14. The Catholic Reformation: Doctrine Defined and Mission Worldwide

On a recent trip to Chicago my husband and I were exploring the city on a Sunday morning and happened on the Madonna Della Strada Chapel—an impressive structure on the Lake Michigan shore of Loyola University. Appropriately named, this particular Madonna had inspired Ignatius Loyola.

What I found most fascinating about the chapel is its stained-glass recognition of dozens of church notables, including more than twenty Jesuits, not the least of whom is Ignatius Loyola himself, and the most well-known missionary of the movement, Francis Xavier. But also in the stained glass are the four great Latin Fathers (Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, and Gregory the Great) and the four great Greek Fathers (Gregory Nazianzen, Basil the Great, Athanasius, and John Chrysostom). In another area of stained glass are depictions of other well-known saints, including Thomas Aquinas, Thomas More, and Vincent de Paul. Here in one chapel is a virtual hall of fame of church history—featuring Jesuits to be sure, but giving a nod to Dominican scholar Thomas Aquinas.

Also depicted in stained glass are three nameless Japanese Catholic converts representing thousands of sixteenth and seventeenth-century martyrs. They, together with European missionaries, were killed by rulers suspicious of Christian priests and their religion.

As I looked in silence at the windows that Sunday morning, I was reminded of Shusaku Endo’s powerfully written novel Silence, a story of seventeenth-century Catholic missionaries set in Japan. News that his mentor, a Portuguese priest, has apostatized prompts Father Rodrigues to search him out. In the process he too apostatizes: he tramples on a fumie (an image of Christ) to save the lives of Japanese Christians being slowly tortured to death. Where is God in the midst of such suffering? he wonders, overwhelmed with “the feeling that while men raise their voices in anguish God remains with folded arms, silent.”

For all of us who have known the silence of God, this profound story offers less consolation than understanding.

Real history—as opposed to anachronistic morality tales— is always more complex than the simple motives we project back onto figures quite different from ourselves.

ROBERT ROYAL

Real history is indeed complex, and we are tempted to simplify it with sentimental anecdotes of great heroes. The story of America’s first president, George Washington, is replete with morality tales, as are stories of the saints. And new versions of these tales are offered in this age of political correctness, especially when we project simple motives back onto figures quite different from ourselves. From the apostle Paul and Augustine to Aquinas and Ignatius Loyola, we easily offer anachronistic constructs.

In fourteen-hundred and ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue introduces a long-cherished morality tale. The hero, Christopher Columbus, discovered the New World. For that, Americans celebrate a holiday. Never mind that native peoples had inhabited the land for thousands of years and that Vikings and others arrived before this Italian did. Nevertheless, Columbus is the figure we remember. A more recent morality tale, however, views Columbus as perpetrating a holocaust on the native Indians of the New World. Both tales fail to capture the complexities of Columbus and the age of discovery and conquest he represented. A key figure in the Catholic Reformation, Columbus paved the way for Jesuits and other religious orders to expand worldwide, an element of reform that overshadows other aspects of Catholic renewal. From a western European base the faith spread around the globe. Catholic Reformers in this age of discovery include Bartholomew de Las Casas, Ignatius Loyola, Francis Xavier, Teresa of Avila, and Menocchio Domenico Scandella.

The Catholic Reformation entailed more than “countering” Protestants by affirming traditional dogma and practice. It encompassed renewal and reaffirmation of spirituality, particularly the form of piety represented by holy martyrdom as had not been seen since the early centuries. Missionaries to the New World as well as those who ventured to the Far East and Africa and the South Sea Islands accepted (if not welcomed) the opportunity to follow their Savior in dying to save others. But Catholic Reformation piety was also seen in the mysticism of Saint Teresa and John of the Cross.

In its reform, the Catholic Church was looking to the future. Seeking to move beyond the scandals of the late medieval papacy this was a time for advance. The medieval mindset, to be sure, was alive and well as was evident in the torture and tyranny often associated with the Inquisition and the Index of Prohibited Books that severely curbed intellectual curiosity. But a renewed church built on missionary outreach and worldwide multicultural expansion was the wave of the future. This multifaceted Catholic renewal was underway before Luther proffered his Ninety-five Theses. Growing numbers of faithful Catholics had been calling for changes in the church for generations. With the accession of Pope Paul III in 1523, the path to reform was officially open, though the beginning of this Reformation is often dated at 1560 with the reign of Pope Pius IV, extending to 1648 with the end of the Thirty Years’ War. In the years leading up to the Council of Trent, many Catholic officials continued to hold out hope that Humpty-Dumpty could be put back together again—the Western Church united under the banner of Rome. This hope was accompanied with threats and the heavy hand of the Inquisition.

PARADE OF HISTORY

With the Catholic Reformation, we see a reaffirmation of church tradition and a procession of missionary monks, merchants, and soldiers sailing to outposts beyond the seas. But this is anything but a glorious parade. In one region after another, converts were slaughtered or decimated by disease and military might. In many respects the devout Catholic Christopher Columbus symbolizes this era. He set the stage for the marriage of missions and colonialism. Today, with virtually no religious reflection, Columbus Day parades are celebrated on October 12 across America.

The Inquisition was a Catholic tribunal that investigated those who broke church laws. The most general offenses consisted of openly challenging church dogma, such as the doctrine of transubstantiation, and refusing to recognize the pope as authoritative head of the church. The accusation of heresy was common, though adding local superstitions to one’s belief system would typically not cause consternation. Earlier Inquisitions were carried out in medieval times with Dominicans largely in charge. But faced with the Protestant Reformation, Paul III instituted the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition, supervised by cardinals who carried out the duties of investigating and punishing heresy well into the twentieth century.

The Spanish Inquisition, initiated by Ferdinand and Isabella in 1478, more than a generation before the Protestant Reformation, is remembered for the terror it inflicted on citizens, particularly Jews. The first Inquisitor General, the infamous Dominican Tomás de Torquemada (1420–1498), was so ruthless and hated that he reportedly traveled with fifty mounted bodyguards. His name has since become synonymous with fanatical cruelty in the name of the church. Heresy was hunted down, and rumors of such were enough to convict. Death sentences were carried out without the benefit of an advocate or the identity of the accuser. From the late fifteenth to the early nineteenth centuries, more than three hundred thousand were burned at the stake and hundreds of thousands more were imprisoned and tortured.

