. Protests against the Catholic Church today, both from within and without, are historically rooted in the Age of Reformation and the Protestant movement.
Finally, with respect to the Catholic response to these challenges, it was late in coming, but did address the major issues which formed the heart and soul of the Protestant movement. The Catholic Church, through the canons and decrees which issued from the Council of Trent (1545-1563), argued that both faith and good workers were necessary for salvation; that religious officials must interpret the Bible; and that clergy are spiritually superior to the layman as "ordained intermediaries between God and human beings" (Perry 342-345).
The thesis of Machiavelli's The Prince is that a leader, or prince, who hopes to acquire political power and maintain that power in the real world must be willing and able to do whatever he must do, without concern for common morality. At the sa
...