Corruptions in the Church

The papacy refers to the office and authority of the Pope, who serves as the head of the Roman Catholic Church. Its place and prominence evolved over centuries, with the Bishop of Rome gradually asserting primacy over other church leaders. The papacy's history includes periods of significant power and influence. Its self-asserted power, centralized in Rome, had estranged many of the local churches throughout Europe.

The papacy was secularized, and changed into a selfish tyranny whose yoke became more and more unbearable. The scandal of the papal schism had indeed been removed, but papal morals, after a temporary improvement, became worse than ever during the years 1492 to 1521.¹

The papacy, consumed by political machinations, was often seen as a secular power rather than a spiritual one. It was entangled in dynastic feuds and preoccupied in the governance of Papal States. Several popes, particularly those of the Renaissance era, were notorious for their lavish lifestyles and political ambitions, most egregiously exemplified by figures such as Pope Alexander VI whose papacy was marked by corruption, nepotism, and scandal.

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Simony was one of the most fundamental corruptions prevalent in the medieval church. Simony refers to the buying or selling of ecclesiastical privileges, powers, functions, rites, or church offices. The term derives from the name Simon Magus, who sought to purchase apostolic powers from the apostle Peter (Acts 8:18-24). Peter’s rebuke is sufficient to denounce this concept from its inception, “May your silver perish with you, because you thought you could obtain the gift of God with money!” (Acts 8:20).

Simony was a crime under canon law. Yet, Church leaders circumvented this by requiring a fee for assuming office once selected. This fee could be set to exclude poorer candidates or auctioned to the highest bidder. Frequently positions of authority and influence were obtained through bribes rather than through spiritual qualification or contribution. Many bishops were merely political appointees from influential families.

The holy offices of the Church were bought and sold like merchandise. Simony polluted the leadership of the Church at all levels. Priests, bishops, and even the highest seats of authority were often given not to those who were qualified spiritually, but to the highest bidder. Greed and avarice multiplied in the highest ranks of the Church with clerics growing richer in material wealth and poorer in spirit. The leaders of the Church were more concerned with the treasures of the world than the treasures of heaven.

Dishonesty, neglect of pastoral care, hunger for power, and all sorts of worldly ambition permeated the ranks of leadership as a result of simony.

Related to simony was the practice of holding multiple offices at the same time, such as several bishoprics. This was illegal but could be permitted through special dispensations for those with enough financial or political influence.

This was a common corruption in the 15th century church. Many bishops and cardinals held multiple dioceses, neglecting the duties that were attached to each. A single bishop might oversee several dioceses, though he would seldom set foot in any of them. But it was a lucrative arrangement. Each diocese came with income.

Bishops and cardinals sought the financial gain of overseeing many local churches yet gave no care to the souls within them. They did not even live in the districts they supposedly served. Living outside their dioceses they happily collected their compounded income. They pursued honor but neglected those committed to their charge, living in ease and idleness while the people spiritually perished for lack of true shepherds.

This corruption was a gross demonstration of self-interest, practical and spiritual neglect, wicked stewardship, and even social irresponsibility toward their churches.

The corruption of nepotism in the church refers to the practice of leaders favoring relatives or friends, particularly by giving them positions of authority, power, and influence.

Nepotism reigned supreme in the 15th century church, with papal appointments favoring family ties over spiritual qualification and devotion. As a result, the Church, which ought to have been governed by those most fit in godliness and wisdom, was instead ruled by kinship and blood. Sons, brothers, nephews, and cousins of popes and cardinals were placed in high offices, regardless of their character, qualification, and suitability for office.

The sacred trust of the Church became dynastic. The term derives from the Italian word “nepotismo,” which is rooted in “nipote” meaning nephew. It was initially associated with popes granting exorbitant favors and positions to family members, often referred to as “nephews” but sometimes actually their illegitimate sons.

Nepotism in the Church began prominently with Pope Nicholas III in the late 13th century and reached its peak under Pope Sixtus IV in the 15th century, causing significant scandal. Efforts to curb this practice within the Church intensified in the 16th and 17th centuries, culminating in Pope Innocent XII's 1692 bull requiring cardinals to swear an oath against nepotism.²

The popes of the 15th century were more concerned with temporal power and the building of empires than the care of souls. They engaged in wars, made alliances with princes, and sought the enlargement of the Papal States, forgetting that Christ's kingdom is not of this world. Their hearts were set on pomp and grandeur, even as the Church languished in spiritual decay.

