Success of the Council of Trent in the years 1545-1563 in Tackling the Problems Confronting the Catholic Church

Success of the Council of Trent in the years 1545-1563 in Tackling the Problems Confronting the Catholic Church

The council met over a period of eighteen years, in this time there

were three distinct periods in which there were a total of 25

sessions. There were several problems with the Catholic Church which

needed to be sorted out, this including doctrine and discipline. The

council met to sort out this problem which had persisted over a number

of years. There were several popes in these three periods.

The council took so long to confront the problems within the church

for two reasons. One of which is that in the first period, Paul III

was Pope and he wanted to move the council to Bologna, as there was an

outbreak of Cholera in Trent which supposedly put the people at risk.

This from Paul’s point of view would increase his power and influence

on what was going on. However Charles realised what Paul was doing and

told his subjects to stay in Trent, this therefore effectively bought

the council to a halt. Secondly in 1555 Carafa was Pope and he was

hostile to the idea of a General Council, he thought that the Pope had

enough authority to reform the church himself. Therefore until 1559

when Puis IV was Pope nothing happened at Trent. However it did manage

to confront many of the problems facing the Catholic Church by the end

of the council in 1563.

One of the major doctrinal issues facing the church was where the

true word of God is found. The traditional Catholic view was that it

was in the Bible and the word was passed down through the church, for

example by priests in services. The protestant view was that it was

found in the ...

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...now a much

centralised institution and the Pope was firmly the head of the

church. No general council was called for a further 300 years after

Trent, this showed that this council must have incurred a certain

degree of success. The papacy was confirmed to be essentially Italian,

and the Pope for the next 400 years was Italian. Trent was the

catalyst to reform after 1563, there was important business such as

the production of a catholic reform after the closure of Trent was

different from that before 1545. After 1563 reform was more positive

and forward thinking. The decrees of Trent often took a long time to

actually take effect and there were vast regional differences in the

effectiveness of the legislation. The Catholic Church had started to

become a static institution that was not going to move with the

times.