The Gregorian Reform--Mixed Successes

A Medieval Bishop sits enthroned
holding his crozier or episcopal staff

There were three main projects to the Gregorian Reform: the imposition of celibacy, the elimination of simony, and breaking the imperial or royal authority over bishops.  This final point is referred to as “The Investiture Controversy” and we discussed it briefly in our last posting with the example of William of Saint-Calais, Bishop of Durham, in the reign of William Rufus of England.  We will look at the Investiture issue more in this posting.  But before we do, let’s review the first to goals.
      The Gregorian Reform managed to impose clerical celibacy as the universal law for the Western Church. That is to say, by the end of the eleventh century it was known and accepted as law that clergy above and including the Order of Subdeacon in the Western Church were to be celibate.  Accepted does not mean, however, that the law was enforced, much less complied with.  As mentioned in some earlier posts (July 20, 21, 23, 24, 27, August 9), clerical marriage—of a sort of common-law variety—remained somewhat the norm until the reforms of the Council of Trent.  We often refer to the practice of the clergy having a less than formal (that is to say church-blessed) union as “clerical concubinage” but it should be considered more as common law marriage as the relationships tended to be permanent, exclusive (faithful), fecund (child-bearing), and if not public nor were they secret.   It is only after the sixteenth century that celibacy, though not necessarily chastity, became the practice as well as the law.
      Simony, the purchasing and selling of Church offices, did not have a better fate.  One does not come across it as much after the Gregorian Reform, at least by that name, but in fact it persisted under various guises and indeed still persists in the Church today under the camouflage of well accepted practices.  We will see that in the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance huge amounts of money as well as promises of lucrative positions were shelled out to the Cardinal-Electors by papal wanna-bes every time there was a conclave.  When we look at the situation at the time of the Protestant Reformations we will examine the issue of “annates”—the practice of giving the Holy See the first year’s income from one’s new position in return for papal confirmation of the election or appointment.  Can you imagine giving to the Holy See the entire income of the Diocese of Winchester in England for, let us say, 1532?  Or the Archdiocese of Cologne?  One can see why so many supported the breaks with Rome just to keep that  money local.   Today too—and many Catholics are surprised (and even shocked) that it is customary for a newly elevated prelate ranging from Cardinals down through Monsignors in developed societies such as our own to give the Holy See (I refrain from saying “The Pope”) a handsome gift in acknowledgement for their appointment.  Such honorariums can range anywhere from a million dollars for a more important appointment to perhaps ten or fifteen thousand for the monsignoral purple belly-band.  In the case of Cardinals or bishops, these gratuities are usually offered by their dioceses to thank the Holy See for providing new leadership and, to be fair, the gifts offered newly named monsignors by their friends help defray the offering the new domestic prelate or chaplain to His Holiness or whatever makes to our friends across the seas.  Moreover the gifts and fees accruing to a major prelate (not a monsignor) make their gifts to the Holy See affordable.  For example, when a bishop visits a parish for confirmation or comes to a religious community to perform an ordination—priestly or diaconal—the normal gratuity would be between five hundred and a thousand dollars.  Even a casual visit to the parish merits an “Irish hand-shake.” One East Coast Archbishop, when complimented on some expensive cufflinks  that matched his arch-episcopal ring (all three holding a Roman coin from the time of Jesus—also the time of Herod the Great), said “Oh, when you’re an archbishop you don’t pay for these things.”    No, I guess you don’t.  And so it is indeed right and just that the Holy See should be thanked for facilitating a step up into a more gracious life-style.     As Thernadier was inclined to sing in Les Miserables: “But nothing gets you nothing Everything has got a little price!”  It can be argued that this provides necessary income for the Holy See which always has a terrible time balancing its budget—an even tougher time than the United States Government, though more successful than the Feds in the end.  I buy that.  The problem isn’t the financial transaction; the problem is the lack of transparency.  But Catholic Church finances are notoriously non-transparent, excepting for some religious orders of women who are way ahead of the pack in knowing what the Church needs today for genuine Reformation. 
     Well—on to the Investiture Conflict.  You know, I don’t think we have time for that today after all.  Let me set it up and we will continue it in the next posting.   The problem is that, as I described yesterday, the custom had arisen of the Emperor, or a King, or even a major nobleman “investing” bishops and abbots in their respective empires, kingdoms, or duchies with the insignia of office.  This implied that the prelate received his jurisdiction and authority not from God (or from God’s Church) but from the secular lord.  Indeed, the problem was even more serious.  In fact it was usually the Emperor, King, or major noble who instructed the cathedral chapter (or in the case of abbots, the monastic chapter) for whom to vote in the election.  Church offices were in the gift of the political authority and this threatened the independence of the Church.  It also, and this was even more to the point, threatened the loyalty of the bishop or abbot to the Holy See should a dispute arise between the secular power and the Church, as it indeed often did.  Thus Gregory VII—who is my second favorite pope in history—undertook to break this practice of imperial/royal investiture and so he took on the Emperor, Henry IV.  But that is for our next posting.        

