Martin Luther Protest Against the Catholic Church

Martin Luther challenged the authority of the Catholic Church and in so doing created a movement away from the strictness of Catholic teaching and from the idea that communion with God required the intercession of the papacy and the religious structure of a Church. Luther was reacting to a variety of specific abuses he perceived in the Catholic hierarchy and in terms of doctrinaire differences Luther had with Church teachings. His protest may have challenged the rule of the Catholic Church, but it affirmed the importance of religion and religious belief. It also demonstrated the human resistance to any perceived tyranny, physical or intellectual, and the human tendency to develop new modes of thought and action to counter such tyranny.

At the same time, Luther demonstrated both his own deep personal faith and a certain naive belief in the willingness of others to learn and to change. His was not the first protest against the Catholic Church and its abuses, but he succeeded where others had failed because of his own charismatic conversion. He was one of the people and spoke their language. Rome resisted all reform with every power at her disposal, and the essential element of Church doctrine which was used to enforce this was the requirement of obedience. Luther clearly broke this tenet, but for Luther and his followers it was not a matter of obedience at all but a question of truth. Indeed, within the Church there was also a dedication to truth, and the Church was

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eform, that the Church was actively preventing and opposing reform. His reformation was also directed toward order and improvement in the world, and Luther in his teachings stressed the political consequences of curial power politics. He thought that the world had never been in worse condition and that the interference of Church authority in the political realm was one of the main reasons for this, especially given the doctrinal differences he saw between Church teachings and scripture. One of the Church activities he opposed in particular was the selling of indulgences. The doctrine of indulgences took a mechanical view of sin and repentance and so aroused Luther's indignation. The sale by the church of indulgencesthe remission of temporal punishments for sins committed and confessed to a priestbrought in much revenue, and the Church had no intention of giving this up (Oberman, pp. 72-76). The archbishop of Mainz, Albrecht of Brandenburg, sponsored such a sale in 1517 to pay the pope for his appointment to Mainz and for the construction of Saint Peter's in Rome. He selected Johann Tetzel, a Dominican friar, to preach the indulgences and collect the revenues. When Tetzel arrived in Saxony, Luther posted his famous 95

Category: History - M