"Actually, I believe this to be the correct view of things from the other side. To me, if one wished to be faithful to traditions, one would be Orthodox. I simply see a problem with relying upon traditions too much."
Your candor is as refreshing as your perceptions are accurate! :-)
"I suppose the Orthodox would say the Catholics left. Perhaps us Protestants can start saying the Catholics left us. I never thought about it like that."
Well, it works for us, but it really wouldn't work for you. Keep in mind that after the Schism, the Orthodox simply continued believing, worshipping, and practicing the ascetic/spiritual life in exactly the same way that they had always done.
Protestantism was not a matter of a pre-existing tradition that then separated from Catholicism. The way that Protestants were believing and worshipping 100 years after Luther started the ball rolling was very different from the way their Catholic parents and grandparents had believed and worshipped. There was a real break and real innovation -- even if that break and innovation was intended to be grounded in the primitive church of a millenium and a half earlier.
"I can’t quibble over this except to say the same is true for Catholics and Orthodox. There are some things the Fathers states that we all would agree upon. There are other things were we all might have sharp disagreements (I doubt any of us would agree with Augustine that all unbaptized babies automatically go to hell.). I’m sure the Catholic Church had great reasoning based upon the traditions of the fathers to give the Pope the final authority or the ability of the Church to sell indulgences."
There is certainly truth in what you say. But there are substantial differences. As I have pointed out before, Catholic usage of the patristic witnesses is subservient to the Magesterium, and amounts to ballast and proof-texting. Protestant usage of patristic writings seem mainly to me to be in the spirit of "see, Catholics, even these guys you call saints disagree with you on this or that point."
If you tell a Protestant that a particular Father contradicts Protestant teaching, he will say, "so what?" If you tell a Catholic that a particular Father contradicts a Catholic teaching, he will show how you can technically read that Father in a way that supports the Magesterium.
If you tell an Orthodox Christian that a given Father seems to contradict Orthodox teaching, he will likely place that Father in the greater Patristic tradition, and either acknowledge that there is ambiguity in the Patristic tradition or show that this particular Father is out of the consensus Patrum.
"If memory serves me correctly, it was the Church that asked Luther to recant; the Church never questioned whether it was in error. It was 100 years later that the Church finally admitted that selling indulgences was a bad thing. Rome was obviously wrong and admitted so by its action. Luther did turn to the writings of the scriptures to prove they were wrong. They just didn’t want to hear it.
Now given that situation what would you do? Would you ignore what is in the scriptures and just go along with the crowd recanting what the Bible states or, would you take your stand with the Bible and face up the Church? This is, after all, what this article is about."
First of all, as you know, you aren't going to find Orthodox defending medieval Catholicism and its abuses. We see that whole corrupt and confused world as being the logical consequence of being cut off from the rest of the Church.
That said, this line of argumentation is disingenuous in the extreme. If the sale of indulgences were all it was about, the Protestant world of 1700 wouldn't look much different from the Catholic world of 1700 -- since in neither world were indulgences being sold.
Luther seems to have seen a window of opportunity, and taken it. Again, we Orthodox have a particular perspective on this, since we completely agree that the medieval Catholic world had serious, serious problems -- the after-effects of which are still with us today, both in Catholicism and Protestantism.
But Luther, et al, did not use this time as an opportunity to return to the patristic understanding of Scripture and the faith. They rather elevated their personal interpretations above that of *any* era of the Church.
There is no doubt that the Catholic world of Luther's day was not going to accept anything from him but a complete recanting and return to the status quo. He would have been wrong to recant under those circumstances. But this fact does not subtract from the adverse effects of the alternative that Luther, et al, actually offered. A golden opportunity was squandered.