The Council of Trent, a response to the Reformation (jan 1, 1545 – jan 1, 1563)

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Council of Trent, 19th ecumenical council of the Roman Catholic Church, held in three parts from 1545 to 1563. Prompted by the Reformation, the Council of Trent responded emphatically to the issues at hand and enacted the formal Roman Catholic reply to the doctrinal challenges of the Protestants.

Everything the Protestant Reformation stood for was vigorously—one could almost say violently—rejected at Trent. The Protestant reformers emphasized justification by faith alone. The council insisted that Christian people must perform good works lest they become lazy and indifferent. Instead of the Protestant concept of external righteousness, by which God counts a person right in his eyes by faith, for Catholics, righteousness was internal, the process by which God imparts righteousness within Christians during the course of their life. Trent emphatically linked justification to the process of becoming righteous, leaving the notion of being declared righteous to be a Protestant heresy.
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Luther, Calvin, and Grebel stressed salvation by grace alone; the council emphasized grace and human cooperation

- Source: Shelley, Bruce L.. Church History in Plain Language, Fifth Edition (p. 128).

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