The Divine Doctor’s Diagnosis Back to Basics: Reform From Within

The Divine Doctor’s Diagnosis

Back to Basics: Reform From Within

The Catholic Church, the surest route to salvation, holds the fullness of Truth; but by the 16th Century, corruption had crept into her inner sanctum. The Church, shaken to wakefulness in the midst of its malaise by Martin Luther, could no longer ignore the problems. Reform was urgently needed. Some of those who protested with Martin Luther such as Philip Melanchthon, John Calvin, and Huldrych Zwingli, chose the path of renaissance - a crusade to be “born again” as a new man with a new theology while rejecting 1,500 years of the teaching of the Catholic Church. Others, inspired by the Holy Spirit (the Divine Doctor), knew that the cure did not call for amputation from the Bride of Christ, but rather a thorough examination and strong medicine administered by qualified doctors and nurses. It is the sick who need a doctor, stated Jesus (Mark 2:17 NABRE), and He then provided His Body, the Church, with doctors - spiritual specialists - who prescribed the right measures to heal the Body of Christ. The remedy involved a return to the wisdom of earlier centuries, reaching back to Christ’s founding of His Church and summoning forth from within Her treasure-house the time-honored tenets: holding to Holy Scripture; practicing the Theological Virtues (1 COR 13:13); and heeding Tradition, in the writings of the Church Fathers, papal and conciliar documents, and the Magisterium of the Church.

The Holy Spirit invigorated men at the Council of Trent to study unflinchingly the maladies besetting the Church; to confirm Catholic belief, following the Fathers and the Apostolic Tradition; and to shed light upon the heresies of Luther’s new theology. Measures were prescribed for both the ordained and the laity, decrees which are considered “the most noble part of all the Church’s legislation.” They thoroughly examined the abscesses, collections of pus which had built up within the Body of Christ: pluralities, absenteeism, and unworthiness of the clergy; they then prescribed remedies to reduce the inflammation and cure the infection. Doubtless the Council Fathers held in mind the wisdom of St. Irenaeus’ Against Heresies: unity with the bishops is unity with Christ; a sentiment with which St. Ignatius of Antioch agreed in his letters to the various churches on his way to martyrdom. The deficiencies which impoverished the faith of the laity were also studied and addressed; medicine to feed the laymen’s faith was dispensed in the form of The Catechism of the Council of Trent, produced by Pope Pius V, “a living saint ruling the Church.” The miracles by which the Council was gathered, time and again, despite plague, internecine wars, and petulant princes clearly show God’s healing Hand. The theological virtue of hope rose in the hearts of the faithful that the Body of Christ would return to full and vigorous health.

The Holy Spirit motivated St. Teresa of Avila, the first female honored as one of the Doctors of the Church, and St. John of the Cross to reform the Carmelites according to the original founding rules. They adopted as their patron the prophet Elijah, who alone challenged the 450 priests of Baal on Mount Carmel to reveal the one True God (1 Kings 18:19-39). John of the Cross’ devotion to Christ mirrored His Passion. John was betrayed by the very brothers he was attempting to reform and was mocked, tortured, and even imprisoned by them. Teresa’s vision and passion to return to the original charism of the Carmelites produced monasteries of women whose life of prayer and penance functioned as “the spiritual heart, a vital organ of Christ’s Body,” for the aim of asceticism is God, Who is Love. Love should be the spiritual heart of every believer.

The rigorous rule of the discalced Carmelites hearkened back to the Desert Fathers such as St. Anthony of the Desert, who influenced the world around him although he had retreated to the solitude of his fortress. Just so, though these nuns lived in seclusion, their witness to the wondrous love they cultivated for God through their renunciation of the world resounded throughout it; although “contemplatives leave the world, the world seeks out the contemplatives.” Teresa’s monasteries proved “to be a significant event in the reform of the Church.”  As Pope St. Clement wrote in his letter of 96 AD, St. Teresa also taught that humility, repentance, and holding fast to Tradition heal one’s relationship with God and empower the “patient”, the wounded Bride of Christ, to recover her theological virtue of charity.

The Divine Doctor galvanized St. Ignatius of Loyola, who founded a new order, The Society of Jesus (the Jesuits), whose preaching spread orthodox, “back to the basics” doctrine. He passionately desired to assist those who sought Christ; he led many in his spiritual exercises and explained Catholic doctrine to them. The Council of Trent tasked Pope Pius V with the production of a catechism and an official Latin translation of the Bible shortly after the Society of Jesus was established, which aided many in their quest to live authentically according to their Catholic Faith. This fresh infusion of Christ’s Blood into His Body strengthened the faith formation of the laity. Ordained and lay alike were revived by the theological virtue of Faith as laid out and clearly explained in the catechism.

St. Frances de Sales’ order emphasized devotion, reverence, and awe at the majesty and mystery of God.  While the Protestants were busy stripping theology of its supernatural, mystic beauty, St. Frances de Sales revived the wonder and holy fear of God as the proper response to the “sacramentum,” that is, “mystery” of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Catholics rediscovered the value of time spent in interior prayer: the fruit of prayer is faith. The potent medicine of private time with God acted as a shot in the arm to the laity, who were roused from their torpor to live the Faith they professed. The “medics” at the Council of Trent had prescribed this very solution in Session XXV “On the Invocation, Veneration, and Relics of Saints, and on Sacred Images.” 

While some of the reforms took many years to fully implement, the end result was the restoration to health for the Bride of Christ. True, she mourns the loss of her separated brethren, but she has never stopped reaching out to them in ecumenical dialogue. Tradition and the Church Fathers guided the spiritual specialists to return to simpler, more selfless, Apostolic times, when those who served the Church counted their labor as treasure bequeathed to Christ and did not seek to profit from it. St Paul opined that “he who will not work shall not eat” (2 Thes 3:10); and spoke of how he accepted no money for his work as an Apostle. From the work of his own hands he provided for himself materially (1 Thes 2:9, Acts 20:34). The men of the first centuries of the Church toiled tirelessly, emulating Jesus and His Apostles, who often could not even take the time to eat (Mark 3:20, Mark 6:31). St. Paul “running the race to the last” (2 Tim 4:7) counted that effort as a blessing.

In contrast, by the 16th century some of the men called to holy orders, standing in the line of succession from the Apostles, slothfully never set foot in their own parishes or dioceses; greedily amassed the profits from these benefices; and selfishly appointed their own relatives as their successors. Instead of tending to their flock, they spent profligately the precious time God gave them in currying favor with those in power or scheming with them in their entanglements. They placed their trust “in princes, in children of Adam powerless to save,” (Ps 146:3), when “it is better to take refuge in the Lord than to put one’s trust in mortals.” (Ps 118:8) They stored up treasures for themselves on Earth rather than in Heaven; and where their treasure lay, there also they cached their hearts. (MT 6:19-21) They neglected the care of the souls entrusted to them to the detriment of the whole Church. God thoughtfully provided many saints to point the way to sanctity during the period of the Reformation, including Ignatius of Antioch, Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, and Frances de Sales. The urgent need for reform of the ills plaguing the Church swelled into boils crying out to be lanced. While debriding of the wounds was necessary to effectuate the cure, the Church, in opening her ancient treasure chest of her Deposit of Faith and emphasizing the basics of Scripture, Tradition, and the virtues, emerged holier and healthier from the Catholic Reformation.

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