Catholicism as a Tyrant to Christianity

In his speech to the Library of Congress, Thomas Mann said that Martin Luther was a tremendously great man even in his duality as a liberating and reactionary force. Mann believed Luther saved Christianity and reconstituted the church. The church acquired its wealth based on what Luther believed to be unrighteous ways. Luther believed that faith in God was key to forgiveness and believed that the Church was misleading in that financial support led to the absolution of sin. Luther essentially took money out of forgiveness, which allowed those who were not rich access to Christianity, in turn, preserving it. Luther saw the church as an unholy exploit, and felt its behavior was reprehensible. The movement that followed Luther's claims, including the anonymous author who wrote The Faust Book, believed that the hierarchy in the Church was greedy and did not act in the best interests of those who belonged to the church, especially the lower-classes.

The title character goes to the Pope's chamber and sees him acting gluttonously and unholy. Faust says, "I wish the devil had made a pope of me" when he sees the pope's company feasting on food, drink, and women. (130-131) Faust believes he would have made a great pope because he too is corrupt. The author uses Luther's belief that Catholicism at its core was evil and shows this through the illustration of the Pope's behavior. The text claims that the Pope and the higher-ups of the Church practice all sorts of debauchery. This is also emphasized by Luther in Table Talk in the sub-chapter XXIII: The Popedom Denieth the Power of Godliness .

Luther claimed in Table Talk that the power structure of the church as a whole is "against God" in that they "indeed… boast of much of God's word, of faith, of Christ, of the sacraments, of love, of hope, &c. But they utterly deny the power of virtue in all of these." (289) Luther believes that the Pope is corrupt and has sold his soul to the devil. In essence, the Pope is the anti-Christ. Luther does not feel that the church has its constituents in its best interest. Merely, the church is using the masses for money and convinces them that through the giving of resources they will gain the absolution of sin that they seek.

If you look at Engels' The Peasant War in Germany, the church used the threat of sin absolution as means to extort money from the poor. In essence, if the lower classes did not pay up, then the clergy would "not only use brutal forces, but all the intrigues of religion as well; not only the horrors of the rack…or the of absolution; they used all the intricacies of the confessional in order to extract from their subjects the last penny, or to increase the estates of the church". (40-41). Engels felt that the church had the power in that they wouldn't absolve sins unless the poor paid their last pennies for that absolution. Luther shared Engel's

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