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Monday, June 25, 2007

The Protetsant Revolution


The Reformation

Was an revolt, that occurred in the sixteenth century, begun by Martin Luther as a revolution against contemporary 16th century order and society, but happened under the guise of a religious reform. It started in Germany with Martin Luther and spread to other areas of Europe. In France John Calvin was causing a ruckus, in Switzerland Ulrich Zwingli was stirring up revolt, in England Thomas Cromwell was making a mess, and others, imitating their example, followed. The common stereotype of the "Reformation" was of a herald of "religious tolerance" and "freedom", about a poor German monk against the "corrupt, tyrannical, intolerant religious system of the day".We hear from our Protestant friends and family members this notion that the corrupt Catholic Church had espoused traditions of man and thus no longer held a pure gospel, and we hear about the great Martin Luther who appeared in Germany to promote a return to the "pure gospel" of the early Church and to the Word of God, which was, so they say, hypocritically kept from the individual. But nothing could be further from the truth. These things are the exact opposite of that which really happened. I intend to here demonstrate first of all that the Protestant Revolt was not a reform, that it was not about doctrine; and it was not about religious tolerance and freedom, but that it was from the beginning a revolution to overthrow traditional religion in favour of a new religion of man; that it was designed from the outset to overthrow Catholic society and religion, and in the process enrich and empower local principalities, aided, of course, by popular discontent with regional clerical misconduct and corruption. And that it was this revolution which is the source of many problems in the modern world, including the plague of secularism and atheism.



In a society that is totally Catholic in religion, society, culture and government, and a couple of generations are raised in it, such becomes all that such a society knows, and ponders, is all that such a society can conceive, thus, the idea that someone would conceive, in such a society, a substantially different kind of society radically opposed to this, with no real contemporary model, is wholly preposterous. This premise operates under the assumption of a faithful, fervent, and believing society; but in a society that has lost its faith and knows corruption, abuse and secularism, one can foresee a fully secular society, something that would better suit the lifestyle of the common secular man, since after all, it's what they already know and practice. In such a society, faith and morality in society, culture, and religion become a stumbling block to the aspirations of those whose goal it is to obtain temporal success, whose mind is not on the lofty ideals of righteousness and chivalry, but on personal gain and ambition, they begin to aspire after their own goals, in a society where every man is set out for his pursuit of wealth and power and success, at every one else's expense, thus, it becomes desirable to seek after a more secularized society where the obstacles of faith and morals, and a code of chivalry are not so much of a stumbling block or hinderance.

Such is the situation of sixteenth century European society. As we know, the above mentioned things of human ambition are stifled by others who impede the fulfillment of them, and being told what one can and cannot do is one such impediment, authority, and this impediment was something that had to be removed in order for this ambitious individualistic ideal to succeed. The Reformation, then, was a violent reaction to authority, and submission to it, it was a violent reaction against not just authority itself, but what really aided its success was that the authority being rebelled against had become, at least somewhat, corrupt. In the society of 16th century Germany, faith was almost forgotten, individualism, secularism, and nationalism had grown to such great heights that it became possible now to dream of a wholly secular society, with individual ambition and gain as the end goal, a sort of nationalistic individualistic utopia. The common people, however, were not blind to all of this corruption, they saw it, and abhorred it, but not even they were exempt from it, and had seen it thrive in the abuse of authority. This feeling, rather, this fervour, against corruption, was a powerful thing, and there were those ambitious minds who, seeing this, and taking advantage of it, just as Nero took advantage of the anger of the Romans over the burning city of Rome, to do a bit of political house-cleaning, they pointed out extreme cases of corruption and abuse of authority by some clerics, and said "seest thou what authority breedeth?", and used these abuses to condemn ecclesiastical authority; utilizing what is known as building up a straw man and knocking it down, a logically fallacious argument, to cast down the order that was based on ecclesiastical authority and to usher in a republican society. They used the former, as an example, of corrupt humans wielding unquestioned authority, concluding that ecclesiastical authority was intrinsically an unholy and corrupt thing, arousing the dissatisfaction of the populace, this fervour, to attack their political enemies, which happened to be ecclesiastical authorites. They used this new feeling amongst the populace to abolish the present ecclesiastical order and usher in a new secular order and bring forth a political and barren Christianity. All of this was done in the name of reform, claiming to be reviving the "pure faith" of the early Christians, where emphasis was not as bold on authority in the Christian religion.


