Note 1088 — XXV. THE REFORMATION IN GERMANY.
Reading edition
Reformat. Cleri German. (Hartzheim VI. 198).—“Hanc perditissimam hæresin ... non parvam habuisse occasionem, partim a perditis moribus et vita clericorum etc.”
There was no scruple in confessing this fact by those who spoke authoritatively for the Catholic church, and it long continued to be alleged as the cause of the stubbornness of the heretics. Thus the Bishop of Constance, in the canons of his Synod of 1567—“Estote etiam memores, damnatam et detestandam cleri vitam huic malo in quo, proh dolor! versamur, majori ex parte ansam præbuisse.... Omnes sapientes peritique viri unanimi sententia hoc asserunt, hocque efflagitant penitus, ut prius clerus ecclesiarumque ministri ac doctores a vitæ sordibus repurgentur, quam ulla cum adversariis nostris de doctrina concordia expectari queat.” And then, after describing in the strongest terms the vices of the clergy and their unwillingness to reform, he adds “Quæ sane morum turpitudo, vehementer et tantopere imperiti populi animos offendit ut subinde magis magisque a catholica nostra religione alienior efficiatur, atque sacerdotium una cum sacerdotibus doctrinam juxta atque doctores, execretur, dirisque devoveat: ita ut protinus ad quamvis sectam deficere potius paratus sit quam quod ad ecclesiam redire velit.”—Synod. Constant. ann. 1567 (Hartzheim VII. 455).
Pius V. himself did not hesitate to adopt the same view. In an epistle addressed to the abbots and priors of the diocese of Freysingen, in 1567, he says—“Cum nobiscum ipsi cogitamus quæ res materiam præbuerit tot tantisque pestiferis hæresibus ... tanti mali causam præcipue fuisse judicamus corruptos prælatorum mores, qui ... eandemque vivendi licentiam iis, quibus præerant permittentes et exemplo eos suo corrumpentes, maximum apud laicos odium contemptionem et invidiam non immerito contraxerunt.” (Hartzheim. VII. 586).
Alfonso de Castro in 1556 declares that the priesthood was one of the efficient causes of the spread of heresy. It would be difficult for orthodoxy to maintain itself without the direct interposition of God, in view of the scandalous lives, and general worthlessness of all orders of ecclesiastics, whose excessive numbers, ignorance, and turpitude exposed them to contempt.—Alph. de Castro de Just. Punit. Hæres. Lib. III. c. 5.