A Good Pope Goes Bad

The Papal Throne in the Pope's

Cathedral, the Basilica of Saint John

Lateran--at the time of Gregory VI

the popes lived in a palace adjoining

the Lateran Basilica.

While Romuald was reforming monasteries and Peter Damian was going after gay clergy, the eleventh-century papacy was having its ups and downs.  We saw (July 17) that Sylvester II, Otto III’s candidate for pope who reigned from 999 until 1003 was a reform pope who brought stability to the papacy after a long period of immoral and/or incompetent popes.  (History shows us that some bad men were, in fact, good popes and some bad popes were good men even as some bad men have been among our best presidents and some exceptionally good men among our worst.)  The period immediately after Sylvester saw the papacy fall again into the control of the Roman mob which, in turn, was driven by the Crescentii family. (Crescentii is the plural of Crescentius in case you see that name somewhere.)  Some of these, such as Sergius IV, was a good man, but all of them—John XVII, John XVIII, Sergius IV—were  controlled, good and bad alike, by the Crescentii.  The Ottonians—the reform party—were able to regain control of the papacy with Benedict VIII (reigned 1012-1024) who was a good man but who was part of the Theophylact clan—those wonderful people who had brought you the pornacracy  (see entries of January 15, and June 9, 6, 18), the so-called “Rule of Whores” when a Roman mother-daughter team slept their way into control of the papacy in the tenth century.  (The Theophylacts were political rivals of the Crescentii.) Despite his shady relatives, Benedict was a capable pope and enjoyed the confidence and patronage of the last of the Ottonian Emperors, Saint Henry II.  He was succeeded, in turn, by his brother as John XIX.   OK—, while Benedict may have been a good man this isn’t a good sign as it indicates a family control of the papacy, and again by a family that had controlled the papacy before and had exploited it for the sake of family wealth and power.  Moreover, John was a far more mediocre pope than his brother, Benedict, had been.  And it gets worse.  John is succeeded by another family member—his nineteen year old nephew, Benedict IX. 
      Benedict was a pretty dissolute character—but hey, he is at that age where hormones are raging.  Nineteen-year-old popes are not a good idea. In the Liber Gomorrhianus Peter Damian called him a “demon in the mask of a priest.”  He did not let his being an active homosexual get in the way of the occasional heterosexual adultery or rape and allegedly was responsible for more than one murder.  But then boys will be boys. 
      Fortunately, Benedict IX did not want to be pope—at least not at that time in his life.  (He would become a problem, like a bad penny he kept turning up in the papal chair—three terms but we will save that story for later.  At this point he wanted out, but he had no money.  He may not have wanted to be pope but frankly he needed the job.  Along came his godfather with a solution that appeared to be a win/win scenario—win/win for Benedict, for the godfather, and for the Church.  Unfortunately they overlooked two details—one was Benedict’s character and the other was the godfather’s naiveté.  
      The godfather was a priest by the name of John Gratian.  You have to be careful because there is more than one Gratian in the history of the Church and several of these Gratians are named John.  This one was the Archpriest of the Church of Saint John at the Latin Gate.  That church still stands today.  Gratian was a canon lawyer and a pious man but he lacked some discretion.  He suggested that if Benedict resigned the papacy in his (Gratian’s) favor, he (Gratian) would make sure that the young man would have sufficient means for a life of comfort and ease.  (He didn’t say debauchery, but if you have money debauchery is cheap.)  Thus Gratian became Gregory VI.  The new pope did not want power, he wanted to reform the Church.   
   The reform party was delighted with this deal—the papacy was now in the hands of a reform minded pope and both Peter Damian and the monk Hildebrand, the future Gregory VII for whom the Gregorian Reform is named, were ecstatic.  But there was a problem and the problem is that technically Gratian had bought the papacy from Benedict and thus was guilty of simony.    Many of the clergy resented—or actually actively opposed Gregory’s reform program, especially regarding celibacy and forbidding the clergy to engage in the political strife that was responsible for all the fighting over the papacy that had almost destroyed the Church over the last two centuries.  They were quick to bring charges of simony against their bishops.  Complicating this was the fact that Benedict soon came to regret having given up the papacy and tried to reassume it. Complicating it even further, there was a third claimant to the papal throne, one Sylvester, who had been the Crescentii family candidate chosen for the papacy at a time when the Roman mob had forced the young Benedict to flee Rome, and thus, according to some, forfeited the papacy.  It was a mess—three popes and two of them no good whatsoever.  The Emperor Henry III came down to Italy and convoked a synod at Sutri that recognized Gregory as the authentic pope and declared Benedict and Sylvester to have no legitimate claims to the papacy.  That same synod, though it acknowledged Gregory as legitimate pope, also told him that because he had bought the papacy he did not in fact have the moral authority to govern the Church and that he should resign.  A good man, he did.   Henry’s candidate for the job, now that it was open, was a German by the name of Suidger of Morsleben and Hornburg and he was elected Clement II.  It’s good to have an emperor for your campaign manager—it more or less guarantees success.  Especially if the Emperor has an army sitting by watching.  Clement  too was an ardent reformer and continued Gregory VI’s program of Reform with the power of  the Emperor to back him up.  Gregory went into exile in Germany where he died.  He was accompanied in exile by his chief supporter, the monk Hildebrand.  Remember him.  He is the key player in this reform. 
      What we see here is that a good pope is not necessarily a good man and a bad pope is not necessarily a bad man.  We also see that sometimes in history good popes have come to power in sinful ways—either through naiveté or an ends-justifies-the-means desire to do good for the Church.  Of course we also see that some popes have led very immoral lives and that does not mean that they are not true popes.  We see too that one of the key needs that the Church had in the central Middle Ages was to free the papacy from mob control and we see that in an effort to do this the papacy  actually became beholden to the Emperor.  In fact, the papacy ended up in the gift of the Emperors who had the  power, if not the authority, to name popes or force them to resign.  And we see that a man, even a good man, may be pope but still lacks the actual moral authority to give the Church the leadership it needs.  Popes may be, under certain restricted circumstances, infallible but they are never about the ability to make some very crucial errors in judgment, much less are they ever unable to sin.  Beneath the robes and triple crown is a very ordinary man.   Wisdom, much less sainthood, does not go automatically with the papal office. 

