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.
[…]
It’s time for a chat across ideological boundaries. And a chat that reaffirms LAW and yet is not burdened by HISTORY? Which law, and what history?
“…one can and must say simply that Marxism failed as an all-embracing interpretation of reality and a directive for action in history [!]. Its promise of freedom, equality and welfare for all was not verified by the empirical facts; it was shown to be false on the basis of political and economic facts. Although these assessments are correct, one would remain on a superficial level if one were to be content with them. Rather, we must take one step farther [today, synodally “walking together”?] and ask: But what is specifically false in this interpretation of the world and in the praxis [Stalinism, etc.] deduced from it? An exact observation of the events leads directly to the heart of the matter: the power of the spirit, the power of convictions, of suffering and hopes, has thrown down the existing structures. This means that the materialism which wanted to reduce the spirit to a mere consequence of material structures [the “law” of history!], to the mere superstructure of the economic system [!], has been brought down. But here we are no longer speaking only of the problem of Marxism and its world of states [now the paradisiacal China, Venezuela, North Korea, etc.]—we are speaking about ourselves. For materialism is a problem that affects us all; its breakdown compels all of us to an examination of conscience” (Ratzinger, “Turning Point for History,” Ignatius, 1994).
The FAMILY, too, is only a consequence of economic forces (F. Engels, “The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State,” Moscow, Foreign Languages Publishing House, originally Zurich 1884). What, then, of Natural Law?
So now, a dialogue with “concrete” Marxists–in what way distinguishable from Marxism (?)–and this theological riddle in the hands of Prefect Fernandez who seems skilled in only the rhetorical harmonization of contemporary “polarities,” since nothing deeper or more concrete (!) seems to be on the synodal roundtable.
Skilled and skilleted—”from the frying pan [the, yes, imperfect market economy] into the [perfect]fire”?
About any “chat across ideological boundaries,” the presumed “harmonization of polarities” (both my wording), and the fallacy (!) of any third way between Capitalism and Socialism, the Catholic Social Teaching is not a middling third way, but rather the “negation of ideology”.
So, in regard to the noted rule of LAW (Pope Francis), and from a predecessor who lived through the (erased?) HISTORY of Communism and who wrote on the threshold of the 21st Century, the following clarification from St. John Paul II—when asked whether capitalism was the path for a post-Soviet eastern Europe and beyond:
“The answer is obviously complex. If by ‘capitalism’ is meant an economic system which recognizes the fundamental and positive role of business, the market, private property and the resulting responsibility for the means of production, as well as free human creativity in the economic sector [papal caricature: “invisible hand”, “finance and market mechanisms”?], then the answer is certainly in the affirmative, even though it would perhaps be more appropriate to speak of a ‘business economy,’ ‘market economy’ or simply ‘free economy.’ But if by ‘capitalism’ is meant a system in which freedom in the economic sector is not circumscribed within a STRONG JURIDICAL FRAMEWORK which places it at the service of HUMAN FREEDOM IN ITS TOTALITY, and which sees it as a particular aspect of that freedom, the CORE OF WHICH IS ETHICAL AND RELIGIOUS, then the reply is certainly negative” (John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, CA n. 44, caps added).
Without diminishing the value of grounded dialogue (more than a flat-table synodal “process”?), what more is the perennial and incarnational Catholic Church bringing to its engagement with Marxists/Marxism, in addition to only a call for “poetry” and “creativity” (https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/speeches/2024/january/documents/20240110-dialop.html). More than a polarity, the Catholic Social Teaching “belongs to the field . . . of theology and particularly moral theology” (CA n. 55; Rerum Novarum n. 153).
Peter. This may well be, reading with moderately jaundiced eyes an adroit overture by His Holiness to expand the cooperative success of his Vatican China policy to include the universal Church.
Humor aside, admittedly, this pontificate has attracted ranking churchmen who have an affinity with Marxist socialist doctrine. We’re aware of high praise for the China regime being touted as a near perfect assimile of Christianity. Indeed there is that resemblance of communal equanimity inclusive of goods. His Holiness has expressed as much in his social doctrine, we recall his universal salary proposal, also his consistent appeal for the poor which is the perceived good of Marxism, a tenet of the Gospels. The difference is this pontificate minimizes the moral dimension as revealed by Christ in favor of a Marxist type of communal justice.