THE COUNCIL OF TRENT AFFIRMS SAINTS AND RELICS

The holy Synod enjoins on all bishops, and others who sustain the office and charge of teaching, that … they especially instruct the faithful diligently concerning the intercession and invocation of saints; the honour (paid) to relics; and the legitimate use of images: teaching them that the saints, who reign together with Christ, offer up their own prayers to God for men; that it is good and useful suppliantly to invoke them, and to have recourse to their prayers, aid, (and) help for obtaining benefits from God, through His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who is our alone Redeemer and Saviour…. Also, that the holy bodies of holy martyrs, and of others now living with Christ— which bodies were the living members of Christ, and the temple of the Holy Ghost, and which are by Him to be raised unto eternal life, and to be glorified—are to be venerated by the faithful….

Council of Trent, Session 25

EVERYDAY LIFE

Sailing the Seas

Most sea voyages prior to the era of discovery were across inland seas such as the Mediterranean or along the coasts of continents. With Columbus came trans-Atlantic travel for merchants, monks, military personnel, and ordinary people fleeing persecution. His remarkable success does not diminish the dangers seafarers faced. Having no knowledge of weather patterns, much less distance or destination or safe harbors, he fearlessly set sail for India, on a westward voyage with three small ships, including the flagship Santa Maria and 104 crewmen. After a stop in the Canary Islands, the ships sailed on uncharted seas.

Columbus and the discovery of America

Time was calculated with an hourglass and direction with a compass, both part of navigation necessities for centuries. Speed was gauged by the use of a chip log with a knotted line, thus measurement of speed in knots. The ships’ speed averaged slightly more than a jogging rate of six miles an hour. But at 150 miles a day, the voyage took little over a month. The crew worked four-hour shifts. Sleeping quarters were cramped except for a small private cabin for Columbus, though he often went for days without sleep. Indeed, life aboard ship was grim, storms and disease being the greatest dangers. Feeding the crew was a challenge. After the supply of fresh fruit was consumed, the one hot meal a day consisted of salted meat, cheese, dry biscuits, and occasionally fresh fish. Except for rainy days, the cook and his crew prepared the meal on deck over an open fire secured in a box of sand.

The Santa Maria

SEA SERPENTS THAT SWALLOWED SHIPS

Life for the common seaman aboard the Columbus voyages of discovery was fraught with peril and hardship, both real and imagined…. Sailors of that day also feared attacks by sea serpents that could swallow ships whole, whirlpools from which there would be no return and, a far more earthly and likely threat, running out of water and food before land could be reached. In fact, had there been no New World on the way to the East, which was Columbus’ original objective, his crew would probably have run out of provisions before reaching their destination, the distance of the East being far greater than had been estimated by Columbus.

Henry Ramsager,

“Early Ocean Voyages.”

A BOY AND A PALM SUNDAY PARADE

Christopher Columbus arrived in Seville on Palm Sunday, March 31, 1493. In his entourage marched seven Taino Indians captured in the Caribbean. Dressed in their native feathers and fishbone and gold ornaments, they drew curious stares from the gawking onlookers, as much impressed by the parrots as the strange “Indians.” Young Bartolomé de las Casas, then eight years old, witnessed the procession into the city. It was the most exciting event of his life…. Change came about slowly in the medieval world. But the first voyage of Columbus detonated an explosion of knowledge that would transform the world. And young Bartholomew was there.

Lawrence A. Clayton, “The Boy in Seville.”

While some captains paid little heed to religious services, Columbus was not one of them. He insisted that the day begin with recitation of prayers and hymns and that the day also close with a religious service.

Closely connected with the Inquisition was the Index of Prohibited Books—first issued by Pope Paul IV in 1559 to designate books that Catholics were forbidden to read. The list was long and included some seventy-five percent of the books being printed at the time, many of which were written by Protestants. It is no surprise that their forbidden status made them all the more sought after by many Catholic readers.

The Council of Trent, extending nearly two decades (1545–47, 1551–52, 1562–63), officially sanctioned the Catholic Reformation, turning it into a counter Reformation. Convened in northern Italy, this nineteenth ecumenical council of the church stands out as one of the most significant councils, especially in its clarification of Catholic doctrine in light of the Protestant Reformation. Calling such a council had been in the works for decades. But there were pockets of resistance among both government and church factions, most notably papal supporters who feared a pope’s authority might be undercut by a council. The question had long been debated in the church: who prevails, a council or a pope? Convening a council, many argued, enhanced the authority of such a body. But if a pope managed to control a council, his power and prestige would rise. So volatile was the issue that fistfights sometimes broke out among delegates.

The decades-long call for reform also focused on curtailing the practice of bestowing church offices to individuals and families for financial gain. In the same vein, the spiritual life of the church was made a priority, with greater emphasis on seminary education for priests. But doctrinal matters were at the forefront. Despite calls by Catholic Reformers to seriously consider theological and biblical matters raised by Protestants, the council took a hard line and strongly reiterated the beliefs most challenged by Reformers: transubstantiation, purgatory, justification by faith plus works, the legitimacy of seven sacraments, and the ranking of tradition alongside Scripture. The council also upheld various practices Protestants rejected: monasticism, clerical celibacy, veneration of saints (especially Mary), and the merit of relics and indulgences—though abuses in the sale of indulgences was censured. Likewise, the papacy retained its power, rejecting demands from the Conciliar Movement that favored council authority and curbing papal power.

During the second series of meetings, Protestants were in attendance at the insistence of the Holy Roman Emperor. However, they were not permitted to vote, a snub that kept the big names away. In the end the Protestant presence made little difference. When the third series of meetings confirmed traditional Catholicism, all hope for reconciliation between the two sides vanished.

