The end of Christian unity in the West is usually take as the time in which Martin Luther broke with the church of Rome. later, there came the Church of England, then tons of new sects. The Reformation resulted in hundreds of new variants of protestants, and many of the new sects promptly fractured into subsects (like the baptists).
Now, if one was completely opposed to the Church of Rome, I suppose that any breakaway would be good. But what was served by setting up hundreds of variants? In some sense then, was the whole thing worth it, or not?
The Church would have only increased in corruption, unopposed, and the disgusting and vile claims to papal supremacy ---- which had already broken the Empire — would have increased to total dominance over secular rulers.
Most of the protestant sects and claims were equally jealous and outrageous, but you take what you can get when opposing totality.
The hundreds of variants sprung up because there were hundreds of ways to interpret and practice Christianity. Why would it be better for all the members of those sects to follow a church that didn’t serve their needs?
One could argue that the cost of the wars that followed the Reformation were too high a price to pay, but breaking up a powerful monopoly will always entail a great struggle and likely bloodshed; it was bound to happen in some form, sooner or later.
I was under the impression Christian unity was on wobbly footing before the nails went in.
From a Christian perspective, it was a tragedy that the church, the body of Christ, could not remain unified. It was one of Jesus’ final prayers before his crucifixion that his followers would remain united. I’ve heard the splintering of the church described as Christianity’s greatest shame and it’s most visible display of ongoing hypocrisy. How can we expect to be reconciled with God if we cannot even reconcile with each other? (In fairness, God is a lot more forgiving).
But people are what they are, and are just too different (and too addicted to forming exclusive social groups) for any one church to remain undivided. The only reason the church in the west (conveniently forgetting the Great Schism with the East) remained monolithic until the Reformation is that it had previously managed to crush all other challengers to orthodoxy.
In the early 1300s the English parliament tried to persuade Henry IV to take direct control of all church property because of how corrupt the Catholic Church had become. Robert Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury was seeking absolute power. Heresy, previously a minor crime, had become a capital offence punishable by being burnt at the stake. The Catholic Church
subjected Europe to 200 years of tyranny. Half the population of Northern Europe died in the 30
Years War. Unfortunately many of the Protestant sexts also took to murdering the populace to maintain their power … and it all happened “in the name of Jesus”
Multiple corrupt churches are preferable to one; they are individually weaker and check each others’ power.
I deny that three times.
You are never going to get the “right” church until you break a few congregations. I am brought to mind of a little church that used to be north of Burlington, WA. The sign outside said something like “6th Church of Christ, Reformed.” The only thing I could think was that the congregation consisted of one grumpy old man who didn’t get along with anybody.
Yes, it was worth it, though for no reasons Martin Luther intended nor could have imagined: No Protestant Reformation, no Scientific Revolution.
You can’t make a homily without breaking ecclesiae.
Speaking as a Catholic, yes, it was worth it. Luther was right: The Church of his time was hopelessly corrupt, and the Reformation was the wake-up call it took to get it cleaned up. I do wish that more Protestants would realize that the counter-reformation happened, though: Most of what Luther said needed fixing, did indeed get fixed, and in fact there are very few real barriers any more to re-unification.
The corruption of the Catholic Church has been greatly exaggerated, generally by authors of polemics needing to create a major enemy. As with any institution, corruption and power, (often closely associated), waxed and waned in different times and in different places for the first fifteen centuries, and within all the Christian denominations that continued after the sixteenth century.
That said, I would say that the Reformation was a generally good thing, bringing about the diminishing of ecclesiastical power among civil governments and leading to the rise of secularism.
Papal supremacy was pretty moribund by the time that Luther came around. The Church was still recovering from the Avignon Papacy, where the popes were, in effect, controlled by the French Kings, and the schism between multiple popes both claiming to be legitimate, and while popes like Alexander VI and Julius II was certainly effective as temporal rulers over the Papal States, that very success and the things they needed to do to achieve it weakened the moral authority of the papacy. More and more, the Pope was being seen as just another secular ruler with secular interests rather than as the leader of Christianity.
It was this very weakness that led to the success of the Reformation. Secular rulers supported the Protestants or not on grounds of realpolitik. So, for instance, one of the motivations of the Schmalkaldic League was to try to check the power of Charles V. An Charles V both persecuted the Protestants to try to strengthen Imperial authority in Germany while, at the same time, fighting wars against the Papacy as a way to gain influence and weaken French influence in Italy.
“In a free government the security for civil rights must be the same as that for religious rights. It consists in the one case in the multiplicity of interests, and in the other in the multiplicity of sects.” The Federalist Papers: No. 51
The multiplicity of sects created (however inadvertently) by the Reformation is therefore certainly better for us non-Christians.
Except for that whole “papal authority,” “works vs grace,” “divorce vs none,” “holy orders,” “presbyterian vs hierarchal” stuff you mean? 
However, like bolshevik communism — which not only has much in common as a religion with catholicism as far as it’s claims to universalism and imperium are concerned [ to say nothing of other similarities in ethics and motivations ], but was directly inspired by christianity and ex-christianity vide Rothbard and Marx’s rejection of his lutheran heritage. it remained a danger until crushed.
By 1970 the USSR had come to an accommodation with the other powers and only paid lip-service to world revolution, although still devout, let alone permanent revolution, yet there was still a danger of a counter-reformation and new rulers emerging, still more charismatic, say, than Pope Leonid and Cardinal Suslov of the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office, who could renew the Faith.
My favourite — Hohenzollerns forever ! — was Albrecht who nobly started the first protestant state by secularizing the Teutonic Order of St Maria, of which he was Grand Master, into Prussia, and graciously becoming Prussia’s first ruler.
The Power of Christ compelled him.
I think you’re overestimating the unity in the church. It was certainly dis-united in the period during which the New Testament was written. I suppose you could say that it re-united somewhere in the 300s… but by the time of Reformation, it was already dis-united again.
In fact, I particularly like this Wikipedia quote from the Eastern Orthodox page:
Anyway, some others have complained that the Reformation cost the church political power, and I say that’s a good thing. The idea that a religion must also be a government is Old Testament thinking and you won’t find a lot of support for it in the New Testament.
A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.
I don’t really know that that’s a good comparison.