Gay Clergy and Married Clergy--An 11th Century Program of Reform

13th centur Bas-Relief on the facade of Lucca

Cathedral depicting the celebraiton of Mass--notice

the celebrant is facing the people over the altar, a

witness to the fact that this is not an innovation but

the restoraiton of an ancient practice.  The 11th century

bishop of Lucca, Anselm da Baggio, was a key

reformer of the Church. 

We spoke in our last post of Saint Romuald of Ravenna, a monastic reformer who founded several monastic communities, most notably the Hermits of Camaldoli, and who laid some of the spiritual groundwork for the Gregorian Reformation.  Over the years, the Camaldoli Monastery and its daughter houses—the Camaldolese Benedictines—have made a great contribution to the Church including Pope Gregory XVI, (reigned 1831-1846), one of the more conservative popes (understatement) who, in his zeal for the modern world, condemned railroads as the work of the devil (literally chemins de enfer—roads of hell—a play on the French for “railroad”: chemins de fer—roads of iron.)   I’m sure he thought it was a rather clever pun but that’s what happens to sophisticated humor when you spend too much time in a monastery.  Fortunately it was not an infallible proclamation.
     Although it was Camaldoli that made Romuald famous (well, relatively famous, like Mel Brooks’ characters Frederick and Anna Bronski in To Be or Not To Be, “world famous in Poland,” it was his foundation at Fonte Avellana that proved to be the springboard of Reformation in the eleventh century.  From that foundation came many holy monks, one of them being Saint Peter Damian who was quite literally a “holy terror.” 
     Unlike the founder, Romuald, who was a serious monk but not at all rigid, Peter Damian found no penance sufficient for his desire for austerity and self-mortification.     It was Peter Damian who introduced the practice of the disciplina, that is of self-flagellation into monastic practice.  Peter Damian was determined to root out all sexual vice from monastic life and indeed from the Church.  One could say that he went after passion with a passion.  That’s a bit lame; perhaps I am guilty of the very monastic overdose of which I accuse Gregory XVI.  
   Lame as it may be, there was reason for him to go after passion with a passion.  The secular clergy were not taking celibacy seriously.  This was a time in which the Church was drawing more seriously on canons (church laws) derived from various early regional church synods (Elvira 306, Carthage  387, Turin 401, Orange 441) that prohibited bishops, priests, deacons, and subdeacons from being married.  As we discussed in some earlier postings (July 21, 23, 24) the concern in the eleventh and subsequent centuries was primarily the protection of church property from being alienated to clergy families and many bishops turned a blind eye to the fact that most of their clergy were living in what we might call common-law marriages.  To Peter Damian, however, this was not marriage of any sort but concubinage.  The clergy wives were whores; the clergy themselves men who had given themselves over to base passions. 
     Speaking of base passions, if Peter Damian thought little of the secular clergy for their loose morals, he thought less of his fellow monks.  Monasteries, whether in fact or in Peter Damian’s perception (and probably to some extent in both) were filled with homosexuals and monks, when not busy with Divine Worship,  gave themselves over to the most gross of sexual practices.  Peter Damian wrote a book, the Liber Gomorrhianus,  (The Gomorrhean Book—named after the famous Gomorrah, twin cities with Sodom) outlining the same-sex practices of the contemporary clergy with the most explicitly vivid detail.)  By the way, he did not limit his accusations of clerical homosexuality to the monks but extended it to the papal court (the Curia) whom he thought were nothing more than a coven of mincing catamites.  (Now that is a word you don’t  hear often.)  
    Peter Damian was even more intolerant of gay clergy than married clergy. He wanted men inclined to same-sex relations barred from ordination and those who were ordained stripped of their Orders and reduced to the lay state.  When Leo IX  (pope from 1049-1054 and himself an ardent reformer of the Church) refused, Peter Damian turned his anger on the pope and wrote an angry letter accusing the pope of neglect in his duties.  
