Reformation Heresy and Sin
Recently, it was heard from a Catholic that the Protestant “Reformers” were justified in rebelling against the Catholic Church, because there was a lot of sin and corruption back then. That is merely a too-common notion in our day, one derived from the modern sense of entitlement. Essentially, it says that if you don't like something, you can do whatever you want to satisfy yourself. In response, however, we must distinguish between genuine reform and what was really schism and heresy. We Catholics admit there was recognized sin and corruption in the Catholic Church in the 1500’s, such as the selling of indulgences, which is the sin of simony. This is a liturgical and ecclesiastical abuse which should never have happened, though the Catholic Church itself never supported nor taught her support of simony. So it was never, the “policy,” of the Church itself. That is a modern, and often deliberate, misunderstanding after the fact. So it is crucial to recognize that these actions ...