And it is hard to avoid wondering if his minimalizing of personal moral dimensions and heroic responses of personal virtue to heal fragile human woundedness or combat darkest humanity, inspired in ways only accessible through religion, from divinely endowed graces and sacraments, might be due to a dearth of authentic faith in whatever vestigial religious sense does inspire or fails to inspire his mind and soul. Marxists have never hidden their absolutist faith, and conceits, in elitist ordered social engineering, murderously intolerant of counterrevolutionaries. A faith in an eventual restructuring of the Church and the world to eradicate all evil often seems to govern Francis’ publicly expressed values, no matter how he might use prepared, perfunctory Christian rhetoric in Angelus addresses that would imply the imperfectability of the human condition, short of Our Lord’s return, were he to consider the meaning of the actual words.
Thanks, dear Fr Peter Morello PhD.
Any political or social system that cancels or curtails the freedom of human persons to choose between right & wrong ethics is a system that opposes what God is doing in this Universe & World.
God, the source of all, is the freely choosing Spirit who always autonomously chooses merciful self-giving love, right-ethical holiness, & perfectly just goodness.
Humans are the only living beings that we know of that share the capacity to choose godly right ethics, or devilishly wrong ethics. We are all EChOs – ethically choosing organisms. It is a maximally serious matter to be a person “in God’s image & likeness” – the opportunities are truly spectacular, the dangers really dreadful.
When militia, politicians, and other social managers (including AI) coerce or dictate in such a way as to diminish or remove the possibility for individual ethical choice, they quench the image of God in us.
Regimented societies have a certain appeal to demi-god rulers and even, tragically, to many who simply want to live a simple life according to the ‘rules of the system’.
This is de-humanizing because it suppresses the freely ethically choosing image of God in us, our source of personhood and our resonance with Heaven.
May God preserve us from Marx, Putin, Xi Jin Ping, ‘Pope’ Francis, and all their like.
Ever in the freedom won for us by Jesus Christ; love & blessings from marty
“Pope Francis this week called for cooperation between Christians and Marxists as a way to achieve greater “dialogue” and help in the search for the “common good.”
Yes, because 20th Century history has given us ample evidence that Marxists have people’s best interests in mind 🙄. Francis, please just stop talking.
All sorts of useful idiots were conducting “dialogues” with the Marxists: PAX in Poland, Pacem in Terris in Czechoslovakia, etc. Under Paul VI, Catholic-Marxist dialogue went on steroids under the leadership of Secretary of State Agostino Casaroli, a lunacy that did not stop until somebody who had real experience of Marxists — Karol Wojtyla — ended it. By then, the Hungarian hierarchy was largely a branch wing of the Hungarian Communist Party, the Czechoslovak sees were vacant, Uniate Catholics in Russia abandoned, etc. Now, the same mindset pursues this policy vis-a-vis Beijing, even though it is clear it is yielding nothing. One wishes Francis would stop his incessant “dialogues” and get down to doctrine (as it exists, not as he might wish it to be).
A revealing history! Thanks, dear John Grondelski.
Do you think this leopard can change his spots . . ?
I think Fidel Cadtro needs help harvesting his sugar cane crop. I’ve volunteered the name of one Jorge Bergoglio as sumpathetic to the cause.
I was so tempted to quip, when was the last time any Jesuit did an honest day’s work? Then my guardian angel kicked me and reminded me of the good Jesuits I met when I did some amount (not enough) of missionary work in the third world.
It’s great to see the pope getting past “rigid ideologies,” isn’t it? Ideologies that don’t starve millions, put opposing voices in gulags, build iron curtains to keep people from fleeing oppression, suppress religion, on and on. Marxism has such a stellar resume of greater dialogue and search for the greater good.
This pontiff continues to astonish.
O Lord, how long?
I’m getting confused.
Didn’t Pope Francis recently say that you weren’t supposed to sup with the devil?
Yes, but he was referring to other people, not himself 🙄.
(Sigh.)
Why am I not surprised?
One hundred innocents murdered over the past century isn’t enough to show what a bad idea this is?
How could someone this stupid have tied the Church into such knots?
I meant one hundred *million* innocents murdered over the past hundred years.
Sorry.
Actually, historians have now revised the figure closer to 140 million. And this does not include the aborted babies.
I am increasingly of the opinion that Pope Francis is not stupid at all. He and those he elevated to be cardinals know exactly what they are doing. They are working according to the plan worked out by the modernists at Vatican II to make the Church more compatible with the spirit of the modern age. A spirit directly contrary to the teachings of Jesus and they will fail. As Pope Benedict predicted we will become a much smaller Church, as many will decide they don’t need the Church at all. They will not see them selves as sinners in need of salvation.
