Luther broke away from the Catholic Church because he saw that there were many problems within it.  First, he did not find it right that the people had to pay indulgences. In many of his 95 thesis’ he stated the problems that had with the idea of paying the donation that the good work or sacrifice would then give you a spiritual benefit.  In the time of Luther the church was collecting donations through indulgences to raise money to build St. Peters Basilica.  Another thing was that the church suffered from one problem to the next.  At one point there were 3 different men all claiming to be the pope.  The problem with that is that there can only be one.  There were also troubles of the Islamic religion trying to take over along with the Babylonian captivity of the church.

There isn’t too much sense in saying that Luther started a “new” religion but because there were so many problems with the Catholic Church at the time it can be viewed as so.  Saying that he started a new religion isn’t the best, I would say that he created a new branch of the same religion.  I think this because there are still many similarities between Lutherans and Catholics and still having their differences.  The Lutheran Church is one of the closest Protestant churches to the Catholic Church.  Catholics and Protestants are both Christians they just have a difference between who’s in charge of the churches and what aspects they believe.  For the Catholics there is a hierarchy, starting with the pope and going down to the bishops, priests, and deacons.  Where as in the Lutheran Churches they don’t have that kind of hierarchy they just have their pastors of each church.  They believe that salvation was by faith alone and authority was scripture alone.