Washington D.C., Oct 30, 2017 / 04:36 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- One fated Halloween, 500 years ago, Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of Wittenberg Castle in a dramatic act of defiance against the Catholic Church.
Or, he may have just hung it on the doorknob. Or mailed out copies.
Or, if he did nail it, the act of the nailing itself would not have been all that significant, because the door may have been used as a bulletin board where everyone was nailing announcements.
And he probably wasn’t all that defiant; he likely had the attitude of a scholar trying to raise questions and concerns. At that point, Luther didn’t know how defiant he would eventually become, or that his act, and his subsequent theological work, would lead to one of the greatest disruptions of unity in the Church’s history.
“This was not a declaration of war against the Catholic Church, nor was it a break,” Dr. Alan Schreck with Franciscan University of Steubenville told CNA.
“It was a concerned, Augustinian monk and biblical scholar correcting an abuse, and it was really a call for a dialogue.”
However, it took fewer than five years for this call for dialogue to transform into schism, rejection of the authority of the Church’s tradition and bishops and most of the sacraments, and a growing number of Protestant communities, united only by their rejection of the Catholic Church.
While historians debate just how dramatic was the actual posting of the 95 theses, its anniversary is an occasion to look back at what the role of the most popular Protestant was in the movement that ultimately split Western Christendom in two.
Who was Martin Luther?
Martin Luther was born on November 10, 1483, the oldest son of Hans and Margarethe Luther. His father, a successful business and civic leader, had grand visions for his eldest son’s life and sent him to school with the hopes he would become a lawyer.
While Luther completed his bachelor’s and master’s degree according to his father’s plan, he dropped out of law school, finding himself increasingly drawn to the subjects of philosophy and theology.
Soon after leaving law school, Luther entered an Augustinian monastery, a decision he would later attribute to a vow he made during a precarious horseback ride, when he was nearly struck by lightning in the midst of a storm. Terrified that he was about to die, the 21-year-old Luther cried out to St. Anne, promising that he would become a monk if he survived. He felt it was a vow he could not break; his father felt it was a waste of his education.
By all accounts, Luther was a Catholic success story before he became the leading figure of the Reformation. He joined the monastery in 1505, and by 1507 he was ordained a priest. He became a renowned theologian and biblical scholar within the order, as well as a powerful and popular preacher and lecturer at the University of Wittenberg in Germany.
During his years of study and growing popularity, Luther began developing the groundwork of his theology on salvation and scripture that would ultimately become deal-breakers in his relationship with the Catholic Church.
The offense of selling indulgences
But it wasn’t strictly theological ideas that first drove Luther to the ranks of reformation ringleader – it was his critique of the practice of selling indulgences, the central subject of his 95 theses, that catapulted him into the limelight.
According to Catholic teaching, an indulgence is the remission of all or part of the temporal punishment due to sins which have already been forgiven, and can be applied either to the person performing the prescribed act or to a soul in Purgatory.
To obtain an indulgence, one must complete certain spiritual requirements, such as going to the sacraments of Confession and Communion, in addition to some other act or good work, such as making a pilgrimage or doing a work of mercy.
But even years before Martin Luther, abuses of indulgences were rampant in the Church.
Instead of prescribing an act of prayer or a work of mercy as a way to obtain an indulgence, clerics began also authorizing a “donation” to the Church as a good work needed to remit the temporal punishment due to sin.
Increasingly, people grew critical of the sale of indulgences, as they watched money gleaned from people’s afterlife anxiety go to fund the extravagant lives of some of the clergy. The money was also often used to buy clerical offices, the sin of simony.
During Martin Luther’s time, in northern Germany, the young and ambitious prince-Archbishop Albrecht of Brandenburg was offered the position of the Archbishop of Mainz, but was unwilling to relinquish any of his previously-held power.
Meanwhile in Rome, Pope Leo X was demanding a considerable fee from Albrecht for his new position, as well as from the people of his dioceses for the fund to build St. Peter’s Basilica. Albrecht took out a loan and promised Rome 50 percent of the funds extracted from – as critics would describe it – preying on people’s fear of Purgatory.
