History is a great teacher. And lately I’ve been absorbed by three late 15th- and early 16th-century Catholic reformers: Girolamo Savonarola, John Colet, and Egidio da Viterbo. Each wasna priest. Each saw the unpleasant truths of Christian life in his time—the complacency, thentepidity, the hypocrisy and corruption. Each warned of coming turmoil if the need for reform,namong both laity and clergy, were ignored. And each saw his words go unheeded.
Savonarola, a Dominican preacher in the city of Florence, is the best known of the three and thenmost problematic. To this day his legacy—saint or heretic; huckster, political zealot or holynprophet—is disputed. Savonarola was excommunicated in 1497. He was then hanged and hisnbody burned in 1498.
One awkward detail: Alexander VI, the pope who condemned him, ranks among the worst innhistory; Savonarola’s preaching regularly targeted his wickedness. The distinguished Fordhamnscholar, John Olin, described the Dominican friar as “an authentic religious reformer . . . whosenconsuming aim was the revival of Christian virtue and the renewal of Christian life” in a time ofncrisis. Savonarola’s 1495 “Renovation Sermon” on the reform of Catholic life (found here) is anclassic example of his fiery style. The cause for his sainthood still exists. It has never beennclosed.
Colet and Egidio likewise called for reform in words that still have power five centuries later.nColet preached the need for conversion to English Church leaders in 1512. Barely two monthsnlater, Egidio delivered a similar plea to the Fifth Lateran Council. He warned that “unless by thisncouncil . . . we force our greedy desire for human things, the source of evils, to yield to the lovenof divine things, it is all over with Christendom, [and] all over with religion . . . because of ournneglect.”
The council made a bumbling attempt at reform with a document in 1514. It was too little, toonlate. Martin Luther posted his 95 theses just three years later.
What happened next was predictable. As Yale historian Carlos Eire wrote:
The fragmentation of Christendom was the most immediate and long-nlasting effect of the Reformations. This splintering, and the plurality ofnchurches and worldviews created by it, changed Western civilizationnradically, creating spaces large and small into which all of the othernpreexisting secularizing forces could flow. Eventually, these other forcesnincreased in strength and volume . . . and they overflowed from thesenspaces . . . turning what had once been the continent of Christendom into anmere archipelago of islands enveloped by a vast and ever-rising tide ofnsecularism and unbelief.
As others have noted, the gulf separating the 1500s from today is huge, and history never reallynrepeats itself. But human nature, and the patterns of thought and behavior that mark it, do repeat themselves, all the time. Thus, looking back on crises of the past can help us think forward aboutnchallenges of the present and future.
In the Catholic Church, as Colet stressed, no enduring reform can happen without a purifiedncommitment to the gospel on the part of the clergy. Priests bear the privilege and the burden ofnpastoral authority. Most laypeople love their priests, and rightly so. I saw this again and againnduring 27 years of diocesan service. They’ll follow holy priests almost anywhere, no matter thencost.
But nothing alienates faithful laypeople more reliably than clergy who violate the dignity of thenvocation to which they’re called. It licenses our own ugly lay weaknesses and sins—any alibi fornour failures is always welcome—and it confirms the skeptical in their cynicism. To borrow fromnthe wisdom of St. John Vianney: bad priests, worse people. This is why reports of priestlynmisconduct, sexual or otherwise, can be particularly damaging.
Before we complain about priestly sins, though, we Catholics in the pew might take a look in thenmirror. Baptism implicates all of us in the health of Catholic life. We live in an age thatncelebrates the vocation of the laity and the universal call to holiness. Benedict XVI stressed thatnlaypeople are not simply “cooperators” or followers in the mission of the gospel, but fully co-nresponsible for the life of the Church.
In other words, we are the times. We make the times. And if the times seem troubled, the burdennfor fixing them—and the blame for helping to create them—also falls on us.
We live in an increasingly “post-Christian,” hostile surveillance culture that we ourselves helpednbuild through our appetites and distractions. We strengthen it every time we agree to then“privacy” stipulation of a web application. If rabbis, ministers, and priests can be sexually outednor diplomats blackmailed by tracking the data of their illicit behavior, exactly the same can bendone to anyone reading these words. In today’s world, nothing is reliably secret, and purity is notnjust a virtuous thing. It’s the smart thing.
Today’s efforts to train better Church leaders, to manage Church resources more effectively, and to plan for future Church needs in an unfriendly world are vitally important. But as thenBenedictine scholar Jean Leclercq once said, “there [can] be no reform of the Church withoutnreform of the Christian.” What the past teaches us most forcefully—from the Gregorian reformnof the 11th century, to the Dominican and Franciscan revivals of the 12th and 13th centuries, tonthe anguish of the various 16th- century Reformations—is that reform of the institution dependsnon reform of the individual.
The Church, as a structure of offices and ministries, never reforms herself. She’s reformed by men and women who themselves are “re-formed” by their love for Jesus Christ; remade in thenfabric of their souls through personal repentance, personal conversion, and a passionatenrecommitment to the gospel. In every age, it’s the converted mind and heart that God uses tonmake all things new, whatever the obstacles.
As strategic plans go, “conversion” might sound naively pious and hopelessly simple. And perhaps it is. But it’s alsonpainfully hard, which is why so few of us choose to do it. In the end, though, the lesson ofnhistory is just this: What the Church finally needs now, and tomorrow, and always . . . is saints.
Francis X. Maier is a senior fellow in Catholic Studies at the Ethics and Public Policy Centernand senior research associate in Constitutional Studies at the University of Notre Dame.
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