Irishtenor, I see you are a Presbyterian, so thought it my opener to step in. Well, me too, in the past.
In the '50's as a young Presbyterian, I burned with desire to be a preacher. More important to me was the quest for truth no matter where it brought me, and guess where it brought me!
One day I heard the Rosary on a radio program, and puzzled at first, I was curious. First reaction: knee jerk declaration they were praying to Mary as if to an idol. Then I listened, finding Gospel and truth in what was said.
Then I started seeing my Presbyterian upbringing as OK, but sort of like Christianity Lite. To me the answers were with the Church founded in the year 33 by Jesus Christ as the Bride of Christ, and not an offshoot coming millenia later. And I understood without being taught the first time I witnessed it, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass was just that, the truth, and not what we were led to believe, dinner with Jesus and the homeless or whatever.
And, yes, I have read the heroic escapades of Luther but also several darker sides of hero Martin Luther, some my Mom, a devout Lutheran would never listen to. And I bet you never read the "rest of the story" either. Maybe you can locate some of it on a google search, the story of a troubled revolutionary bent on destruction, yet reluctant to let even his own mother part from the Catholic faith and insisting she continue to Mass. (Could it be he wanted his mom saved, even in the knowledge he was leading others astray?)
You might find he believed Marianology, the truth for what it was, then fought it anyway.
It really gets tough for me to see doubt and destruction as virtues any more. I can only doubt the doubters. It is tough as well to accept truth with footnotes and qualifications, when the simple truth is right there. The emptiness of my searching went away as I settled into being a plain old traditional Catholic.
Check out my own tagline to see where I came after the Presbyterian Church.
The whole praying to anything or anyone is a sin. When God gives you a direct line to him through his Son, why hang up and dial another number?
As for my being a follower of Luther, I am not. However, his book called "Bondage of the Will" gave me great insight as to the situation and belief in free will. All I did was recommend the book to someone and now I am branded a "Lutherite". One even accused me of choosing between Luther and Jesus. I also read books by Calvin, Boice, Sproul, Spurgeon, etc. All it makes me is well read.
As to what Luther believed, he was a Catholic, he always believed that he was a Catholic, and he felt that the Catholic church was in error. He tried to fix it. He never wanted to leave it. So, of course he would espouse all the things that the church was teaching.