 Martin Luther in 1517 offered to the princes of central Germany the opportunity to confiscate the vast properties of the Church and its many states, and of course all the wealth that that entails, by condemning ecclesiastical holdings. The State of course obtained a whole new opportunity when the Catholic religion ceased to be universal and supra-national and became a local thing; "most of all was his [Luther's] appearance appropriate to the condition of German politics in that he brought a new kind of support and propaganda for a theory about the place of the Church in the State that offered advantages to all -- except to the clergy -- and to none more than to the princes." [2] But to make it succeed it needed support, especially financial, and so they sought this financial support in some wealthy merchants who might be interested in a share in the loot, finding the Jews' financial dealings to be profitable & useful. With the Reformation, their opportunity, to be rid of the dull morality and traditions of the Catholic Church, along with its almost universal authority, had come . "Everywhere in Northern Italy, in Southern Germany, upon the Rhine, wherever wealth had congested into a few hands, the chance of breaking with the old morals was a powerful appeal to the wealthy"; and, therefore, throughout Europe. The rich "in Montpelier and Nîmes, a knot of them in Rome itself, many in Milan, in Lyons, in Paris, enlisted intellectual aid for the revolt, flattered the atheism of the Renaissance, supported the strong inflamed critics of clerical misliving, and even winked solemnly at the lunatic inspirations of obscure men and women filled with "visions." They did all these things as though their object was religious reform, but their true object was money. The rich, then, looked for profit by such a general break in the popular organization of society. The atheism and the wealth, the luxury and the sensuality, the scholarship and reservedness of the Renaissance answered, over the heads of the Catholic populace, the call of barbarism. The Iconoclasts of greed joined hands with the Iconoclasts of blindness and rage and with the Iconoclasts of academic pride." [3] All of which bred looting of Churches, which were sacked and destroyed as here recorded by a contemporary:
"On the Holy Good Friday, April 14 [1525], the day which ought to have been kept most sacred, on that day the Devil possessed them entirely. They destroyed the Chapel of the Rosary and the vault, tore down the pictures and images and cut off Our Lady's head.... They decapitated all the images of God and Our Saviour and His blessed Mother, broke in two the image of the Child in the Virgin's arms, and other dear images of saints they dishonoured, hacked about, threw down and broke in pieces. They emptied out the baptismal font in the Church in a most sacrilegious manner, broke in pieces the cover and carried it off; also the sacramental pyx, which had been made at great cost, was quite destroyed..."[4]
Everywhere Protestant revolutionaries went they brought havoc, destruction, and looting. Right from the beginning, Luther's spiritual revolt had let loose material greed. The German rulers, the Scandinavian monarchs and Henry VIII of England had all taken advantage of the break from papal ministration to appropriate both the wealth and the control of the ecclesiastical communities and endowments of their respective domains. [4] The influence of the English revolutionaries spread, and the great Scottish nobles also, supporting the religious revolution, and giving them the power, looted the Church and the monarchy wholesale. [5] "Thus the temptation to loot Church property and the habit of doing so had appeared by 1536 and was growing, rapidly creating a vested financial interest in promoting the change of religion. Those who attacked Catholic doctrine, as, for instance, in the matters of celibacy in the monastic orders opened the door for the seizure of the enormous clerical endowments by the Princes. The property of convents and monasteries passed wholesale to the looters over great areas of Christendom: Scandinavia, the British Isles, the Northern Netherlands, much of the Germanies and many of the Swiss Cantons." But ecclesiastical property was not the only property so affected, the endowments of hospitals, colleges, schools, and guilds were considerably confiscated. [6] The city too found Protestantism profitable. For a slight alteration in their theological garb they escaped from episcopal taxes and courts, and could confiscate pleasant parcels of ecclesiastical property, thus, now everyone who had an eye for temporal gain and had the guts to pursue it, went for it. The "reformers" had now formulated a doctrine that nobles could be spiritual, as well as temporal, lords, and with such being the case, all the wealth of the Church could be theirs. The Lutheran nobles looted and annexed monasteries right and left, and the only ones in their territory allowed to continue to exist were those whose community had embraced the Protestant faith[7], such are the shining examples of Protestant "toleration".


