[Someone]

But for Catholics, the pope can override ^W interpret what all those long dead people said, (mostly) because of chronology.

For Protestants, Luther came along and more or less said "make up your own mind", so everybody can make their own interpretation.

So, yes interpretation at the very least depends on where one wants to put the accents.

[mattlutze]

Luther was still mostly about the Catholic church's canon. His opposition was mostly to the business and political practices of the Church. Or, in other words, against the sale of indulgences for absolution of purgatory-condemning sanctions against living and dead parishioners.

In the beginnings of the 95 Theses he actually puts a favorable light on the Pope, in my brief re-reading [1].

Luther's protestants still held to the catacism(sp?), sacraments, transmutation of the hosts, etc. As far as I've ever understood it.

[1]: http://www.luther.de/en/95thesen.html

[jpt4]

The Lutheran Catechism differs from the Catholic on several points of theology, particularly the Lutheran orthogonality of salvation and sanctification [0], which are joint pursuits in Roman Catholicism. Regarding the nature of the hosts, Roman Catholics argue transubstantiation [1], and Lutherans speak "mu" to the question [2].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sola_fide

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_presence_of_Christ_in_the...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_presence_of_Christ_in_the...

[mattlutze]

I think sola fide is the concept I ham-fistedly attempted to express with the opposition to the business side of the Catholic church, insofar as it extended to mortals (the Pope included) declaring the sins of and absolving the sins of the people and their dead relatives, yeah? It seemed to all draw from points 10-20ish in the declaration.

And on the transubstantiation vs, dual-state can we call it, of the eucharist... my denomination considered it all symbolic, so I'd always really considered them the same thing (by which I mean, saying "it's just his body" vs "it's both his body and bread" were still "it's his body).

I'm not sure how foundational that distinction was when the schism occurred. Do you know by chance?

[jpt4]

> my denomination considered it all symbolic,

Is yours a Reformed church? The anti-institutional fervor of the later (post-Luther) Protestants led to many such purely mundane interpretations of the host, which Luther vigorously denied [0].

> I'm not sure how foundational that distinction was when > the schism occurred. Do you know by chance?

Though I do not know the relative impetus imparted to the Reformation by differences in belief about the nature of the hosts in the eucharist, it seems to have been a deeper divide within Protestantism than between P and the RC [1]. Charitably, Luther accorded the question of the metaphysical connection between bread and wine, body and blood as axiomatically resolved by accepting the Word of their identical existence as a matter of belief, independent of argumentative investigation (i.e., he "unasked" the question, or said "mu" [2]). Uncharitably, he dodged by declaring the answer uninteresting or irrelevant to Christian faith.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sacrament_of_the_Body_and_...

[1] http://socrates58.blogspot.com/2004/06/martin-luther-refutes...

Specifically: "Before I [Luther] would drink mere wine with the Enthusiasts, I would rather have pure blood with the Pope."

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu_%28negative%29#.22Unasking....