How Did The Protestant Reformation Change

In 1517, the Protestant Reformation started. The Protestant Reformation was not only to protest against the church, but to reform its way of how it's changing the beliefs and practices of the Roman Catholic Church. Martin Luther was a monk who led the Reformation which his plan or intention was to reform the church and for the Pope and Priest to stop taking advantage of people such as lying to them and making them turn against the faith in God, but eventually made the Protestants and Catholics divide. Many people have criticized the church because of its social, economic and religious problems. Now most protestants have been divided into sects of Christianity.

In the Protest Reformation, there were many problems when talking about the church.

During the 1500's the Pope became more important to the city except for the protestants. The Pope, besides taking over the church made a few changes that could guarantee his life, especially when talking about luxury and power, for this reason, the church believes that people could be saved by pardons. People were not glad about his new way of controlling or governing the church, especially when he uses indulgences to make money and lie to people. Indulgences were just for fun since people believed that buying indulgences allow freeing someone from guilt or responsibility. In a passage of Erasmus he tells how the Pope uses such creativity in order to gain money as it states,”There are plenty, too, who relying upon certain magical little certificates and prayers which some pious impostor devised either in fun or for the benefit of his pocket”(Document 5 - Erasmus 1500's). In other words, the Pope sells pardons for the benefit of his pocket which in addition allows him to gain power.This allows people to criticize the church for economic reasons, allowing to exchange their money for the forgiveness of sins and not having the chance to have faith in God.

The Catholic Church was a good place where the Priests could take advantage of, after knowing that people will do anything as long it involves in God. Martin Luther took action against the church, but John Wycliffe also did since he was also openly critical of the church and clergy. During the 1370's John Wycliffe wrote a passage on how Priests were not doing a good job of giving support to people and turning their head away from Christs and not wanting to have faith. Priests were not exactly happy with having faith in God, since they consider to ruin the laws of Christ for the best and for their ambitious needs, as John Wycliffe says ”Covetousness and worldly love, and so blinded people and ruined the laws of Christ, that his servants have been turned away from Christ's”(Document 3 - John Wycliffe, 1370's). However, this demonstrates that most often Pope’s have caused most critical social problems, unlike Priests who are taking advantage of people and making them lose their faith in God/Christ.

There is no doubt that people were criticizing the church. The Pope and Priests were possibly the main cause of how people were turning against them because of their unfairly way to betray people especially God. Even though lying to people to buying indulgences to make money and having other individuals to lose faith everything in the church became different. As a result, people became more independent and started to choose their own religion.