USE of the term “Catholic Reformation” to describe the renewal of Roman Catholicism during the 16th and 17th centuries has been ascendant in recent decades. This is a welcome development: the older label “Counter-Reformation”, was pejoratively loaded with the assumption that this movement (or, as James F. Kelly argues, these movements) merely responded to the rise of Protestantism.
The alternative “Tridentine Catholicism”, Kelly says, is useful, but also has drawbacks: some important things that historians associate with the renewal preceded the Council of Trent (1545-63); others were, variously, mentioned only briefly or not at all in its decrees.
Discussion of Trent’s successor, the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), are dominated by two competing views typified by the Italian term aggiornamento and the French one ressourcement. Aggiornamento means “updating” and implies adaptation to contemporary realities. Ressourcement (“re-sourcing”) connotes a return to the Patristic foundations of Catholic theology and the measuring of subsequent developments against that standard.
Kelly argues that the same was true of early-modern debates about Catholic renewal and mission. Starting a long trend, the Jesuits championed the idea of “accommodation”, especially in light of their missionary experience in the New World. Meanwhile, more conservative, or rigorist, visions of regeneration emerged from both the Dominicans and from France — as they would again in the 20th century. The Catholic Reformation wasn’t one thing, but many.
This book demonstrates that we can’t speak of “Tridentine Catholicism” as something to be contrasted with Vatican II and its aftermath. Instead, both appear to be instances of ongoing dynamic interaction between different visions of renewal. The author also challenges us to revisit assumptions about “peripheries” and “centre” in early-modern Catholicism, making it clear how globalised the Church had already become.
Less happily, Kelly shows confusion regarding the Peace of Westphalia (1648). This, he asserts, brought, “toleration at state level by recognising the right of princes to choose Protestantism”. Westphalia’s outcome, however, wasn’t to give (German) princes freedom to determine their territory’s confession arbitrarily. Rather, it obliged them to preserve their land’s official religion as it stood on 1 January 1624, regardless of their personal beliefs.
The Revd Alexander Faludy is a freelance journalist based in Budapest.
The Catholic Reformation: A very short introduction
James F. Kelly
OUP £9.99
978-0-19-286231-0
Church Times Bookshop £8.99