And then the 'church' went off the rails and ALLOWED the reformers to rise.
“They didn’t Christianize anything.”
Of course they did - and even the early Protestants would have agreed. Before the Catholic Church arrived Europe was pagan believing in many gods. After the Catholic Church came to Europe and taught people about Jesus - which they most certainly did - millions became Christians. They became Catholic Christians. There were no Protestants like yourself for more than 1400 years. Those are just the facts and there are plenty of Protestant scholars who admit them.
Actually all along from 300 AD when the Catholic church started with Constantine until 1500 when Luther posted his 95 Theses and the Bible was printed in French for the common folk to read, there were people who believed in the LORD Jesus Christ and not what the popes told them...
Until 300 AD there were Christians who believed in God and Jesus in the way the later Protestants wished to return to...
By keeping the masses ignorant and uneducated in Latin and other necessary written languages so they couldn’t read the Bible for themselves, the Catholic Church made up beliefs and practices which were convenient for them and brought them great wealth and power...
It was only after Luther went to the Catholic university that he had access to the Bible and read things in there that were never taught in any church...
That’s when he found that we were justified through faith in God and not because the local priest said so and we paid enough tribute to the pope...
Theres a great gulf of difference between Catholicism and Christianity...
Long before Queen Mary was burning Christians at the stake for believing differently than Catholics, people were persecuted and put to death and had to worship God in secret...They were often called hermits...
Luther and Jean Calvin didn’t start the world believing the way the Apostles had, they just brought the movement into the open..it was a protest against the heresies of the Catholic Church..a desire to reform the Church, to get back to the way the LORD Jesus had first designed Her to be, His unblemished Bride...
but it wasn’t a new idea...not by hundreds of years...
From the time of Jesus until now, there has always been someone somewhere who believed the truth about salvation through the Blood of Christ alone and not through any pagan words of a Catholic priest...
The Catholic Church tried in vain to stamp out that Truth, but they never succeeded...
Actually much of Europe was "christianized" by Charlemagne at the point of a sword. Convert or die.
And then the 'church' went off the rails and ALLOWED the reformers to rise.