    Peter Damian was by no means a stupid man, but he was quite anti-intellectual.  Steeped in monastic tradition—and the tradition of the ancient desert monks more than the urbane Benedictinism, Damian rejected the importance of secular studies, even (and perhaps especially) Philosophy.  For him, as for Cassian and the early monks of the Egyptian and Syrian deserts, the monk was a “man of one book”—the Bible.  This no doubt contributed to his zeal (some would say fanaticism) in “purifying” the Church.  He was one who, like the Gnostics in early Christianity and the Puritans in the English Reformation could simply not bear compromise with what he believed to be the Christian ideal. 
     Surprisingly, while such a “puritan” and anxious to rid the church of what was its biggest problem, simony (the buying and selling of Church offices or positions), he was not nearly as rigid with simonical clergy as with sexually active clergy.  He wrote a second book defending not simony, but the validity of the ordination of bishops and priests who had purchased their offices.  Some in the Church were saying that simoniacs   (those clergy who had obtained their position by purchase) were not validly ordained.  (The subject of valid orders is an interesting one and one that we should take a look at sometime as it has impact on contemporary ecumenical affairs.)  
     To his credit, Peter Damian was a monk and not a man of ambition; nevertheless, he was forced by Pope Stephen IX in 1057 to accept nomination as a Cardinal.  Stephen and subsequent popes frequently used Peter Damian as a legate to conduct business in the pope’s name in various places where the Church was having difficulties.  His most important legation was to Milan in 1059, representing Pope Nicholas II to decide the dispute between the clergy of Milan—who openly violated the canons on celibacy and who, for the greater part, had obtained their various benefices through purchase.  One of the cathedral canons, Arialdo of Cucciago had allied himself with Bishop Anselm of Baggio, the Bishop of Lucca, to form the pataria, an organization that motivated the faithful to reject the ministry of married clergy.  Arialdo and Anselm mobilized the middle and working classes against the Bishop, Guido da Velate, and the nobility who supported the married (and simonical) clergy.  It was a very complex issue, as married clergy were still the norm through much of the Church and as for simony—well that too, if wrong, was a well-established practice.  Beneath the surface there were other issues.  One was the attempt of the papacy to establish control over the independent dioceses such as Milan who often were allied with the Emperor and his policies.  (We will see in a future blog that a key element of the Gregorian Reform was the struggle for power between the Emperors and the Popes.)  Another issue was the social conflict between the working classes that supported Arialdo and the propertied classes that supported the bishop.  In any event, Peter Damian effected a compromise.  The archbishop agreed that no church position would be given in return for money or gifts.  He then imposed penances on all who had purchased Church office, but agreed that they should keep their positions if they accepted the obligations of celibacy.  The rigorists were furious, because they wanted the offending clergy—both simoniacs and married clergy—permanently deprived of office, but Damian’s compromise held—temporarily.  It was to break out again under Alexander II. 
    When Nicholas II died in 1061, the Cardinals met per his instruction (Nicholas was the pope who in 1059  had designated the Cardinals to be the sole electors of the pope; see blog entry January 12, 2011) and elected the aforementioned Bishop of Lucca, Anselm da Baggio, as pope.  Anselm, as we saw, was a  proponent of reform.  Several weeks later, an anti-reform group of bishops met at the summoning of the Empress Regent, Agnes of Poitou, and elected Pietro Cadalus as Honorius II.  This created a schism in the Church as the Reform Party and Imperial Party struggled for control.  This shows what the real issue for the Gregorian Reform was to be—not Church reform per se, but imperial control of the papacy.  Was the pope to be free to exercise his authority unimpeded by the Emperor or was he to administer the Church at the Emperor’s bidding?  Peter Damian was on the side of a free papacy and did his best to resolve the schism in the Church in favor of Alexander.  He was unsuccessful in the short run, but at a synod convoked in Augsburg by the Archbishop of Cologne, Anno II, in 1062 Peter Damian made a spirited defense of Alexander and the autonomy of the papacy.  Through the influence of Peter Damian, Alexander was determined to be the authentic successor of Saint Peter. 

