But seek His kingdom, and these things will be added to you (Luke 12:31).
We all have times in our lives when we need help. Even organizations like the Church have occasionally faltered and are in need of reform. Most people think of the Great Reformation period in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as the time when the Church of Jesus Christ took a look at some of its practices and began to make much needed changes.
Actually for centuries before this God sent many men and women to call the Church to holiness. During the Middle Ages the Christians in the western part of Christendom and the Christians in the eastern part of Christendom could not agree on how the Holy Spirit fit in with the work of the Trinity. The disagreement went all the way back to the fourth century, but the two halves of the Church tried to keep unity for seven more centuries. Then in 1054 AD the tension came to a head with the Western pope and the Eastern patriarch excommunicating each other. This was really just a human power struggle and the Church has been split apart ever since. Not until the twentieth century did the Eastern patriarch and the Western pope try to speak to each other. This has been a black eye on the Church.
Another black eye for the Church came about in the fourteenth century when there were not one or two, but three popes at one time, all claiming to be the successor to Peter.
How did this happen? The crisis started in 1303 when haughty Pope Boniface VIII and the even haughtier King Philip of France clashed. Philip kidnapped Boniface, precipitating his death. His successor was poisoned after only eight months in office. The College of Cardinals took a year to try and decide between a French candidate and a Roman candidate, eventually bowing to King Philip and electing the Frenchman who was crowned Pope Clement V at Lyon. The Popes would now reside in France instead of Rome, eventually living in a magnificent palace in Avignon.
Now began the time known as the Babylonian Captivity. The Church would be rocked by unprecedented avarice, luxury, national jealousies, and the schism that resulted in three popes.
Into this unholy mess stepped Catherine of Siena in 1376. She had come to Avignon to try and talk the current pope, Gregory XI, into returning to Rome where he belonged.
The tension in the air was palpable as the twenty-nine year old mystic came to talk to Gregory. The cardinals were afraid that she might upset their comfortable lifestyle. Why should they fear this young woman? Why should she have so much influence?
By this time Catherine had the respect of the people. She had the courage to do what she believed God had called her to. She had worked tirelessly to try and get the popes to reform.
Catherine was born in 1347, the twenty-fourth child of Giacomo and Lapa Benincasa. Giacomo was a prosperous dyer and they had a very large home. At age six, Catherine had a remarkable experience. On the way home from visiting a sister she had a vision of heaven. At age seven she took a vow to devote her life to Christ. She refused all of her mother’s marriage plans for her and devoted her life to solitude and prayer. At age sixteen she joined the third order of the Dominicans. There she spent all of her time praying and speaking to no one but her confessor.
After three years she left the cloister to become active in charitable works. At this time the dreaded Black Plague had been killing thousands of people. Catherine fearlessly nursed the sickest people. While administering to the needs of her patients she also gave them spiritual advice. Her personal charm and down home wisdom won many friends for her.
Her piety convinced many that she was truly a woman of God to follow. Of course, this made enemies for her too. Some thought of her as just a fanatic. Later, when she had some influence among the church leaders she would be accused of just being a political manipulator.
But Catherine had the ability to discern the state of a soul and she witnessed to many lost people and won many to Christ. People began to flock to her for advice.
These stories eventually got back to Avignon and the cardinals invited her to come for a visit, which they later regretted. They wanted to use her influence to be an envoy of the pope to Italy to convince the people there to support him. Catherine traveled to Pisa and Lucca to convince those cities not to join in Florence’s rebellion against the pope. While there however Catherine came to the conclusion that peace could only be had if the pope were to return to Rome.
And so when Catherine went back to Avignon in 1376 she went with the intention of convincing Gregory to stop being a coward and hiding in France, and to go back to Rome. Much to the consternation of the cardinals, he listened to her. He may have been having doubts, but she told him that she happened to know that he had made a secret vow to move the papacy back to the Holy City. This shook him to the center of his being. He had in fact made such a vow but he had never told anyone! How could Catherine know about this?
In three months time he was in Rome. Only a year and a half later he died. It was said that as he was dying he expressed regrets that he had ever listened to that “meddling woman”.
The next pope, Urban VI, was wicked and cruel and extremely difficult to deal with. The College of Cardinals in France claimed that he was invalid and elected another pope who tried to lead the Church from Avignon. Now there were two popes. (Fighting would go on until in 1409 when both popes would be declared illegitimate and a third pope would be elected. All three would try and control the reins of power until finally it would end in 1417 with the election of Pope Martin V.)
Catherine remained loyal to Urban VI. She “would not defy him,” she declared, if he were “the devil incarnate.” She did try to help him reform however earning the reputation of an uncompromising reformer who perfected the art of “kissing the pope’s feet while simultaneously twisting his arm.” She wrote him many sincere letters trying to persuade him to mend his ways, which he never did.
Catherine’s mystical experiences continued and in 1377 she began writing her famous
“Dialogue” which she said were her conversations with God.
She never gave up on trying to reform the papacy and some say that she even worked herself to an early death because of it. She died at Rome on April 29, 1380, only thirty-three years old. In 1970 Pope Paul VI declared her, along with Teresa of Avila, the first two women “Doctors of the Church”.
The papal schism greatly weakened the prestige of the Western Church. Catherine’s work as an early reformer helped to pave the way for the Protestant Reformation a little over a century later.