For the St. Peter’s fund, the Pope had employed Dominican friar Johann Tetzel to be the Grand Commissioner for Indulgences for the country of Germany.
According to historians, Tetzel liberally preached the indulgence, over-promising remission of sins, extending it to include even future sins one might commit, rather than sins that had already been repented of and confessed. He even allegedly coined the gimmicky indulgence phrase: “As soon as a coin in the coffer rings / the soul from Purgatory springs.”
It was Tetzel’s activities that ultimately pushed Luther to protest by publishing his 95 theses.
The 95 theses and the seeds of reform
“When he posted the 95 theses, he wasn’t a Lutheran yet,” said Michael Root, professor of systematic theology at The Catholic University of America.
“In some ways they get things rolling, but what’s important is what happens after the 95 theses when Luther gets pushed into a more radical position.”
Regardless of how dramatically they were posted to the door of Wittenberg Castle on October 31, 1517, Luther nailed not only his theses but the feelings of many faithful at the time who were also frustrated with the corruption and abuse they saw in the Church.
Christian humanists such as Erasmus and St. Thomas More were contemporaries of Luther who also objected to abuses within Church while not breaking from it.
Meanwhile, Luther’s already-established reputation as a respected professor, as well as access to the printing press, allowed his theses and ideas to spread at a rate previously unmatched by previous reformers who had similar critiques of the Church.
“Clearly there was a kind of symbiosis between Luther and the development of the printing press,” Root said. “What he was writing was able to engage lots of people. Many of them were short pamphlets that could be printed up quickly, they sold well…so he was on the cutting edge of technology and he fit what the technology needed – short, energetic things people wanted to read.”
Most historians agree that Luther’s original intent was not to start a new ecclesial community – that idea would have been “unthinkable at the time,” Root noted. ??“So that’s too much to say; however, it’s too little to say all he want to do was reform abuses.”
By 1518, his theses spread throughout Germany and intellectual Europe. Luther also continued writing prolifically, engaging in disputes with Tetzel and other Catholic critics and further developing his own ideas.
For its part, the Church did not issue an official response for several years, while attempts at discussions dissolved into defensive disputations rather than constructive dialogue. As a result, early opportunities to engage Luther’s criticisms on indulgences instead turned into arguments about Church authority as a whole.
Swatting flies with a sledgehammer – Luther becomes a Lutheran
One of Luther’s most well-known critics was Catholic theologian Johann Eck, who declared Luther’s theses heretical and ordered them to be burned in public.
In 1519, the two sparred in a disputation that pushed Luther to his more extreme view that scripture was the only valid Christian authority, rather than tradition and the bishops.
“The Catholic critics quickly changed the subject from indulgences to the question of the Church’s authority in relation to indulgences, which was a more dangerous issue,” Root said. “Now you’re getting onto a touchy subject. But there was also an internal dynamic of Luther’s own thought,” that can be seen in his subsequent writings.
In 1520, Luther published three of his most renowned treatises: The Babylonian Captivity of the Church, On the Freedom of a Christian Man, and To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation.
By that time, it was clear that what Luther thought was wrong in the Church was not just the abuse of indulgences, but the understanding of the message of Christianity on some basic levels. Besides denouncing the Pope as a legitimate authority, Luther also declared that faith alone, sola fide, was all that was necessary for salvation, rather than faith and good works.
“Luther was definitely trying to fix what was a legitimate problem, which was pelagian tendencies, or people trying to work their way into heaven,” said Dr. Paul Hilliard, Assistant Professor and Chair of Church History at Mundelein Seminary. It had created a “mercantile attitude” in some people at the time of Luther – “if I do this, God will do this.”
“So Luther was trying to correct these things, but the phrase I sometimes say is that Luther swatted the fly of pelagianism with a sledgehammer. In order to keep any trace of humans earning salvation out of the system, he changed the system.”
Luther’s distrust of human beings did not particularly spring from his criticisms of indulgences and the subsequent pushback from the Church – it was in line with most anthropological thought at the time, which tended toward a very negative view of human nature. Therefore, in his Protestant views, he sought to get rid of any human involvement wherever possible – particularly when it came to interpreting scripture and salvation.
