What REALLY happened?!?

Factual Questions
1

I like the videos by historyteacherz very much on Youtube. I find their videos very informative and fun. Though, sometimes, they leave me with questions.

Check out this video: Martin Luther ("Manic Monday" by the Bangles) - YouTube

It’s about Martin Luther, but the song makes it sound like Martin Luther was the “good guy” and the Roman Catholic Church was the “bad guy”. I think the song is trying to be poetic yet oversimplifying the circumstances.

I noticed that Martin Luther wrote about indulgences of the Catholic Church, but Wikipedia seems to provide a different perspective: “In 1517, Pope Leo X offered indulgences for those who gave alms to rebuild St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. The aggressive marketing practices of Johann Tetzel in promoting this cause provoked Martin Luther to write his Ninety-Five Theses, condemning what he saw as the purchase and sale of salvation. In Thesis 28 Luther objected to a saying attributed to Tetzel: ‘As soon as a coin in the coffer rings, a soul from purgatory springs’. The Ninety-Five Theses not only denounced such transactions as worldly but denied the Pope’s right to grant pardons on God’s behalf in the first place: the only thing indulgences guaranteed, Luther said, was an increase in profit and greed, because the pardon of the Church was in God’s power alone.” Now, that makes it sound like that Martin Luther was really against Johann Tetzel’s aggressive marketing practice of selling indulgences in exchange for salvation. I would assume “offering indulgences” in exchange for alms (good works to society) is a good thing, but offering indulgences in exchange for salvation is NOT a good thing. If that is the case, then Martin Luther was really against Johann Tetzel, not the Pope.

Am I misreading this? I never really studied 95 Theses in detail in my history classes, so I don’t know. Still, I wonder what is the Catholic perspective on this issue. Is the song slightly biased in favor of the Protestant perspective? :rolleyes:

2

The Catholic doctrine, then as now, was that indulgence could be granted for the remission of temporal penance – that is, here on earth – as a result of pious acts. Giving alms or donating to the Church qualified, though not to the extent that prayer, sacrifice, and contrition did. The important point is that indulgences had no effect on salvation itself. Tetzel went along with this for the living, but also argued that the dead, not being on earth, could receive greater benefit from the pious acts of the living, and made a particular point of soliciting cash gifts as a means of obtaining intercession for the dead – then, as now, quite against Church doctrine. Luther apparently believed that Tetzel was acting with the full approval of the Pope, but that’s hard to know.