The Roots of the Reformation III: Long before Luther

Howden Minster, an English
pre-Reformation Chuch

John Wycliffe is another proto-Protestant—one of those religious leaders who anticipated Luther in calling for a reform of the Church and whose preaching and teaching led to the formation, not of an alternative Church or community of believers, as with Peter Waldo and his Waldensians, but of groups of followers who existed as a dissenting movement that technically remained within the Catholic Church but without subscribing to many of its doctrines. 

Wycliffe, born 1328, was a Yorkshire man from the North of England which always had a different religious tradition than London and the southern counties, a tradition that looked less to Rome for leadership and a stronger sense of both Englishness and of the distinctive “Ecclesia Anglicana” heritage.  He was a scholar at Baliol College, Oxford where he studied mathematics, natural philosophy (the physical sciences), English and Roman Law, English history, theology and Philosophy.   This was an amazing spectrum of studies and he could well be called a Renaissance man although there was as yet no Renaissance, at least in England. Philosophically, he was a disciple of Ockham and the Nominalists and as such he was what we would call today, a deconstructionist.   He rejected “realism” and thus such doctrines as “transubstantion” did not sit easy with him.  Indeed, the one source of authority he recognized was The Bible—to which he had great devotion and which he managed to have translated in its entirety to English (from the Latin Vulgate) so as to be accessible to the common people.  His study of scripture convinced him that many of the doctrines of the Church—such as papal supremacy—were unsubstantiated by Scripture or even contrary to it.  Moreover, he differed from Catholic orthodoxy on several other points.  Influenced by the ancient Donatist doctrines, for example, he believed that the efficacy of the sacraments depended on the worthiness of the minister.

Despite his lack of strict religious orthodoxy, he was recognized for his academic brilliance and Archbishop Simon Islip appointed him head of Canterbury Hall—an Oxford foundation which was meant to provide education for twelve priests or candidates for priesthood from the Archdiocese of Canterbury.  Islip’s successor, Simon Langham, replaced Wycliffe with a monk, however, and while Wycliffe appealed his case to the papal court the appeal was unsuccessful.  This may account in part for Wycliffe’s turning against both monasticism and the papacy.  

