The Reformation, the persecutions, the abuse crisis: what do Catholics and Protestants each have to answer for?
The passage it turns on
“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravening wolves. By their fruits you will know them. Do you gather grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles? Even so, every good tree produces good fruit; but the corrupt tree produces evil fruit. A good tree can’t produce evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree produce good fruit. Every tree that doesn’t grow good fruit is cut down, and thrown into the fire. Therefore by their fruits you will know them.
Matthew 7:15-20In context. The Sermon on the Mount on false prophets: you will know them by their fruits, as a tree is known by what it bears.
Catholics point to the fruit of two thousand years: the saints, the hospitals and schools, the martyrs of every century, and a Church that has outlived every empire. A tree that bears such fruit, over so long, is not a bad tree, whatever its bad branches.
Protestants point to the same test applied to a system: indulgences sold, dissenters burned, abusers moved from parish to parish. They also grant that the warning cuts both ways, and that every Protestant body has wolves of its own.
Press a reading to put the lamp behind the words that side leans on. The passage does not change.
How to read this page
Doctrine is argued from Scripture; conduct is a matter of record. This page keeps the two apart. Every number below comes from a named report, with how it was counted, because numbers on this subject are often built to flatter one side. Where a figure is contested, the range is given and who gives each end of it.
Neither side comes out clean. The Catholic Church has owned much of its record in public, most fully in 2000; Protestant bodies have owned the persecution of Anabaptists and Luther’s writings against the Jews. Both still have unfinished business.
The points people make
How the Reformation began
He who pleads his cause first seems right; until another comes and questions him.
Proverbs 18:17In context. Said of a dispute or a case at law: the first side you hear sounds right until the other side questions it.
Not a question Scripture answers. Proverbs says the first to state his case seems right until another examines him. Who answered whom fairly between 1517 and 1521 is history, not a question Scripture answers. What the gospel is, Scripture does answer, and the faith and works page sets both readings beside it.
The Catholic reading
Luther’s protest in 1517 began with a real abuse: Johann Tetzel preaching indulgences for money, with half the proceeds going to the Archbishop of Mainz. The Church answered at Trent (1545 to 1563), which banned all sale of indulgences, reformed the clergy, and defined its doctrine. Catholics say the abuse was reformed and the doctrine was not the abuse.
“They preach only human doctrines who say that as soon as the money clinks into the money chest”
Luther asked for a debate and received a demand to recant, then excommunication (1521), then the ban of the empire. Protestants hold that the Church answered a question about the gospel with power before it answered with argument, and that Trent then made the dispute permanent by anathematising justification by faith alone.
“If any one saith, that by faith alone the impious is justified; [...] let him be anathema.”
John answered, “Master, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we forbade him, because he doesn’t follow with us.” Jesus said to him, “Don’t forbid him, for he who is not against us is for us.”
Luke 9:49-50In context. John tells Jesus they stopped a man casting out demons in his name because he was not one of them; Jesus says, ‘Don’t forbid him, for he who is not against us is for us’.
One more passage: Luke 9:51-56
It came to pass, when the days were near that he should be taken up, he intently set his face to go to Jerusalem, and sent messengers before his face. They went, and entered into a village of the Samaritans, so as to prepare for him. They didn’t receive him, because he was traveling with his face set towards Jerusalem. When his disciples, James and John, saw this, they said, “Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from the sky, and destroy them, just as Elijah did?” But he turned and rebuked them, “You don’t know of what kind of spirit you are. For the Son of Man didn’t come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them.” They went to another village.
Luke 9:51-56In context. As Jesus sets out for Jerusalem a Samaritan village refuses him; James and John offer to call down fire, and he rebukes them.
Scripture states it. Jesus told John not to stop a man outside their company, and rebuked James and John when they offered to call fire down on a Samaritan village: “the Son of Man didn’t come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them.” Those who burned heretics cited the law given to Israel (Deuteronomy 13:6-10); Jesus gave his disciples no such sword. No one who burned a heretic was obeying him, and both sides have said so.
The Catholic reading
The Spanish Inquisition, over three and a half centuries, executed far fewer than legend says: the best-documented series (1540 to 1700) records 826 people executed in person; whole-period estimates run from about 3,000 (Henry Kamen) to about 12,000 (Andrea Del Col), out of roughly 125,000 trials. Mary I burned around 280 Protestants in five years; a pope sang a Te Deum after St Bartholomew’s Day (1572), when between 5,000 and 30,000 French Protestants were killed. In 2000 John Paul II asked pardon for all of it.
“for the violence some have used in the service of the truth”
Protestant states killed too. Calvin’s Geneva burned Servetus (1553); Zurich drowned Felix Manz (1527) and Protestant and Catholic rulers together executed an estimated 4,000 to 5,000 Anabaptists; Henry VIII burned 81 for heresy and Elizabeth I executed almost 200 Catholics. Luther’s late writings urged the burning of synagogues. The Lutheran World Federation asked the Mennonites’ forgiveness in 2010, and the ELCA repudiated Luther’s words against the Jews in 1994.
“we who bear his name and heritage must with pain acknowledge also Luther’s anti-Judaic diatribes”
but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble, it would be better for him that a huge millstone should be hung around his neck, and that he should be sunk in the depths of the sea. “Woe to the world because of occasions of stumbling! For it must be that the occasions come, but woe to that person through whom the occasion comes!
