Do you think that Luther really believed that Pope Leo X did not know what the indulgence salesmen were saying?
For the first week in the RPC Mr. North covered the topic of Martin Luther and his writing of the 95 theses. Ths week covered the stpory of the Catholic chrurch and what it took for Martin Luther to write his work. While at the time, this was seen as disobediance to the church, Martin Luther Accomplished to main things with his writing. One would be changing the course of Catholic Christianity for the rest of history, and creating one of he greatest written works the world has seen. The 95 theses put simply exposed the corrupted and Power hungry religious and political leaders of the time. The main theme of the Theses was to explain not only to the religious zsars but also to the people that Christianity couldn’t be paid off. One dosen’t go to heaven just by paying off the church. One gets into heaven through hard work, and following the Bible.
Within the Catholic Religion an indulgence is a payment to the church to clense the soul. For example, if a man cheats on his wife, that is a sin. Known as adultry. However, the church taught to all of it’s goers that paying them would remove that sin from their soul. While silly to beleive for us, the Catholic Church at the time was playing off the fear that many had of going to hell and then proffiting off of it. Soon people used this to become lazy with their religious duties and began paying the church off to pay for their sins. Instead of actually putting the time and effort into becoming and better Catholic and repenting for pure salvation, it was easier to write a check and hand it to the priest. Martin Luther saw this. He saw that people were to be damned if they treated Christs following like this. This was a smear to God. He knew that the Catholic Church wouldn’t stop because they were making a pretty profit.
JBSchool 