It is always in the interest of scheming factions to make their revolts appear under the guise of a reform, highlighting in the minds of every man the abuses and troubles with current order and then the "excellences" of the new order to come into effect if the "reform" succeeds, in an attempt to make it seem as something not only legitimate but also as something necessary, so that the coup happen quickly and with little or no opposition. This was the tactic of the Reformers, who slandered and misrepresented the Catholic religion in every way possible, highly exaggerating abuses and imperfections to arouse popular discontent with the current order and to foster zeal amongst them for the execution of the "reform". The Reformation, then, was an opportunity for the ideas and ambition that later inspired, and allowed for, Capitalism, and then socialism, and eventually Communism. It offered wealth to everyone who was interested in profiting by the religious "reform". But this revolution did more than just set loose material greed, as seen above, it offered every man certain "freedoms"; freedom from authority, freedom from morality; freedom from God; Freedom from true freedom; It gave them the right to let loose their passions, their lusts, but most of all their greed. It was a movement for liberty from authority.They told their fellow-men that they were no longer obliged to subject their understanding to the mysteries of faith, and to regulate their actions according to Christian morality; they preached that every one was free to style his beliefs and practices as it suited his impulses. Protestantism, then, was truly a religion of man, by man, and for man, and it was this mock imitation of the true religion which resulted from the Protestant revolution, forever anathematizing the true religion of Christ as one inspired by the devil, who wants us to forget that there is one True Religion, the Supernatural Religion established by Our Lord Jesus Christ, True God and True Man. He wants us also to lose sight of the fact that there are organized forces working for the destruction of the Faith, he wants us to forget that he is the enemy, and in the process deceive us into believing, as he did in the beginning, that God is the enemy of our freedom, and this notion, that God and His Church were the enemy of our freedom, was one of the battle cries of the Protestant Revolution.


It is commonly believed in Protestant and secular media and culture that the Reformers were great champions of religious liberty against a system that was against liberty and wanted to keep people in the ignorance of the Dark Ages. The Protestant believes that the Church is oppressive and evil and false; they believe that the Church persecuted their founding reformers, made the reading of their sacred Bible difficult by keeping the scripture in a dead language and keeping education from the people and trying to keep them in ignorance. They maintain this notion because their whole basis for legitimacy hinges on the allegation that the Church is evil, the Church, therefore, must be wrong. Each Protestant attacked the Church over almost everything, not caring whether their attacks were consistent, or credible, so long as its assault were directed against Catholicism. Each is so concerned with the thing attacked that it ignores all else. Each is at heart concerned not so much with its own doctrine as with the destruction of the Faith. [8] Thus, we have had the Church in Her first days sneered at for insisting on the presence of the full Divine nature in one whom many knew only as a man; at the very same time She was called Blasphemous for admitting that a Divine personality could be burdened with a suffering human nature. She was furiously condemned, in later ages, for laxity in discipline and for extravagant severity; for softness in organization and for tyranny; for combating the appetites natural to man, and for allowing them excess and even perversion; for ridiculously putting forward a mass of Jewish folklore as the Word of God, and for neglecting that same Word of God; for reducing everything to reason—that is, to logic, which is the form of reason—and for appealing to mere emotion.[9] Most Protestants, however, hated it, and still hate it, out of their ignorance, and personal prejudice, they accuse the Church of revisionism and propagandizing, but the fact of the matter is that the Protestant revolution is guilty of the same - revisionism, false history designed to make one group seem malignant, and the other excellent. They claim that the Protestants were great champions of liberty and tolerance, claims that are plainly unhistorical; for the fact is that the Protestants were the ones who were most intolerant towards those who held a different belief than their own.The fact of the matter is that the reformers were not the champions of freedom and justice that common historical fiction would have us believe. They persecuted Catholics, and even other Protestants, who held different views than themselves in the process of their "Reformation"; the revolt that they fought was not a reform but a revolution against the "papist" order of society, but most especially against the religion, which these "reformers" mockingly called "popery".