“On the scale of beasts to angels, most people (at the time) would have us a lot closer to beasts,” Hilliard noted.
The Catholic Church officially condemned Luther’s theses in a papal bull, Exsurge Domine, promulgated in June 1520, and in part authored by Eck. The declaration afforded Luther a 60-day window to recant his positions, lest he be excommunicated.
But by the time the papal bull was issued, Luther had not only denounced the authority of the Pope, but had declared him an anti-Christ. The window for reconciling views was all but closed.
The popular and political reforms
Despite Luther’s increasingly radical claims against the Pope and the Church, his popularity spread, due to his compelling and prolific writings and, to Luther’s dismay, his populist appeal.
Luther popularized the idea of a “priesthood of all believers” to the exclusion of an ordained, ministerial priesthood. Rather than bearing an indelible mark on their soul, in Luther’s view ministerial priests did not differ from the “priesthood of believers” except in office and work. This, along with his personality and background, appealed to the poor and working class of the time who were frustrated with the lavish lives of Church hierarchy, which typically came at the expense of the poor in rural areas.
“Luther was very much a populist, he was a man of the people, he was scruff, he came from sort of peasant stock, he spoke the language of the people, so I think a lot of the common people identified with him,” Shreck said.
“He was one of them, he wasn’t far away in Rome or a seemingly wealthy bishop or archbishop…so he appealed particularly to Germans because he wanted a German liturgy and a German bible, and the people said, ‘we want a faith that is close to us and accessible’.”
But Luther balked when his religious ideals spurred the Peasant’s War of 1525, as peasants in rural areas of German revolted, motivated by Luther’s religious language of equality. The year or so of subsequent bloody war seemed to justify those who dismissed Luther as nothing more than a social movement rather than a serious religious reformer.
In order to maintain the esteem of those higher up, Luther disavowed the unruly peasants as not part of the official reform movement, laying the groundwork for the Anabaptists to fill in the religious gaps for the peasants in the future.
However, the Peasant’s War wasn’t the only time the Reformation got political – or lethal. Because of the vacuum of authority that now existed in Luther’s pope-less, emerging ecclesial community, authority was handed over to the local princes, who took advantage of the reformation to break from the fee-demanding Pope.
Much of Germany had embraced Lutheranism by the mid 1500s, though some parts, such as Bavaria, retained their Catholic faith.
For his part, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V officially condemned Luther’s theology at the 1521 Diet of Worms, a meeting of German princes, during which Luther famously refused to recant his position with the words: “Here I stand. God help me. I can do no other.”
Despite Charles V’s opposition to Luther’s views, he allowed for Luther’s safe passage from the diet, rather than enforcing the customary execution of heretics, and thus forfeited his best chance for stomping out the Reformation at its roots.
Historians speculate that while Charles V personally opposed Luther’s views, he let him live because he also saw the decentralizing of power from the Vatican as something of which he could take political advantage.
Reformation fever was also catching throughout Europe, and soon Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland and England were all following Germany’s example of breaking from the Catholic Church and establishing state-run, Protestant ecclesial communities.
“I like to think of the story with the little Dutch boy with his the finger in the dyke,” Shreck said. “Once the breach was made, others follows his example. Once Luther did it, it was like the domino effect.”
“In a book by Owen Chadwick, he said the Reformation came not because Europe was irreligious, but because it was fervently religious,” Shreck added. “This was after the black death and a lot of social turmoil – people really wanted to turn to God and seek solace in faith.”
But the reformers were not all agreed on their beliefs, which led to the rise of numerous sects of Protestantism, including Calvinism, Anglicanism, and Anabaptism.
“Protestantism became very divided, though they all claimed to be doing the right thing because they believed they were maintaining the purity of the faith,” Schreck said.
Root noted that once the Protestant-Catholic divide “got embedded in political differences, between southern Europe and northern Europe, between Spain and England, and so the religious differences also became national differences, that just made matters far worse.”
“Once you have the wars of religion in 1546, then attitudes become very harsh. Once you start killing each other, it’s hard to sit down and talk,” he added.
The wars over religion would become especially pronounced in the 30 Years War of the 1600s, though at that point, religion had become more of a political tool for the state, Hilliard said.
