[aMorePerfectUnion]

“It is this division caused by the Reformation that has lead to the loss of faith and secularism that we see today. “

For clarification... in your view:

Is the loss of faith and secularization in the Catholic Church caused by the Reformation, or just in non-roman denominations?

Please explain, if you have time.

[Petrosius]

The Reformation led to secularism in two ways. Externally there was the scandal of the divisions within Christianity which even led to war. With the various conflicting claims to the truth many just chucked the whole thing. But internally there was also a weakening of the faith. A central tenant of Protestantism is sola scripture. While seeking to place authority in God alone without the need of an intervening church it actually placed authority in one's own private opinion, i.e. sola my interpretation of scripture. This led to a cynicism that would eventually result in the questioning of the reliability of scripture itself and of the divinity of Christ. We see this in the introduction of the Historical Critical Method by Bultmann and others. This produced a division in Protestantism between faith and reason and the modern division between the more biblically inclined evangelicals/fundamentalists and the liberals. The latter, of course, leads to a complete loss of faith.

Catholicism, with its reliance on Tradition, was able to resist this subjectivism in thought but was not immune. Liberal Protestant ideas started to enter into Catholic academic thought through Modernism in the late 19th cent. But where Catholicism differs with Protestantism is the existence of an authoritative Magisterium that was able to resist this movement and Modernism was condemned by Pope Pius X. It was, however, able to make a comeback after Vatican II. It could even be said that it became dominant at the academic and popular levels. Again, however, it was never able to change the dogmatic teachings of the Magisterium. The spread of Modernism (i.e. liberal Protestant thought) was more from a neglect of discipline by the Magisterium rather than by its adoption. Today, however, even on the academic and popular levels there is a return to orthodoxy.

As a Catholic I would call this preservation of orthodox teaching at the Magisterial level a result of the protection of the Holy Spirit. A non-Catholic might take a more cynical view and note that if the Catholic Church would ever deny a dogmatic teaching that it had declared in the past that it would deny its very claim of infallibility and thus its very nature. Thus such a cynic would say that the Catholic Church cannot deny a previously defined dogmatic teaching only because of self-preservation. In either case, the Catholic Church has a bulwark against the spread of Modernism/liberalism that Protestantism does not.