The Role Of Corruption In The Catholic Church

Little was known about the clergy during the Black Death. For a long time people believed that the Catholic Church had fled from its duty to serve the people, but that could not be further from the truth. In recent discovery it was found that greater than 50 percent of clergy were killed during the Black Death. This was not because the clergy were running away; rather, the clergy stayed and helped the people in villages, knowing the likelihood they would survive would be slim throughout this epidemic. It is my goal in this paper to describe what was occurring during the Black Death and how the Catholic Church and its clergy reacted to the epidemic.

The Catholic Church during the early 16th Century was rooted throughout Europe. The Church influenced every country and its respective monarchs through the Church’s wealth and power. The Catholic Church placed a tight hold on the general populace with individuals who went against the Church being branded as heretics and excommunicated. The wealth and power of the Church eventually caused the quality of the clergy to deteriorate. Priests became corrupt and subjected to their physical desires. They frequented taverns, gambled and kept mistresses. The reputation of the clergy were horrid as the general populace was relieved that “their priest [kept] a mistress” because it “[secured] their wives from seduction” The knowledge of the clergy degenerated as well as they were no longer required to learn and teach the Holy Scriptures because the Church dictated their actions. The pinnacle of the Church’s corruption was the sale of indulgences. An indulgence was the “extra-sacramental remission of the temporal punishment” sold by priests as a temporary relief from sins. The indulgences were then sold to the general populace for money as the monetization of a priest’s services. Johannes Tetzel was a prominent preacher of indulgences who relied on the money from the sales to subsidize the rebuilding of St. Peter’s basilica in Rome. The corrupt sales did not go unnoticed as Martin Luther, in an effort to stop the corruption of the Church, posted the 95 Theses on the door of a Castle

In the time of 1500s the Catholic Church, the papacy, was known to hold a large amount of power, both religiously and politically. With this power it allowed for a lot of different corruption to seep into the different seeds of the religious power. This corruption was due to the fact that the church became a lot about the different money that was gained, power in the church was able to be bought by the rich with their money. The church also used money gained from the people

Prior to the plague the entire legal system relied on the church, the church made all of the decisions. The general population stopped backing the church because they believed that god would never do that to them so god must not be real. There was always the priests who said it was a punishment for sin but nothing added up for the people surrounded by death and loss. Since this abundance people stopped believing the church lost power, ”...the Church’s reputation never quite recovered, as the new priests who were quickly brought in to fill the void were not as scholarly or thoroughly trained as the old. It became more acceptable to malign the clergy in the years that followed…” (“Priests and the Black Plague”

In 1536, John Calvin was a French lawyer and theologian who lived in Geneva, Switzerland. He published a book titled Institutes of the Christian Religion. Originally published his work in Latin but subsequently translated into different European languages. The Institutes outlined Calvin’s basic philosophies on “predestination” as a precondition for salvation. Calvin, like many Christian reformers during the Reformation, was most fascinated in discovering the true way to heaven. As he fought to comprehend the word of God, Calvin came to a logical spat regarding salvation. By Calvin’s ideas, since God was

Before the Black Death, the church was already declining from the hierarchy statues as each country became secular from the church.It should be noted that Europeans did not “decline in their faith in God, but rather a decline in their confidence in the ability of the institution of the Church.” The church were guilty of abusing their power and influence Catholics to become more aggressive towards others who were non-Catholic.The church would perform public flogging towards non-Catholic missionaries from passing through countries and preaching their religion.They would then encourage violence towards to Jewish citizens as they were blamed for cause of the Plague.Other Catholics, in fear of their sins would perform self- flagellation as they worried that they will be infected with the plague.This would lead the idea that the church would use the Black Death as an scapegoat since they were losing power and faith from the people.The church abuse of power were the reasons why they had lost

Before the Black Death arose, Churches throughout Europe had nearly absolute power. However, as disease swept across Europe, devastated citizens once reliant on God for survival, began to abandon Canon law. As the citizens looked for answers as to why the plague was affecting Christians, the priests and bishops could not give them the answers they wanted, resulting in the Church losing spiritual authority over its people. As such, people turned to astrological forces, earthquakes and the poisoning of wells by Jews as potential explanations for the plague. In addition, many of the churches finest leaders fled to safer areas and as the Monks, nuns and friars continued to disappear, the standards for their replacements lowered. Monasteries were

When the plague began its reign of terror, everyone turned to the church for answers and a cure. When the church couldn’t produce, people became skeptical. Then to add on top of that, “perhaps a third of the Catholic clergy died. ”(source 2; paragraph 3). And with the catholic leadership depleted and their inability to control the plague, many began to question the power and authenticity of the church.

