The Protestant Reformation (October 31, 1517) - Started By A Note Posted By Martin Luther

[DonRocks]

Everyone has heard of the "Protestant Reformation," most people know it's the beginning of the Protestant breakaway (note the word "Protest") from the Catholic Church, and some people know it was Martin Luther who history credits as being behind it.

What many don't know are the shocking events leading up to it. The Catholic Church had gone insane, was essentially one gigantic, corrupt, sex orgy, and beginning with Pope Innocent VIII (1484-1492), and continuing with Pope Alexander VI (1492-1503) - also known as Rodrigo Borgia - who was regularly taking his daughter, Lucrezia Borgia, to orgies, where everybody would be fucking everybody else. I repeat: This was the Pope.

One of Borgia's most lavish parties was known as "The Ballet Of The Chestnuts," where 50 naked prostitutes performed before, with, and on the invited guests.

Shortly before these tawdry affairs, Pope Sixtus IV (1471-1484) proclaimed, in 1476, that it was now possible for people to give money (or, Indulgences) to the church, and in return, their dead relatives - who were suffering in Purgatory - would be released, and fly up into Heaven.

Yes, rich people could now buy their way into Heaven, and be assured that their relatives would be there to meet them in Holy Paradise. Essentially, they could spend a lifetime shitting on people, and buy their way out of it in the end. This was all guaranteed by the Pope.

Is it any wonder Martin Luther detected some hypocrisy in the state of things? Well, he did, and on October 31, 1517, he took a piece of paper, which contained his "95 Theses" - 95 refutations of Papal Indulgences - and nailed it to the Castle Church in Wittenberg (now in Germany), and the Protestant Church was born.

This is only a summary - it's not like Martin Luther materialized out of thin air on October 31 - but this is what I was told.

Do you know why I wrote this? Because I was watching "Parks and Recreation" - in particular, Season 2 Episode 4: "The Practice Date," where they make fun of a lying politician who's an obvious parody of Mark Sanford (Mark Sanford was the Governor of South Carolina, who was supposedly out hiking on the Appalachian Trail, when he was down banging a woman in Argentina).

Sanford had met this woman in 2001, 8 years before, in Uruguay. They had met 7 times between 2001-2009, including 2 multi-night stays together. He also "crossed lines" with other women than his mistress. But he never had sex with them, or even with her until 2009. At least this is what I was told.

An interesting correlation is that Mark Sanford's six years in the House of Representatives (from 1995-2001 - he promised he'd only serve for six years), and then his term as Governor of South Carolina (2003-2011) ended up being nothing more than a "Practice Date." You see, after the sex scandal forced him to resign from public office, he ran again, and won a special election in 2013. Mark Sanford has paid his price for his indulgences, and is once again a member of the South Carolina House of Representatives.

It was Mark Sanford that inspired me to write this post. Mark Sanford, I'm sorry, Congressman Sanford, is a member of the Episcopal Church. The Episcopal Church describes itself as being Reformed, and "Protestant, yet Catholic."

Thank God things have changed.

[The Hersch]

Martin Luther was an important figure in the development of European Christianity, but no Protestant church was summoned into being by his tacking up his talking-points on a church door. Earlier figures like Jan Hus and John Wycliffe had a great deal to do with the second great schism in Christianity, as did contemporaries of Luther like Henry VIII and his ministers Thomas Cromwell and Thomas Cranmer, who together created the English Reformation with only fairly tangential influence from Luther. And lest we look too kindly on the Reformation, let's remember that it led to the Thirty Years' War, among the most catastrophic conflicts in human history.