Matthew 18:6-7In context. Jesus, with a child beside him: whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in him to stumble, it would be better to be drowned with a millstone round his neck.
Scripture states it. Jesus says whoever causes a little one to stumble would be better drowned. No reading of any passage excuses what was done or hidden, in any church.
The Catholic reading
The Church commissioned the John Jay College study (2004): 4,392 priests, 4.0 percent of the 109,694 who served in the United States from 1950 to 2002, had allegations against them, from 10,667 people, at a cost then above 500 million dollars. The Australian Royal Commission (2017) found 7 percent of priests from 1950 to 2010 had a claim against them; the French CIASE report (2021) estimated 216,000 people, give or take 50,000, were abused as children by clergy or religious since 1950. Since 2019 every diocese must have a reporting system and bishops must report what they know.
“this evil is in no way less monstrous when it takes place within the Church.”
The numbers above are the Church’s own and the governments’ own, and the Pennsylvania grand jury (2018) found 301 priests and more than 1,000 identified victims in church records, with cover-up as the pattern. Protestants have their own crisis: the Southern Baptist Convention’s Guidepost report (2022) found leaders met survivors with resistance and stonewalling, and three insurers of Protestant churches reported in 2007 upward of 260 abuse claims a year, a figure with no clergy denominator and so not comparable to a rate.
“only to be met, time and time again, with resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility from some within the EC.”
For the time has come for judgment to begin with the household of God. If it begins first with us, what will happen to those who don’t obey the Good News of God? “If it is hard for the righteous to be saved, what will happen to the ungodly and the sinner?” Therefore let them also who suffer according to the will of God in doing good entrust their souls to him, as to a faithful Creator.
1 Peter 4:17-19In context. Peter to suffering Christians: judgment begins ‘with the household of God’, so entrust your souls to the faithful Creator while doing good.
Not a question Scripture answers. Peter says judgment begins with the household of God. How each church has owned its record is for the reader to judge, from the documents linked below.
The Catholic reading
On 12 March 2000 John Paul II led a public confession of the Church’s sins: divisions among Christians, violence in the service of truth, sins against the Jews, against women and the weak. The McCarrick report (2020) named a pope’s own misjudgment. Catholics say no other body has examined its record so openly, and that the examination continues.
“Let us ask pardon for the divisions which have occurred among Christians”
Lutherans repudiated Luther’s anti-Jewish writings (1994) and asked the Anabaptists’ forgiveness (2010). The Reformed churches have no single body to speak for them and have owned Servetus mainly in monuments and essays. Protestant critics say the Vatican still owns individual failures more readily than the structure that moved abusers, and Catholic critics say Protestant bodies have no structure to answer at all.
Who is Catholic, and who is leaving
The LORD’s word came to me, saying, “Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel. Prophesy, and tell them, even the shepherds, ‘Thus says the Lord GOD: “Woe to the shepherds of Israel who feed themselves! Shouldn’t the shepherds feed the sheep? You eat the fat. You clothe yourself with the wool. You kill the fatlings, but you don’t feed the sheep. You haven’t strengthened the diseased. You haven’t healed that which was sick. You haven’t bound up that which was broken. You haven’t brought back that which was driven away. You haven’t sought that which was lost, but you have ruled over them with force and with rigor. They were scattered, because there was no shepherd. They became food to all the animals of the field, and were scattered. My sheep wandered through all the mountains, and on every high hill. Yes, my sheep were scattered on all the surface of the earth. There was no one who searched or sought.”
Ezekiel 34:1-6In context. The LORD through Ezekiel against the shepherds of Israel who fed themselves and not the flock, so the sheep were scattered and became prey.
Not a question Scripture answers. Ezekiel lays a scattered flock at the door of shepherds who fed themselves, and Jesus says of the way to life, “Few are those who find it” (Matthew 7:13-14). A count of members does not show which church is right; why people leave is a question these passages press on every church.
The Catholic reading
The Vatican yearbook counts just over 1.42 billion baptised Catholics in 2024, about 17.8 percent of the world, and the number rose by about 16 million in a year. Growth is in Africa and Asia; priests rose slightly to 407,421. A baptism count measures baptisms, not practice.
“In 2024, the Catholic population stood at just over 1.422 billion, compared with about 1.406 billion in 2023”
In the United States, Pew’s Religious Landscape Study (2023 to 2024) finds that 43 percent of adults raised Catholic no longer call themselves Catholic, and that for every convert received about eight people have left. Pew’s own narrower count (June 2025) puts converts to Catholicism at 1.5 percent of US adults and Catholics at 20 percent. Protestant churches in the same survey are losing people too, mainly to no religion.
“Overall, 1.5% of U.S. adults are converts to Catholicism.”
One talk from each side, chosen for making its own case well. Each loads from YouTube only when you press play.
Bishop Robert Barron. 11 min. Bishop Robert Barron on how Catholics see the Reformation. Open on YouTubeRyan M Reeves. 36 min. Ryan Reeves, a church historian, on Luther’s breakthrough and the start of the Reformation. Open on YouTube
Sources on this page
Every quotation above, with the page it comes from and the day it was read. Primary documents first where a side has one.