Expert: D.S - 6/12/2009

Question
Hello hope all is well

I am taking an introductory to christianity course and i need to pick a topic for a research paper. I have to focus on an event. I want to write on the reformation, but i need to pick a particular event that occured during the reformation. Can you give me some examples of events that occured during the reformation that i can write on?

Answer
In 1559 Pope Paul IV ruled that no Bible could be printed in the vernacular without church approval


in 1564 Pope Pius IV stated: “Experience has shown that if reading of the Bible in the vulgar tongue is permitted indiscriminately, . . . more harm than good arises therefrom.”



Martin Luther

At the age of 22, Luther entered the Augustine monastery in Effort. He later attended the University of Wittenberg, obtaining a doctorate in theology. Luther considered himself unworthy of God’s favor and was at times driven to despair by a guilty conscience. But Bible study, prayer, and meditation helped him to gain a better understanding of how God views sinners. Luther recognized that God’s favor cannot be earned. Rather, it is granted through undeserved kindness to those exercising faith


Luther’s understanding of how God views sinners brought him into conflict with the Roman Catholic Church ,historians point to 1517 or thereabouts as the birth of the Reformation.


John Wycliffe

Catholic priest and a professor of theology at Oxford, England. Well aware of the abuses in the church, he wrote and preached against such matters as corruption in the monastic orders, papal taxation, the doctrine of transubstantiation (the claim that the bread and wine used in the Mass literally change into the body and blood of Jesus Christ), the confession, and church involvement in temporal affairs.



William Tyndale

translating the Bible into English


Church of England became Protestant in practice during the reign of Elizabeth I

abolished allegiance to the pope, clerical celibacy, confession, and other Catholic practices.


The highest good the Reformation achieved, no doubt, was that it made the Bible available to the common people in their own language
since the Catholic Church had it in Latin which the common man could not read and the church and killed any who translated the word of Jehovah into their own language