“The 30 Years War is a really good indication that while religion was important, it was not the most important thing – it was a war between different competing princes to gain greater control of territories, during which religion was thrown into the mix,” Hilliard noted.
Could the Reformation have been avoided?
The million-dollar question at the center of Reformation history is whether the Reformation and the splitting of Western Christendom could have been avoided.
“Some would say by two years into the Reformation, the theological differences already ran very deep and there was no way you were going to get reconciliation,” Root said.
“But there are others who would argue that as late as the 1540s it was still possible that perhaps the right set of historical circumstances could have brought people together, and there’s no way of knowing, because you can’t run history again and change the variables.”
“Whether one could have settled it all then short of war, there were missed opportunities for reconciliation, that’s clear,” he added.
Luther’s fiery and rebellious personality, matched with the defiant and defensive stance that the Catholic Church took in response to his ideas, created a perfect storm that cemented the Protestant-Catholic divide.
Much of Luther’s thinking remained Catholic throughout his life, Schreck noted, including his devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary.
“I think if there had been a sincere effort on the part of the Catholic hierarchy that his concerns were legitimate, history might have gone in a different direction.”
It wasn’t until Pope Paul III (1534–1549), 17 years after the fated theses first made their rounds, that the Catholic Church as a whole took a serious and official look at its own need for reform, and its need to respond to the Protestant Reformation.
This is Part 1 in a three-part series on the Reformation. Part 2 will discuss the Council of Trent and the Counter-Reformation. Part 3 will discuss ecumenism today.
[…]
Did his grace light a candle before “St” judas?
I thought martin luther was dead.
The people this priest describes as breaking into tears and one passing out sound as though they have significant mental issues and need therapy . But that is not a good reason to change church teaching. It should be obvious that if such folk find catholic teaching unpalatable, there are literally thousands of super liberal churches where “anything goes”, which they can join. But such sexual excess should not be expected to be accepted by the faithful who know that such actions are in fact wrong and sinful.This is an exceedingly slippery slope, and I hope I am dead by the time there is a push for acceptance of polygamy and bestiality, or even, yes, pedophilia. Some prohibitions are pronounced by the church as wrong, period, and are NOT a matter of conscience to be decided by individuals.
Bishop Wilmer is lip syncing the false wisdom dropping from the lips of Cardinal Hollerich, and from Bishop Bats-sing (who surely has a role in parceling out the state church tax).
Why is one reminded, too, of the neighbor’s dog? Who, after having done his business on your front lawn, then does a 180 to kick grass over the droppings! Likewise, with the sexual abuse crisis in Germany–turn human sexual morality completely around so as to kick aromatic verbiage over recent history!
Similarly, also invert the Vatican reminder that schismatic Germany is betraying the universal Catholic Church. In Wilmer’s very localized mind, the “task is to serve unity…in such a mixed situation.” The barking Wilmer asspires to be the “bark” of Peter!
Neighborhood alert! Send Bishop Wilmer a doggie poop bag.
Is the Roman Catholic Church serious about following Jesus?
“Unity” means ABSOLUTELY NOTHING when it means unity with men and women who reject the commandments of Jesus, and unity with Bishops who would silently accept unity with apostates for the sake of counting heads.
It is no surprise that the Church is now under the control of apostates, as reluctantly hinted at by Fr. Robert Imbelli in his essay “No Decapitated Body.”
What is happening now, the open threat to officially promote and/or allow apostasy, is what happens when our Church started ordaining and promoting openly apostate Bishops in the 1970s, among these many openly apostate German Bishops, such as Walter Kasper, who denies the bodily resurrection of Jesus.
On what possible grounds can our Catholic Church ask to be taken seriously, when its pontiffs have promoted and ordained apostate Bishops, granting apostolic teaching authority to outlaws who deny the Gospel and the Creed?
On what grounds can the Church ask to be taken seriously?
Why would you ever believe that the Catholic Church could deny what She has always taught as if the 1960’s was the beginning of true Catholicism because this is exactly what Catholics have been deceived into believing? Since Vatican II the denial, doubt, ambiguity, and contradictions about so many of the dogmas of the faith is its modis operandi and none of this can ever be said about true Catholicism. These people are not members of the Catholic Church but members of a counterfeit church with an anti-Catholic religion as its foundation.
