error” and to believe “that the Popes and bishops, the theologians and the universities, the monasteries and all the teaching corporations had formed for centuries past a vast conspiracy to deform and suppress the teaching of the Gospel.”[9]
Luther himself bore witness to the sad state of decay of education after the Reformation:
“Under the Popes not a child could escape the devil’s broad nets, barring a rare wonder, so many monasteries and schools were there, but now that the priests are gone good studies are packed off with them. When I was a child there was a proverb that it was no less an evil to neglect a student than to mislead a virgin. This was said to frighten the teachers.”
“The devil has misled the people into the belief that schooling is useless since the exit of the monks, nuns and priests. As long as the people were caught in the abominations of the Papacy, every purse was open for churches and schools, and the doors of these latter were widespread for the free reception of children who could almost be forced to receive the expensive training given within their walls” —Martin Luther cited by Jannsen, History of the German People at the close of the Middle Ages.[10]
Calvin alluded to his followers:
“The pastors, yes, the pastors themselves who mount the pulpit…are at the present time the most shameful examples of waywardness and other vices. Hence their sermons obtain neither more credit nor authority than the fictitious tales uttered on the stage by the strolling player…. I am astonished that the women and children do not cover them with mud and filth.”[11]
“In these latter times,” writes Melancthon, “the world has taken to itself a boundless license; very many are so unbridled as tothrow off every bond of discipline, though at the same time they pretend that they have faith, that they invoke God with a truer fervor of heart, and that they are lively and elect members of the Church; living, meanwhile, in truly cyclopean indifference and barbarism, and in slavish subjection to the devil, who drives them to adulteries, murders, and other atrocious crimes…. Men receive with avidity the inflammatory harangues which exaggerate liberty and give loose rein to the passions; as, for example, the cynical, rather than the Christian principle, which denied the necessity of good works. Posterity will stand amazed that a generation should ever have existed, in which these ravings have been received with applause. Never, in the days of our fathers, had there existed such gluttony as exists now, and is daily on the increase. The morals of the people, all that they do, and all that they neglect to do, are becoming every day worse. Gluttony, debauchery, licentiousness, wantonness, are gaining the upper hand more and more among the people, and in one word, everyone does just as he pleases.”[12]
I have presented a few of the legitimate results of the system of religion as established by the Reformers in Germany. The same sad results invariably followed these doctrines wherever they have taken root. In Switzerland, France, Sweden, Denmark, England and in the United States, there has been a general decline in public morality and virtue. The scope of this work will not allow us to submit in detail the vast array of fact pertaining to this subject. A simple review of the histories of each nation will amply corroborate our assertion. An examination of the daily news media will suffice to show the rampant decline of morality in the United States. Atheist materialism is not only condoned by the political leadership but is also broadcast on network television, Hollywood movies and Madison Avenue. U.S. foreign aid to third-world countries is usually predicated on the sterilization of the populace; if we keep their families small they will have disposable income to spend on our products. Deviant sexuality is flaunted in Gay-pride parades and pornography is sold openly. The state and federal prison populations are overflowing and the Criminal Justice system is overloaded.[13] Abortion, usury, divorce, child abuse, gang-warfare, drive-by shootings, murder, theft, white-collar crime, racial and religious hatred, euthanasia, etc., are all indications of the failure of the Protestant gospel.
The gospel of Christ calls us to nothing less than Christian perfection.[14] A perfection, which is impossible to attain without the efficacious grace of the sacraments instituted by Christ and perpetuated by his Church. When the true gospel message is rejected or diluted the results are easily discernible and deplorable.
In the first years of his career, Luther condemned the use of arms in the establishment of his new doctrines. He confined himself for the most part to violent denunciations of the pope, the clergy and all that opposed him. In his work on Christian Liberty, he urged the populace to be governed solely by their own private and personal ideas respecting religion, morals, government, laws and spiritual and temporal rulers.These inflammatory appeals to the ignorant multitude incited within them a spirit of insubordination and discontent, not only against Catholicism, but also against the existing government and their civil rulers. Among the first fruits of this incendiary publication was the “War of the Peasants.” In the beginning, Luther wrote a letter of encouragement to the forty thousand rustic rebels, sustaining them in their revolt. Later, he wrote another letter to the princes, who had thoroughly prepared themselves for resistance, to exterminate without mercy these wretched rebels. The first civil war, inaugurated under Luther’s system occurred in 1525-26. The war had grown out of the revolutionary principles embraced by the Reformers and was headed by Protestant preachers. They pillaged, ravaged, massacred, and burned everything that fell into their hands. In 1528 the Lutherans, under Philip of Hesse, took up arms to subjugate the Catholic princes who had opposed them. Actual hostilities were temporarily postponed by means of a large sum of money paid to Philip by Catholic rulers.
After the Diet of Augsburg in 1531, the Protestants formed the League of Schmalkalden and formally resolved to go to war in order to extend and support their doctrines. In Switzerland the Protestant provinces, under the leadership of Zwingly attacked the Catholic provinces with utmost ferocity. It was in one of these bloody battles that the so-called follower of the Prince of peace, Zwingly, fell with sword in hand, in the act of slaughtering his fellow men and countrymen. Although in the beginning Luther declared that no means but persuasion should be used in the propagation of his teachings, from this time on, he gave his support and authority to military coercion.
In 1545, one year before his death, Luther again incited his partisans to take up arms against the pope and all that presumed to follow the Catholic faith.