The Council of Trent and its affirmation of Catholic tradition is the theological event of the Catholic Reformation. But the most far-reaching impact was the worldwide spread of the church’s authority. As was true of the later British Empire, the sun never set on the Roman Catholic Church. Protestants were largely confined to land-locked countries; thus, in the sixteenth century the Protestant Reformation had little correlation with colonialism and missions.

The discovery of the New World was viewed in apocalyptic proportions—particularly for the expansion of the Catholic faith. Catholic nations controlled the seas, and every new “discovery” was God’s open door for missionaries to pass through. The singular happening of 1492, according to an early Catholic historian and observer, was “the greatest event since the creation of the world (excluding the incarnation and death of Him who created it).”

It is appropriate that Columbus should be credited with this great event that rivaled creation. He was, in fact, a very devout Catholic whose interests later veered toward apocalyptic speculations, as evident in his Libro de las profecías (Book of Prophecies). But expanding Mother Church was his early obsession. In correspondence with Ferdinand and Isabella he wrote: “With a hand that could be felt, the Lord opened my mind to the fact that it would be possible to sail from here to the Indies, and He opened my will to desire to accomplish this project. This was the fire that burned within me when I came to visit your Highnesses.”

Setting foot on the New World and encountering native peoples confirmed for him the imprint of the hand of the Lord. “As I saw that they were very friendly to us, and perceived that they could be much more easily converted to our holy faith by gentle means than by force,” he wrote on October 12. “I presented them with some red caps, and strings of beads to wear upon the neck, and many other trifles of small value, wherewith they were much delighted and became wonderfully attached to us…. I am of the opinion that they would very readily become Christians, as they appear to have no religion.” Again, writing to Ferdinand and Isabella, he pleaded for missionaries to come and teach the Native Americans so that the King and Queen might atone for the extermination of the Moors, North African Muslims who had invaded Spain generations earlier:

I have no doubt … that were proper devout and religious persons to come among them and learn their language, it would be an easy matter to convert them all to Christianity, and I hope in our Lord that your Highnesses will devote yourselves with much diligence to this object, and bring into the church so many multitudes, inasmuch as you have exterminated those who refused to confess the Father, Son and Holy Ghost [referring to Moors], so that having ended your days (as we are all mortal) you may leave your dominions in a tranquil condition, free from heresy and wickedness, and meet with a favourable reception before the eternal Creator, whom may it please to grant you a long life and great increase of kingdoms and dominions, with the will and disposition to promote, as you always have done, the holy Christian religion, Amen.

Following his famous crossing in 1492, Columbus made four more major voyages and went on to live a life of accomplishment and controversy until his death in 1506—more than a decade before the tumultuous religious upheaval of the Reformation. He died with his dream of converting the natives unfulfilled, but a quarter-century after his death an image materialized on a Mexican peasant’s cape—the Virgin of Guadalupe, a fitting symbol of the appeal of Catholicism among indigenous peoples of the world.

Bartholomew de Las Casas: Missionary and Humanitarian

Considered by some to be the father of liberation theology (championing justice for the oppressed as central to the gospel), Bartholomew de Las Casas (c. 1484–1566) became the greatest defender of the native peoples during the Spanish colonial period. The son of a merchant who had sailed with Columbus on his second voyage, Las Casas received from his father a native boy for a servant. After studying law, he sailed to the island of Hispaniola to serve as the governor’s legal advisor. Settling into the affluent lifestyle of the colonists and readily accepting the conventional disdain for the natives, he participated in raids and enslaved them on his plantation. But amid his prosperity and success a change began to occur. His conscience was seared by the decimation of the native population in Cuba. “I saw here cruelty on a scale no living being has even seen or expects to see.”

Then, in 1511, he hears a Dominican friar preach against the colonists’ cruel treatment of the natives, suggesting that such tyrants dare not call themselves Christian. His words, as Las Casas remembered them, are severe:

You are in mortal sin … for the cruelty and tyranny you use in dealing with these innocent people. Tell me, by what right or justice do you keep these Indians in such a cruel and horrible servitude? On what authority have you waged a detestable war against these people? … Why do you keep them so oppressed? … Are not these people also human beings? … Be certain that in such a state as this you can be no more saved than a Moor or a Turk….

While others revile the preacher, Las Casas senses his calling. Joining the Dominicans, he begins advocating for the natives. In that role, he travels to and from Spain, pleading their cause with government officials, sometimes presenting a naïve description of the “noble savage”:

God created these simple people without evil and without guile. They are most obedient and faithful to their natural lords and to the Christians whom they serve. They are most submissive, patient, peaceful, and virtuous. Nor are they quarrelsome, rancorous, querulous, or vengeful. They neither possess nor desire to possess worldly wealth. Surely these people would be the most blessed in the world if only they worshipped the true God.

CRIMES AGAINST NATIVE AMERICANS

First, all the wars usually called conquests were and are unjust and tyrannical.

Second, we have illegally usurped all the kingdoms of the Indies.

Third, all encomiendas [land grants utilizing forced native labor] are iniquitous and tyrannical.

Fourth, those who possess them and those who distribute them are in mortal sin.

Fifth, the king has no more right to justify the conquests and encomiendas than the Ottoman Turk to make war against Christians.

Sixth, all fortunes made in the Indies are to be considered as stolen.

Seventh, if the guilty of complicity in the conquests or encomiendas do not make restitution, they will not be saved.

Eighth, the Indian nations have the right, which will be theirs till the Day of Judgment, to make just war against us and erase us from the face of the earth.

Las Casas, letter to Royal Council of Indies

As part of his humanitarian outreach, he proposes the establishment of a safe haven for native Indians in Venezuela, with agricultural tracts, churches, and hospitals. Here native people would work alongside colonists at fair wages. But the publication of his plan backfires, and his opponents become even more militant in their aggression. Yet he perseveres in his evangelistic outreach, and his legal battles in support of the native peoples result in the New Laws enacted for their protection.

