He believed the selling indulgences was wrong, and even the pope, Pope Leo X, did not have the authority to abolish sins through payments. Luther recognized that at this time, the Church was more focused on accumulating money than saving its people and spreading the word of Christ. Luther believed that only God has the ability to take away the sins of humanity. Martin Luther published his opinions in a document titled Ninety-Five Theses. The monk's writing spread quickly around Europe, and he soon posed a serious threat to the Catholic Church.
The man who first rebelled against the Catholic Church was a man named Martin Luther. He did this by creating the 95 Thesis. Thesis number 32 states that “Those who believe that, through letters of pardon indulgences, they are made sure of their own salvation, will be eternally damned along with their teachers”. The 95 Thesis were reasonable and fair to all of England, unlike the Catholic Churches new rules. Henry VIII thought of the idea to challenge the church from Martin Luther.
America First Committee- in1940 after WWII began isolationists were alarmed by Roosevelt’s pro British policies. To mobilize public opinion against war they formed the America First Committee. Speakers like Charles Lindbergh, traveled the country and spoke out against war. Prelude to War To avoid open conflict with Germany, a policy of appeasement was adopted. And allowed Hitler to get away with small acts of aggression and expansion.
Luther’s first step was to attempt reform within the Catholic church was posting “The 95 Theses on the Power of Indulgences” on the door of the church of Wittenberg to directly protest the selling of indulgences. Condemning indulgences was, in fact, condemning the pope, and his authority to grant pardons to the Catholics. Opposing indulgences was not the end of opposing the pope, however, when the pope sent Luther a letter telling him to take back his words or be excommunicated, Luther burned the letter publicly. Eventually when Luther was excommunicated, he continued to spread his heretical ideas especially through his writings, some of which included “On Christian Liberty” which led the peasant class to believe Lutheranism would lift their oppression and “An Appeal to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation” which invited Christian princes to take over the wealth of the German monasteries. Luther needed the support of the masses to bring about his reform.
In the midst of Hitler’s mass killings, the Catholic Church could not speak out in accordance with the concordat. The Catholic Church was a simplified Holy Institution unable to stop a darkening Nazi Regime. In Victoria Barnett’s article The Role of the Church: Compliance and Confrontation, she explains how the church acted ”Churches throughout Europe were mostly silent while Jews were persecuted, deported and murdered by the Nazis. Churches, especially those in Nazi Germany, sought to act, as institutions tend to do, in their own best interests -- narrowly defined, short-sighted interests.”(Barnett) The inability of the Catholic Church to resist Hitler’s regime left them as an independent institution with a front row seat to mass
“Between 1933 and 1937, the British public’s hostility to the confrontation of foreign powers left the National Government with no alternative to a policy of appeasing Hitler and Mussolini.” – How far do you agree with this judgement? Due to the aftermath of the First World War and the oncoming threat of further war, the general public opinion was to avoid war at all costs during the time between 1933 and 1937. It was in British interests to maintain peace because of similar reasons, and because of the state of the British economy. The British public were therefore not hostile to confrontation of foreign powers, but wanted to avoid the conflict, meaning there was a strong influence on the National Government to please the general public, and appeasement was a better option than to use violence. The public opinion of wanting to be peaceful was the main reason why the National Government felt as if there was no alternative to appeasing Hitler and Mussolini.
Hank is not a fan of Catholicism to say the least: “There you see the hand of that awful power, the Roman Catholic Church. In two or three little centuries it had converted a nation of men to a nation of worms” (43). Hank experiences that without title and heritage people are nothing in King Arthur’s time and he feels this is because of the church. He says that the church “invented the divine right of kings” (44). He is also proud that his knights who carry advertisements will influence people in a way that the Church cannot control: “This would undermine the Church.
Henry VIII began his reign as a loyal Catholic, accepting the Pope as head of the Church. The Pope even gave Henry the title, ‘Defender of the Faith’. This was a reward for writing a book that defended the Pope against criticism from a German reformer called Martin Luther. However, things did not stay the same - Henry VIII and the Pope had a quarrel. It was over Henry’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon.
Scientific advancements such as heliocentricity and atomism disproved geocentricity and Aristotelian beliefs. The Catholic Church supported many of those views and anyone who opposed those beliefs were made instant targets of the pope and his follwers.4 Punishments were very severe, including house arrest, to discourage scientific advancement, but some refused to give in to church demands. Aristotelian belief was that the Earth was the center of everything, which tied well into the churches’ misunderstanding of several bible verses. This misunderstanding caused the church to strictly promote the idea of an Earth-centered universe.4 Many scientists were persecuted, but Galileo was the most notable. With him inventing the one of the first telescopes, he could see multiple areas of space never seen before such as Jupiter.
Protest occurred even before the Tet Offensive in both the United States and Vietnam. Vietnamese protests were headed primarily by Buddhist monks in opposition to the war. In one shocking occurance, “on June 11, 1963, Quang Ngai set himself on fire as a protest against the policies of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem. Several others followed his example” (Wills 44). Because the American government openly supported the Christian Diem, the South Vietnamese were almost as against American involvement as the North Vietnamese by the time of the Tet Offensive.