Roman Catholic And Pre-Reformation Support For Protestant Beliefs

There were far more pre-Reformation individuals and groups who agreed with Protestant beliefs than critics of Protestantism typically suggest. And the beliefs people held prior to the Reformation, regardless of whether those people agreed with Protestants, were far more diverse than is often suggested. The people who agreed with Protestantism were accompanied by many others who had some degree of sympathy or tolerance for Protestant views, even though they didn't adopt those views themselves. Many people were agnostic about an issue, would hold a Roman Catholic view while attending the same church as somebody else who held a Protestant view, and so on. In 2008, I wrote a post providing some examples of the wide diversity of views people held at the time of the Reformation. A series of striking examples come from the diversity of views held by the Roman Catholic leaders who attended and voted at the Council of Trent.