In 1544 he is appointed Bishop of Chiapas, an impoverished region in southern Mexico. Most of the Spanish planters there blame him for the New Laws, convinced they will ruin the plantation economy. When they ignore the laws, he orders his priests to deny them absolution. The battle lines are drawn. In fact, many of his own priests defy him, and his life is threatened. After three years he gives up his bishopric, discouraged and defeated. He returns to Spain never again to sail to the New World.

But the New World is ever on his mind as he fights battles in court and as he writes his History of the Indies. For four decades this six-volume tome is his obsession, but it remains unfinished at the time of his death. His purpose is to write the truth of the horrors of colonial exploitation of the native peoples, refuting the false accounts of others. In his eighties, shortly before his death, he writes a letter to Pope Pius V, condemning the ill-treatment of the indigenous people, one last time pleading their cause.

Ignatius Loyola: Founder of the Jesuits

A small boy when Columbus first set sail, Ignatius Loyola (1491–1556) grew up in a world filled with possibility and exploding with geographical and mechanical discoveries. As the founder of the Society of Jesus—known simply as the Jesuits—he was one of the premier figures of the sixteenth century. Others had formed religious orders before, but his was a militaristic missionary organization demanding strict discipline and loyalty. He set the pace for Catholic outreach worldwide, and before he died there were Jesuits scattered across Europe and serving in outposts as remote as India, Japan, and Brazil.

Born into nobility in the Basque country of Spain, Loyola was schooled in the Spanish court and steeped in military training and the art of chivalry and courtly love. In his free time, he gambled and caroused with friends: “[I was] a man given to the vanities of the world, whose chief delight consisted in martial exercises, with a great vain desire to win renown.” But the excitement of training soon turned into the horrors of war. Spanish troops were called up to defend Pamplona against French invaders. He is caught in the crossfire, and his shin is shattered by a cannonball. He endures excruciating primitive surgery with no anesthetic, leaving him with constant pain and a lifelong limp.

Now in his early thirties, he spends his time while recuperating reading biographies, including Stories of the Saints and Life of Christ. He is particularly impressed by the lives of two monastic leaders who founded religious orders. “What if I should do great things for God like St. Francis and St. Dominic?” he wonders. He vows to become a soldier of Christ, living a life of holy chivalry devoted to the Virgin Mary. To confirm his calling, he takes a pilgrimage to religious shrines that ends in a remote village. There he lives in seclusion—tempted, as he later relates, to take his own life. Yet he continues to seek God, retiring to a cave where he prays for hours and experiences visions that reassure him in his faith.

His fame, like Luther’s, spreads through his writing, particularly his still-influential Spiritual Exercises. Here he lays out a path to piety, reflecting on his own spiritual life and the necessity of absolute obedience to Christ. The exercises begin to take shape in 1522 while he is meditating by the Cardoner River. Speaking of himself in third person, he writes, “The eyes of his understanding began to open and, without seeing any vision, he understood and knew many things, as well spiritual things as things of the faith.”

Spiritual Exercises does not offer a warm and fuzzy spirituality—and for good reason. Its purpose is to lay the groundwork for devout and disciplined discipleship. The subject matter is designed to fit a four-week retreat, focusing first on sin, followed by Christ’s earthly kingship, his passion, and his reign as risen Lord. Exercises challenge the Christian to avoid such sins as idle talk. Also prescribed is meditation on “the length, breadth and depth of Hell,” while asking for a “sense of the pain which the damned suffer” and to imagine “the great fires and the souls as in bodies of fire.” The exercises are designed not only for those who would become Jesuits but also for lay people.

“Let me look at the foulness and ugliness of my body. Let me see myself as an ulcerous sore running with every horrible and disgusting poison.”

Ignatius Loyola

In the following years he travels and spends time studying theology at various universities, including the University of Paris. Collecting a band of followers, he stirs suspicions and is questioned by the Inquisition. In fact, he is twice briefly imprisoned. In 1534 he and six companions unite together and take vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience to the pope. They intend to evangelize Muslims in Palestine but are stymied by military engagements in the region.

TWO KEY CHURCHMEN OF THE COUNTER REFORMATION

Gasparo Contarmi (1483–1542): Like Erasmus, Contarini was a Christian humanist whose goal was to reform the Catholic Church. He worked closely with Philip Melanchthon on a compromise that would bring Catholics and Protestants back together—especially at the Colloquy of Regensburg in 1541. They found points of unity on justification by faith but were unable to agree on the Lord’s Supper and papal authority. Even when they could agree, however, colleagues on each side opposed their efforts. Charged with heresy following the Colloquy, he died the next year before any action against him could be taken.

Pope Paul III: A reformer pope, he reigned from 1523 to 1534, establishing a reform commission headed by Contarini to shore up the morals of the papacy and the College of Cardinals. The commission sought to stamp out abuses relating to the sale of indulgences, prostitution, bribery, and other corruption that had infiltrated the church.

In 1539 they travel to Rome and receive the blessing of the Pope Paul III, who officially sanctions the Society of Jesus with a bull, Regimini militantis ecclesiae (To the Government of the Church Militant). Their absolute obedience to the pope comes in a “special vow” that Jesuits, unlike other orders, are required to obey—vowing to “take upon ourselves, beyond the bond common to all the faithful, a special vow … meant so to bind that whatsoever the present Roman Pontiff and his successors may command us concerning the advancement of souls and the spreading of the faith, we shall be obliged to obey instantly.”

Above all, Loyola is a devoted churchman. Right or wrong, the church is not to be questioned: “We should always be disposed to believe that that which appears white is really black, if the hierarchy of the Church so decides.” Distinct from most other religious orders, the Jesuits do not require a monk’s cowl or any other religious uniform, nor are daily liturgies or fasting or penance part of the religious routine. They follow the Spiritual Exercises, with its focus on an intense period of prayer and meditation. Unlike Francis and Dominic, Loyola does not establish an order for women, even though they are clamoring for one. He does, however, donate money for the establishment of the House of St. Martha, which helps prostitutes leave their profession and reunite with their families or join in the ministry.

