Be gentle to Trent
It is sad and unbalanced that the Council of Trent should be castigated so severely in your leader (20/27 August): “Rather than listening to the Protestant point of view, Trent favoured a confrontational response …[it] refuted what it thought Protestantism was, rather than what it actually was.”  

The Reformation was well advanced when Trent convened in December 1545. By then there was no likelihood that a wide range of major breaches between the Catholic Church and the churches of the Reformation could be easily mended. Nevertheless the council paid considerable attention to Protestant criticisms of Catholic teaching and practices, and many “Protestant-friendly” modifications were introduced into the conciliar decrees.

Trent was surely providential at this time of great crisis. Despite its limitations, the council enabled the Catholic church to recover coherence and morale. Without it, the future positive developments that came about in Catholic relations with the Reformed churches, principally through Vatican II, are hard to imagine.