The Catholic response: Trent and the Counter-Reformation

The Catholic Church did not stand still. Its answer, the Counter-Reformation (or Catholic Reformation), reformed abuses the Reformers had attacked while firmly reaffirming the disputed doctrines. Its centerpiece was the Council of Trent (1545–1563), which curbed the sale of indulgences and the corruption of clergy, standardized the Mass and priestly training, and, against the Reformation, declared that justification comes through both faith and works (grace received and cooperated with through the sacraments), affirmed seven sacraments, upheld Scripture and tradition together as authorities, and confirmed the deuterocanonical books as canonical. New orders drove renewal and mission, above all the Jesuits (founded by Ignatius of Loyola, 1540), who became teachers, missionaries, and defenders of the faith across the globe. The result was a Catholicism that was, on its own terms, both purified and re-armed: it conceded the moral failures but rejected the theological revolution, and drew a sharp confessional line that would define Catholic-Protestant Europe for centuries, including the devastating wars of religion that followed. As with the Reformation itself, this file reports what Trent decided and why each side saw it as it did, without ruling on who read the New Testament rightly.