Mr. Snow,
You get the BINGO prize! The Pope and his cardinals know EXACTLY what they are doing. Just as former president Obama, upon becoming a US President, advised that “America is about to undergo a “fundamental” change”, so to is Francis implementing fundamental changes with the other men who seem to be acting as politicians in the Vatican. Yes, they know exactly what they are doing, and perhaps, Archbishop Vigano has it right that the Swiss Guards at the Vatican should arrest the Pope and his seditious and heretical cohorts and remove them from the Lord’s Holy of Holies here on earth.
JCALAS!
“Dialogue” often leads to compromise. As in, you say 2+2=4; I say 2+2=6; so the correct answer must be that 2+2=5.
Someday, will we have St. Marx, patron of murderous ideologies? Perhaps there will be St. Pollyanna, patroness of dangerously naive dialogue?
As a Jesuit, this meeting is like the Pope talking to himself.
The Christian and Marxist conceptions of the common good are diametrically opposed. We should dismiss the Holy Father’s call for cooperation with groups and governments who have murdered well over 100 million in the last century and are determined to finish the job. The ongoing betrayal of Catholics and others who continue to suffer vicious persecution under Communist regimes like those in China and Nicaragua is one of the many and most serious scandals that will be this papacy’s legacy.
I’m already imagining what the “anti-everything-Francis” squads will say about this. I am personally hoping we can see a rejection of capitalism (state sponsored usury) as well as Marxism and a renewed interest in Solidarism. It is a real shame how most people have no idea that there is another, CATHOLIC way to run an economic system.
The Pontiff Francis is himself “not burdened by the history” of the sadistic, mass-murdering Marxist ideology, because he doesn’t identify with the millions of souls slaughtered in the name of his political hero, the psycho-sexual sociopath Karl Marx.
What’s important to “his purpose in life” is that homicidal, sociopath, anti-Christ tyrants, like General Secretary Xi, are preferred to to ascend to establishment power on every continent.
This is the gruesome reality signified by the two photo-stunts staged by the Pontiff Francis, when he first received his gift of the Hammer-and-Sickle-Crucifix, and subsequently orchestrated the worship of the idol Pachamama: what he reveres is not Christ crucified, but the empire that built the cross used to crucify him.
So the Pontiff Francis now presides over the “marriage-he-made-in-hell,” having collaborated with his longtime friend McCarrick, the sociopath-sodomic-sex-abuser, to sign the Pontiff’s “secret accord” with “their one, true god,” the Communist Party in China.
And now the self-identified progressive church apologists, in alliance with self-identified “moderate” and even “conservative” church apologists, have the opportunity to don the costume of the neo-ultramontanists, and sheepishly bleat out their message of the day, that the Church is not utterly polluted, but instead, it is “indefectible.”
But in battle against those voices is the Lion of Judah, the Word Made Flesh, Jesus Christ, crucified and risen, who is the head of the Body of Christ, and supreme Judge of the steward.
Pope Francis can’t quit talking.He has the condition known as compulsive talking. I think it’s a mental and or emotional illness.
It called loggorheia. It’s a chronic condition in his case.
Correct.
Silence is of little value to him. Deep thought, not his strong point, ever. Only the endless nonsense of jesuit-speak.
The denial of The Unity Of The Holy Ghost (Filioque), is the source of all heresy including the modernist Marxist heresy of the atheist materialist over population alarmist globalists whose end goal is the objectification of the human person, as they designate the State to be their god of tyranny.
Shall we now ask God to Bless this tyranny even though such tyranny is anathema?
Surely if we choose to have that which is not Holy Blessed we become accursed.
Catholicism is Holy while Marxism, which can never be reconciled with Christ, is not.
Didn’t our Immaculate Mother warn us about this at Fatima?
A better world will only come when nations embrace the Catholic faith and proclaim Christ as King. It will not come from atheistic ideologies or compromising with them. Our Lady of Fatima warned us.
This is actually quite terrifying. I think human history gives us a darn pretty good idea of what Marxism does to governments and the people who are governed under Marxism. God help us.
“The common good” is not at all what most people assume it is. The truism, “a rising tide lifts all boats” shows a particular element (in this case water) affecting all that it touches, but just because all boats are lifted doesn’t mean that the water has advanced the common good, rather it has only facilitated a [universal] composite of particular goods.
Moving from boats to people, just because a particular political act has increased prosperity (and of course socialism hasn’t a track record proving anything of the sort) that also would be an amalgam of individual goods—the common good hasn’t been affected in any way. Even the building of a dam or a road or a reservoir for the benefit of those living nearby only multiplies individual goods.
The common good has to do with the ability of individuals to advance towards perfection, and thus economic questions have little to nothing to do with it. Our perfection consists in holiness, a deepening relationship with God, the proliferation of the sacraments, and freedom to choose the good. (Charles de Koninck has a lifetime of work dedicated to explaining this.)