In Augsburg, the town council issued a decree forbidding the Catholic worship, and banishing, after eight days, all who would not accept Protestantism. The council sent soldiers to take possession of all churches and monasteries; altars and statues were removed, and priests, monks, and nuns were banished. In 1533, Frankfurt-am-Main promulgated a similar ordinance; and the seizure of Catholic church properties, and the suppression of the Catholic worship spread like wild fire through the states dominated by Protestants. In Early July,1530, the bishops presented their complaints to the Diet of the plundering and destruction of churches, confiscation of monasteries and hospitals, prohibition of Masses, and attacks on religious processions by the Protestants. "When Charles called upon the Protestants to restore the property they had seized, they said that to do so would be against their consciences. Charles responded crushingly: 'The Word of God, the Gospel, and every law civil and canonical, forbid a man to appropriate to himself the property of another.' He said that as Emperor he had the duty of guarding the rights of all, especially those Catholics unwilling to accept Protestantism or go into exile, who should at least be allowed to remain in their homes and practice their ancestral faith, specifically the Mass; the Protestants replied that they would not tolerate the Mass" [10]. Tolerance was not present in Protestant Augsburg towards Catholicism after the Diet either, as the Catholic Encyclopedia records: "At the Diet of Augsburg in 1530, at which the so-called Augsburg Confession was delivered to Emperor Charles V in the chapel of the episcopal palace, the emperor issued an edict according to which all innovations were to be abolished, and Catholics reinstated in their rights and property. The city council, however, set itself up in opposition, recalled (1531) the Protestant preachers who had been expatriated, suppressed Catholic services in all churches except the cathedral (1534), and in 1537 joined the League of Smalkald. At the beginning of this year a decree of the council was made, forbidding everywhere the celebration of Mass, preaching, and all ecclesiastical ceremonies, and giving to the Catholic clergy the alternative of enrolling themselves anew as citizens or leaving the city. An overwhelming majority of both secular and regular clergy chose banishment; the bishop withdrew with the cathedral chapter to Dillingen, whence he addressed to the pope and the emperor an appeal for the redress of his grievances. In the city of Augsburg the Catholic churches were seized by Lutheran and Zwinglian preachers; at the command of the council pictures were removed, and at the instigation of Bucer and others a disgraceful storm of popular iconoclasm followed, resulting in the destruction of many splendid monuments of art and antiquity. The greatest intolerance was exercised towards the Catholics who had remained in the city; their schools were dissolved; parents were compelled to send their children to Lutheran institutions; it was even forbidden to hear Mass outside the city under severe penalties. . . . Altogether during these years of religious warfare the Diocese of Augsburg lost to the Reformation about 250 parishes, 24 monasteries, and over 500 benefices." [11] In January of 1540 Luther, Melanchthon, and Zwingli's successor Bugenhagen signed a statement "declaring that religious peace could be established simply by the Emperor and the German bishops renouncing "their idolatry and error," and that "even if the Pope were to concede to us our doctrines and ceremonies, we should still be obliged to treat him as a persecutor and an outcast, since in other kingdoms he would not renounce his errors." This was first explicit public announcement that the goal of the Protestants was the total destruction of the Catholic Church throughout the world."[12] Protestantism, then, was never about religious tolerance and freedom, it was about the destruction of Catholicism, admitted by the main tenants of the Protestant rebellious sects. For this reason, wherever the Protestants went they brought tyranny and intolerance for Catholicism with them, as the Protestant historian Johann Neander records:
"[Luther's views] would justify all sorts of oppression on the part of the State, and all kinds of intellectual tyranny, and were in fact the same as those on which the Roman Emperors acted when they persecuted Christianity." [13]
 In Paris during a violent campaign of the Lutherans against the Mass, which brought on retaliation, "Etienne de la Forge and others were burnt in the Place de Grève; and Calvin, accompanied by du Tillet, escaped to Metz and Strasburg. In the latter city Bucer reigned supreme. The leading reformers dictated laws from the pulpit to their adherents, and this journey was decisive for Calvin, who committed himself to a war on paper with his own sovereign. The famous letter to Francis I, August 23, 1535, served as a prologue to the "Institutes". Calvin's apology for lecturing the king was, that placards denouncing the Protestants as rebels had been posted up all over the realm, and in this letter Calvin made a plea, not for toleration, which the Reformer utterly scorned, but for doing away with Catholicism in favour of the new gospel and that kings ought to make an utter end of popery." [14] This feeling is what fuels the Calvinists in a discussion between the two Churches from May 30 to June 24, 1535, which the Protestants won. The altars were desecrated, the sacred images broken, the Mass done away with. Bernese troops entered and "the Gospel" was accepted. This implied persecution of Catholics by the councils which acted both as Church and State. Priests were thrown into prison; citizens were fined for not attending sermons. At Zürich, Basle, and Berne the same laws were established. Toleration never dawned on the minds of the reformers at that time. [15] Martin Luther, the one man who is the symbol of religious tolerance today did not practice tolerance in the least:
"Even though they do not believe, they must nevertheless . . . be driven to the preaching, so that they may at least learn the outward work of obedience." [16] "Men despise the Evangel and insist on being compelled by the law and the sword." [17] "It is our custom to affright those who . . . fail to attend the preaching; and to threaten them with banishment and the law . . . In the event of their still proving contumacious, to excommunicate them . . . as if they were heathen." [18]
This is also true of Luther's feelings towards Franciscan Friars: "If I had all the Franciscan friars in one house, I would set fire to it . . . To the fire with them!" [19] and of the Pope: "We must curse the Pope and his kingdom and revile and abuse it, and not close our jaws but preach against it without ceasing. There are some now who say we are capable of nothing else but of damning, scolding and slandering the Pope and his followers . . . Yes, and so it must be." [20] This is the exact opposite of the Protestant claim concerning Luther, their herald of tolerance. The reformers did not tolerate those whose theological views differed from theirs, they burned people at the stake, and did kill who they deemed to be heretics. To illustrate this point further, we shall see how Martin Luther felt about heretics:
"There are others who teach in opposition to some recognised article of faith which is manifestly grounded on Scripture and is believed by good Christians all over the world, such as are taught to children in the Creed . . . Heretics of this sort must not be tolerated, but punished as open blasphemers . . . If anyone wishes to preach or to teach, let him make known the call or the command which impels him to do so, or else let him keep silence. If he will not keep quiet, then let the civil authorities command the scoundrel to his rightful master - namely, Master Hans [i.e., the hangman]. " [21]
"In Luther's case it is impossible to speak of liberty of conscience or religious freedom. The death-penalty for heresy rested on the highest Lutheran authority." Yet this was not confined to the Lutherans, the views of the other reformers on the persecution and bringing to justice of heretics were an outgrowth of Luther's plan; "they contributed nothing fresh"; [22] they carried out almost the same policies. There was little political liberty in Geneva under Calvin's regime, and still less of religious liberty. His practical influence was on the side of an autocratic state and complete conformity of the individual to the established powers. [22] Calvin had set up a counter-Church in Geneva, and the Calvinists in France destroyed twenty thousand Catholic churches; they murdered, in Dauphiné alone, two hundred and twenty-five priests, one hundred and twelve monks, and burned nine hundred towns and villages.[23] However, Calvin is significant not only in this, but in that he contributed in large part to the organization and philosophy of the Protestant movement; he presented an entire system which explained in a full and worked-out philosophy how one might be rid of the Priest, and against the hated creed and discipline [Catholicism] set up another discipline and creed, unlike the other Reformers, who were chaotically raiding and destroying everything Catholic at will with little or no religious justification, save their claim that the Church no longer kept true Christianity; plus "the fervor of the denial of sacramental power to sinful priests, the tendency to substitute the dead Scriptural authority for the old living authority of the Church—a reaction against the conception of a priesthood, and of an order sacramentally set apart for the performance of spiritual power among Christian men. A rebellion driven by an undying hatred of the Faith itself, which the very power of Faith produces, had produced a negative result of disunion and confusion." [24]


