Inquisition Vs Reformation

If you look back on the History of the Catholic Church, two major events that happened at around the same time, will pop out at you. These are the Reformation and the Inquisition.The reformation was a movement to break off from the Church. Lead by the hot-headed Luther, the Reformation is seen to many as a break away from the old, outdated, and corrupt Catholic Church. If you look closer, you can see it was a rejecting of the Church, with flawed Philosophy and distorted logic that was filled with much bloodshed. On the other hand, the Inquisition is usually portrayed as an evil and secretive organization that tortured to get people to get confessions out of them, then burned them at the stake, but if you look closer at this as well, you can …show more content…
During the reformation, many Protestants were being killed by the thousands, because of how hated they were. There were also many Protestants posing as Catholics, such as Cranmer, to lead people astray. Some Jews also posed as Catholics in order to get government posts. The mass murders and impostors would stop on their own, so the government had to implement a solution that could deal with these problems in a legal manner, and that solution was the inquisition. The Spanish Inquisition was hardly the first inquisition. Both Moses and Pope Gregory had started inquisitions to stop heretics, so it was not immoral in and of itself. The Inquisition’s main goal was to find those who were fake Catholics, and to investigate those who claimed to have visions. If they did not do this, those who were true mystics would have their voices drowned out, and people would learn and accept doctrines that were not true, without knowing it. They also would allow people to have a legal outlet to report those who they thought were traitors to the faith, instead of resorting to violence. The Inquisition was designed to save lives, and prevent the thoughts of the innocent being …show more content…
In the end, the Reformation created a divided Europe, left in chaos, but it was not all bad. It produced many martyrs, role models, and saints. It also did in the end help the Church to refine itself, and do away with many corrupt practices like the indulgences. The inquisition helped keep Spain from losing too many of its people, or its Catholic identity, but it wasn’t all good. The torture they used was not moral, and many innocent people were subject to interrogation. In the end, I think that the Inquisition was somewhat more justified versus the reformation, since it actually saved some lives. The wars caused by the reformation could have been prevented, if those who had supported them, supported helping the Church remove corruption through good arguments, rather than through