Do you not credit the Reformation with distributing the Word of God directly to households, decentralizing the faith?
Discussion
That has nothing to do with whether or not the reformers preach a valid gospel
But to answer your question, I would give that credit to the printing press.
Also, I don’t view “decentralizing the faith” as a good thing. Christ had one body, his Church is his body. There’s one true Church. While I would credit Rome with starting the endless schism/fracturing of Christ’s Church, I don’t think pushing the division even further is anything protestants should be proud of
I should clarify. I do think the printing press making the scriptures more accessible to the average person was a good thing. But the reformation “decentralizing the faith” was not a good thing. The Roman church became the OG protestant church when they fell into heresy and schism in 1054, then the reformation democratized the papacy. The reformation made everyone a pope. Their own infallible interpreter of scripture.
Depends on the amount of reform intended and accomplished. Roman Catholics think Lutherans are all part of the reformed church, aka “Protestant”, and they ARE… but Lutherans are far closer to Catholics than they are to all other Reformed church bodies.
And Catholics are hardly a monolith, even if they want to claim The Pope as a somehow uniting force.