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The Reformation began with those Catholics that thought reform of the corrupt and greedy clergy was possible. For hundreds of years the clergy as a group was a moral sink hole of concubinage, whore mongering and the selling of their offices. As long as they could engage in simony on a wide scale all the half hearted edicts and councils were worthless since the hierarchy loved the income they could skim off the top.

People start all kinds of things over the best of motives. Look at the Bolshevik revolution in Russia. The point is to determine who has the power, why they want it, why they have it, and what are they doing with it.

Look at the novelties developed over the last 500 years, with each innovation being stranger than the last. Is there any doubt that Jim Jones (The People's Temple) or David Koresh (Branch Davidians) was a logical and expected development of the thinking that came from the Reformation?

Regarless of what the Reformation was protesting against, a separate topic, the results of the Reformation have given us the LDS, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Heaven's Gate.

If you wish to talk about motives in the Reformation first spend some quality time with the history books.

Already have. We can speak to the motivations of certain individuals, we can speak to the motivations of those that made it succeed, we can speak to the rewards of those in power afterwards, and we can speak to the modern results of the Reformation.

For those not inclined to crack the history books,
By the 13th and 14th century Catholicism had a number of splinter groups, heretical in the eyes of the authorities but purer in their Catholic belief than the rest by their own lights.
There were Brethren of the Free Spirit, the Beguines, The Catharists, Waldenses and many others, including the Flagellants who beat themselves bloody as though shedding their own blood was superior to having it shed by others.

Novelty indeed, unless one has that very special leather belt hanging in their closet.

“Is there any doubt that Jim Jones (The People's Temple) or David Koresh (Branch Davidians) was a logical and expected development of the thinking that came from the Reformation?”

Not necessarily, there was plenty of craziness going on under the rubric Catholic that we can find precedent there for Jones and Koresh and this long before the Reformation.

Was the Reformation successful? Only to some degree as the reformers thought they could do just that.. reform the way the management ran the enterprise rather than question whether it was legitimate in the first instance.

That the Reformation nourished a greater freedom to investigate the Scriptures is probably its most valuable legacy.

“Regarless of what the Reformation was protesting against, a separate topic, the results of the Reformation have given us the LDS, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Heaven's Gate.”

None the three has ever tried to put a torch to my feet and the past willingness of the Catholic church to do so when it had the ability tells me that last statement is utter nonsense.

“Already have. We can speak to the motivations of certain individuals, we can speak to the motivations of those that made it succeed, we can speak to the rewards of those in power afterwards, and we can speak to the modern results of the Reformation.”

Where is the speaking to the moral depravity that cried out for a reformation? It's there in those history books.
And the latest $2 billion plus clergy scandal shows that novelty may not always be bad.

So on the one hand, the faith of Catholicism has no responsibility or blame whatsoever concerning all the pedophile priest scandals, (and whose administration did not lead towards those scandals), because these priests were all lone wolf bad apples who were in fact perverting everything true Catholicism stands for. But on the other hand, the faith of Reformed theology IS to blame and is indeed culpable for leading to the likes of Jim Jones and David Koresh 500 years later? Come on, even this one would get picked up at an airport screening.