The clergy indulged in lavish lifestyles, with opulent buildings, fine clothes, and sumptuous feasts. They forgot their sacred vows of poverty and simplicity, and became indistinguishable from the princes of the world. Those at the helm of the Church had lost their direction, and with it the Church’s mission.

These corruptions, coupled with the growing intellectual and spiritual ferment of the Renaissance, made the Church ripe for reform.

Many priests lacked even the most basic knowledge of Scripture and theology. Priests were typically ordained without ever reading the Bible. Some were even illiterate. They often lacked education in general, struggling even to comprehend the Latin Mass they recited daily. There were early attempts to alleviate the problem of illiteracy and ignorance in church leadership, however the problem persisted.

Leadership was perfunctory, devoid of the mind and soul. The sacred office designated for spiritual oversight, leading in the likeness of Christ’s heart and mind (1 Corinthians 11:1; Hebrews 13:7; 1 Peter 5:2-3), was tragically reduced to an office of ritual operators.

This corruption grew in part because the Roman Catholic Church holds that sacraments operate ex opere operato. This means that the services of a priest are valid solely through the work of Christ and are not contingent on the worthiness or knowledge of the priest himself. Consequently, the Church did not concern itself much with the education of the clergy.

This tended to mysticism. Most parishioners did not understand Latin and perceived the priest's actions in somewhat mystical terms. The sacred Scriptures were supplanted by mystical rituals. The way of true spiritual devotion in the disciplines of grace was forgotten, for the lamp and light of Scripture had been darkened. Instead, superstition and experientialism were confusedly counted as spirituality.

In England, as late as the 16th century, there were reports of clergy unable to recite basic religious tenets. Some folktales criticize clergy for their lack of knowledge about religious rituals and holy days. It was clearly this corruption that colored the background of William Tyndale’s famous retort, when threatened by a pair of visiting clerics, “If God spare my life, ere many years I will cause a boy that driveth the plough to know more of the Scripture, than does the Pope.”³

These issues of clerical ignorance and illiteracy were detrimental to the Church's ability to effectively feed, lead, and serve her members. Such facilitated the blind following the blind, and the growth of abuses and corruptions within the Church. This corruption also paved the way for gross and defiling immoralities.

Absence of grace will be seen in absence of godliness. No true gospel, no true godliness. Ignorance of Scripture meant ignorance of the gospel, which in turn will always accommodate immorality.

One of the most plain and obvious corruptions of the medieval Church was the varied and pervasive immorality of her leaders. Priests, bishops, cardinals, and even popes lived lives of open immorality and debauchery. They readily brought shame and scandal on the Church. Drunk with self-interest and self-indulgence, many carelessly drove the faithful away from the truth by their gross hypocrisy.

The sanctity of marriage was defiled as clerics, bound by sacred vows, flouted their chastity shamelessly. One example is seen in concubinage, which was prevalent. Roman Catholic canon law mandated celibacy for priests, yet many openly lived scandalously with women in unofficial common-law relationships. They kept mistresses and fathered children, all while preaching holiness to their flocks. This practice was not only tolerated but sometimes encouraged by bishops, for the sake of sordid gain. Some bishops even incentivized priests to take concubines, allowing them to impose an annual fee for this arrangement, thereby strengthening their income. Often, parishioners also expressed their support of priests having concubines. They thought that such arrangements kept the priests from pursuing their own wives and daughters. So widespread was this corruption in medieval times that jokes circulated widely about immoral monks.

Not only this, but according to Italian Renaissance writer Giovanni Boccaccio, there were convents in Rome rumored to double as brothels. Martin Luther went further, alleging that certain cardinals in the church were revered as saints merely because they confined their sexual activities to adult women. Luther, speaking of the leadership of the Roman Catholic Church in his day, comments in a letter, “look at those whom He allows to give free rein to their lusts smugly, with impunity, and without any trial. They slip from one crime into another, into lusts, murders, adulteries, hatreds, and horribly monstrous misdeeds, as is evident today in the Roman Curia. What else are the colleges of the canons and the cardinals than brothels and houses of ill repute? And Rome is a cesspool of unspeakable crimes and exceedingly wicked men.”⁴

Such immoralities, glaringly at odds with Scripture and the Church’s teachings, eroded public confidence in the leadership of the Church.

