Luther Wasn't Pious

As soon as someone starts virtue-signalling it's important to assume the opposite of whatever they're signalling. The null hypothesis is that Luther was even more corrupt than the priests he was condemning.

The real story goes roughly like this: a peripheral duke had a beef with a central duke, and decided to attack him on religious grounds. Thus the duke hired Luther to be his patsy, so it wasn't quite as obvious. The scheme got a bit out of hand. 

Even Luther started preaching against the excesses in Protestant fanaticism...once he had secured a nice cushy chair for himself, of course. 

 

Either the Catholics would have listened to reasonable arguments, or they were incorruptibly corrupt. If they would listen to arguments, nailing something to their door is a teenage tantrum, not a dialogue. If they were corrupt, then nailing something to their door is nothing but a publicity stunt...in other words, an adult tantrum. 

Luther was violently proud, in the sinful sense, at the very least. If you genuinely think the Catholics are hopelessly corrupt, then you perhaps don't even bother to call your division a protest. You call it a restoration, and denounce them as un-Catholic.

Is there any actual evidence for Luther's piety?
Would Luther in fact approve of what his intellectual descendants have done?

I think the answer to that second one is "he wouldn't care" because he was flagrantly corrupt, but I am genuinely asking questions here. Perhaps, had he known the result of his actions, he would have lived a quiet life instead.  

 

See also: "saint" Francis, who took a vow of poverty but somehow ended up with de-facto property rights over a whole abbey... 

Know them by their fruits. The Amish don't tell anyone else how to Christianity properly. They just quietly do it, and Gnon clearly loves them for this. 

P.S. There's also the issue that you can make your hierarchies hostile to corruption. It should be uncomfortable and difficult, at the procedural layer, for corrupt priests to fit in. Christianity, by contrast, is uncomfortable and difficult for the genuinely pious.