Question

How did the Roman Catholic Church respond to the spread of Protestantism?

Answer 1

Hint: Protestantism, the Christian religious movement that originated in the early 16th century in northern Europe in response to mediaeval Roman Catholic doctrines and practises.

Complete answer: We need to go back to the early 16th century, when there was only one church in Western Europe, to grasp the Protestant Reform movement, what we will now call the Roman Catholic Church. Protestantism is one of three main movements of Christianity, along with Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. It spread throughout the globe after a series of European religious wars in the 16th and 17th centuries, and especially in the 19th century.
The first attempt to avoid the spread of Protestantism was to label the heresy as an effort to reform the Catholic Church. People who joined the demonstrations against the selling of indulgences and other practises viewed as unbiblical by the protesters were excommunicated. According to excommunicated Catholic theology, the redemption of the person was jeopardised and the individual was excluded from economic and political involvement in Western Europe's Catholic-dominated society. By making limited reforms, curbing earlier abuses, and countering the further spread of Protestantism, the Catholic Church replied. The Catholic Counter-Reformation is known as this movement.

Note: The Reformation led to the reformulation of some core tenets of Christian belief and culminated in the separation between Roman Catholicism and the modern Protestant traditions of Western Christianity.