Little Or No Resistance To The Protestant Reformation

What would it take for the Roman Catholic Church to either not be willing, not be able, or be neither willing nor able to combat the Protestant Reformation? Also, what can we expect Europe to look like in terms of how nation-states are organized and governed under these circumstances?
 
You need the church and state far less linked. The best way I can think of is to have the Catholic Church far less successful and doesn't wipe out the various pagan faiths and have to compete against them. Maybe have Zoasterism, Hinduism and other faiths spread to Europe. That way the church is far weaker and can't prevent offshoot branches. Of course you then don't have Reformation as we know it. Frankly to prevent great resistance to the Reformation as we know it probably requires ASBs as there is a big link between church and state. In that situation the church will have a huge tendency to use its state influence to have it crushed. Those who are corrupt don't want to lose their power, those who are not will genuinely believe that the best way to save the most souls is to stop the "heretic deceivers" from spreading their influence and dragging more souls into Hell with them.
 
Perhaps have the Popacy make some sort of major blunder in trying to take more direct role in the counter-reformation, something along the lines of 'as you've allowed Heresy to spread to your realm the Pope's going to have to take some control here'. That way you'd have a church v. state conflict akin to the Investiture controversy to distract the Catholic powers/make rulers more amenable to Protestantism.

Though this is probably very unlikely on a large scale.
 
I can't recall which of them it was but one of the Habsburg rulers was apparently very Protestant friendly and with the right conditions and a bit of nudging could of gone that way. Plus IIRC something like 75% of Habsburg territory converted to Protestantism before the Habsburgs started laying down the law and forcibly converting the place back in the counter-reformation. Throw in areas like Bohemia and Hungary that were already trending that way and that's a fair chunk of territory that would be lost to the Catholic church. At that stage it could get to the point where Germany turns more Protestant, or at least areas that converted but later had to re-convert back don't have to, then Italy, France and Spain become the only major Catholic states left.
 
You need the church and state far less linked. The best way I can think of is to have the Catholic Church far less successful and doesn't wipe out the various pagan faiths and have to compete against them. Maybe have Zoasterism, Hinduism and other faiths spread to Europe. That way the church is far weaker and can't prevent offshoot branches. Of course you then don't have Reformation as we know it. Frankly to prevent great resistance to the Reformation as we know it probably requires ASBs as there is a big link between church and state. In that situation the church will have a huge tendency to use its state influence to have it crushed. Those who are corrupt don't want to lose their power, those who are not will genuinely believe that the best way to save the most souls is to stop the "heretic deceivers" from spreading their influence and dragging more souls into Hell with them.
Indeed. You'd need a pod about this major and early.
 
I can't recall which of them it was but one of the Habsburg rulers was apparently very Protestant friendly and with the right conditions and a bit of nudging could of gone that way. Plus IIRC something like 75% of Habsburg territory converted to Protestantism before the Habsburgs started laying down the law and forcibly converting the place back in the counter-reformation. Throw in areas like Bohemia and Hungary that were already trending that way and that's a fair chunk of territory that would be lost to the Catholic church. At that stage it could get to the point where Germany turns more Protestant, or at least areas that converted but later had to re-convert back don't have to, then Italy, France and Spain become the only major Catholic states left.

What I'm trying to see with this question is whether or not we could have official Protestant denominations with the full backing of the respective nation-states where that version of the Reformation succeeded with decisive victory (for example, Lutheranism = Germany, Germany = Lutheranism, and ne'er shall the Papists re-enter). This is not to say that Catholicism is outlawed or prohibited, it just means that the nation-state of the German people funds the Lutheran Church with direct taxation subsidies. How do we make this possible? (You can push it to the ASB "border" but please try to find a way to not cross it.)
 
In some ways this did happen. One of the reasons why Prussia didn't annex Austria for example was that the inclusion of a large catholic majority region was considered unpalatable to the Lutheran government of Prussia.
 
In some ways this did happen. One of the reasons why Prussia didn't annex Austria for example was that the inclusion of a large catholic majority region was considered unpalatable to the Lutheran government of Prussia.

What I'm trying to do is pretty extreme though, I'm trying to get Hungary to go Lutheran, Bohemia to go BRETHREN (without that being ASB) and for Catholicism to be diminished in Austria to the degree that they are absorbed into Germany due to linguistic commonality and cultural similarity. I want the only Catholic nations in Europe to be Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, and possibly a few others. I want to see a European religious landscape with the fewest Catholic nations possible. Italy is a foregone conclusion: it is Catholic yesterday, today, and forever. I understand that were it not for the Jesuits that Poland would've become Protestant. Let's go so far as to make Ireland Protestant (not Anglican or Presbyterian, but definitely NOT Catholic dominant). The game is that I'm trying to essentially castrate the powerbase of the RCC only insofar as how they link Church with state in terms of authoritarian enforcement and instead have nation-states on the so-called fringes sponsor their own denomination/theology.

Also, what I would love to see is a valiant attempt on behalf of the RCC to enforce themselves on the rebellious/reforming nation-states, but failing miserably, thus resulting in whatever respective nation-state's theology becoming blended with nationalism, but not to a belligerent end.
 
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