In the 16th century the Catholic Church got very involved in the political issues and social economics in Western Europe. This lead to the churches growing power and wealth …show more content…
This meant that more people were able to read the Bible and put into practise/spread the word of God. (Henry Zecher, 1992) He also taught people that being close to God was an internal thing that involved yourself, God and you believing in your own faith and which stop the idea of being close to God meant that you had to certain things, which is what we are taught today. (History.com staff, 2009) Furthermore long terms effect of Martin Luther’s work include the following; we could and mostly all would be Catholics today, we wouldn’t have Protestantism without the Protestant reformation as Martin Luther generated a way people viewed religion. We still would be ruled by Papal, because of this reformation people started getting interested in how the church and the state split. We would not have religious freedom to worship which ever God we choose, we would still pay others to have our sins removed through confession and indulgences and having rituals like the Seven Sacraments instead of having an more real and personal relationship with God. Another impact Martin has had on the Catholic church today is that he changed society, politics views and contributed to the economics, people realised they had a direct link to God and didn’t have to go to church in order to get one. People also realised that they didn’t have to every sacrament to be deemed as a part of the faith, and the only ones you truly needed were baptism and Holy Communion and people also started believing that you didn’t have to pay for priests to pray to