Missionary outreach becomes the hallmark of the Jesuits as they spread out across the globe from India and Japan to South America, Africa, and French Canada. Loyola serves as Superior General, heading up the vast administrative duties from his office in Rome. Before he dies, he drafts the Constitutions, a lengthy and detailed rulebook that clearly differentiates Jesuits from the other monastic orders that require a strict ascetic life style. Mobility is the key to Jesuit effectiveness. As the church militant, cloistered monasticism simply is not their way of serving Jesus. By the time of his death in 1556, there are more than a thousand Jesuits, and within decades the membership exceeds ten thousand.

Francis Xavier: Jesuit Missionary Hero

The most ardent follower of Ignatius Loyola and one of his first six companions was Francis Xavier (1506–1552). Known primarily through his letter writing, he served as a missionary in India and later in the Far East, where his ministry in Japan met with harsh resistance. Like his mentor, he was born into Basque nobility. Unlike Ignatius, however, he associated for a time with a small group of Protestants who were risking their lives to spread the Reformation message. He contemplated joining them—that is, until he encountered the dynamic personal magnetism of Loyola. Soon Xavier joined with Loyola, turning his back not only on the Protestants but also on his family’s wealth and the promising career he might have had as a church administrator.

His assignment to serve in cross-cultural evangelism came when he was singled out to replace another Jesuit who had become ill. Arriving in the port of Goa in India in 1542, he was astonished by the European corruption that permeated the city. Yet he and his companions, with no language training, visited prisons and leper colonies and recited the most basic tenets of the gospel. Ringing a bell as they walked the streets, they announced their services while singing their message in catchy tunes. But few showed interest. Xavier soon realized that the best way to evangelize was to focus on children who are more easily swayed than their elders.

But Goa, he is convinced, is not a suitable location for a mission. The corrupt westernized society with its mix of Muslims and Jews is too much like back home. When his preaching fails to stir the hearts of his hearers, he sends word to the King of Portugal, pleading that the strong arm of the Inquisition force the people to become good Catholics. Frustrated by the hopelessness of the situation, he leaves the area: “I want to be where there are … out-and-out pagans.” He finds his “out-and-out pagans” among the impoverished Hindu pearl fishermen further south along the coast. Their response to Christianity depends primarily on caste. High-caste Brahmans, enjoying wealth and cultural superiority, are antagonistic. But low-caste Paravas and outcastes are open to any change that might benefit them. Soon there are crowds of people listening to simple messages and recitation of creeds. Baptisms are so numerous that he complains of being so exhausted from performing the sacrament that he can barely lift his arms.

Miracles of St. Francis Xavier

Pleading with Ignatius for more missionaries he writes, “In these heathen places the only education necessary is to be able to teach the prayers and to go about baptizing little ones who now die in great numbers without the Sacrament because we cannot be everywhere at once to succor them.” His focus on children is a two-pronged strategy: salvation and service. “I earnestly recommend to you the teaching of the children and be very diligent about the baptism of newly born babies,” he counsels another missionary. “Since the grownups have no hankering for Paradise, whether to escape the evils of life or to attain their happiness, at least let the little ones go there by baptizing them before they die.”

COMMISSIONING CHILDREN FOR MINISTRY

I told the children who memorized the Christian doctrine to betake themselves to the homes of the sick, there to collect as many of the family and neighbors as possible, and to say the Creed with them several times, assuring the sick persons that if they believed they would be cured…. In this way I managed to satisfy all my callers, and at the same time secured that the Creed, the Commandments, and the prayers were taught in the people’s homes and abroad in the streets.

Francis Xavier

Far more fun for the youngsters than reciting creeds, however, are other activities he assigns. “They detest the idolatries of their people and get into fights with them on the subject,” he reports. “They tackle even their own parents, if they find them going to the idols, and come to tell me about it. When I hear from them of some idolatrous ceremonies in the villages … I collect all the boys I can, and off we go together…. The little fellows seize the small clay idols, smash them, grind them to dust, spit on them and trample them underfoot.” But his missionary outreach in India is severely limited by language barriers. After three years among the pearl fishermen, he still has great difficulty with the complex Tamil tongue. Religious services are ritualistic and repetitious, as his own account shows:

Xavier family castle

On Sundays I assemble all the people, men and women, young and old, and get them to repeat the prayers in their language…. I give out the First Commandment, which they repeat, and then we all say together, Jesus Christ, Son of God, grant us grace to love thee above all things…. [Then] we recite the Pater Noster together, and then cry with one accord, Holy Mary, Mother of Jesus Christ, obtain for us grace from thy Son to enable us to keep the First Commandment. Next we say Ave Maria, and proceed in the same manner through each of the remaining nine Commandments. And just as we say twelve Paters and Aves in honour of the twelve articles of the Creed, so we say ten Paters and Aves in honour of the Ten Commandments.

He is an evangelist at heart—always eager to win a convert. He reports one such opportunity while ministering on the coast of India: “I encountered a merchant who had a ship with wares. I spoke to him about the things of God, and God gave him to realize within himself that there are other wares in which he had not traded.” The man leaves behind his ship and wares and becomes Xavier’s traveling companion. “He is thirty-five years old. A soldier of the world for all his life, he is now a soldier of Christ. He heartily commends himself to your prayers. His name is Joao d’Eiro.”

INDIAN FIELDS WHITE UNTO HARVEST

Many, many people hereabouts are not becoming Christians for one reason only: there is nobody to make them Christians….

I wish the university students would work as hard at converting these people as they do at their books, and so settle their account with God for their learning and the talents entrusted to them…. and give themselves over entirely to God’s will and his choice.

They would cry out with all their heart: “Lord, I am here! What do you want me to do?” Send me anywhere you like—even to India!

Francis Xavier to Ignatius Loyola

A trailblazer more than a church-planter, Xavier is eager to expand ministry in other regions. From India he travels to Malacca on the Malay Peninsula, where he establishes a mission post. But his sights are set on Japan with the hope of planting the church there. While ministering in Goa in 1548, he had met a Japanese citizen who was certain he would be welcomed in his homeland: “The king, the nobility, and all other people of discretion would become Christians, for the Japanese, he said, are entirely guided by the law of reason.”

