Why was the Catholic Church so weak by 1780?

Controversy between the Jesuits and their opponents soon escalated to a level that led to the questioning of the papacy’s infallibility. A book written by Quesnel which among other things proclaimed that priesthood had greater significance than rank caused great controversy. The divide between the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, mostly from noble backgrounds and the parish priests from the peasantry was inflamed by the subsequent Jansenist debate and exacerbated internal conflict within the Catholic Church. Opponents of the Jansenists accused them of questioning the Pope’s infallibility in their writings and 5 points in their Quesnel book were deemed heretic.  Despite Noailles, archbishop of Paris, previously recommending the moral reflections on the New Testament by Quesnel, the pope, under the influence of the Jesuits still condemned the book issuing the bull of Unigentus in 1713.

The renewed persecution of the Janesists brought a lot more attention to them and consequently their anti-Jesuit views. Many Catholics thought the bull was one sided and could not relate to it. Also the fragmentation of the relationship between the church and state was accelerated by the bull Unigentius which highlighted the papacy’s fallibility which was thought to transcend moral as well as religious matters of dogma. The persecution at the hands of the papacy and the Jesuits fuelled the Jansenists desire to reduce papal ‘power and pretensions and the regimes which upheld it’ again contributing to the weakening of the Catholic Church.

The fall of the Jesuits proved to be fatal to the strength of Catholicism. The Jesuits had great wealth and influence with the Papacy. Their prominent position caused animosity between them and the people and rulers throughout Catholic Europe. The Jesuits had had great success in extending Catholicism across the continent to remote areas because of their willingness to adapt the tenets of Catholicism, to the local traditions and rituals of their targets. The Jesuits attempted to spread Jesuitism to Paraguay South America. Claims surfaced that the Jesuits were simply exploiting their converts to increase their own wealth and attempting to incite the natives to revolution. The Portuguese absolutist Marquis Pombal perceived this as a threat to his authority. Many European leaders were becoming increasingly annoyed at the wealth and authority that the Jesuits had autonomous of the state and were looking for a way to restrict them. Pombal used the opportunity to defame the Jesuits, implicating them in an assassination attempt on the King in1759 and in 1759 they were forced into exile from Portugal and all it’s surrounding territories and their property was seized. A series of countries followed: first France in 1765 due to ‘commercial malpractice’ and then Spain whose King Charles III exiled the Jesuits for much the same reasons as Pombal. The expulsion of the Jesuits from these countries finally culminated in their eventual ban by the Pope Clement XIV in 1773.

This had the immediate effect of suppressing a huge part of the Catholic church the Jansenists the other main group had already been denounced and now the Jesuits the main advocators of baroque Catholicism found themselves in retreat. As did hundreds of Catholic groups that were affiliated with the Jesuits

The disintegrating relationship between the Catholic Church and state rulers can be traced back to long term disputes between the church and state mostly over issues such as jurisdictional questions. The Papacy’s apprehension at being sidelined by the state and monarchy manifested itself into fervour among some popes to assert their authority and this in turn fuelled anti- Papal activity. The Papacy by the end of the 18th century was significantly weakened lacking political clout; having no “real army, ruling one of the most backward and impoverished states in Europe” it had ceased to be a driving force in Europe. Ruler’s desires for absolutism were impeded by the church’s traditional strong hold over the nation. Rulers such as Joseph I and Louis XV’S governments sought to undermine the churches’ authoritative position in order to bolster theirs. When Louis XV’s government found itself lacking funds following the expense of the war of Austrian Succession the church was a primary target and Louis began to challenge the Church’s tax privileges although he did not follow through with them.

Maria Theresa an Austrian monarch did, and imposed restrictions and controls on the Catholic Church. Reducing the wealth of the Catholic Church and its extensive lands meant that the money could be redirected towards the state and used for state purposes such as the reform of education. This impetus continued and accelerated by her son Joseph I who continued stripping the Catholic church of its privileges.         

From the mid 18th century the papacy and established religious orders were gradually being ignored by rulers and the state this Disengagement between the church and the state has been used as evidence for a decline in the importance of the Catholic Church. The two institutions were at this time competing agents each struggling to assert and further their autonomous position. The Catholic Church was thus no longer propped up by the state. Previously the state upheld the church to promote social order it Christianised civil ceremonies such as marriage and burials. However the state in establishing its own position did not prop up the church it could provide its own source of unity and national identity which was through patriotism.                                                    

Growing illegitimacy rates in both the Austrian Netherlands and France and a rise in the use of birth control indicates that Catholic values were losing their grip on the nation perhaps in favour of new forms of social identity that were  emerging i.e. nationalism. The Catholic Church therefore had to contend with new ideals that threatened its dominance over the people. Nationalism and patriotism became agents of social control; generating norms and values and restricting and determining behaviour thus nationalism replaced religion as the primary source of moral values. It became increasingly clear to many that the Church as the dominant institution was in need of reform.