In Switzerland the fruits of the Reformation were even more radical and thorough than the Germans. Like the German, dissension, civil unrest, rape, violence and bloodshed also characterized its progress. And, like the German, it was also indebted to the support of the civil authorities. The Reformation found the thirteen Swiss provinces united, and in peace. It sowed dissension among them and plunged them into a fierce and protracted civil war, which threatened to destroy personal liberty. The consequences of this attempt to subvert the national faith were disastrous. The harmony of the Swiss republic was destroyed. The conditions of anarchy and civil war lasted for twenty years.
Catholics were not the only ones who felt intolerance in Switzerland. Protestants were also persecuted if they had the misfortune to believe either more or less than their more enlightened brethren, who happened to be orthodox for the time being. The Anabaptists, in particular, were hunted down with ferocity, which is almost inconceivable. The favorite mode of punishing them, especially at Berne, was by drowning. This manner of execution was considered the most appropriate because it was only baptizing them in their own way! Another common method of punishment was perpetual imprisonment on bread and water.
As the Reformation spread from country to country through Europe and Scandinavia the same brutalities were sanctioned and committed. The Protestant leagues of the sixteenth century were nothing more that warlike organizations instituted and perpetuated for the purpose of spreading the doctrines of the Reformation by arms. Everything was accomplished under the pretext of religion, while the spirit of the entire affair was in direct opposition to the merciful teachings of the Prince of peace.
It was in this spirit that Luther, Calvin, Zwingly, Karlstadt, and others urged on their followers to take up arms and to pursue all that were in opposition to them with fire and sword.
Luther and his contemporaries claimed that they had been delegated by God to restore Primitive Christianity as Christ and the apostles had taught it. Let us examine briefly the merits of this assumption.
What then did the Reformation rule accomplish? What primitive ideas, principles and practices did it restore to mankind in the sixteenth century? In view of the brief citations from the writings of the Reformers in the preceding pages, the impartial reader would be compelled to admit that it restored all the dominant ideas, hypotheses and effects of the pagan system of the Roman Empire. The fundamental principles of the pagan system were selfishness, love of power, riches, pomp, and excitement, the pursuit of pleasure, and a hatred and contempt for everything that stood in the way of their interests or passions. The pagan subjects of the Caesars delighted in disputes, conflicts, and bloody civil wars. For the glory of their system and their national loyalty, they never hesitated to plunge the nations into fierce civil wars and to kill millions of innocent people. Contrast the principles and results of both systems and you will be compelled to admit that Luther and his revolutionary imitators revived primitive paganism instead of primitive Christianity. Paganism was intolerant, arrogant, cruel, grasping, ostentatious, ambitious, warlike, greedy, and worldly; the Protestant system exhibited the very same characteristics. The religion and the priesthood of Jesus was ridiculed and attacked by the pagans of the first three hundred years of the Christian era. The Reformation revived, in all the original harshness, the same scorn, lies and persecutions against the same religion, the same Church and the same ecclesiastical body. The cultured idolaters of the Augustan age were an enterprising, thrifty, prosperous, and rich people; so as a general rule, have been the advocates of Protestantism. In material prosperity, in the rich treasures and luxuries of earth, the pantheistic aristocrats of the first three centuries of the Christian era were far ahead of the humble followers and disciples of Christ; nor have the Protestant fatalists of the past almost five centuries lagged behind their primitive models. The highly cultivated aristocrats of the golden age recognized no other authority in religion or morals than their own personal desires and opinions neither did the followers of the Reformation. Roman civilization, up until the invasion of the barbarians, was almost exclusively concerned with material prosperity, and morals were universally corrupt. Protestant civilization has developed in much the same direction.
The prominent idea of all the Reformers was the overthrow of the Catholic Church. To accomplish this, every evil passion was invoked, the truths of Christianity were set aside and warlike organizations were established. The question was not, What is truth? But what does the Catholic Church teach? And all the power of the Reformers was arrayed against the latter. This purely biased idea has dominated all the crusades of the Protestants down to the present time. Although the immediate result of the Reformation was the dividing of Christendom into innumerable sects each hating the other, the hatred of Catholicism was common to all. In the midst of their fiercest struggles, they could always pause for the moment and combine their forces to strike a blow against the ancient Church. On this one point—hatred of Catholicism—the sects have always been together.
The Puritans of America founded this nation with a fierce antagonism of anything Catholic and this narrow-minded bigotry, that included blasphemy, ridicule, mudslinging and slander, has survived to this very day.
[1] Eph. 4:3.
[2] Eph. 4:4.
[3] Marcy, pp. 342-343.
[4] Ibid, p. 343.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid. 344.
[9] Christopher Dawson, The Crisis of Western Civilization, (Sheed & Ward, 1961). P. 35, as quoted in Mulloy.
[10] John Laux, Church History, (Rockford, Illinois: TAN Books and Publishers, Inc., 1989) pp. 435-436.
[11] Marcy, pp. 344-345.
[12] Ibid. p. 345.
[13] The total Federal, State and local adult correctional population – incarcerated or in the community – is nearly 6.6 million. About 3.1 % of the U.S. population, or 1 in every 32 adults, were incarcerated or on probation or parole at yearend 2001. There are 4.6 million people on parole or probation, 1.9 million in jail or prison, with 3,503 of these (Jan. 1, 2004) for an approximate total of 6.5 million men and women criminally involved in the justice system in the United States, Correctional Populations in the United States, 1995, U. S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 7/07. NCJ 195669.
There are 3.1 million people on probation, 507,000 in jail, 1,079,000 in prison with 3,082 of these are on death row and 700,200 on parole for an approximate total of 5.3 million men and women criminally involved in the justice system in the United States, Correctional Populations in the United States, 1995, U. S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 5/97. NCJ 163916.
[14] Matt. 5:48.
First published in The Catholic Response September/October 2024