[this is the third try sending this]
The following are selected items from Martin Luther's 95
Theses.
http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/wittenberg/luther/w
eb/ninetyfive.html
50. Christians are to be taught that if the pope knew the
exactions of the pardon-preachers, he would rather that St.
Peter's church should go to ashes, than that it should be
built up with the skin, flesh and bones of his sheep.
51. Christians are to be taught that it would be the pope's
wish, as it is his duty, to give of his own money to very
many of those from whom certain hawkers of pardons cajole
money, even though the church of St. Peter might have to be
sold.
77. It is said that even St. Peter, if he were now Pope,
could not bestow greater graces; this is blasphemy against
St. Peter and against the pope.
82. To wit: -- "Why does not the pope empty purgatory, for
the sake of holy love and of the dire need of the souls that
are there, if he redeems an infinite number of souls for the
sake of miserable money with which to build a Church? The
former reasons would be most just; the latter is most
trivial."
86. Again: -- "Why does not the pope, whose wealth is to-day
greater than the riches of the richest, build just this one
church of St. Peter with his own money, rather than with the
money of poor believers?"
[the following excerpt comes from Johan Huizinga's HOMO
LUDENS - A STUDY OF THE PLAY ELEMENT IN CULTURE.
"The player who trespasses against the rules or ignores them
is a "spoil-sport". The spoil-sport is not the same as the
false player, the cheat; for the latter pretends to be
playing the game and, on the face of it, still acknowledges
the magic circle. It is curious to note how much more
lenient society is to the cheat than to the spoil-sport.
This is because the spoil-sport shatters the play-world
itself. By withdrawing from the game he reveals the
relativity and fragility of the play-world in which he had
temporarily shut himself with others. He robs play of its
_illusion_ -- a pregnant word which means literally
"in-play" (from inlusio, illudere or inludere). Therefore he
must be cast out, for he threatens the existence of the
play-community. . . . In the world of high seriousness, too,
the cheat and the hypocrite have always had an easier time
of it than the spoil-sport, here called apostates, heretics,
innovators, prophets, conscientious objectors, etc. It
sometimes happens, however, that the spoil-sports in their
turn make a new community with rules of its own. The outlaw,
the revolutionary, the cabbalist or member of a secret
society, indeed heretics of all kinds are of a highly
associative if not sociable disposition, and a certain
element of play is prominent in all their doings."]