One of the most significant milestones in Western history is only two weeks away: the 500th anniversary of the start of the Protestant Reformation.

It was Oct. 31 — Halloween — in the year 1517 when a bright but increasingly frustrated Catholic priest named Martin Luther challenged his church. While teaching biblical theology at a Catholic university in the Bavarian city of Wittenberg, Luther became troubled by wide disparities he observed between biblical and church teachings, particularly about the buying and selling of “indulgences” — absolution and other spiritual privileges — in exchange for money. The public seemed ignorant of the differences, mostly because the Bible was a handwritten document available only to wealthy people who could read Latin.

Luther, the son of a peasant copper miner, could read Latin better than the king. He also could read and write German, Greek, English and other languages.

Luther’s written challenge — we’ve come to know it as the “95 theses” — was nailed to the church door in Wittenburgh and sent to the Bishop 500 miles away in Mainz.

That might have been the end of it — except for the uncanny coincidental timing of history.

It was onlhy a few years earlier and a few steps from the Mainz cathedral that Johannes Gutenberg was making easy money with his new inventions: a printing press and moveable metal type. The new technology made it easy to make hundreds of copies of Luther’s 95 theses and distribute them across Europe, sowing the seeds of Protestantism across the continent. Bibles in plain languages, too.

And speaking of coincidental timing, Gutenberg and Luther were contemporaries of Christopher Columbus, traditionally celebrated as the discoverer of the American continents.

Columbus has been discredited and even besmirched in recent years for his abuse of indigenous people. Much of the criticism is deserved. And for the sake of full disclosure, Martin Luther was an anti-Semite, while Gutenberg made spare money by printing the Catholic Church’s indulgence certificates, which were the things that upset Luther in the first place.

All three were imperfect human beings, yet their combined gifts and talents enabled a schism of the church Luther regarded as corrupt to settle on a new continent, reinvent itself and prosper.

Nearly five centuries later, the sect is fully maturing, but to what end? Has it made any difference?

Case in point: In Crown Point, Indiana, a mother was outraged last week when her 9-year-old daughter, Cady, wanted to wear a pant suit instead of a dress to receive her First Holy Communion.

Every Catholic knows girls wear a white dress for First Communion.

After learning she planned to wear a suit to the ceremony, the local church said Cady would not be allowed to participate if she chose to wear a suit. The girl’s mother, Chris Mansell, posted on Facebook about the incident: “The only other option we were given that allows her to wear a suit is for Cady to receive First Communion privately, after the real First Communion ceremony. ... She can’t sit with her classmates. She can’t be in any group photos. If she wears a suit we have to pretend like my daughter doesn’t exist.”

Does this compare with NFL players taking a knee for the national anthem? Maybe not. The Mansells could always join another denomination. They don’t even have to nail any grievances to the door of their old church.