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If memory serves me correctly, a hundred years later, in France, the Church brutally murdered Chevalier de la Barre (they pulled out his tongue for God's sake!), for either refusing to doff his hat to a procession of Capuchin monks or for uttering some blasphemy, depending on your historical source. Then came the Council of Trent, and your point becomes even stronger.

Your history is off a bit. The Council of Trent was convened in 1545 - twenty-five years of so after Luther came on the scene, not "a hundred". It ended in 1563. The 25th and last session included a decree on indulgences - although the Pope had already stemmed the tide of abuses by then. If you look at all of the decrees of Trent, you'll see it was very comprehensive, because the Reformers had questioned practically everything that the Church had believed and done for the past 1500 years...The Reformation went WAY beyond a "reform". It was a total break away from the Church - where every man was his own pope.

At that time, and as I see it, the Church considered itself the equal of Almighty God, and possibly even His superior (bound by nothing), and not merely the human institution that Christ left behind to propagate the Faith.

Those ideas I have seen from individual priests and bishops, but not the Church as a whole. If that were so, the Church wouldn't bother to look to its past, but would make up new doctrines that had no past basis or belief by the faithful.

I could spit nails when I think of how they terrorized us, and made God out to be a ruthless, unapproachable dictator who placed big, black X-marks on your soul when you committed mortal sin.

The effects of Jansenism - a heresy that was a rigorist, legalistic approach to God - still had lingering effects on some of the nuns and attitudes of the parishoners who thought of themselves as "holier-than-thou". All of this is a point well taken. I don't recall EVERYONE being like that, though! However, is your faith based on God and what HE did or on the individual man or woman of the Church? Man will ALWAYS let you down. By putting all trust in them - and watching them fall flat on their face - is a formula for falling away from the Church.

Place your faith in God, not the individuals within the Church. Know that God has given us the Church to come to Him through the sacraments and community. There will always be weeds among the fields.

Regards