Corruption In The Roman Catholic Church

In the sixteenth century of Europe, religious reform and changes led people away from the Catholic Church. From Martin Luther’s exposition of the church’s corruption to King Henry VIII’s Act of Supremacy, these two religious figures broke away from the Catholic Church in favor of alternative religions. Their lives were heavily involved in their personal and political motives to change the church’s religious practices and beliefs. In the German states, Martin Luther realized that the priests were often unqualified, immoral, and corrupted.

The church was a central factor of the medieval times. “Medieval Christians believed they could only find salvation by following the guidance, laws, and teachings of the church, for according to Catholic beliefs, the church and its clergy had been proclaimed by Christ to be the only intermediary (go-between) between God and human beings”(“The Medieval, Catholic Roots of the Elizabethan World”). In the medieval times, the church overruled the peoples’ lives. Everyone believed that God, Heaven, and Hell existed. Everyone believed that the only way to Heaven was through the church.

During this period the Renaissance Popes failed to fulfill the churches spiritual needs, and they were often involved in worldly concerns such as Pope Julius II who was a “warrior pope” leading armies into battle. Christians were disgusted, they viewed the Pope as their spiritual leader, someone to lead them spiritually not into battle with the enemy. The church failed as many of the church officials were ignorant of their spiritual duties and more concerned with accumulating more wealth, and the use of their position within the church offices to their advantage to further advance their careers and fortunes. (Duiker, World History, 421) While the spiritual leaders of the church were failing their responsibilities many of the people were looking for some sort of meaningful religious expression and most importantly salvation after death.

Jeramie Jones Dr. Hermann History 101 Right before the 16th century, there were huge changes in the way people started to think. One major movement that influenced this was the wave of humanist thought, which understood the importance of the study of classical text to emphasize a larger value of the individual, to which the Protestant Reformation owed a lot to. This basis of thought is a huge reason people began to critique the teachings of, and even question the theological foundation of the Catholic Church. The main reason for which religion was so divisive in the 16th century was that people finally began to think for themselves. Despite Roman Catholicism being the dominant in Europe all before the 16th century, a new wave of Protestantism

People were unhappy with the way the clergy were treating their people and it was clear that corruption was throughout the Catholic church. The state of the Catholic church, while significant, was simply a backdrop for Martin Luther in his early life. Ironically, he was on the side of the Catholic church in his early life; he was “a university professor of theology and a member of the Catholic clergy,” (Dutton, 390). This close integration with the church made it surprising that he was the one to lead a religious reformation. However, it was his knowledge of scripture that made his message so

Historians argue that there were many causes of the Protestant Reformation, but there was one main issue that instigated its formation. Economically, resentment of the Church’s wealth and taxes influenced the drive for reformation and particularly, other European leaders. In the same respect, the Church’s growing political authority and push for power troubled such leaders. Despite the perceived supreme power of the Church in Europe, the religious affairs and corruption amongst the Church’s leaders were more important causes of the reformation. An increased disdain and mistrust of the Church dominated the opinion of the public and further supported the idea of reformation.

The rise new monarchs who were powerful and established their absolute rule, contributed to the Reformation. A number of monarchs including Henry VIII considered the presence of a powerful church as a check on their authority since in many ways outside the King's authority and the property of the church was excused from royal taxation. Bishops still directed justice in church in agreement with the Canon Law. The flow of enormous amounts of money from the revenues of the country to the Papal treasury was also opposed by them. There was a weakened ability of rulers to influence events or resist the Papal demands for money.

The Protestant Reformation broke out in Germany in the beginning of 1517. The Church and the Pope began to lose power and authority and people began to question the teachings and ways of the Catholic Church. Ideas of new religions, such as Protestant, Lutheran, and Calvinists, started to spread throughout Europe. The Church was corrupt and started to lose followers. These problems led to people speaking out against the Church and it became a revolution of political and religious debates.

The written word was controlled by clergy, the men of the cloth and the Church, who controlled the flow of knowledge for all men and women (Cheryl). " The audiences within this time period were peasants who were kept uneducated to keep the power within the church and wealthy. In looking at the type of social system in place at the time I believe that persuasion of audience was focused more on their religious duties and that the repercussions of disobedience were against Gods teachings and because illiteracy was prevalent it was easier for the church to use rhetoric producing fear to maintain control. This audience was passive because they had no options outside of what they knew, for the most part they were a part of a system which did not allow them to question those who had the power and because they were for the most part uneducated they did not have the knowledge to do

This corruption led to people losing faith and believing the church was unimportant, resulting in the Reformation. Both these diseases led caused very important movements to be put into action.

The punishment for standing up against the Catholic Church was very severe and often resulted in brutal death. These individuals cared more about their ideals than the consequences given for putting their rebellious rebellious ideas

In anger, King Henry broke from the church and made himself head of the church of England. King Henry could do whatever he wanted, because the people of England had lost their freedom. Laws were created which forced people to stop practicing the Catholic religion and turn to Protestantism, which resulted in a great loss of souls. While all of this was

Consequently, the Catholic Church became known for its corruption and impiety during the middle Ages One of the main causes for the corruption in the medieval church was the practice the buying and selling

The church promised eternal salvation to everyone who lived accordingly(Overfield). In the 1500s the Roman Catholic Church was very powerful in Western Europe. But other political forces including Italy, England France and more had increased in the previous century and many were anxious to take the opportunity offered by the Reformation to weaken the power of the papacy and increase their own power in relation to the Church in Rome and other rulers. There was also a great deal of corruption of the church thanks the the pope and his abandonment of the people. The corruption of the Church was well known, and several attempts had been made to reform the Church but none of these efforts successfully challenged Church practice until Martin Luther 's actions in the early 1500s.

During the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church had a great amount of power because it was the only one at the time. As expressed in The Canterbury Tales, it even oversaw the court, so one could propose that the Church had exponential power. They seemed to rule the economy and hold a lot of land. Kings and queens were even preceded by the Church. Supposedly, in those times, the Catholic Church was a source of great hypocrisy or a good number of its people were.