One of the most important incidents from the past, which helped to fashion the Church of today, was `The Reformation.' The aim of the Reformation was for an internal renewal of the church during the 16th century in Western Europe because of the evil conditions present at that time. The lives of clergy and the people who followed Christianity committed various abuses, which were against the Church's teachings, many bishops and abbots considered themselves as secular rulers rather than servants of the church; the higher clergy lived in luxury while the lower lived in oppression. These conditions in part were contributed by the Renaissance which gave people on the higher class of society the "gross love of pleasure, a desire for gain, and a voluptuousness of life diametrically opposed to Christian morality." (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12700b.htm) The reformers started sects of `national churches', which...