File 51. >> With all that you've been describing to us, it seems as if the tide had definitely turned against Catholicism, but yet I know that Catholics remain the largest denomination within Christianity. How's that possible? With all the different kinds of Protestants that spread across the western world, how is it that many parts of Europe remain Catholic? >> Well, David, if we would compare the 16th century to a football game, we could say that in the first half it was all Protestantism, but in the second half the Catholics got their act together and dominated the field of play. What I'm suggesting is that as we move through the 16th century, we get a kind of new brand of leadership within the Catholic church that understands the issue and devises a strategy to deal successfully with Protestantism, so that in many places the Catholic church was able to stem the Protestant advance, and in at least a few places through the 16th and 17th century, they were actually able to reverse things and to regain for the Catholic church some of the territories that seemed as if they were forever going to be lost to Protestantism. Now, we call this period of history, when we're looking at the Catholic church, by a couple of different terms. Some history books refer to it as the counter reformation. Others refer to it as the Catholic reformation. As you might imagine, that first term, "counter reformation," was one that Protestant historians developed in an earlier period. For historians of the Protestant perspective, the reformation was all about the Protestant voices, the Protestant theologians, Protestant leadership. People like Luther and Zwingli and Calvin. That was the real reformation. And so what the Catholics did, in reaction to Protestantism, was a counter reformation. More recently, historians have been using the term "Catholic reformation," and by that term they mean to suggest that not only did the Roman church respond to Protestantism in a variety of ways, but that there actually were authentic currents of reform within the church, currents that actually antedated Protestantism, and that might very well have led to a reformation, had there been no Martin Luther and the posting of the 95 theses. Either term is correct, but each takes a look at the Catholic church from a slightly different perspective. Now, as a matter of fact, the way we've set up this particular course, doing all of the Protestant material first, and finally coming to Catholicism, we are really more likely to be talking about counter reformation than we are Catholic reformation. But I wouldn't want the terminology to suggest sort some sort of a prejudice against what it is that the Catholic church actually accomplished in these years, because in point of fact, they did produce a new and better kind of leadership. There was renewed vitality among the religious orders. A lot of new orders came forth and they attracted some very dedicated people. And the Roman church did define its doctrine in a decisive way over against Protestant attacks upon that doctrine. So as we come to this last part of our course, we want to at least acknowledge the fact that in the second half of the 16th century, especially, the Roman church, the Catholic church, actually did devise a successful strategy for dealing with Protestantism.