[B]but in the 19th century, when the study of history became professionalized, it was mostly Protestant scholars in Germany who led the way. They got to name names, including “Protestant Reformation.” The British picked it up automatically, and so did the Americans. Now it is applied universally.
And it makes sense to many. The Catholic Church is allegedly retrograde, reactionary, and incapable of change. It is only fit to launch a Counter-Reformation. Really? What of the Cluniac Reform? If we agree about the truth of this Catholic reformation, on the one hand, and the Protestant revolution on the other, we will be mentally equipped to acknowledge that what we were dealing with was not a “Catholic Counter-Reformation” but, rather, a Catholic counter-revolution. Let’s get it straight.
This is an uphill battle, but someone’s got to do it.
"Revolution" instead of "Reformation." I have heard Latin traditionalists and even some conservative Latins advocate the same thing before. Even if such rhetoric might be effective, its effectiveness would have been 500 years ago, not now, and I don't think the rhetoric would have been effective with the reformers nor with the Christians who thought they had a point. Pope Francis doesn't talk about the Protestant Revolution, and some may be critical of his overtures to Protestants. Certainly there may be excesses in his sort of ecumenism, such as meeting with female "bishops" like Antje Jackelén, the Lutheran archbishop of Uppsala in the Church of Sweden, who said of Pope Francis, “Living in a single-sex environment may not make it so easy to in all aspects achieve a balanced view of humankind.”
Now his defenders will say that as the leader of the Church who is interested in ecumenism, he must maintain relations with the Lutherans, and this includes meeting with their leaders, regardless of their gender identity. The original protestors against Rome would probably be shocked by the deviations from the primitive Gospel that their various confessions have undergone. What, then, is the point of an aimless ecumenism that seeks to be friendly with all, while reconciling none? Benedict XVI was able to restore communion with traditional Anglicans, and some were hoping that there would be similar overtures to traditional Lutherans. Apostolic Christians, especially Latins, can reach out to traditional Protestants who have not traded in the Gospel for heretical liberalism, and those who are not traditional need to be evangelized or be left behind in their "town." What other action is possible? Whether the "Christian" believes in feminism, the liceity of homosexuality or same-sex marriage, abortion, fornication, or a host of other errors pertaining to the Divine Law, I don't see how they cannot be corrected. Is it an act of mercy to leave them in ignorance? But what if their ignorance is culpable?
Back to Chodakiewicz's polemic -- I don't believe the Protestants were completely wrong in their protests, and Louis Bouyer points to the fundamental intuitions which were correct in his The Spirit and Forms of Protestantism. If the Latins had not been estranged from the rest of the Church Universal, would they have been in an intellectually better state to dialogue with the Protestants, instead of enshrining scholastic theology as dogma? I do think the separation that the Apostolic Churches suffered and maintained did weaken all of them, and we should take care to heal those divisions.
Related:
Address of His Holiness Pope Francis to the World Communion of Reformed Churches
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