Acts 5...what Gamaliel said to the Jews regarding Christianity I think applies to this stand off between Protestants and Catholics. In 500 years the Protestants haven’t gone away and we’ve produced our own notable scholars, scientists, teachers, musicians...ect, ect. Protestants have evangelized the world for Christ in ways and with a speed that Catholics over 1500 years could only have dreamed of. Perhaps Catholics need to stop fighting a genuine move of God.
I recognize that for 1500 years...if one wanted to find out about Christ...you went to the Orthodox churches in the east or you went to the Catholics in the west. The churches preserved knowledge during the dark ages. Yet by the 1500’s, they had lost their spiritual vision and were so caught up in temporal intrigues, monarchical empire building, and materialistic corruption (that you sometimes couldn’t tell a cardinal from a common fornicator save by the robes they wore...)that the gospel of Christ was in danger of being snuffed out! The Reformation was a necessary step to begin to disentangle those things that belonged to God vs. those things that belonged to Earthly rulers!(in my opinion..such as it is). The invention of the printing press would help ensure the spreading of the word of God! Christianity had become an instrument of oppression and I believe God wanted to change that....hence the Reformation! Christ wants men to wear his yoke which is easy and to bear his burden which is lite...he doesn’t want men burdened with the additions of rituals or superstitious genuflections to statues; or to have a fear that God will not hear their voice without first approaching the “great bureaucracy” of the heavenly host and being told to “take a number”!
If you read Revelations chapter 2 and 3, the churches were off target and needing correction from the start...................
What of the 35,000 sects of Protestantism are you referring to? Many have withered and died as did their followers in Jim Jones and David Koresh.