The Reformation, therefore, was a revolution, a war on religion, particularly on the Catholic worship.On Christmas eve at Wittenberg a new liturgy written by Carlstadt was used at the university Church. "All references to the sacrificial character of the Mass were omitted, confession was explicitly not required for communicants, Carlstadt said the Mass without vestments, and the people were allowed to take the consecrated bread and wine directly from the altar. Mobs attacked priests in the town and threatened the priest at the castle church with the pestilence of hellfire." [25] Luther seemingly approved of it, in his work "On the twofold species of the Sacrament", in 1522, he said of changing the Mass liturgy to remove all references to it as a sacrifice: "The priest will easily be able to arrange that the common people learn nothing of it, and take no scandal." [26] Luther was dead set against the Catholic Mass: "If I succeed in doing away with the Mass, then I shall believe I have completely conquered the Pope. On the Mass, as on a rock, the whole of the Papacy is based, with its monasteries, bishoprics, colleges, altars, services and doctrines.... If the sacrilegious and cursed custom of the Mass is overthrown, then the whole must fall." [27] "George Metzler [another Protestant revolutionary] and his odenwald rebels "plundered "all that was ecclesiastical" in the town of Neckarsulum, then marched on Weinsberg in the kingdom of Wurttenberg, arriving there just as Easter Mass was being said. When their demand of the immediate surrender of the city was refused, they stormed it. They killed the priests who just finished saying Easter Mass, along with all others they found in the city, and also Count von Helfenstein and about a dozen nobles. The dead count's two year old son was slashed with a knife. Before Metzler's Easter in Weisberg was done, he called to near by Heilbronn to support an uprising there. Arriving with the blood and flesh of the victims of Weisberg still on the clothing of some of his troops, Metzler took over Heilbronn on Easter Tuesday. The rebels took Stuttgart, and on the 27th and 28th Erfurt was taken, its churches and monasteries sacked and all the priests and religious driven out or killed."[28] "On May 21st, 12,000 armed peasants who had acquired cannon laid siege to the town of Freiberg in Bresgau and bombarded it, smashing the dome of the cathedral. On the 24th the town had to surrender and was required in the surrender terms to develop a plan to suppress all its Catholic churches and monasteries and to "protect the evangel."' [29] In the City of Muhlhaussen, in Central Germany, Thomas Munzer, while establishing a rebellious regime, abolished the Mass and plundered churches and monasteries, forcing citizens of raided cities to join him or die.
Zwingli and his followers were no different. They stamped out the Mass in Zurich by 1525, preceded by a violent iconoclasm, obviously, for such loveliness was connected to the official Church, and they felt it had to go.[30]


