63
Christians Quarrel
Some people say young boys and girls can’t understand this chapter. They say it is too difficult. But I want to see if it is.
Up to this time, as I have told you before, there had been only one Christian religion—the Catholic. There was no Episcopalian, nor Methodist, nor Baptist, nor Presbyterian, nor any other denomination. All were just Christians.
But in the sixteenth century some people began to think that changes should be made in the Catholic religion.
Others thought changes should not be made.
Some said it was all right as it was.
Others said it wasn’t all right as it was. So a quarrel started.
This is the way the trouble began: The pope was building a great church called St. Peter’s in Rome. It took the place of the old church that Constantine had built on the spot where St. Peter was supposed to have been crucified head down. The pope wanted it to be the largest and finest church in the world, for Christ had said, “Thou art Peter, and upon this rock [Peter means rock in Latin] I will build my church....” So the Church of St. Peter’s was to be the Capitol of the Christian religion. Both Michelangelo and Raphael had worked on the plans for the new church. In order to get marble and stone and other materials for this Church of St. Peter, the pope did as others before him had done; he tore down other buildings in Rome and used their stone for the new church.
But besides all this the pope needed an enormous amount of money to build such a magnificent church as he had planned. So he started to collect from the people. Now, there was a man in Germany named Martin Luther who was a monk and a teacher of religion in a college. Martin Luther thought that not only this but also other things in the Catholic Church were not right. So he made a list of ninety-five things that he thought were not right and nailed them up on the church door in the town where he lived, and he preached against doing these things. The pope sent Luther an order, but Luther made a bonfire and burned it publicly. Many took sides with Luther, and before long there was a great body of people who had left the Catholic Church and no longer obeyed the pope.