Victor R. Claveau, MJ
Historian Dr. Pierre Janelle summed up the results of the Counter-Reformation:
“Taken as a whole, the results obtained by the Catholic Reformation appear monumental. We might speak of it almost as a second birth of the Church: a Church, indeed, greatly reduced, at least in Europe, and from which all abuses had not been weeded out; a Church nevertheless, purified and strengthened, concentrated, more sinewy, more capable of endurance, of bearing persecution at home and abroad, and of expanding in the mission field; a Church with its dogmas clearly defined and firmly settled, fit to serve as a rallying point; a Church spiritually independent, and apt to play its part in dealing with great moral, social, and charitable issues; last but not least, a Church which was supported in its reforming action by literature and art, and which created a cultural movement of lasting value.”[1]
The history of the Roman Catholic Church demonstrates that she has survived all the persecution that her people, within and without, have perpetrated against her over the past two thousand plus year. No organization has ever endured as long, and we naturally attribute this longevity to Divine assistance, clarifying that Mother Church is the one true Church of Jesus Christ, as He said she is. At crucial episodes in church history, God has repeatedly inspired His men and women to lead a reform movement, to rouse those weak in faith and to reinvigorate the slothful into action and fervor, in order to thwart the heretical actions of the attackers and, even though suffering and death, to end the persecution.
As we have seen, the Counter Reformation, which had its origins prior to the Protestant Revolt, passed through phases of development, from the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries, with Mother Church suffering through a period of some bad Renaissance popes and anti-popes, and the French takeover of the papacy, which led to the division of Christendom by Protestantism.
Afterwards came along a group of reformers, missionaries, founders, and educators. St. Ignatius of Loyola, St. Francis Xavier, St. Philip Neri, St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa of Avila, and many more, revived the Church, reformed their religious orders, established new ones, and took the Gospel around the world. Bishops and cardinals—like St. Robert Bellarmine, St. Charles Borromeo, and St. Francis de Sales—reformed the seminaries, visited their parishes, battled abuses, and wrote books of spiritual direction and Catholic apologetics. There were also the popes who called the Council of Trent and implemented its reforms: Paul IV, St. Pius V, Gregory XIII, and Sixtus V, for example. After the Church seemed to be in such grave danger, it emerged more unified and dedicated to its mission to proclaim the Good News.
We have read brief biographies of the English martyrs of the 16th century recusant era: men and women like Saint Thomas More, Saint Edmund Campion, Saint Robert Southwell, Saint Margaret Ward, and Saint Anne Line. Their willingness to suffer excruciating torture and endure (in the case of “traitorous” priests, the barbaric execution of being drawn, hanged, and quartered) inspired generations of Catholics to remain true, in spite of fines and harassment. Even those who opposed the Catholic Church were impressed by their fortitude, marveled at their endurance, and regretted their deaths. Queen Elizabeth I and her government found that, after they executed priests and the laity who assisted them, more priests and more laity, who refused to conform, rose up after them. The blood of the English martyrs, for many years, was the seed of the Catholic Church in England when it was driven underground and persecuted.
During the Catholic Reformation, the Church also sought to draw back her dwindling number of parishioners by hiring artists to paint depictions of historical events that happened within the Church. One such artist, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio[2] actively painted in Rome, Naples, Malta, and Sicily between 1592 and 1610. His paintings, which combine a realistic observation of the human state, both physical and emotional, with a dramatic use of lighting called tenebrism,[3] had a formative influence on Baroque painting. Caravaggio’s The Calling of Saint Matthew, an oil on canvas masterpiece painted between 1599 – 1600 was specifically painted for the Counter Reformation, depicting a scene in which Matthew is seated at the end of a table, near his money—the moment which Christ calls Matthew to come follow Him. It was completed in 1599–1600 for the Contarelli Chapel in the church of the French congregation, San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome, where it remains today. It hangs alongside two other paintings of Matthew by Caravaggio, The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew(painted around the same time as the Calling) and The Inspiration of Saint Matthew (1602).
