Why The Reformation Was Necessary But Protestantism Was Not

“The Church always needs reform”

- Mark Brumley

Reformation of Western Christianity was necessary and, in that sense, justified. At the same time, reformation was also sinful—something that should not have happened. How could it have been both?

Modern historians generally speak of the Reformations of the sixteenth century: the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Reformation. (The Protestant Reformation is divided into magisterial Protestantism, which employed the power of magistrates, and the radical Reformation, which at first ignored and then at times sought to overthrow the existing political order.)

The Catholic Reformation was the movement within the Catholic Church to renew the doctrinal, spiritual, moral, and institutional life of Western Christianity. That reform, sometimes called the Counter-Reformation, didn’t change doctrine, the sacraments, Christian morality, or church structures, although many Catholics had to change their lives.

Catholic Reformation was necessary and justified. Although Catholics contributed sins of their own, the “sin” of the Reformation, it seems to me, was the division among Christians brought about by Protestant changes of doctrine, practice, and church structures.

“Continual reformation”

Ecclesia semper reformanda est: “the Church always needs reform.” As Vatican II put it, “The Church, embracing in its bosom sinners, at the same time holy and always in need of being purified, always follows the way of penance and renewal” (Lumen Gentium 8). In its decree on ecumenism, the Council stated, “Christ summons the Church to continual reformation as she sojourns here on Earth. The Church is always in need of this, insofar as she is an institution of men here on Earth” (Unitatis Redintegratio 6).