Arriving in Japan in 1549, Xavier realizes the incredible obstacles he is confronting, not the least of which is the language barrier: “We are like so many statues amongst them, for they speak and talk to us about many things, whilst we, not understanding the language, hold our peace.” But within months he reports that people are glad to hear his words, “chiefly when they understand them.” When he departs after two years, he identifies dozens of converts. In the succeeding years, missionaries witness even greater results. Within a decade, tens of thousands have been baptized, and by the end of the century the Japanese church numbers in the hundreds of thousands. But storm clouds are on the horizon. Christians begin to face severe persecution, and the church goes underground.

THE FICTIONAL REALITY OF PERSECUTION IN JAPAN

Why has Our Lord imposed this torture and this persecution on poor Japanese peasants? … Already twenty years have passed since the persecution broke out; the black soil of Japan has been filled with the lament of so many Christians…. They were martyred. But what a martyrdom! I had long read about martyrdom in the lives of the saints—how the souls of the martyrs had gone home to Heaven, how they had been filled with the glory in Paradise…. But the martyrdom of the Japanese Christians…. What a miserable and painful business it was! The rain falls unceasingly on the sea. And the sea which killed them surges on uncannily—in silence…. Behind the depressing silence of this sea, the silence of God.

Shusaku Endo, Silence

After leaving Japan, Xavier returns to Goa, where he makes plans to establish the Catholic faith in China. But while waiting for permission to enter, he becomes ill and dies barely a decade into his missionary career.

Teresa of Avila: Carmelite Reformer

The Society of Jesus was not the only new religious order established in the sixteenth century. The Capuchins (named for their unique headgear), a mendicant order founded in Italy in the 1520s, sought to return to the way of St. Francis. The Ursulines were women religious who lived by the rule of St. Augustine while conducting charitable work and fostering education for girls. The Discalced (barefoot) Carmelites arose in an effort to bring renewal to the Carmelites, who had turned away from their heritage of poverty. Teresa of Avila (1515–1582) is the most noted of the Discalced Carmelites and the most celebrated woman of the Catholic Reformation. Like Loyola, she was regarded with suspicion and treated as a heretic by church officials. Yet she was a tireless reformer and mystic whose writings have inspired generations of religious seekers—both Catholic and Protestant.

JESUIT MISSIONARIES AROUND THE WORLD

Matthew Ricci

Following the footsteps of Xavier, Matthew Ricci journeyed to Goa, where he was later joined by thirteen other missionary monks. After four years they sailed to the Portuguese port city of Macao on the coast of China. Dressing as a Confucian scholar, Ricci identified with the educated classes. Much to the chagrin of Dominican and Franciscan missionaries also ministering in China, he was convinced that Confucianism was compatible with Christianity. In 1601, at the invitation of government officials, he relocated in Peking (present-day Beijing), where he carried out mission work in the shadow of the emperor’s palace, supported by a government stipend. He died a decade later, having converted several palace officials. “It is a miracle of the omnipotent hand of the Most High,” Ricci reflected, and “the miracle appears all the greater in that not only do we dwell in Peking, but we enjoy here an incontestable authority.”

Robert de Nobili

While Ricci was seeking to contextualize the Christian faith in China, Robert de Nobili (1577–1656), was conducting a similar ministry in India—becoming a Brahmin to reach that caste with the message of the gospel. He separated himself from the already-existing Christian community in the region and began observing the laws and wearing the garments of the Brahmin caste. Like Ricci, however, his methods were very controversial. Some critics accused him of turning Christianity into just another Hindu sect.

Jean Brèbeuf

French Jesuits, under the leadership of Jean de Brèbeuf (1593–1649), entered Canada in the 1630s and began working among the Huron tribe. True to Jesuit mission strategy, they studied and appreciated the worldview of the natives. They modified their theology, avoiding reference to eating the body or drinking the blood of Christ (the very essence of the Mass) so as not to further encourage native cannibalism and blood drinking. Because of the Hurons’ positive association with the color red, Jesuits used it freely—especially for the cross. Jesuits interpreted the Hurons’ dreams as the Great Spirit’s desire for them to convert. According to a grisly story related to a priest by Huron natives, Brèbeuf died at the hands of the enemy Iroquois. After beating him and burning him with coals, they tore out his nails. “To prevent him from speaking they cut off his tongue and both his upper and lower lips. After that, they set themselves to strip the flesh from his legs, thighs, and arms, to the very bone; and then put it to roast before his eyes, in order to eat it.” Impressed by his great courage to the moment of death, they drank his blood to absorb his bravery.

Catholic Spain in the sixteenth century specialized in spirituality. Religion out-ranked all other facets of life. For Teresa, the Christian faith was as natural as breathing. There were those of her family, however, with questionable Christian credentials. Her Jewish grandfather, pressured to convert to Christianity, continued to hold to his Jewish beliefs and was later condemned by the Spanish Inquisition. Her father assimilated easily into the Christian community; her mother, Beatriz, a devout Christian, passed her piety on to her daughter.

Growing up in good times, she was a lively and fun-loving Spanish lass. A daughter of privilege, she enjoyed dancing, horseback riding, chess, and especially romance novels of chivalry. “So excessively was I absorbed in it that I believe, unless I had a new book, I was never happy,” she writes in her autobiography. “I began to deck myself out and to try to attract others by my appearance, taking great trouble with my hands and hair, using perfumes and all the vanities I could get.” But she also fanaticized about dying as a martyr preaching to the Turks in Palestine. In fact, at age seven she had run away with her brother to seek martyrdom, only to be spotted by an uncle and brought back home.

