In this chapter I hope to accomplish for Catholicism something similar to my description of the Lutheran structure of thought given in chapter 1 but I shall go about it rather differently. I shall concentrate on the Council of Trent and in particular its decree on ‘Justification’. What I believe it is important to show is that Catholicism did not so much react to the Reformation through taking on board the new learning and adapting it to its own structure, but rather that it closed down possibilities which were present within Catholicism itself in the early sixteenth century. Catholicism was narrower as a result of the sixteenth-century developments. Certain options were ruled out as no longer Catholic. Part of the ground had been lost to Protestantism. Those who advocated acceptance of the new insights of biblical scholarship had been silenced. The decree on justification in effect took Catholicism as far as possible from a Lutheran position, while at the same time retaining certain Augustinian insights. The understanding of the human person in relationship to God was in many respects diametrically opposed to that present within Lutheranism. In the course of this chapter it will therefore be important to consider what was ruled out as well as what won the day. Towards the end of the chapter we shall enter into a more general discussion of the Catholic context.

Catholicism was ill-prepared to meet the onslaught of the Reformation.