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SURE Protestant Reformer Martin Luther (former Augustinian Catholic monk) had cause to rebel and reform the Catholic Church back in the 16th century. There was a host of irregularities in the Church which ranged from the improper sale indulgences, corrupt clergy and those in high places, etc., just as there are problems in the Church of today. It was and still is a Church full of sinners.

I have numerous Protestant friends and relatives. I really respect them. I was one of them. I love them. They are very faithful and God-fearing people. However, Luther, I believe did not understand that God's Church is made up of sinners, and that Satan, even back then, was very hard at work in the Church-some even say he was hard at work through Luther. But Luther had good intentions. He reminds me of me; one that cannot sit around and have atrocities and wrong things being committed in full view. Last October 31 marked 490 even years since the big break with the Roman Catholic Church in 1517. Luther was excommunicated after Pope Leo X encouraged him to recant his actions and allow the Church to heal itself.

While Luther had a right to air his concerns about the abuses in the Church of the day, the man began to challenge Holy Scripture. Luther began to doubt, up to then, 1,500 years of Biblical interpretations by the Apostles and early Church fathers. His two main pillars for this: sola scriptura (Scripture alone) and sola fide (Faith alone).

I quote from a very powerful testimony in the form of one of Protestant (Presbyterian) converts to Catholicism, Scott Hann's "Rome Sweet Home". Luther and (John) Calvin (another Reformer) often said that this was the article on which the Church stood or fell. In James 2:24, the Bible teaches that "a man is justified by works and not by faith alone." Besides, Saint Paul said in 1 Corinthians 13:2, "if I have all faith so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing." Scott Hann, on his way to Catholicism, said in his book that Saint Paul never mentioned or taught that we were justified by faith alone and that solar fide was scriptural.

Martin Luther let his theological convictions contradict the very Scripture that he supposedly chose to obey rather than the Catholic Church. He declared that a person is not justified by faith working in love, but rather he is justified by faith alone. He went so far as to add the word "alone" after the word "justified" in his German translation of Romans 3:28 and called Saint James "en epistle

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