Many people thought that it was a punishment from God, so this led to people about questioning their faith. This concerns the religious impact of the Black Death, the plague that devastated Europe during the middle of the fourteenth century. It goes into the effect of the Black Death on the Catholic Church and the religious movements that emerged in response to it. The Catholic Churches played a significant role during the Middle Ages because religion was an important aspect of daily life for European Christians. When the Black Death struck Europe somewhere around 1347, the Church struggled to deal with the plague’s “damaging consequences and its reputation suffered as a result.” (History.com, 2010) “ Moreover, a large number of Catholic priests died during the Black Death...this made it even more difficult for the Catholic Church to recover from the shaken faith of its following”. (History.com, 2010). Since many priests had died because of the plague, several uneducated people did not fully understand why this disease was spreading around. They last almost all their faith in God which led to fewer people going to church and practicing their faith. This concludes that the “Black Death contributed to the decline in the confidence and faith of the Christian laity towards the institution of the Church and its leadership”(History.com, 2010). During the middle ages, Catholic Churches held enormous power in Europe and were still very religious and political even after the impact of the Black

After the Reformation started, many other Protestant groups came about. This was caused by John Wyclif and Jan Hus translating the Bible into common vernacular. Because the Bible was now open for everyone to read, it was interpreted in different ways. As people began to form their own beliefs and opinions, different Protestant groups began to form. Some spiritual ideas became more popular and widespread. For example, John Calvin believed in predestination, or the belief that God has already decided who is to be saved and that your actions do not matter. This idea spread throughout Europe, and Calvin became one of the more powerful Christian reformers. However, these ideas would change continuously as more people began to interpret the Bible

Corruption in the Catholic Church was real; the Church has always had a strong present in Mexico since the beginnings. For instance, those in the strong circle of the Church who are not part of the clergy have always been men of power who hold swayed over the government. They have passed laws that benefit the Church, such as the example I pointed out before of Title 1. Precisely, for this reason, was why the Mexican liberals hated the clergy. The main problem and reason why the anti-clerical liberals wanted to remove the clergy in Government was “Fueros”, which means corporate immunities. For the Church, corporate immunities meant that if there was a transgression in the clerical power they were subjected to a different form of justice than the Mexican people. The Liberals saw it as the highest form a corruption because basically those part of the clergy circle who were men of power could get away with corruption. Laws like the example that was given were what ultimately what triggered the anti-clerical liberals to fight back, and that is why by 1861 when Benito Juarez re-established the Mexican government. Once Benito Juarez establishes the Federal Constitution of the United Mexican States of 1857, the Catholic Church was slowly starting to lose the control it had over the Government.

greed when the church was built and dressed so lavishly. There were rumors of corrupt

Although Martin Luther impacts history greatly, people must remember what role John Calvin has to offer as well. Born in France in 1509, John Calvin is raised as a Roman Catholic by his family. His family is so devoted to the Roman Catholic Church that his dad aspires for his son to become a priest (John Calvin- Calvin College 1). John Calvin later reads Luther’s works and converts to the ‘faith of the Reformation.’ He strongly believes that salvation is achieved through faith and predestination (Cowie 44). In 1537, John Calvin publishes, Institutes of the Christian Religion. In this book, John Calvin states his beliefs on Christianity. He proposes that God has been veiled by the devotion of the people to the Virgin Mary and the saints. He also insists in his book that predestination is how God determines who goes to hell and who goes to heaven. John Calvin writes, “We call predestination, God’s eternal degree, by which He determined that He willed to become of each man.

John Calvin’s doctrine of predestination is arguably one of the most important results of the Protestant reformation. Predestination is the belief that “salvation[entrance into heaven] is given to only those whom god has chosen”. The chosen people were called the elect. John Calvin wrote this important belief during the era of the Protestant Reformation. People often formed negative opinions on predestination or let it rule their lives. Some people who did not think like Calvin loathed predestination because they believed that

Throughout the semester, we examined many different topics that are important to know and which are beneficial to the priestly ministry. One of these is the church’s Magisterium which is held as the authoritative teaching office of those who teach the community in the name of Christ. It serves its role to safeguard the truth of God by faithfully interpreting and applying God’s revelation. It seems that, in our current society, many people don’t know what to believe anymore. This crisis of people not knowing what to believe has affected the Catholic Church even moreso because of the whole sex scandal in recent years. Because of incidents like this, Catholics no longer trust nor do they know what to believe when it comes to morality, faith, and