This period brings a crystallization of tensions existing within Christianity and a significant cultural moment in western European cultural organizing shifting from a collective base to an individualized base. Like all things, the Reformation is both a tool and a weapon. In this period there is a shift from a Catholic structure where priests act as an intermediary between non-clergy and God to a new Protestant belief system in which individuals are seen as having a right to their own relationship with God. This allows a kind of individual agency over matters of faith that hasn't been part of Christianity for a very long period of time. The Protestant Reformation and the growth of Protestantism consolidates following the invention of the printing press, because now non-clergy can read the Bible and make their own interpretations and decisions.