Teresa of Avila

Teresa’s teen years were marked by the trauma of her mother’s death and her own illness, which prevented her from finishing her education with nearby Augustinian nuns. She strived for piety, floundering until she read a copy of Jerome’s Letters, a volume that affirmed women in monasticism. Determined to keep that tradition alive, she left home at twenty to join a local Carmelite convent. Poor health continued to plague her, however, and during her first decade as a nun she was filled with doubts: “I went through a life of the greatest conflict. On the one hand, God called me; on the other, I followed the world.” Following the world, in her mind, was failure to live up to the strictest standards of asceticism. She lamented Carmelite slackness, determined to demonstrate her own devotion to God. She refused to see visitors and reportedly lashed herself “until the walls of her cell dripped with gore.”

Her “conversion” comes at age forty. One day while participating in the liturgy, she suddenly comprehends for the first time the suffering Jesus, wounded and dying. “So great was my distress when I thought how ill I had repaid Him for those wounds that I felt as if my heart was breaking, and I threw myself down beside him.”

“When I started reading the [Augustine’s] Confessions it seemed to me that I was seeing my own self right there. When I got as far as his conversion and read how he heard that voice in the garden, it was just as if the Lord gave it to me.”

Teresa of Avila

In the following years she continues to struggle with poor health. At the same time, however, she experiences ecstatic visions. “Having spent the day in prayer and begging the Lord to help me,” she later recalled, “I began the hymn; and while I was reciting it, a rapture came on me, so sudden that it snatched me out of myself…. It was the first time the Lord had given me the grace of raptures. I heard these words: ‘Now I want you to talk no longer with men, but with angels.’“ The raptures occur with more frequency, and some fear that she has gone mad or is demon possessed. In fact, she wonders if the ecstasies are the result of a “troublesome disease.” But she is eager that others find this same mystical union with God by following her meditation program—four stages described as tranquility, union, ecstasy, and spiritual marriage.

The rapture most associated with Teresa is an erotic experience of the love for God. In her Life, she testifies of how a seraphim plunged a fiery spear into her heart—to the very core of her being. This leaves her enflamed with love for God. But true love for God is something else: “Let everyone understand that real love of God does not consist in tear-shedding, nor in the sweetness and tenderness for which we usually long, just because they console us, but in serving God in justice, fortitude of soul and humility.” Her ideal of justice, fortitude, and humility corresponds with her determination to reform Carmelite houses and to establish new ones throughout Spain. No more laxity and easy living for the nuns. Aided by her strong will and charismatic personality, she gains a following; and in less than twenty years she establishes fifteen new houses.

But her success is met with suspicion. A papal thug sent to investigate concludes that she is not acting properly for her gender. She is a “restless gadabout, disobedient, contumacious woman who promulgates pernicious doctrine under pretence of devotion.” More than that, “She leaves her cloisters against the orders of her superiors, contrary to the decrees of the Council of Trent.” Worse yet, “she is ambitious and teaches theology as if she were a doctor of the church in spite of St. Paul’s prohibition.”

A GARDEN FOR THE LORD

A beginner in prayer must look on himself as one setting out to make a garden for his Lord’s pleasure on most unfruitful soil which abounds in weeds. His Majesty roots up the weeds and will put in good plants instead. Let us reckon that this is already done when a soul decides to practice prayer and has begun to do so. We have, then, as good gardeners, with God’s help to make these plants grow, and to water them carefully so that they will not die, but produce flowers which give out a good smell, to delight this Lord of ours. Then he will often come to take his pleasure in this garden and enjoy these virtues.

Teresa of Avila, The interior Castle

JOHN OF THE CROSS

A Carmelite reformer, John of the Cross (1542–1591) was in his twenties when he came under the sway of Teresa, who was then old enough to be his mother. Opposition to his efforts to reform the Carmelites led to his arrest, and with no trial he was held in a dungeon and tortured until he escaped several months later. One step ahead of Inquisitors he carried on with the work. He is most known for The Dark Night of the Soul, identifying various depths of darkness that lead to perfect union with God. A painful journey, this “spiritual night is the portion of very few.” It is not available to the spiritually lazy or those who do not truly seek it and for good reason. The danger is so extreme that the seeker might in the process deny the faith: “Thinking that they are spiritually ruined, and that God has forsaken them … [they may] fall away, and abandon the right road.” The key to finding God in darkness is detachment from possessions, family, education, and any interests that distract from total emersion in God.

Teresa feared she would be imprisoned even as her dear friend John of the Cross had been, but the pope rules in her favor and she is permitted to continue her itinerant work of reforming convents. The pope is particularly impressed with her work in reclaiming Protestants to the Catholic faith—ridding Spain of the “mischief and ravages those Lutherans had wrought in France.” She regards the Protestant Reformation as a grave threat to true religion: “Had I a thousand lives,” she vows, “I would give them all to save a single one of the many souls which were going to perdition.”

Teresa’s legacy involves more than her active public ministry. In 1562 she published her Life, a spiritual autobiography; and three years later, The Way of Perfection, written primarily for her nuns encouraging them to continue their struggle against the Protestant heresy. Her most important work, The Interior Castle, was not published until a few years before her death in 1582. The castle is the soul, and there are seven apartments representing seven stages of growth through prayer, the final and innermost apartment culminating in complete union with God.

Despite having to face the Inquisition and accusations of mental instability, Teresa’s reputation was secure at the time of her death, and just four decades later she was canonized. Five years earlier she had been named Patroness of Spain. In 1970 Pope Paul VI bestowed upon her (with Catherine of Siena) the title Doctor of the Church, the first women to be so named. She was specifically honored as the Doctor of Prayer.

Menocchio: Astrologer, Philosopher, and Prophet

Sixteenth-century religious turmoil is easily associated with well-known popes and bishops and monks and martyrs. But this era also found ordinary lay people jumping into the fray. Literacy was on the rise, and speculation on religious and scientific topics tempted amateur philosophers. Menocchio Domenico Scandella (1532–1599) was one such thinker. In biblical terms, he would not even rank as a minor prophet, but his life adds color to the tapestry of sixteenth-century religion.

