What part did the Catholic Church play in the sixteenth century ?

Question

In Europe.

Answer 1

Where?

Anyway here are links but if its not good enough simply add to the title of the question the country you research.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Cat...

Answer 2

The 16th Century was the time of Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon.  The Catholic church refused to allow an annulment between the King and Queen of England, which Henry wasn't having so he declared himself head of the church in England, divorced Katherine, sent her into exile while placing Anne Boleyn on the throne. He went through six wives to only come out with one sickly son who died I believe at the age of 16.  I think that God did not allow him to have sons because God did not favor the Tudors at all.  They only took over the throne of England after they murdered the two Plantagenet heirs in the tower of London, and hid the bodies which to this day have never been found.  When the Catholic church excommunicated Henry, he was pretty angry and took it out on the local Catholics with the dissolution of the monasteries and that massacring of Catholic priests and nuns.  People called his daughter Mary blood Mary because she sentenced 400 protestants to death, her father Henry was responsible for the deaths of an estimated 70,000 people.  Henry's bloody tirade opened the door for the protestant reformation which really took affect under the rule of Elizabeth the horrible b*****d queen of England who also went on a killing spree of Catholics when the Pope excommunicated her.  And you wonder why Pius XII didn't excommunicate Hitler formally.    The Catholic church was majorly under attack in England and in Germany during the 16th century.  The Catholic church did print their first vernacular translation of the Latin Vulgate bible, called the Douay Rheims.  They in fact had it published before the official KJV version came out.  They also began the Council of Trent created to refute every argument of the protestant religion against the Catholics, and strongly professed the dogmatic teachings of the church.

Answer 3

You are joking, right?

Remember, in the 16th Century, there was not even a concept of separation of Church and State.  So, they were essentially the same thing.  And considering the fact that the Protestant Reformation had barely begun, the Catholic Church played a HUGE role in even the smallest of European countries and cities.  To be honest, I can't think of anything the Church DIDN'T have a hand in.

I guess the best answer to your question is that Church at that time were the spiritual and political "powers that be" in everybody's lives.  For anything more specific, you'd have to ask a more specific question.