Catholic Reformation (Set books / Open University) Book

Text extracted from opening pages of book: THE CATHOLIC REFDRMATIDN B Y PIERRE JANELLE PROFESSOR IN CLERMONT UNIVERSITY THE BRUCE PUBLISHING COMPANY MILWAUKEE Nihil obstat: JOHN A. SCHULIEN, S. T. D., Censor librorum Imprimatur: % MOYSES E. KILEY, Archicpiscopus Milwaukicnsis Die 15 Octobris, 1948 Copyright, 1949, The Made in the Unit B e r d uc S e tat P e u s bl o i f sh A i m n e g ri C c o a mpany In loving memory of my father ERNEST JANELLE ( 1861-1940) to whom I owe the little that I am Preface by the General Editor IN HIS brief Foreword the author deems it imperative to call attention to the obvious impossibility of dealing in a single volume with every phase and circumstance of so vast and momentous a movement as the Catholic Reformation. Yet the prime value of his work consists in the fact that he has made avail able, for Catholics and non-Catholics alike, an adequate and readable record of the characteristic features of this important event, whose duration extended from the fifteenth on To^ JHe ^ seventeenth century. Few indeed would have the leisure or the patience to search through piled-up volumes for the information amply conveyed for their purpose in the chapters of this scholarly work. What they seek above all to learn is the nature, spirit, and ultimate result of this most significant movement whose importance in history, whether religious or secular, can hardly be overestimated. But what lends its particular value to this volume is the candor of its presentation com bined with equal thoroughness of research. In fact it is a lesson by itself to learn how profoundly the results of religion become calculable and visible, not merely in the arts, the architecture, and the very conventions of mankind, but no less in the progress of industry and the tilling of the soil. The latter in par ticular is evidenced especially in the case of retarded peoples under the influence, material as well as spiritual, of the Church's undaunted missionaries. Stress, however, is rightly laid by the author upon the magnificent results achieved m education, and this in every truest sense that could make of it a beneficient power for the progress of mankind. Whatever was humanly wrong on the part of any of the Church's prelates, clergy, and the laity; whatever clamored for reformation in regard to any of her members; whatever demanded in any place viii PREFACE BY THE GENERAL EDITOR wheresoever a more thorough and effective instruction is clearly and inoffensively stated. But no less vividly are we shown in turn these evils of the day gradually righted by devoted souls men and women freely dedicating their lives to God and happily bringing about the most glorious fruits of renovation at home and conversion abroad in distant lands. All this is convincingly presented on the sole evidence of unquestionable facts and of documents freely quoted. Human failings, as well we know, at any time may sadly display themselves on the part of certain of the Church's members, whether in the highest places or in the lowest ranks, yet nonetheless, for the Church Christ founded upon Peter, the assurance stands infallibly that the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. The solicitude, in fine, of Christ for His Church is beautifully expressed in the Epistle of St. Paul to the Ephesians when he says: Husbands, love your wives, as Christ also loved the church, and delivered himself up for it: that he might sanctify it, cleansing it by the laver of water in the word of life: that he might present to him self a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy, and without blemish ( Eph. 5: 25-27). In the words of the Douay commentator, the Church, as here described by St. Paul, is ever obedient to Christ, and can never fall from him, but remains faithful to him, unspotted and unchanged to the end of the world. To aid their own successive generations in approaching ever more closely to what Christ desired of them witRead More