Add to this that the priests were unbound by ties of family, that by confession they entered into everyone's private life, that they were not amenable to civil justice--and their position as a privileged order was secure.

The growing self-assurance and enlightenment of a nascent individualism found this distinction intolerable.
[Sidenote: Other-worldliness] Another element of medieval Catholicism to clash with the developing powers of the new age was its pessimistic and ascetic other-worldliness.
The ideal of the church was monastic; all the pleasures of this world, all its pomps and learning and art were but snares to seduce men from salvation.

Reason was called a barren tree but faith was held to blossom like the rose.

Wealth was shunned as dangerous, marriage deprecated as a necessary evil.

Fasting, scourging, celibacy, solitude, were cultivated as the surest roads to heaven.