WI/AHC: Make the Catholic Church as weak as possible

Make the breakdown in Church moral authority in the 14th century even worse.

Have the Avignon Papacy be more corrupt or make foreign policy decisions that overwhelmingly favor France. An anti-pope is raised in Rome by pro-German forces in Italy, and you have a schism.

This schism continues, because the declaration of an anti-pope prevents one of the Avignon Popes from returning to Italy. Geopolitics continues to corrupt the Church, and in the midst of the suffering Europe was undergoing during the calamitous 14th century, several heresies break out... including alt-Protestantism.

Without a central Church or Jesuits to try and stop the Reformation, it spreads. Some countries convert, while the main anti-Papacies try and stamp them out, failing miserably.

Eventually, one Catholic church is restored, but at a steep cost. Protestantism dominates the Netherlands, Germany, northern Italy and parts of Britain, and new heresies continue to grow. The Renaissance is just beginning (late), and the Catholic Church is a mere shell of what it once was.

The Renaissance Popes turn out to be just as corrupt as their predecessors, and constantly fighting wars against the northern Italian states. Eventually, a new Roman Commune is declared as a successor to the one in the 12th century, and the Pope not to war-torn France, but instead to Spain.

A particularly obstinate Pope promotes Luso-Spanish interests at the expense of France's nascent explorations... and refuses to annul the marriage of the French King. Said king, swollen with pride, declares his own Church, robbing the Church of its most powerful promoter.

By this point, only Poland-Hungary, southern Italy, Iberia and distant Scandinavia are Catholic. The Church ends up enacting a counter-reformation, and eventually returns to Rome in the 17th century, completely powerless and almost bankrupt. Its Eastern flank has been crushed by Lithuania-Russia, which has sacked Krakow and which has nipped at Sweden from now-Orthodox Finland for over a century. Poland and Hungary are crushed between the Orthodox to the East and South and the Protestants to the West.

Abroad, Catholicism has flourished in parts of Southeast Asia, but has been pushed out of Japan. In addition, the Protestant powers have destroyed Portugal-Castille's (aka alt-Spain's) control over vital trade markets in Asia and the Americas.

Only the constant rancour between the various Protestants and other heresies has spared the Church further misfortune. Rome is a miserable backwater, since the Church spent most of the Renaissance in Santiago. The Italian wars continue to force the Church to spend money on defending Rome, the city that stands between mostly-heretic Northern Italy and Aragonese Naples.

The eventual Spanish revolution robs the Church of its strongest supporter and introduces secular liberalism into the European consciousness. The Pope is forced to flee to Hungary. Eventually, Europe is split between republics and kingdoms... with anti-clerical republics in Spain, Aragon and Poland.

Scandinavia is eventually lost to semi-neopagan *Fascism, which ravages the Church's property, social standing, and infrastructure. Denmark becomes a republic after a strong backlash to a Catholic military government.

When the Budapest commune breaks out, the Pope is lynched, and the Church is forced to flee abroad in ignominy to the New World, where Catholicism had been taking a beating for centuries. There were never Jesuits, and the various non-Catholic churches did much better in the America.

The Pope lives in farthest Canada, in the small, formerly Luso-Spanish colony called Terra Nova. It's wet, cold and miserable, the Papacy is barely subsidized by the government, and the outgrowths of industrial and liberal revolutions have completely destroyed the Church's moral teachings in much of Europe (aka Sexual Revolution).

The Church is weak everywhere except for Terra Nova, parts of Africa, and parts of Asia (albeit as a strong minority faith).
 
Protestants were making huge headway in strange (to us) places like Poland and Southern France.

One of the things that allowed RCs to claw back a bunch of territory was the CounterReformation, which fixed a lot of the abuses of the system and was a pretty effective response to Protestantism.

If the RCs had doubled down on persecution, instead of eliminating abuses, you could have seen Protestantism grow even further.

If more kings saw the advantages that Henry VIII got, you might get several 'national Catholic' churches which might, or might not, go Protestant, but which would at least remove power from the Roman church...
 
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