⭐ The Catholic Church's direct rejection of the sixth answer. ⚠ This is not the same entry as our other entry, the Council of Trent's Session VI Decree on Justification — that one deals with justification; this one deals with who has the final say.
The issue
Who interprets Scripture? Are all believers priests?
Claim
The Protestant side (Luther's two points on this thread). First, all Christians are priests of God — as Olson puts it, pastors are not above the rest of God's people, nor do they hold any special spiritual rank that gives them rule over them; pastors should be called and chosen by God's people, not imposed by the church hierarchy; and in an emergency any ordinary Christian may administer baptism and the Lord's Supper and preach God's word to the congregation. Second, Scripture has supreme authority — ⚠ and in Wycliffe this point had already been put very plainly: even the pope must keep a standard drawn wholly from the teaching of Scripture.
⭐ This side's arguments set out in full (the source gives them, and we fill them in here):
On the right to interpret Scripture. Wycliffe's position came earliest and was the most blunt: in Olson's summary, even the pope had to keep a standard drawn wholly from the teaching of Scripture. ⚠ What he was facing, Olson notes, was that many priests and bishops treated the pope's words as the words of God himself — and Olson adds that Catholic theology did not in fact require this. That is: much of what the reforming side was fighting was practice, not formal doctrine.
On the priesthood. Luther's reasoning came from justification: as Olson puts it, because Christians are justified by grace alone through faith, all Christians are priests of God. It had two consequences: all true believers may come directly before God to pray for themselves and for others; and pastors are not above the rest of God's people, nor do they hold any special spiritual rank that gives them rule over them. In church order this meant that pastors should be called and chosen by God's people, not imposed by the church hierarchy; and in an emergency any ordinary Christian may administer baptism and the Lord's Supper and preach God's word to the congregation.
⚠ But Luther did not abolish the pastoral office — as Olson puts it, he affirmed the pastor as a teaching office, trained to interpret and teach the word of God. ⭐ This matters: the two sides were not arguing about whether there should be pastors, but about whether there is a line of spiritual rank between pastor and congregation.
Counterclaim
The Catholic side: medieval Roman Catholicism, Olson notes, already held the great universal tradition to have the same authority as Scripture, and many priests and bishops treated the pope's words as the words of God himself — ⚠ though Olson is careful to add that Catholic theology did not in fact require this; that is, it was practice, not formal doctrine.
The ruling
⭐ Two decrees, which we give here in the council's own words (quoted from Schaff's English translation of the decrees).
First: the right to interpret Scripture. No one may presume to interpret Scripture “contrary to that sense which holy mother Church … hath held and doth hold”, for it is the church's, as the decree says, “to judge of the true sense” and interpretation of the holy Scriptures. It further ordered that no book could be published without the approval of church authorities, and that this approval must appear in writing at the front of the book. ⚠ González notes one detail: this procedure was to cost the author or publisher nothing — here, he says, one can see that the council truly cared about removing any profit made under cover of holy things.
Second: the rejection of the priesthood of all believers. Olson calls this one brazen. Since in the sacrament of Order, as in Baptism and Confirmation, “a character is imprinted which can neither be effaced nor taken away, the holy Synod with reason condemns the opinion of those who assert that the priests of the New Testament have only a temporary power … And if any one affirm, that all Christians indiscriminately are priests of the New Testament, or that they are all mutually endowed with an equal spiritual power, he clearly does nothing but confound the ecclesiastical hierarchy”. The council also reaffirmed the traditional Catholic hierarchy (pope, bishops, priests, deacons) and condemned anyone who denied it.
What was at stake for salvation
These two decrees decided directly the road to salvation: if the power to interpret Scripture belongs to the church, and if the priesthood has a character that cannot be effaced imprinted on those ordained, then to know God's word and to receive the sacraments a person must go through this system. ⚠ The Protestant claim was to move this road from the system back to faith — and each side believed the other had cut the road between people and God.
Aftermath
⭐ Notice how frank that last half-sentence is: it does not say this is wrong; it says such a person “clearly does nothing but confound the ecclesiastical hierarchy” — ⚠ both sides knew perfectly well that what was at stake was authority, and nothing else.
⚠ And the cost of this step Olson records elsewhere: Trent's anathemas, he says, declared Luther and the other Protestant reformers and their followers to be heretics, and in effect all Protestants were excommunicated by its canons; only with the Second Vatican Council of 1962–1965 did Protestants gain a somewhat more respectable standing, when Rome called them separated brethren. ⚠ But the chronology must be recorded too: long before the Council of Trent anathematized the Protestants, Olson writes, the leading Protestant reformers and many of their followers had grown used to calling the pope the Antichrist and consigning his whole following to hell — the condemnation did not run in one direction only.
⭐⭐ Read this alongside Cyprian in the first part of this thread: in the 3rd century he said that the first place of the bishop of Rome was only a title of honor; here, the church's hierarchy became a doctrine that may not be denied. And papal infallibility had to wait another three hundred years — ⚠ Olson states plainly that it was not formally proclaimed before the 19th century; it was formally proclaimed at the First Vatican Council in 1870. In sixteen hundred years, a title of honor became a doctrine.