Like many of the Oxbridge dons, Wycliffe was supported by being given “a living” or “a rectory” which meant he was pastor of a parish which paid a handsome salary—handsome enough both to support him in his academic work and to pay for a “vicar” to actually live in the parish and tend to its pastoral needs.  Wycliffe held a number of rectories in his life but probably actually ministered only in the last two-- Ludgershall, Buckinghamshire and Lutterworth in Leistershire.  But from these rectories, when he was no longer teaching at Oxford, he issued a series of pamphlets and other materials that attacked corruption in the Church.  His Donatism shown through in his affirming that the “real” Church was not the represented  by the hierarchy and the visible society of baptized believers, but the association of those believers, known only to God, who were to be saved.  This naturally led him to a doctrine of predestination in which God not only knew but determined who would  be saved and who was to be lost.

Wycliffe not only undermined traditional Catholic Doctrines, but he directly assailed the papacy.  Remember that through most of this time the papacy was located at Avignon, just across the Rhone River from the realms of the King of France but very much under his influence.  The popes were mostly French at this time, as were the majority of the cardinals.  And the French were the enemies of the English.  This was not only the time of the Avignon papacy but of the Hundred Years War between France and England.  Wycliffe’s anti-papal polemics found a patriotic ear among the English. Wycliffe assailed the papacy for its wealth and claimed that various practices such as annates were simply simony.  Annates were the practice by which a man elevated to an ecclesiastical post—bishop, Archbishop, Abbot, even a canon or somewhat minor official—paid the pope the first year’s revenues of his new position.  We will hear much about them in this series.  Simony is the crime/sin of buying and selling Church office.   

As much as Wycliffe hated the papacy he hated monasticism even more.  He was a secular priest and he resented to claims to holiness that the monks made when often they were not only no better than himself and other parish priests, but when in fact they led lives far more indolent.  Initially supported by the Mendicant Orders—who themselves were often in mutual hatred with the Monastic Orders—Wycliffe soon turned on them too for their lack of holiness.  Read the medieval literature, Chaucer, Boccacio and others, and you will see that monks were seen to be lazy gluttonous characters more given to sleep and drink than to prayer, and friars (the mendicants) were womanizers and cheats.  These caricatures did not come out of thin air.  Not all monks were lazy and not all friars were lechers, but there was a need—a serious need—for reform in the clergy. 

The English Church, like the Church most place sin Europe, had great wealth in the centuries before the Reformation.  Bishops and Abbots, by virtue of their office, were great landowners and peers of the Realm.  Generations of bequests, donations, endowments, and monastic dowries—all usually made in grants of income-producing land and properties—made abbeys, cathedrals, and even parish churches very wealthy.  Great Lords and simple yeoman farmers alike were constrained in giving a tenth of the produce of their fields and orchards to the clergy in tithes.  The clergy had other customary charges that brought them revenue—the burial cloths and candles from funerals, wedding and christening fees, stipends for the blessing of fields and vineyards and orchards, and mass offerings.  While parish vicars were often underpaid, rectors of churches—often absentee—could usually count on a handsome income and as for canons, bishops, and other prelates, want was not at their doors.  Wycliffe—himself the holder of comfortable benefices—proposed the sending out of “poor priests” who would preach the gospel to the poor and evangelize the ordinary English man or woman. It would have been a brave step because the Church was losing its credibility fast among the middling sort of folk.   

Wycliffe’s rants were popular for a variety of reasons.  The popes were unpopular due to their alliances with England’s enemies; the Church did control great wealth and vast lands in a society where many were, or perceived themselves to be, on the margins of survival; the clergy needed reform; the English bible nourished people spiritually and rendered the ministrations of the clergy somewhat superficial.    Wycliffe also had a protector in the King’s uncle John of Gaunt who was extremely influential, especially during King Richard’s minority. 

Wycliffe’s ideas were condemned by a synod of English bishops in 1382 but he was not deprived of his living and no action was taken against him in his life time.  He suffered a stroke while attending mass on the Feast of the Holy Innocents in 1384 and died three days later.  But that is not the end of the story. 

We will see that many of his themes—especially the authority of scripture,  popular religion and the role of the Bible, and the wealth of the Church,  will continue to surface and threaten the hegemony of the hierarchical Church.  The failure of the Church to heed the calls to Reform will eventually lead to the struggle of the Reformation.  Hus’ doctrinal ideas on the Eucharist, on the nature of the Church as a “spiritual reality,” on the need for ministers to be men of integrity in order to minister effectively, on scripture alone, and on predestination will survive and later even return with a vengeance.  We will see what happens when the Church fails to “read the signs of the Times” as John XXIII called it to do when he called a Council in our own times.