Martin Luther, who shed light on the issue of sin, was a religious reformer who lived in the 16th century.
Catholics have a system called the Sacrament of Forgiveness. This is also known as 'confession'. This system requires confession of one's sins to a priest in church, which requires three elements. The three elements were: sincere contrition, confession of sin and atonement. The 'atonement' was to be done as specified by the priest, but when soldiers were sent to war in large numbers during the Crusades, exemptions were made for the faithful who found it difficult to make 'atonement'. Exemptions began to be made through donations, which gradually became institutionalised. The indulgences also came to be used as a means of saving people from purgatory. Catholic doctrine states that, in addition to heaven and hell, there is also purgatory as the place to which a person must go after death. Purgatory is the place for those who could not go directly to heaven, and they go to heaven after suffering in purgatory. A system was also established whereby the payment of money to the Church mitigated the time spent in Purgatory by those who had died. This allowed the Church to accumulate excessive amounts of money and become a den of human greed.
In exchange for money, the medieval Church corrupted its authority to forgive sins with sin.
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Truth and Eternity
SpiritualThe protagonist is a Christian and is fascinated by the world of the Bible. She eventually enters a seminary, but struggles between the problems and constraints of religion and her own faith. A modern-day 'Beneath the Wheel' that questions the funda...
