I'm sure somebody even if Luther did not would eventually have stood up and pointed to 'inconsistencies' that the Catholic church was engaging in at the time! But what if it was successfully surpressed! What would be the consequences. TV historian Ferguson suggests that the reformation was crucial in reawakening development in Europe, in particular economically - competition between catholic and protestant states, increasing literacy rates prompted by the need for bible reading, Webber points out that capitalism needed a protestant work ethic to spread, Ferguson says it was more accurately dependent on a word ethic, protestantism being a religion of word and thought, catholicism being a religion of symbol and ritual.