“The Church never did. Some unscrupulous members of the Church violated canon law and did so.”
The Church is the people who make up the church. And certainly there are false believers within churches. But even true followers of Christ sin and make mistakes. God wants repentance and correction of these errors.
Indulgences are not merely a breaking of “canon law” but of the commandments of God revealed directly through scripture. Congregants are supposed to obey those in authority over them in the church. But this is more than that.
Any extra biblical writings are only as valuable and significant as their ability to help organize and clarify the message of scripture. They must never be treated as a higher authority than scripture or as infallible. We have clear examples and proof of this from the scriptures.
“The Church never did. The state did.”
That’s like Paul saying he never threw any stones at Stephen. He participated in Stephen’s martyrdom. Representatives of the Catholic Church instigated these murders.
It is similar today to how certain Muslims commit murder as suicide bombers. Society reasonably expects for all Muslims to denounce such actions, or we consider them complicit.
The doctrinal errors in the church led to horrific crimes. And the Reformation was not a human effort, but a cleansing that God did of His Church over a period of time. And He is still doing so today.
Those who deny rather than confess the sins that were committed are not even taking the first required step of repentance.
Of course, this is not to say that you or others in the Catholic Church are complicit today. But those who did these things in those days will answer to God for them.
God commands individuals and Churches to repent. We see this in Revelation 2-3. The majority of churches in Asia, even those who had a lot of good things to be commended for, also needed repentance.
God calls the lost to repentance unto faith for salvation. And he calls Christians to repent when we sin. And he calls churches to repent when churches commit sins as well.
Christendom, within all denominations, is full of hypocrisy, false doctrines, willful disobedience, and moral failures by well-intentioned people. God wants to correct these things. When people harden their hearts in stubborn unrepentance, the sins remain.
The Spirit of God testified and warned the churches in Revelation of the consequences of not repenting. One church was warned of being spit out of His mouth.
You can not repent of someone else’s sins. But you can acknowledge the sins of those who are or were part of your church. Daniel confessed his sins and acknowledged the sins of his people.
Do you know how the Church ultimately got involved? Do you know how the Inquisition came about?
Ok, so I am a local lord, and I don't like you. Maybe I want your land. I control the government and the courts. So I accuse you of being a heretic, try you, condemn you, and take your land. It was very easy, because if you get someone talking about theology it's very easy to trip them up I don't care how smart they are. And I'm a layman--so where do I get off accusing another layman of heresy?
So the Church said; "Aw no. WE and we alone have the power to determine what is heresy and what isn't. So we will take over the part of the trial dealing with heresy, and then we will make our recommendation to the court about what should be done."
That was the Inquisition.
It wasn't perfect, because as we can see with St. Joan of Arc, the process could still be corrupted, but it was an improvement. And remember...the death penalty for heresy was handed out very infrequently. I think in the single digits, percentage wise.
I wouldn't be so quick to condemn those who advocated for the death penalty for heresy in previous ages. They had a certain logic to their position: heresy is worse than murder, for it is infinitely worse to kill a man's soul than to kill his body. In any case, the Reformation didn't do much to change that attitude, they just flipped it around. Catholics were killed in England, Calvin sentenced Servetus to the stake, etc.
Excellent as usual.