Caravaggio earned the reputation as “a sinner who paints saints.” When he wasn’t painting breathtaking Christian art, he was up to no good. He was a belligerent drunk who engaged in brawls and, when he murdered a man, he fled to Rome, eventually joining the Knights of Malta to try to get a papal pardon. A cardinal intervened and he was in the process of procuring for him a pardon but a high fever took his life before the pardon became available. The artist died in 1610, at age 38, but his legacy lives on today.
The painting, The Calling of Saint Matthew, scored headlines in early 2015, when Pope Francis declared during a visit at the University of Santo Tomas, “If you have time, go see the picture that Caravaggio painted of this scene.” He added that the painting is about how God gives second chances, adding, “The important thing is to let yourselves be loved by him.”
What can we Christians today learn from the example of the saints and martyrs mentioned here, who remain in our hearts as the living, breathing testimony of how fully God loves us when we allow ourselves to be loved by Him? We can learn that, with God, there is always mercy and hope, especially for our separated brethren, to return to Him in the fullness of His glory. May the Blood of Christ and that of His martyrs wash over us and fill us with the desire to imitate the devotion of these saints and martyrs, fill us also with an indomitable zeal for ascetical works, a firm desire to please God, with adherence to His law, and a willingness to die to ourselves and to this earth for the Good News.
Let us end with an additional quote from James Cardinal Gibbons:
“Children of the Catholic Church, give thanks to God that you are members of that Communion, which proclaims year after year the one same and unalterable message of truth, peace and love, and that you are preserved from all errors in faith, and from all illusion in the practice of virtue. You are happily strangers to those interior conflicts, to those perplexing doubts and to that frightful uncertainty which distracts the souls of those whose private judgment is their only guide, who are ‘ever learning and never attaining to the knowledge of the truth.’[4] You are not, like others, drifting helplessly over the ocean of uncertainty and ‘carried about by every wind of doctrine.’ You are not as ‘blind men led by blind guides.’ You are not like those who are in the midst of a spiritual desert intersected by various by-paths, not knowing which to pursue; but you are on that high road spoken of by the prophet Isaiah, which is so “straight a way that fools shall not err therein.”[5] You are a part of that universal Communion which has no ‘High Church’ and ‘Low Church;’ no ‘New School’ and ‘Old School,’ for you all belong to that School which is ‘ever ancient and ever new.’ You enjoy that profound peace and tranquility which springs from the conscious possession of the whole truth. Well may you exclaim: ‘Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity.’[6]
“Give thanks, moreover, to God that you belong to a Church which has also a keen sense to detect and expose those moral shams, those pious frauds, those socialistic schemes which are so often undertaken in this country ostensibly in the name of religion and morality, but which, in reality, are subversive of morality and order, which are the offspring of fanaticism, and serve as a mask to hide the most debasing passions. Neither Mormons nor Millerites, nor the advocates of free love or of women’s rights, so called, find any recruits in the Catholic Church. She will never suffer her children to be ensnared by these imposters, how specious soever they may be.”[7]
[1] Pierre Janelle, The Catholic Reformation, (Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing Company, 1963) 367. In this work, Janelle corrects the world’s generally mistaken impression the Catholic reform, commonly termed the Counter-Reformation was a consequence of and reaction against the Protestant Reformation. The Catholic Reformation began before the Protestant Reformation as a continuation of the Christian humanism movement of the late fifteenth century. It not only amended the discipline of the Church, but also exerted its influence in every field of human endeavor.
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caravaggio
[3] Tenebrism, from the Italian, tenebroso (murky), also called dramatic illumination, is a style of painting using very pronounced chiaroscuro, where there are violent contrasts of light and dark, and where darkness becomes a dominating feature of the image.
[4] 1Timothy 3:7.
[5] Isaiah 35:8.
[6] Psalm 132.
[7] Gibbons, The Faith of our Fathers, pp.72-73.