Why did Luther have a conflict with the Roman Catholic Church?

Answer 1

It's just Catholic, not Roman Catholic. Roman is an epithet first commonly used in England after the protestant revolt to describe the Catholic Church. It is never used by the official Catholic Church.

"Because the roman catholic church was taking the tithe money and using it for themselves!" This was the original answer posted by someone else, however, it is highly inaccurate and doesn't give the full picture. Martin Luther disagreed with many things. 1: The authority of the Church. Martin Luther did NOT believe in the Pope as the authority of the Church. After the resurrection, Jesus gave the keys of his Church to Peter to be the "physical" leader in His stead. After Peter died, a new leader was chosen and since then, Catholics have always had a Pope. 2: "By Faith alone we are saved" Martin Luther believed that if one just has faith, then he/she is saved and claimed that it was even written in The Bible. When Martin Luther translated the Bible from original Greek to German he added words. Such as, Romans 3:28, "Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith {"allein" (English 'alone')} apart from the deeds of the law." Allein, was added in by Martin Luther and even some Protestant scholars have admitted that this is true, though some denied it. Catholics strongly disagree with the "Faith alone" statement and insist that one must also try to be perfect AND faithful. --This also ties in with Martin Luther's disagreement with confession and repentance. He states, "Be a sinner, and sin boldly, but believe more boldly still. Sin shall not drag us away from Him, even should we commit fornication or murder thousands and thousands of times a day (Luther, M. Letter of August 1, 1521 as quoted in Stoddard, p.93)." Yet Catholics firmly believe in the repentance of one's sins. There are many other things that Martin Luther disagreed with the Catholic faith. As to the answer left beforehand, many people have the misconception that the Catholics were "money hogs." In actuality, the Church was quite poor and what little money it did have, was spent on the long and painstaking process of translating and hand-printing the Bible and distributing them among Churches around Europe, during the middle ages. That point of time with the Church does not tie in with Martin Luther.

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Answer from a Catholic who used to be a LutheranI'm sorry, but people have to stop dancing around the main issue here. If you actually read Martin Luther's own writings, the man had a problem with alcohol and sex. The man threw off his lifelong religious vows of chastity, obedience, and poverty without so much as a by-your-leave and proceeded to trash the Church for anything he could think of to get the attention off himself as he broke every commandment Our Blessed Lord left us. Martin Luther did not want to try to be good and follow God, so he made up his own religion that allowed him to "sin and sin greatly" and God would still save him, in spite of his sin (his words, not mine). Martin Luther disagreed with the Church because the Church had constantly taught the morality of Jesus calling people to "repent and believe in the Gospel." Luther did NOT want to repent, nor did he want to believe in the Gospel, he wanted to believe that he was saved - period. So the Catholic faith that Our Blessed Lord entrusted to St. Peter and his successors had to go. The German princes loved it as they no longer had to send tithes to Rome, so they followed Luther into the gutter, and took the Church away from the common people.

Answer 2

A:As a professor of biblical studies and Augustine monk, Martin Luther saw himself as a loyal servant of the Catholic Church, but also saw that the sale of Indulgences was leading to corruption in the Church. He sought to advise his superiors, and thereby achieve change. His initial aim was not to abolish indulgences, but to reform their use. In 1517, he nailed his 95 theses to the door of the castle church in Wittenberg, calling churchmen to debate their sale.

Luther's views on Indulgences were debated at the Leipzig Disputation of 1519, by which time Luther was increasingly doubting the whole basis of papal authority. He proceeded to deny the infallibility of the Pope and of General Councils, for which the Pope excommunicated him in 1520.

Although not totally antagonistic to the veneration of saints, Martin Luther saw that the veneration of saints had turned into the worship of semi-divinities who were addressed exclusively for some need, with no reference to Christ. He also objected to the cult of relics to raise money. In Smalcald Articles (1538), he called the invoking of angels and saints, praying to them, keeping fasts and festivals for them, saying masses and offering sacrifices to them, and assigning to them special functions, "idolatory".

It could be said that Martin Luther gradually came into conflict with the Catholic Church because he sought to define standards on issues of faith and morals that were unacceptable to the Church leadership of his time.