The "Reformers" preached the idea of each being one's own priest, that each man is his own authority on matters of religion, thus removing the "obstacle" of the Priest. Yet the priesthood was not destroyed because it was what it was, a priesthood, but because the priest is the representative of the Pope, and that they could not retain a priesthood, and delete the Papacy, so the elimination of the priesthood began; which included the destruction of doctrines and practices having to do with that priestly power; such as the Eucharist, confession, consecration, Purgatory, endowments, and alms. What little doctrine and practice that was spared by the reformers (such as the Incarnation, redemption, common prayer, and the ascension) were retained only because they could be believed and practiced without the retaining of the priesthood, doctrine only entered the scene where it was prudent to do so in order to replace the papist religion. The Reformation, then, was not a reform, but was a Revolution against Papal power and to overthrow the Catholic society, uprooting Catholicism in all places where the Protestant plague had spread. This policy of completely uprooting the Catholic Church succeeded the forbidding of all things which could keep the Catholic Church alive: preventing children from receiving a knowledge of Catholic truth, hunting out the priesthood till this was reduced to a handful of wandering, concealed men in peril of their lives. But the capital agent of the change was the stamping out of the Mass.[31] "Libel, once set free to express itself, spat at all things Catholic, and particularly the Blessed Sacrament and the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, as well as the main Officials of the Church."[32] It was a fierce, increasing hatred against the Mass, the Blessed Sacrament, the whole transcendental scheme; a hatred such that all who felt it were, in spite of a myriad differences, in common alliance, a hatred which fed upon an original popular indignation against the corruption of the clergy, and especially against their financial claims.[33]

In England, With the help of Cranmer, the Archbishop, they destroyed Catholic order and magnificence. First, the Government translated the Mass into English in a new "Prayer Book," modified it, confiscated its endowment and the wealth of its ritual and shrines in jewelry, tapestry, furniture, plate and building. Then they imposed upon the people of England a new ceremonial of religion, in a second Prayer Book; and at once abolished the last scraps of the Mass which they had already undermined.[34] The Protestants either revised or deleted the customs and practices of the Roman Catholic Church, and what happened in England also happened elsewhere under other Protestant rulers in their quest to eliminate the Catholic Church. Frederick, Elector of Saxony, John Frederick, his successor, and Philip, Landgrave of Hesse became Luther's disciples. Gustavus Ericus, King of Sweden and Christian III., King of Denmark, also declared themselves in favor of Lutheranism. By this it got its foothold in Hungary. Poland, after a variety of different doctrines, left to every individual the liberty of choosing for himself. Munzer, a disciple of Luther, set up for doctor himself, and, with Nicholas Stark, created the Anabaptists, which was propagated in Suabia and other provinces in Germany, and in the Low Countries.[35]