As I recall: The commandments of Jesus are two: Love God above all else and Love your neighbor as yourself.
Yes and warning your neighbor of sin is loving your neighbor. It’s a spiritual work of mercy…recall ‘Go and sin no more.’
Enabling sin, as the German bishops are doing, would be the opposite
Dear Kate:
On further recollection, what you alluded to is a gloss of “The Greatest Commandment,” which is recounted in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke. In Matthew’s account, Jesus affirmed (in answering the lawyer) “the greatest and first commandment” is “You shall love God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and all your strength.” And Jesus said that “the second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two hang all the law and the prophets.” (Matt 22) And in Mark’s account, Jesus ends by saying “There is no commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12)
Then recalling these accounts, Jesus is saying that these are greater than all of the other commandments, and thereby reminding us that there are other commandments.
And in the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew’s account (Matt 5), Jesus declared “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law and the Prophets, I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.” And then Jesus set about to start adding even more commandments, as the law-giver who declared himself “greater than Moses.” And the commandments he gives are recognized to be very demanding, and hard to follow. For instance, Jesus declares: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that every one who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” (Matt 5: 27-28) That is a very strict commandment, and is what Jesus commands about our sexual behavior, penetrating our very thoughts.
And then Jesus adds another very demanding commandment: “You have heard it said: ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. For if you love only those who love you, where is the reward in that? Do not even tax collectors…and pagans do that? Be perfect therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
In recollection, Jesus doles out a lot of very stern commandments, sexual-wise, and charity-wise, etc.
As he recalls to us: “Apart from me, you can do nothing.” (in John)
And it seems, therefore, that the Bishop called “His Excellency Wilmer,” and other Bishops like him, such as “His Eminence McElroy” and “His Eminence Hollerich,” etc etc etc, are “apart from Jesus.”
The evil one’s greatest victory is within reach.
A fitting end for a church that stood by while more than a billion children were being butchered over the past fifty years.
Jesus, forgive us for our fecklessness and our hypocrisy.
Are you personally involved in any of this “fecklessness and hypocrisy”? Then what would you need Jesus to forgive you for? Isn’t it the responsibility of those who are involved in this fecklessness and hypocrisy to admit it, repent, and vow to sin no more so that then they may ask for Jesus’ forgiveness?
We’re all involved in one way or another. If we lie to ourselves to pretend we’re not, then that is one way in which we are involved.
Bishop Wilmer pens a letter full of apostasy and error. Instead of being warned about his beliefs and told to take time off to reconsider his thoughts he will probably be promoted. Meanwhile, Catholics who hold to the truths of the faith which are pronounced unequivocally in the ancient mass are demonised and persecuted because the church hierarchy no longer holds to its theology. This is the chastisement Our Lady warned us about at Fatima, its only going to get worse. There will be a springtime in the Church, but it will come from the hands of Our Lady, not some council.
Well, this guy certainly has Cardinal McElroy’s vote.
Since the root cause of the Church sex abuse disaster was unquestionably gay priests preying on male adolescents, how can the German synodal embrace of gay relationships seriously be considered a response to or correction of that catastrophe?
If all this leads to schism, so be it. I believe, In all humility, schism must be chosen over infidelity and apostasy.
Simply following the “spirit of Vatican II” and of all of the leaders since then.
There is no “spirit of Vatican II”. The documents are clear, you should read the documents, they do not include any of what is being promoted by this pontificate. The interpretations have been the issue and do not in anyway support Wilhmer.
From direction of Catholic doctrine to indirection began with Francis’ unexplained dismissal of then CDF prefect Card Gerhard Müller’s three indispensable priest assistants, to revision of Curia order of primacy Propaganda Fide replacing the CDF.
If Pope Francis had a rationale for the abrupt, unexplained firing of Müller’s priests, it can be reasonably explained in the prospective appointment of charlatan Bishop Heiner Wilmer. A Charlatan is The Pardoner in The Canterbury Tales who tricks sinners into buying fake religious relics. In this instance Pardoner Wilmer tricks sinners into buying fake legitimacy.
