Where Do We Go From Here?

Six Lessons from the History of Church Reform

Christopher M. Bellitto

For the first time since the years right after the Council of Trent in the 1560s and Vatican II in 1960s, never have so many been talking so much about reform so passionately. But church reform goes far beyond Martin Luther's 95 Theses (1517) and Vatican II (1962-1965), and involves more than structural changes. In fact, one theme endures throughout church history: as often as we fail, God offers both the individual believer and the entire institutional church the chance to reform our ways and renew our commitments. As we debate change today, what lessons can we draw from the history of church reform to light our way ahead?

LESSON FIVE: They may be part of the problem, but bishops will be part of the solution

Even leaders who frustrate and infuriate can be agents of change and honesty, as the period around Trent demonstrates. Just a few years after the 95 Theses broke open the simmering calls for widespread reform, Pope Adrian VI (1522-1523) gave startling directions to a legate trying to open a dialogue with Luther's followers: "You will also say that we frankly confess that God permits this persecution to afflict his church because of the sins of men, especially of the priests and prelates of the church." A decade later, hopes for reform may have plummeted with the election of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese as Pope Paul III (1534-1549). Farnese was called "Cardinal Petticoat" since he got his red hat through pillow talk between the Borgia pope, Alexander VI (1492-1503), and the papal mistress, Alessandro's sister Giulia. Paul III was a Renaissance prince, yet he moved Rome's climate toward reform. He supported critics who bluntly told the curia it was at the center of the church's problems. His reform commission produced, in its own words, "a compilation of [the church's] diseases and their remedies," marking a first step toward "the renewal of the church of Christ."

It is tempting to hear in these frank self-appraisals Bishop Wilton Gregory's words to his brother bishops in Dallas, June 2002: "We are the ones, whether through ignorance or lack of vigilance, or-God forbid-with knowledge, who allowed priest abusers to remain in ministry and reassigned them to communities where they continued to abuse. We are the ones who chose not to report the criminal actions of priests to the authorities, because the law did not require this. We are the ones who worried more about the possibility of scandal than bringing about the kind of openness that helps prevent abuse. And we are the ones who, at times, responded to victims and their families as adversaries and not as suffering members of the Church."

Adrian VI, Paul III, and Bishop Gregory share an insight: we move forward not by pointing the blame away from ourselves (today, to reporters, conservatives or liberals, homosexuals, district attorneys, or enemies of Catholicism), but by bravely looking within. When we do, we find in the late Middle Ages and the period around Luther many bishops guilty of nepotism, worldliness, arrogance and the unholy trinity of simony, absenteeism, and pluralism. In 1553, a papal official wrote with dismay: "The whole world shouts. Of what value is it that the bishops reap the benefits of their entrance, but do not want to care for the faithful of their bishopric and abandon so many souls to be devoured by the infernal demons?"

In 1553 (or 2003), who would dare think that the bishops could lead the way out of the situation they helped create and exacerbate? But it was precisely the bishops who helped rescue the church after Trent. That council focused on their roles as teachers, preachers, and reform leaders. It took time for nepotism, arrogance, and worldliness to dissipate somewhat, although clericalism and the hierarchy of vocations are troubling byproducts of Trent with which today's church still struggles. But bishops in the decades and centuries after Trent did indeed revitalize the church and help her to embrace some of the innovative reforms to come after that council: religious orders of teachers (especially of women like the Ursulines), more and better catechesis of the laity, and improved education for-and oversight of-priests.

Christopher M. Bellitto, Ph.D., Academic Editor of Paulist Press, is also a church historian and teacher. His most recent books are the companion volumes Renewing Christianity: A History of Church Reform from Day One to Vatican II (Paulist Press, 2001) and The General Councils: A History of the Twenty-One Church Councils from Nicaea to Vatican II (Paulist Press, 2002). He is also the author of Lost and Found Catholics: Voices of Vatican II (St. Anthony Messenger Press, 1999).

This article is reprinted, in a slightly different form and with permission, from its initial publication in Catholic Library World, a publication of the Catholic Library Association, www.cathla.org., to which the author expresses his thanks.

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