How did Henry Vlll and Martin Luther change the Church?

A:

Of course, King Henry VIII and Martin Luther were instrumental in the formation of the Protestant churches. This would not necessarily change the parent, Catholic Church but it did, in a way they could not have anticipated.

Prior to the Reformation, the Catholic Church had a spiritual monopoly in Western Europe and could demand absolute allegiance. The creation of new and sustainable Churches protected by powerful kings and princes changed all this. There was no longer a universal monopoly, and the Catholic Church had to adapt to the new reality, which it did at an astonishingly slow pace.

The Catholic Church still held a spiritual monopoly in countries where Catholicism was the major faith, and it continued to exercise that monopoly. As recently as 1864, Pius IX published the Syllabus of Errors, stating that where Catholics are in the minority, they have the right to public worship, but where others faiths are in the minority, they have no right to public worship because only the true faith has the right to public worship.

Finally, in 1965, the Church came to the realisation that it would no longer be possible to force all people to believe and practise the one faith, even where Catholicism was the majority faith. The Second Vatican Council pronounced the right of all to religious liberty, recognising their right to worship in whatever way they wished. Almost five hundred years after the time of Henry VIII and Luther, the change was complete.

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Catholic AnswerThe change that Henry VIII and Martin Luther contributed to, although unintentionally, was the Catholic reform which peaked with the Council of Trent, and continued for several centuries. A major result, again unintentional, was that the Church became to a certain extent insular and reactionary, fearful of the protestant heresies. And they both certainly gave a huge impetuous to education and missionary work whose prime example was the Society of Jesus, which came into existence primarily to fight the heresy brought about by Henry VIII and Martin Luther. Many Jesuits were martyred in England in the century beginning with Henry's apostasy.

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from the Catholic Encyclopedia

The term Counter-Reformation denotes the period of Catholic revival from the pontificate of Pope Pius IV in 1560 to the close of the Thirty Years' War, 1648. The name, though long in use among Protestant historians, has only recently been introduced into Catholic handbooks. The consequence is that it already has a meaning and an application, for which a Word with a different nuance should perhaps have been chosen. For in the first place the name suggests that the Catholic movement came after the Protestant; whereas in truth the reform originally began in the Catholic Church, and Luther was a Catholic Reformer before he became a Protestant. By becoming a Protestant Reformer, he did indeed hinder the progress of the Catholic reformation, but he did not stop it.

from A Catholic Dictionary, edited by Donald Attwater, Second edition, revised 1957

The Counter-Reformation is the name given to the Catholic movement of reform and activity which lasted for about one hundred years from the beginning of the Council of Trent (q.v., 1545), and was the belated answer to the threatening confusion and increasing attacks of the previous years. It was the work principally of the Popes St. Pius V and Gregory XIII and the Council itself in the sphere of authority, of SS. Philip Neri and Charles Borromeo in the reform of the clergy and of life, of St. Ignatius and the Jesuits in apostolic activity of St. Francis Xavier in foreign missions, and of St. Teresa in the purely contemplative life which lies behind them all. But these were not the only names nor was it a movement of a few only; the whole Church emerged from the 15th century purified and revivified. On the other hand, it was a reformation rather than a restoration; the unity of western Christendom was destroyed; the Church militant (those still on earth) led by the Company of Jesus adopted offence as the best means of defence and, though she gained as much as she lost in some sense, the Church did not recover the exercise of her former spiritual supremacy in actuality.

from Modern Catholic Dictionary by John A. Hardon, S.J. Doubleday & Co., Inc. Garden City, NY 1980A period of Catholic revival from 1522 to about 1648, better know as the Catholic Reform. It was an effort to stem the tide of Protestantism by genuine reform within the Catholic Church. There were political movements pressured by civil rules, and ecclesiastical movements carried out by churchmen in an attempt to restore genuine Catholic life by establishing new religious orders such as the Society of Jesus and restoring old orders to their original observances, such as the Carmelites under St. Teresa of Avila (1515-98). The main factors responsible for the Counter Reformation, however, were the papacy and the council of Trent (1545-63). Among church leaders St. Charles Borromeo (1538-84), Archbishop of Milan, enforced the reforms decreed by the council, and St. Francis de Sales of Geneva (1567-1622) spent his best energies in restoring genuine Catholic doctrine and piety. Among civil rulers sponsoring the needed reform were Philip II of Spain (1527-98) and Mary Tudor (1516-58), his wife, in England. Unfortunately this aspect of the reformation led to embitterment between England and Scotland, England and Spain, Poland and Sweden, and to almost two centuries of religious wars. As a result of the Counter Reformation, the Catholic Church became stronger in her institutional structure, more dedicated to the work of evangelization, and more influential in world affairs.