Well said as always Father. My discontent in reading Mr. Weigel columns these days stems from his failure to take on Francis directly. He knows full well of his many outrages and never says anything. I read all his books prior to his fantasies about “the next pope,” which seemed to have been written as though a return to stable orthodoxy is a near certainty. Criticisms around the edges do not suffice during the most ominous time in Church history.
“Criticisms around the edges do not suffice during the most ominous time in Church history.”
A most appropriate comment.
So either a confused stupid God, “still in the process of learning how to be God,” spread confusion and misery among His creation for thousands of years by instilling in them a natural sense of a coherent family unit upon which a greater society would be built but this Supreme Being was ultimately mistaken, or a mean sadistic God, interested in torturing His creation with endless moral confusion just for His own amusement, who led His creation to where it is impossible to understand right from wrong with the proper ordering of their biological nature, we now have, thankfully, theological minds, superior to God, willing to sort through God’s shortcomings.
Martin Luther redux.
Germany is a pagan country not least due to most Catholic bishops there having apostacized.
‘Conservatives’ – You’re Rad Trads!
Traditional Catholics – okay, but we told ya!
It was within weeks that Bishop McElroy was elevated before he spoke the quiet part out loud regarding the synod on synodality, confessing it “gives the liberals in the church the opportunity to complete the revolution they began at Vatican 2”. I can’t help but ponder the message given by Our Lord to Sister Marie de St. Pierre that due to offenses against the Holy Name of God and the command to keep the Sabbath holy, the world would suffer the “chastisement of revolutionary men”. One year later, on the anniversary of this message, Karl Marx published his Communist Manifesto. The world has suffered revolutionary men ever since. God help us and the church, “where else are we to go, Lord, only You have the words of eternal life”.
Someone recently commented on CWR whether Papa should be asked if he is a homosexual! Perhaps we don’t need to ask. Papa’s silence is thundering on this heretical matter?
This seems to me to be the same old … same old…pharisees vs Christ: Any new approach based on further knowledge frightens the bejesus out of the old school. As the RC church moves forward some will stay behind. Don’t old fashioned Jews still go to the Wailing Wall, hats, curls and all? The Tree of Life needs the unchanging trunk but that trunk would die too in the absence of new leaves bringing fresh sunshine, chemicals etc from leaf to root so that growth can continue.
So human beings never delude themselves and call it “new knowledge”. How are value judgments a question a “knowledge” in the first place? And how can God change His mind about truth? And when did Jesus ever contradict received moral truth? Don’t confuse morality with ritual now.
Come right out with what you are saying. No need for coded speech and vague allusions.
Speaking of new leaves…
Genesis,,,And God created man to his own image: to the image of God he created him: male and female he created them. And God blessed them, saying: Increase and multiply…
Matthew…Who answering, said to them: Have ye not read, that he who made man from the beginning, Made them male and female? And he said: For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they two shall be in one flesh.
Therefore now they are not two, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.
Kate Grace, I didn’t have time the other day for a longer answer, but your understanding of the conflict of visions between Our Lord and the Pharisees is a reversal of Christian reality. Yours is a secular belief in inevitable progress based on a faith and trust in elitist superiority, the very thing the Pharisees, who were essentially more like secular progressives in their day than people of authentic faith, condemned Our Lord for undermining their dominant capricious rituals by His preaching the eternal, unchanging nature of truth. Progressives have always sought to reimage Jesus as one of them, as a revolutionary, when He is the exact opposite, the perfect reactionary, a non-elitist because He reminded us what is placed in every heart to know, that truth, all truth, is immutable because it comes exclusively from God, not from phony elitists. Our Lord’s preaching is a rebuke to the human vanity that needs to treat truth as fungible for those seeking the prestige of innovation or for those seeking to avoid impeachment from moral truths that never change.
Bravo George! A devastating laying out of what is at sake here. If this man is indeed made head of what we used to call the CDF then all the cards, as you say, will truly be face up. There can be no hiding behind any of the usual fig leaves this time.
