How effective was the Catholic Church's response to the challenges presented by the Protestant Reformation?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

The ideal answer should include:
a. The Protestant Reformation posed two challenges to the Catholic Church. The first was the Church's interpretation of Scripture. The second was the Church's authority over Christians.
b. The Church's response to the first challenge was the Council of Trent, which reaffirmed traditional Church doctrine, including upholding all seven sacraments, confirming the reality of Purgatory, and justifying the sale of indulgences.
c. The permanent division between Catholicism and Protestantism attests to the failure of the Council of Trent in bringing Protestants back to the Catholic fold.
d. The Church sought to assert its doctrinal authority by using the Roman Inquisition to root out heresies and the Index of Forbidden Books to suppress ideas it did not like.
e. Protestants who wanted to avoid the Inquisition could move to countries with more tolerant attitudes toward religious diversity. The presence of Protestant communities in eastern Europe indicates that many Protestants did this.
f. People could still get books that were listed on the Index of Forbidden Books, so censorship was not very effective.
g. The Council of Trent's response to the second challenge was to uphold the authority of the pope, bishops, and priests.
h. The fact that Protestants established their own churches indicates that the reassertion of the Catholic Church's authority did not address the concerns of the Protestants.
i. The Council of Trent's call for bishops to reside in their dioceses and for seminaries to be established to train priests addressed some of the concerns of the Protestants.
j. However, by the time the Council of Trent issued its decrees, Protestantism had already spread widely and established deep roots in many European communities.
k. The establishment of the Society of Jesus and the Carmelites as new Catholic orders indicates that many Christians still accepted the Catholic Church's leadership.