External forces also helped to weaken the Catholic Church in this period such as the Enlightenment a hugely popular secular movement emerging in the 18th century and growing in influence by the end of the 18th century. The Enlightenment wanted to liberate issues such as education and politics from the grasp of the Church. Writers such as Voltaire engaged the public in disputes with the church over their monopoly on knowledge. The enlightenment undermined religion bringing into question its validity and use in an age where the rationality of man could explain and aid human development. What was just as effective was the writings of new rationalists and intelligentsia whose scientific endeavour challenged literal readings to the bibles version of creation for example, ‘the discovery of overseas animals made it difficult to envisage all animals issuing form the ark’ The ‘Age of Reason’ discarded anything that could not be logically and empirically explained like Catholicism and its blind faith in an illogical God. The influence of enlightenment and rationalist writers was also helped by the increase in literacy rates in this period.

The churches monopoly over social life and culture was declining, demonstrated by the declining proportion of new publications that were religious works as the 1750’s progressed. This coincided with the publishing of influential secular texts that had a mass audience due to being printed in French they would be read across Europe by ‘cosmopolitan’ elites.

Catholic rulers were often wrong in their attempts to arrest the decline. Catholic rulers wanted to reduce idleness, eliminating disorderly behaviour by promoting devoutness. They sought to achieve this by reducing the frequency and amount of feast days pilgrimages and the like. However these events appealed to the masses giving the working classes especially, leisure and entertainment they were therefore displeased with such measures and they had the opposite effects resulting in popular dissatisfaction with the Catholic Church.

Economic factors also contributed to its downfall. The Catholic Church due to its privileged position had enjoyed great wealth for many centuries in catholic Europe. However rulers began to see the effects of these differences between Protestant and Catholic Europe and how this could be used to their advantage. Britain’s victory over Prince Kanitz’s Austrian in the Seven Years War led him to be increasingly concerned with the need to increase the revenues and stripping the Catholic Church of its wealth and ostentation based on the protestant model seemed to be a great method.  Muratio Lodovico was prominent advocator of reform of the established clergy at the time due to what he saw as their greed and excessive wealth his views were popular with the masses in areas like Austria and Southern Germany were the Jesuits were especially avaricious.

Declining participation in religious practice can be interpreted as a weakening of the Catholic Church.

From around 1770 in the Austrian Netherlands one can discern a weakening of the Catholic Church in terms of a fall in the number of priestly vocations as in France. Less of the educated wished to become monks or priests perhaps due to the influence of ideas such as the enlightenment. This weakened the Catholic Church since many religious houses had to close due to the lack of new novices.

Although the Catholic Church’s dominance had undoubtedly been reduced in this period there is evidence to suggest that the Catholic Church was not completely weakened by 1780. Perhaps Catholicism was changing rather than declining. Disengagement between the church and the state has been used as evidence of secularisation however it could be argued that it denotes the movement to a purer form of Catholicism not tainted by involvement in secular issues .The enlightenment literature revolution was largely confined to urban areas and thus affected the intellectual elites far more than the rural populations, thus the historian Wolich’s comments, “…it seems the more urbanised and market orientated the location the greater the ‘de-Christianisation’”. Scholars such as Volvelle have produced figures supporting such claims e.g. “the number of people requesting masses to be said for them after death declined to below 50% from at least 80%” It is again necessary here to assert that rather than this representing a weak church by 1780 it can perhaps be said that  the supposed processes of de-Christianisation was simply the a privatisation and personalisation of Catholicism in the late 18th century as opposed to the superficial practises of the Jesuits.

The historian Doyle also points to the buoyancy of religion in rural France and also some Catholic states of Germany in the late 18th century. Religious practice in France therefore provides us with evidence of a decline alongside evidence of strong religious sentiment limiting the validity of any conclusions of this question.

The Catholic Church was certainly weakened in its dominance and influence over Europe by 1780. The internal dispute which it suffered was perhaps the largest single factor in its decline however the combination of the other factors also helped to undermine its hegemonic position and compounded its relative weakness by 1780.