Come on, Dr. Chapp! “If this man” is elevated then the cards are face up? Are you kidding me? The cards are already face up, and they have been for 10 years. Only fools have either refused to see them or have pretended they are still face down. I agree with the comment above – Weigel and others go to great lengths not to address the real issue explixitly. And that issue is PF.
The cards have been face up for longer than 10 years, but who is counting.
Maybe the Protestants aren’t so crazy after all. In the face of all this craziness the only thing we can really trust is the Bible. Popes can dismiss previous magisterial teaching and reform the Catechism, but God’s Word is forever and unchangeable.
Hallelujah to the Lamb of God. Our Saviour and Counsellor.
Hardly “unchangeable”. Besides all the hundreds of opportunistic translations that were made during and after the protestant “reformation”, a number of books of the Bible were dropped by the protestants. Why? They didn’t think they were “inspired”, since they disagreed with their content. For “unchanging scriptures” you go to the Vulgate, or even better, the oldest extant copies in Hebrew and Greek.
Ok. Even if that simplistic apologetical trope was true, what option do we have then? Where can one go for firm guidance? Surely not the liquid magisterium of the present pontificate. Sure I can quote past Church documents, but no one (including this Pope) cares. Have you ever listened to some apologists endlessly arguing Church documents (watch an old Gerry Matatics debate)? It’s mind numbing and soul crushing because at the end of the day one can simply say…the present Pope doesn’t believe or teach that, and there you are left standing there with a Church document that has been robbed of its authority by the supreme authority in the Church. It’s much harder to do that with the Bible. In these times, I’d rather stick with the Bible which we know is inspired by the third Person of the Holy Trinity. Notice when anyone wants to refute the German Bishops or Francis or question Biden’s reception of Communion they usually go straight to Scripture? Why? Because we implicitly know there is something very special about it and that its authority is unparalleled. So…when in doubt go to the Bible and in that perhaps the Protestants are on to something.
Yet protestants changed/change God’s Word. Indeed, Martin Luther wanted to remove God’s Word. Protestantism goes back to John 6 when disciples no longer walked with Jesus. The German bishops are doing the same thing.
Let me put it to you this way:
Pope says X
Bible says Y
Who do you listen to? How you answer the question will determine what is the greater authority in your spiritual life…also notice that in this we know the Bible will never command anything that goes against God. Why? Because it is inspired by Him.
Nope the choice is….do I listen to God’s Word, which comes to us through Scripture, Tradition and the teaching Authority of the Catholic Church? Or….do I listen to a protestant’s unbiblical word of sola scriptura? I think I’m gonna go with God on this, thanks.
OK. But then we have the Pope himself saying that divorced and remarried Catholics can receive Communion in some cases, in clear contradiction of Jesus’ own words in the Gospel of Matthew and St. Paul’s admonition against receiving Communion unworthily. Even the plain language of Scripture is no impediment to those bent on fomenting revolution.
But notice that you went to Scripture to disprove Francis’ ideas. In other words, Scripture takes precedent.
Scripture alone is not the answer, to begin with, which bible do you look too? The Protestant bible was deliberately amended to fit Luthers heresy, and is continually misinterpreted by Protestants to fit their own ideas, which is why there are thousands of Protestant sects. Stick to catholic bible, tradition.
That’s been done before too. The first Pope denied Christ three times! I’m certainly not defending this Pope but looking to protestants is not the answer.
If the Magisterium collapses, we won’t even be able to trust the Bible. It’s true meaning will be obscured. It will be interpreted in accordance with the spirit of the age and in a manner that fits with one’s preferences and prejudices, viz. it will mean whatever one wants it to mean.
This seems to me to be the same old … same old…pharisees vs Christ
Exactly! The Pharisees went wrong by placing man-made doctrines ahead of God’s revelation — just like the ‘Synodal Way’ crowd.
“If the appointment of Bishop Wilmer to the position once held by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger is made, it would not only be a mortal insult to the memory and legacy of Pope Benedict XVI.”
Correction – ANOTHER mortal insult.
Let’s call a spade a spade. These are *heretics* in conversation with the devil. They are not to be listened to. The good news is that eventually, the bishops of the world will grow a spine, like the Spanish bishops. The heresy will be called out, and proper responses made.