The spirit of Protestantism, or the spirit of revolt against God and his Church, originated from the Reformers' spirit of depravity, obstinacy, and covetousness. Luther had preached sensuality, and reviled the emperor, the princes, and the bishops. The peasants lost no time in freeing themselves from their masters. They overran the country in lawless bands, burned down castles and monasteries, and committed the most barbarous cruelties among the nobility and clergy. Germany became the scene of desolation and the most cruel atrocities during the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648). "More than one hundred thousand men fell in battle; seven cities were dismantled; one thousand religious houses were razed to the ground; three hundred churches and immense treasures of statuary, paintings, books, etc., were destroyed."[37] In this manner they ousted the former Catholic society and replaced it with a new Protestant society, though the immediate fruits of the Reformation decayed, the disruption it had produced remained, and the main principle - reaction against a united spiritual authority - so continued in vigour as to break up Western civlization.[38] "A generation of fierce conflict between ideas was, for a time, almost universal; then another generation of growing regional separation, growing more and more a political rather than a religious conflict", progressed and left Europe in a mass confusion. [39] "Behind it all there was this opportunity, for territorial lords, large and small, from kings down to squires, of looting ecclesiastical property. This property was everywhere very large, in Scotland it is reputed to have been half, in England, from a third to a fifth, of the wealth of the governing classes, and elsewhere on the same scale. It was this opportunity for loot which worked the Reformation in England and Scotland, and prevented, in England at least, any return to the Church. It was this same opportunity for loot which let loose the German nobles in a pack against religion, and which provoked, primarily, the French nobles to their rebellion." [40] Protestant Reformers invented a new doctrine which supported spiritual revolt, the doctrine of unquestioned right in Princes to absolute rule, both temporal and spiritual.[41] The Nobles of Central and Western Europe are what really made the Reformation a success, for without their support and protection, the Protestant revolt would have died out and would not have lasted for very long, healing the wounds inflicted, society would have been restored to its norm.

But it succeeded, and the Protestant movement eventually broke up into dozens, then hundreds, and finally thousands of different Protestant sects, reviling God and Church. In all of the countries that embraced the Protestant insurgency, today now reigns the plague of atheism and godlessness, where no longer even the simplest principle of morality and religion remains. Concepts such as right and wrong, loyalty, faith, and charity are no longer remembered. From some of the most radical Protestants the different concepts that later began what is known as communism flowered and now thrives in over 1/3 of the population of the world, and the other third caught up in a milder form of communism known as socialism, the origin of which is capitalism, the brain child of John Calvin, a chief architect and leader of the Protestant revolt.

The Protestant revolution not only led a revolution against religion, but also against authority and society, the corporate quality of society was disrupted. A process of disintegration transpired. "The corporate sense which bound individuals together as in the old Guilds, in the old domestic social system, in the old forms of village life, was gradually dissolved. As consequence of this, individualism took its place. The principle of competition came forth, and, with it,Usury, that is, the taking of profit on an unproductive loan, a system which drains wealth from the many or the few and gives dominant power to capital. However, Usury nothing new, it had been around before the Reformation, and there was plenty of it in the Catholic culture of the Middle Ages." [42] But before the Reformation, it was seen as intrinsically evil and wrong. But after the Reformation it was seen as good and its critics as fools. Usury gained new heighs under the Calvinist Capistalist society, and grew to a large and national scale and nearly everyperson was prey to its impoverishing effects - except the one who practiced it.


Protestantism produced the modern secular dogma of subjectivism. Subjectivism is the main consequence of individualist philosophy, and since there was no longer an authority which was objectively right and moral, since the Church no longer played the dominant role in human values, men are left all on their own to decide that which is right and that which is wrong, and with the Protestant standard of private interpretation of sola scriptura, by which every man decides, in the most important matter of all, that of religion, he will take his own feelings and experiences as to how he will guide his conscience, from which the idea that every man has his own experiences or "truths" that every man may decide for himself that which is true, and that which is false, which is why there are tens of thousands of Protestant sects, each man in each sect says for himself what he will believe concerning religion, but the most grave thing is that this standard was applied not just to religion, but also to every other aspect of life. This is subjectivism was the destruction of faith, men no longer accepts truth on some authority, but now only by popular opinion, and faith is confused with emotions instead of divine faith in some divinely revealed truth. Each dogma left over from this enthusiastic revolution was left behind bit by bit, and man was left to his own private judgment in the discernment of truth, a philosophy which infected all the rest of society with a sort of anarchy regarding religion and philosophy.

But its consequences were not just economically and governmentally, with the revolution against God and His Church, something had to replace it, man now had to have an ultimate something to believe in, something to define to him truth. With religion out of the picture, man's religion became twofold: Worship of man, and worship of government, these dogmas have been propounded into the minds of every man through the education system, in which the government has all of the powers to indoctrinate its people. And so this indoctrination unfortunately has been largely anti-Catholic, which has continued to declare that subjectivism is freedom, and governmentalism is equality, and usurious capitalism each man's pursuit of happiness, and in doing so has proclaimed that the Reformation was something done for the progress of man, and the "freeing of man from the bondage of the Church" and king, and the "poverty" of the guilds and domestic system of life, the "lifting up of the mind of man from the lowliness of the superstitions of the Middle Ages". Many things that have transpired in recent history are a fruit of the Protestant Revolution, a revolution that took place by brute force and greed, not by doctrinal proofs and truths, as commonly assumed in light of the bigoted "history" which is taught by the secularist of modern times.

