In the early sixteenth century, a broad sense of discontent spread through Western Christendom. Many believers were troubled by corruption within the clergy, by the sale of indulgences, and by the impression that the Church had grown rich, political, and distant from the Gospel. Renaissance humanism had encouraged Christians to read Scripture more closely and to measure church practice against the Bible. At the same time, princes and cities in the German lands of the Holy Roman Empire resented Roman influence and welcomed the idea of reform for their own reasons.
Into this climate stepped Martin Luther, an Augustinian monk and university professor in Wittenberg. Distressed by the indulgence campaign led by Tetzel, he published his Ninety-five Theses in 1517, arguing that forgiveness cannot be bought, that repentance is inward, and that the pope has no power to release souls from divine punishment. What began as an academic protest quickly reached a mass audience thanks to the printing press. Luther was summoned before church and imperial authorities and finally condemned at the Diet of Worms in 1521. Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony, intervened to shield him from arrest, protecting him partly from conviction that he deserved a fair hearing under imperial law and partly from political prudence. In hiding at Wartburg Castle, Luther translated the Bible into German in order to place Scripture into the hands of ordinary Christians.
Luther insisted that the Bible is the only ultimate authority and that a person is justified before God by faith alone, not by works or payments. These principles undercut the old structure of sacramental mediation and priestly authority and soon divided Europe. Religious wars followed; allegiance to the old Church or to the new confessions became a matter not only of piety but of politics and survival. When a great peasant uprising broke out in 1524–25, invoking divine justice and appealing to reforming ideas, Luther sharply condemned it; he insisted that spiritual liberty does not justify social revolt, and he called on rulers to put the revolt down.
Out of these struggles emerged the characteristic teachings of the Reformation: the primacy of Scripture over tradition, justification by faith alone, the priesthood of all believers, and the rejection of indulgences and other practices not grounded in the Bible. These claims loosened the Church’s monopoly and permanently changed the religious and political map of Europe.
This story is a great example of when people had enough and they are sick of the system. In order to change the leadership, to change the government or kings, mass movements are needed. Everyone has to think the same way, their shared consciousness must vibrate the same way. This is how people can achieve something.
What I am saying is that humans may be corrupt but there is still some hope that some of them despise corruption and they are willing to fight it. Religion history shows a number of examples when simple people realized how corrupt the Catholic Church was and they started fighting it. The same is true for governments and empires whose leaders are corrupt. There is a limit when people are tired and sick of greediness and they want to introduce something fair.