His story is told by Carlo Ginzburg in The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller. Living in a village near Pordenone, Italy, Menocchio is a “very poor” laborer by his own testimony. His wife has given birth to eleven children—only seven of whom survive. While plying his trade, he serves for a time as town mayor, ever struggling to support his “poor family.” Unlike many of his neighbors, however, he is literate and loves to ponder the great questions of life. And he is not alone: “The porter, the maidservant, and the bondsman,” writes an observer, “dissect free will and make hash of predestination.” Menocchio debates issues with traveling peddlers, particularly those hawking relics and religious paraphernalia. His beliefs are an amalgamation of biblical stories, pagan lore, astrology, and elementary science.

Fascinated by the origin of the universe, he is an evolutionist before his time—and, some charge, an atheist. His basic question is: how did matter arise, and where did human—and divine—life come from? A neighbor testifies: “I heard him say that in the beginning this world was nothing, and that it was thrashed by the water of the sea like foam, and it curdled like a cheese, from which later great multitudes of worms were born, and these worms became men, of whom the most powerful and wisest was God.” Boasting that he will gladly present his beliefs to authorities, he gets his chance in 1584. He is hauled off to prison and brought before an Inquisitor. A neighbor testifies: “He is always arguing with somebody about the faith just for the sake of arguing—even with the priest.” For his part, Menocchio tells the court:

The Miller

I have said that, in my opinion, all was chaos, that is, earth, air, water, and fire were mixed together; and out of that bulk a mass formed—just as cheese is made out of milk—and worms appeared in it, and these were the angels. The most holy majesty decreed that these should be God and the angels, and … Lucifer sought to make himself lord equal to the king, who was the majesty of God, and for this arrogance God ordered him driven out of heaven with all his host and his company; and this God later created Adam and Eve and people in great number to take the places of the angels who had been expelled. And as this multitude did not follow God’s commandments, he sent his Son, whom the Jews seized, and he was crucified.

To suggest that God, angels, and the devil had emerged out of the swirl of matter is controversial. The Inquisition takes him seriously, fearing that he might influence others. Nor is his cosmology his only heresy: “I said that if Jesus Christ was God eternal,” he testifies, “he should not have allowed himself to be taken and crucified … and so I suspected that since he was crucified, he was not God.”

JESUS RETURNS AND IS ARRESTED BY THE GRAND INQUISITOR

He comes silently and unannounced; yet all—how strange—yea, all recognize Him, at once! The population rushes towards Him as if propelled by some irresistible force…. He extends His hands over their heads, blesses them, and from mere contact with Him, aye, even with His garments, a healing power goes forth…. A terrible commotion rages among them, the populace shouts and loudly weeps, when suddenly, before the cathedral door, appears the Cardinal Grand Inquisitor himself…. Slowly raising his finger, he commands his minions to arrest Him….

Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

As the Inquisition progresses, he tempers his remarks and backtracks: “I have never associated with anyone who was a heretic,” he insists, “but I have an artful mind, and I have wanted to seek out higher things about which I did not know.” But languishing in prison, he retracts his beliefs: “I have held opinions that were wicked, but the Holy Spirit has enlightened me.” Then comes his final plea: “I ask forgiveness and mercy of the most Holy Trinity … the glorious Virgin Mary … and also of your most holy and most reverend and most illustrious justice, so that you will want to pardon me and have mercy on me.” Yet he is confined to his prison cell for nearly two years.

Finally a free man and back in business as a miller, he serves as a church administrator overseeing parish funds. Unable to keep his opinions to himself, however, he reportedly asks a neighbor: “Who do you think makes the Gospels if not the priests and monks, who have nothing better to do? They think up these things and write them down one after another.” This time the Inquisitors do not give him a second chance, and Pope Clement VIII fears he is a dangerous heretic. At sixty-seven, he is found guilty and is burned at the stake.

The Catholic Reformation, like its Protestant counterpart, was beset with infighting and controversy. Like the Reformers, Catholics met opposition with brutal force and left behind a mixed legacy. Missionaries sacrificed their lives to carry the faith around the world while church officials banned books and the heavy hand of the Inquisition burned heretics.

What if…

What if Columbus had met with disaster and other European sailors met with the same fate? Might the Muslims been the ones to “discover” America? Might they have been more humane toward the natives? How different might the Americas be today under Islamic rule?

What if Ignatius Loyola had not been wounded in battle? He was aiming for a successful and chivalrous military career. How different would Catholic missions around the world be without the Jesuits?

What if Francis Xavier had converted to the Protestant cause? Might his name today be listed as one of the great Protestant Reformers?

What if Pope Paul III or Gaspero Contarini and their Protestant counterparts had made further compromises? Would they have been able to bring the two sides together?

What if Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross had backed down or been executed before they carried out their reforms and wrote their mystical literature? Have their lives made a difference in the arena of Christian spirituality?

14. The Catholic Reformation: Doctrine Defined and Mission Worldwide

14. The Catholic Reformation: Doctrine Defined and Mission Worldwide

CHAPTER 14

The Catholic Reformation

Doctrine Defined and Mission Worldwide

PARADE OF HISTORY

THE COUNCIL OF TRENT AFFIRMS SAINTS AND RELICS

EVERYDAY LIFE

SEA SERPENTS THAT SWALLOWED SHIPS

A BOY AND A PALM SUNDAY PARADE

Bartholomew de Las Casas: Missionary and Humanitarian

CRIMES AGAINST NATIVE AMERICANS

Ignatius Loyola: Founder of the Jesuits

TWO KEY CHURCHMEN OF THE COUNTER REFORMATION

Francis Xavier: Jesuit Missionary Hero

COMMISSIONING CHILDREN FOR MINISTRY

INDIAN FIELDS WHITE UNTO HARVEST

THE FICTIONAL REALITY OF PERSECUTION IN JAPAN

Teresa of Avila: Carmelite Reformer

JESUIT MISSIONARIES AROUND THE WORLD

A GARDEN FOR THE LORD

JOHN OF THE CROSS

Menocchio: Astrologer, Philosopher, and Prophet

JESUS RETURNS AND IS ARRESTED BY THE GRAND INQUISITOR

What if…

Further Reading