What were Martin Luther’s reasons for apposing the Roman Catholic Church?

Question

The word should be opposing.

Answer 1

A) At that period in time the Church was rebuilding St. Peter's and figured that a dandy way to raise money was to get people to contribute to the cause. So they wouldn't feel like they weren't getting anything (most of them would never SEE Rome), churchmen went from town to town preaching reparation for sin. You sin, you confess, you do the penance which satisfies for the earthly debt, but there's still the spiritual debt, so you hand over a chunk of change and the priest will give you a piece of paper that says the time in purgatory cleansing yourself of the stain of that sin is remitted (sort of a get-out-of-jail free card). Money was raised. Lots of people went around with smiles because they weren't gonna get fried in Purgatory for as long as they probably deserved. But Martin Luther decided that it was just too crass and he objected.

B) Priestly celibacy was finally catching on in his time and he'd tried it (he DID start out as an Augustinian monk after all) and knew he wasn't gonna make THAT stick (randy German that he was), so he objected to celibacy.

C) A goodly number of cardinals were related to the "best" families in Italy. The Curia was a nifty place to put excess younger sons and just think of all the favors they could do for dear old Dad. Luther objected to this rampant nepotism.

D) He got so ticked off that he made up a list of things the church was doing wrong and nailed it to a church door and got himself excommunicated for his troubles. Nothing daunted, he merely started his own church. He had ample precedent as there'd been dissatified customers doing that since Arius in the second century CE.

E) Since the German princelings were always barging into each other's territories with shouts of, "This is MY land." and being greeted with barrages of arrows and other unfriendly activity as the barged in on shouted back, "Oh no it's not!", it didn't take them long to take sides and give themselves another dandy excuse to try wrenching territory from each other. And since what the prince said went, their populations perforce hadda be what their prince said he was, ie, either faithful to Rome or following Luther.

made for some interesting times, it did.

Not to worry, though. Rome and the Missouri Synod are getting buddy-buddy again and there's a reconciliation in the wings.

Hope this helped.

Answer 2

It would not be strictly true to say that Luther opposed the Roman Catholic Church--unlike other reformers, he wished to reform from within; but he was eventually forced out.

As for the reasons, the summarized version is that he objected to the way Reconciliation had been turned into a commodity. As you may know, Reconciliation consists of confession, forgiveness, and penance. Penance had been organized into a system of earning indulgences for the relief of temporal punishment (Purgatory), and Luther objected to the way they had been turned into a fundraising machine. Furthermore, he objected to the promise being made by some that you could earn indulgences on behalf of deceased family members to get them out of Purgatory more quickly regardless of their own merits.

Each of the original Protestant theological systems, as well as the Catholic Church's own counter-reformation, were aimed at addressing these abuses.

Answer 3

He didn't approve of all the corruption in the church. Today, he might be protesting all the immorality among priests in the church.

Answer 4

Hopefully he wanted to teach you how to spell but it looks like that was just one more thing he got wrong.

Answer 5

He saw the hypocrisy.