Another major corruption of the medieval Church is seen in her suppression of the truth and its rebuke. When brave souls did arise to call for reform and renewal, they faced persecution, imprisonment, and even death at the hands of the corrupt Church hierarchy. The Church suppressed and stifled the Spirit of God, and resisted the necessary corrections that would have restored her purity and power.

The corruption of indulgences presented the spark that officially ignited the controversy of the Reformation. It was in direct response to the corruption of indulgences and related abuses of the clerics that Martin Luther drafted and posted his Ninety-Five Theses.

Indulgences are a Roman Catholic Church doctrine that derives from the Sacrament of Penance. This was a very important sacrament in the medieval Church, forming the plank by which baptism was restored. Indulgences could be obtained for oneself or for deceased persons, but not for other living individuals.

The Church claimed that when a baptized parishioner in good standing obtained an indulgence, they were granted remission of temporal punishment for sins already forgiven. Obtaining an indulgence exempted a man from paying the satisfaction element of penance. Originally, indulgences could be obtained by pilgrimages, devotional practices, and charitable acts. But to add insult to injury, wealth had become the favored means of obtaining an indulgence by the 16th century. The Church effectively commercialized its spirituality.

This corruption was wrongly based on the previous corruption of the papacy. The Church claimed the authority to grant indulgences based on the power of the keys to the kingdom given by Jesus to Peter.

Indulgences were sold like trinkets in a marketplace, promising salvation for coin. Forgiveness was peddled, selling remission of sins to the highest bidder. This created a mockery of Christ’s atonement and reduced the Church to a mere marketplace of salvation.

The poor were deceived, believing that their souls could be redeemed with coin, while the rich bought their way into false assurance. Popes and clergy alike sanctioned the widespread sale of indulgences. This mercenary distortion of salvation was met with increasing distaste, particularly as the funds were often used to finance lavish building projects in Rome, most notably the reconstruction of St. Peter’s Basilica.

Martin Luther wrote forcefully against indulgences in his “Ninety-Five Theses Or: Disputation on the Power And Efficacy of Indulgences.” For example:

32. Those who believe that they can be certain of their salvation because they have indulgence letters will be eternally damned, together with their teachers.

34. For the graces of indulgences are concerned only with the penalties of sacramental satisfaction established by man.

36. Any truly repentant Christian has a right to full remission of penalty and guilt, even without indulgence letters.

37. Any true Christian, whether living or dead, participates in all the blessings of Christ and the church; and this is granted him by God, even without indulgence letters.

39. It is very difficult, even for the most learned theologians, at one and the same time to commend to the people the bounty of indulgences and the need of true contrition.

43. Christians are to be taught that he who gives to the poor or lends to the needy does a better deed than he who buys indulgences.

50. Christians are to be taught that if the pope knew the exactions of the indulgence preachers, he would rather that the basilica of St. Peter were burned to ashes than built up with the skin, flesh, and bones of his sheep.

51. Christians are to be taught that the pope would and should wish to give of his own money, even though he had to sell the basilica of St. Peter, to many of those from whom certain hawkers of indulgences cajole money.

52. It is vain to trust in salvation by indulgence letters, even though the indulgence commissary, or even the pope, were to offer his soul as security.

53. They are enemies of Christ and the pope who forbid altogether the preaching of the Word of God in some churches in order that indulgences may be preached in others.

54. Injury is done the Word of God when, in the same sermon, an equal or larger amount of time is devoted to indulgences than to the Word.⁵

The Roman Catholic Church claims that the bread and wine in the Lord's Supper become the actual body and blood of Christ upon the invocation of a priest in the mass. This doctrine, known as Transubstantiation, was not officially recorded into canon law until the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215. It is a corruption of the plain meaning of Scripture. John Wycliffe strongly rejected it, asserting that the elements remain bread and wine and are meant for remembrance, not literal transformation. Jan Hus, influenced by Wycliffe, likewise condemned it as a deceptive practice that obscured true faith. Martin Luther, though he held to Christ's real presence in the Eucharist, refused the idea of a physical change. Ulrich Zwingli went further, emphasizing that the Lord’s Supper is symbolic, not an act of corporeal consumption. John Calvin, building on these critiques, taught that Christ is present in the sacrament spiritually, received through faith rather than through the mouth.