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Of course, Martin Luther was wrong, just to name one. Thousands of priests leaving the Catholic Church remained Catholic, and thousands of priests over a 2000 year history isn't a whole bunch. Of course the rest is just ad hominem.
The mainstream narrative regarding Luther can be summed up this way: By the 16th century, the Catholic Church had become so corrupt, so evil, that it required Luther to come to the forefront and save Christianity from the evil and corrupt papacy.
This is a false narrative.
The Protestant Reformation wasn't a reformation, it was a revolution. Reform means to take that which exists and return it to its pristine state. A revolution is destructive, seeking to take that which exists and eradicate it, replacing it with something new.
The Church was in need of reform in terms of her practices, but these weren't even addressed by Luther.
Luther was an Augustinian monk who was abused by his parents throughout his childhood. He left university to become a monk, after an unusual conversion. Luther was obsessed with his own salvation, had a difficult time trusting God, knowing who God was. He thought that the only way one knows one is saved was through faith, sola fide. He also adopted the idea that the only authoritative source of God's divine revelation is Scripture-sola scriptura. He didn't see God as a loving Father-God was a vengeful, wrathful judge. He wrote that he hated God. He suffered from cardiac problems, anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, kidney stones, buzzing in the ears, constipation, hemorrhoids, and spiritually, he was scrupulous. He was very stubborn and strong-willed, and a very charismatic speaker. He had a violent temper which comes across in his writings.
While Luther was a monk, Pope Julius II decided he wanted to rebuild St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. He decided to allow for the granting of an indulgence to those who gave alms for this cause (a penitential act, an individual giving money to the Church for the rebuilding of St. Peter's). Pope Leo X continued this practice after Julius died. In 1515, the Archbishop of Mainz, Luther's bishop, allowed this indulgence to be preached in his diocese. The Dominicans came in and preached about the four last things, helped people to understand the seriousness of salvation, of sin and its consequences, then allow you to receive the indulgence for the contribution. Johann Tetzel was one of these preachers, was 'a bit' ill-formed in his theology, and less than pious, took this idea a step further than the Church intended. He played on the ignorance of the people and gave the impression that they were buying salvation. That's not the Church's teaching. He said "Can you not hear the voices of your dead parents pleading with you? "A tiny alms, they are saying, and we will be free from this torment, and you begrudge this to us?"
Luther was upset, rightly so, with these bad preachers. He writes the 95 theses and posts them on the Church door at Wittenburg. In there, he rejects plenary indulgences, which isn't a bad thing, considering some of the preachers loose in Germany. But what really gets him into trouble is that he questioned indulgences, but then questioned whether the Pope had the authority to grant them. This is a much more serious problem, a theological attack on the papacy. In 1520, Pope Leo issued a bull. Luther was required to cease preaching, recant and submit to the Church within 60 days, and he would be forgiven. Luther, instead, wrote "Against the excreable bull of Antichrist." He said, in this treatise,that the purpose of the bull was to compel men to deny God and worship the devil and all good Christians should trample it underfoot. He burned the bull in the town dump, along with a copy of Canon Law, and the works of a number of Scholastic scholars. "He who does not resist the papacy with all his heart cannot obtain eternal salvation." When people criticized him for his action, he said "If we punish thieves with a yoke, highwaymen with a sword, and heretics with fire, why do we not rather assault these monsters of perdition, these cardinals, these popes and the whole swarm of the Roman Sodom who corrupt youth and the Church of God, why do we not rather assault them with arms and wash our hands in their blood?" Calling people to kill the Pope? Obviously not concerned with reformation, but revolution...
He then wrote three pamphlets "An appeal to the Christian nobility of the German Nation" to get rid of the Church in Germany, "On the Babylonian captivity of the Church" against four of the sacraments, and "On Christian Liberty" on his understanding of free will.
He taught the total depravity of mankind, advocated for the total destruction of the Catholic Church, called the Church the "harlot of Babylon", and do completely away with the Mass. He called upon Mass to be condemned in areas of Germany. By 1525, it was a capital offense to attend Mass or celebrate Mass in Wittenberg. He called the Pope the Anti-Christ. Henry VIII of England wrote against Luther's teaching, and for this he was given the title "Defender of the Faith" by the Pope. Luther wrote a letter to Henry in response, in which he wrote "From Martin Luther, Minister at Wittenberg by the Grace of God, to Henry, King of England, by the disgrace of God." Later on in the letter, he describes Henry as "a nit, which has not yet turned into a louse, a brat whose father was a bug, a donkey who wants to read the Psalter, a sacreligious murderer, the chosen tool of the devil, a blockhead, and as bad as the worst rogues, whom indeed he outrivals, an abortion of a fool, a limb of Satan."
So the Church has to deal with this situation, so they excommunicate him, because of his own heretical teachings. Not only was it a church crime, it was a civil crime, so Martin Luther became a fugitive. Charles V calls the Diet of Worms to discuss this issue. Luther was invited, and given the opportunity to recant, which he refused. Charles V condemned him, the penalty was death, but Charles had given him safe conduct, so he was allowed to leave. On his way home, one of Luther's friends, Frederick, spirited him away and he spent the next year in hiding. People began to take Luther's writings and use them to go against not only the Church, but the Government. They asked him to do something to stop this, so he wrote "Against the murderous, thieving hordes of peasants" encouraging the nobility to put down the rebellion. 130,000 peasants were killed.
It is amazing how often violence follows heretical teaching...
In 1543, Luther wrote a pamphlet "On the Jews and their lies", in which advocated an 8 point plan to get rid of the Jews in Germany, either to be converted or kicked out of Germany. This is one of the seeds of Nazi Germany. Just one factor. William Shirer wrote, in the "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich", "It is difficult to understand the behavior of most German Protestants in the first Nazi years unless one is aware of two things-their history, and the influence of Martin Luther. This great founder of Protestantism was both a passionate anti-Semite and a ferocious believer in absolute obedience to political authority. He wanted Germany rid of the Jews. Luther's advice was followed four centuries later by Hitler, Goering and Himmler." I want to emphasize what I said-THIS IS ONE REASON OF MANY WHY THE RISE OF THE NAZI STATE TOOK PLACE. One reason of many.
His final pamphlet was titled "Against the Pontificate at Rome founded by the Devil". In it he writes "The popes are a set of desparate, thorough-going arch-villains, murderers, traitors, liars, and the most debased and utterly depraved beings on earth. He, the Pope, should be seized, he and his cardinals, their tongues should be torn from their throats, and nailed in a row along the gallows street. I would like to curse the pope and his supporters so that thunder and lightning would strike them, hellfire burn them, the plague, syphillis, epilepsy, scurvy, leprosy, carbuncles, and all manner of diseases attack them."
From the writings of Luther, we see that this was an individual who wasn't really interested in reform. Rather, he was interested in complete revolution, the complete destruction of the Catholic Church-the sacramental system of the Church, the sacramental nature of the Church, the papacy, the hierarchy of the Church, in favor of turning it into something completely different.
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