In every sense was the Reformation a Revolution, it followed the same path that all other revolutions followed, it overthrew the old order by force and replaced the philosophy and belief system of the Catholic Church with the forced indoctrination the people and the confusion of subjectivism. The Protestant revolution was more than just a war on the Church, it was a war on that which the Church stood for, it was a war on the Authority Jesus Christ, the Son of God, it was the turning of tide in the battle between God's people, and the forces of Satan. The Protestant Revolt, therefore, was not a reform, it was not about true doctrine; and it was not about religious tolerance and freedom, as I have shown; but it was from the beginning a revolution to overthrow traditional religion in favour of a new religion of man; it was designed from the outset to overthrow Catholic society and religion and in the process enrich and empower local principalities. And as we've seen, it was this revolution which was the origin of many problems in the modern world, such as subjectivism, secularism, capitalism, socialism, usury, and atheism. The Protestant revolution was clearly not the Reformation which we are constantly hearing about, the Protestant Revolt was a "deformation" of religion and society which was conceived of and perpetrated by the agents of Satan against God's Church.







__________________________________________

Endnotes for Chapter II:

[2] Philip Hughes, A History of the Catholic Church to the eve of the Reformation, Volume II, Ch. 5.
[3] Hilaire Belloc, Survivals and New Arrivals.
[4] Janssen, History of the German people, IV, 234, cited in Warren H. Carroll's "The Cleaving of Christendom", p. 76, from the series, A History of Christendom, Volume 4, Front Royal, VA: Christendom Press.
[4] Belloc, Hilaire, Europe and the Faith, Rockford, IL: TAN Books & Pub., 1992 (orig. 1920), 191p.
[4] Will Durant, The Reformation, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1957, 424.
[5] Belloc, Hilaire, Characters of the Reformation, Garden City, NY: Doubleday Image, 1958.
[6]Daniel-Rops, 309-310: Because of all of this, there immediately appeared a new economic class which had never before been seen by western civilization. The nobles who had so suddenly enriched themselves began to see Catholicism as a threat to their confiscated wealth and fortune.
[7] Will Durant, The Reformation, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1957, pp. 438-439
[8] Belloc, Hilaire, Survivals and New Arrivals.
[9] Belloc, Hilaire, Europe and the Faith, Rockford, IL: TAN Books & Pub., 1992
[10] Warren H. Carroll, The Cleaving of Christendom; from the series, A History of Christendom, Volume 4, Front Royal, VA: Christendom Press, 2000, 103-104.
[11] Joseph Lins, The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume II. Published 1907. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
[12] Warren H. Carroll, The Cleaving of Christendom [A History of Christendom, vol. 4], Front Royal, VA: Christendom Press, 2000, 176.
[13] Grisar, VI, 266-268.
[14] William Barry, The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume III. Published 1908. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
[15] Ibid.
[16] Grisar, VI, 262; in 1529.
[17] Grisar, VI, 262; EA, III, 39; letter to Georg Spalatin.
[18] Grisar, VI, 263; EN, IX, 365; letter to Leonard Beyer, 1533.
[19] Grisar, VI, 247; Table Talk [edited by Mathesius], 180; summer 1540
[20] Ibid., 62, p.222 v.4;304-05/3
[21] Janssen, X, 222; EA, Bd. 39, 250-258; Commentary on 82nd Psalm, 1530; cf. Durant, 423, Grisar, VI, 26-27
[22] Walther Kohler, Reformation and Ketzerprozess, 1901, 29 ff.
[23] Fr. Michael Muller, C.S.S.R., The Great Revolt against Christ
[24] Belloc, How the Reformation Happened.
[25] Harkness, 222
[26] Grisar, Luther, II, 98-99; Veder, Reformation in Germany, p. 182.
[27] Grisar, Luther, II, 321, cited in Warren Carroll's The Cleaving of Christendom, p. 57.
[28] Grisar, Luther, II, 320
[29] Carroll, Cleaving of Christendom, p. 76
[30] Ibid., 77
[31] Belloc, How the Reformation Happened.
[32] Ibid.
[33] Ibid.
[34] Ibid.
[35] Fr. Michael Muller, C.S.S.R., The Great Revolt against Christ
[36] Ibid.
[37] Ibid
[38] Belloc, Hilaire, The Heresy of Protestantism
[39] Ibid.
[40] Belloc, How the Reformation Happened
[41] Ibid.
[42] Ibid.
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