©2014 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” (Eph. 4:3). 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” (Eph. 4:4).
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 Reformers 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, 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, I have made concerning the influences of the Reformation upon society, I cite the following extracts. Space limits my to present only a few of the vast number of facts bearing on the subject; but they are mostly from the mouths of the Reformers 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.
“Our evangelists,” says Luther “are now sevenfold more wicked than they were before the Reformation. In proportion as we here 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.” [1]
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 for the Word of God and the most unheard-of ingratitude, taken possession of the nobility, the courts, the towns, and the villages.”[2] In March 1542, he wrote: “…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.”[3] In October 1542, he declared: “…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.”[4]
Just before his death in February 1846, 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 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—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.”[5]
“Since the downfall of popery and the cessation of its excommunications and spiritual penalties, the people had learned to despise the Word of God. They have ceased to fear and honor Him.…”The noblemen and the peasants 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.”[6]
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”[7]
In the pandemonium of wild and criminal ideas, social, religious and moral, that continue to rush upon our society, leaving devastation in their wake, there is only one power now, as there was then, that can rise secure above them, stay destruction, control and direct the blind violent forces and bring order out of chaos. The only moral power in the world today that can speak with authority is the Catholic Church. She is the only power that speaks without equivocation. Acts of moral weakness may happen to any individual, for all are human, and for individual acts no system is to be condemned whose principles are clearly and strongly opposed to those acts; but when the system itself compromises and concedes on principles that are essential and primary, then it betrays its vulnerability and sooner or later death and destruction will find it out. The doctrines and morals of Protestantism have been weighed these four hundred years and have been found wanting.
[1] Erastus Edgerton Marcy (1815-1900) Christianity and its Conflicts, Ancient and Modern, (New York: D. Appleton and Company), 1867, pp. 342-343.
[2] Ibid., p. 343.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid., 344.
[7] Liv. I., Sur les Scandales, p. 128