“Sure it was.”
No, it wasn’t - as you yourself here help prove:
“There were highly placed individuals within the RCC who themselves wrote (in a joint letter to a pope) that the Church had been all but destroyed, in a sense, (by elements within the priesthood) themselves in that letter focusing merely upon the grotesque error of selling indulgences.”
Except that never happened: The Church was not “all but destroyed” by the selling of indulgences or anything else. The view you apparently hold to is out of touch with reality. It’s a myth created by Protestants trying to rationalize their rebellion against the Church. All you have to do is actually read historical works to know this is the case. No one can read Eamon Duffy’s Stripping of the Altars and believe the myth of the “all but destroyed” Church. After all even Protestants commonly admit that the Catholic Church in that same century of time was founding universities, sending missionaries as far away as Japan, publishing great works, and seeing plenty of indisputable saints raised by God in the bosom of the Church. That’s not an “all but destroyed” Church. What you’re saying is rational. You need to read this; you probably won’t:https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/rec.arts.sf.written/lxbX7oRpEeA%5B1-25%5D
I suppose I have to show (translated copy of) the letter?
You claim to be a historian.
Do you not know the name of the letter (what it came to be later referred as)? It's rather notable (no pun intended) although I cannot recall what it commonly referred to as, I can still recall the gist of it.
What I had just said was that priests within the RC church had written that very thing --- by which I intended to mean that they said as much in concept anyway, if not exact word-for-word.
If I'm illogical and irrational, then they were too.
Funny thing is, the pope they were writing to payed attention to what they were saying, and enacted reform (in part, anyway, though not the extents sought after, if memory serves) along lines of what they were more or less requesting...yet too there was much pressure from OUTSIDE the priesthood to do this also, so it's not like the RCC reformed itself from within on that one point (the sale of indulgences), all on it's lonesome.
Maybe that pope was "irrational" also. He would have to have been, if I am now as fully so (irrational) as you would have that to be (if you could get your way, and have everyone around here agree with you ---but I can't help but notice hardly anyone comes to your aid in these endeavors of yours to demonize whatever opposition you encounter on these pages).
I "need" to huh? From a Google forum is it? What's it going to say? Some extract at best, with fuller contexts safely distanced away somewhere else, inaccessible unless I buy and read a particular book. Correct? And then accept that one book as if it says it all, as if the selected extract is the "last word"?
And what would the subject matter be? That indulgences were not sold -- woops--- they were sold (they simply have to admit to some sale of indulgences, once the issue is pressed, anyway) but that it was just isolated occurrence, there wasn't all that much money involved, and besides, not much made it all the way to papal coffers, is that it? Just a minor detail, blah, blah, whitewash ---YOUR SPECIALTY---.
Why should I bother?
We are talking about differing things using the same words. This began with your own assertion that Churches other than the RCC (with the exception of the Orthodox, then again possibly not *all* of those, depending upon which RCC scorekeeper is consulted) are not Churches.
That's been backed by argument of assertion, coupled with added conditions which Christ did not include.