Moreover, the suggestion that this project will allow peace to “grow from below,” beginning on the human level, woefully misunderstands grace as a gift from above, and that peace is “the tranquility of order, (Augustine) which again requires a turning to God and rejection of materialistic solutions to spiritual problems.
You can’t mix oil and water no matter how much you talk about it. Dialogue in this case is only good in clarifying both positions and acknowledging the impossibility of reconciliation. From there mutual agreement on respecting rights of both parties to live separately in peace could POSSIBLY be worked out. But this is highly unlikely long term due to our sinful nature.
Marxism is an ideology of building a perfect world through the murders of millions of innocents. That poor old man who envisions a dialogue with satanic evil is either uneducated or demented.
With a head stuck in the sixties this individual has us doing déjà vu all over again? This is pitiful, pathetic and scandalous. One would ascribe it to geriatric diminishment but he operates with a staff of the equally ideological malcontent who are not quite as advanced in the life journey.
Marxism has a trail of corpses behind it far, far longer than National Socialism and it continues its holocaust at this very moment. Our Chinese brothers and sisters in the Faith have been sold into its slavery by the present Vatican administration. In all honesty, this pronouncement actually makes the recent endorsement of blessings for sodomites look quite tame.
No one is undermining the Bergoglian enterprise with any honest critique. It is doing it to itself and boldly.
One wonders if Francis’ embrace of the road to serfdom stems from his resentment of market economies having to regularly impose sensible terms for bailing out his persistently failed country.
A financial version of the classic definition of insanity is buying Argentine government bonds and expecting it won’t default on them again.
A theological version might be trying to unite Catholicism with Marxism and expecting the combination not to be a betrayal of Catholic principles.
I say let the global Marxists send financial support to the Vatican and the real Cathokics in the Church use their dobations to support well-documented orthodox efforts regarding charity.
Maybe a visit to the iron law of oligarchy is needed in order to understand what went wrong with Marxism and what goes wrong with most human ideologies and what will always go unless one is grounded in humility and under the Lordship of a higher authority. The RCC learned very early in its history that an oligarchic structure was needed. Is the RCC now seriously trying to change that to a more democratic ‘synodality’? Is that the ‘why’ for the new (well more open) attraction to Marxism. Hmm. OK, how about Francis present another document comparing the lives of Christ and Marx. Marx was a horror especially to his own family. By their fruits you shall know them. The only reason I can think of for Francis wanting to ‘dialogue’ with Marxists is that he probably does really believe that religion is merely an opiate, the dispensing of which is carried out by his men in black, in order to pacify the masses from an otherwise meaningless existence and from questioning the oligarchs and those who seek to control them. Sometimes, often actually, it has been so. But Jesus, in righteous anger, overturned that mentality (in the temple) – he didn’t flirt with it or try to incorporate it into his teachings. Just a few thoughts.
OK, dialogue and seeking to understand other beliefs is always good but we’ve done this already in relation to Marxism (Liberation Theology???) and it indeed has become the co-foundation for the social justice movement in the Church. The difference between the two (Christ and Marx (besides their whole life example) is the means of achieving justice especially in regard to those who well, don’t cooperate – what do we do with those pests? (We can excommunicate them I suppose both spiritually and physically – cut them off paint them as evil). So, why these headlines? To make the world like the RCC more? Yes, there are sociological similarities between what most perceive as a Marxist approach (distribution of wealth) and the first Christian communities; yes, there’s a similarity there, but really, there’s not a lot more.
Because of my research into clergy sexual abuse, misconduct, activity, crimes, and Francis’s approach to especially adult victims of the likes of Randy Rupnik the Misconductor, which I am quite sure now is founded on some weird perception that these victims simply should not feel like victims and only do so because they have an approach to sex of someone ‘still in diapers’ and, therefore, it is they who are actually in the wrong. I cannot fathom that he does what he does otherwise. I really have come to believe that Francis believes that Catholicism is or should be merely a psycho-social humanism, a philosophy, able to be changed with debate and ‘new discoveries’ – very Jesuit. Nah, not for me or billions of others – makes no sense without a higher divinity beyond the mere wording of concepts God, Trinity, Christ, which I’ve come to think Francis has become a master at (wording), using all his Jesuitical training and prowess. He seems like a nice chap, though, doing all the nice justice things. And I often hear him talking, preaching, and then think it must be me who has it wrong.
We read: “The only reason I can think of for Francis wanting to ‘dialogue’ with Marxists is that he probably does really believe that religion is merely an opiate…”
I do disagree, but just for fun, over half century ago and as a student before one doctoral seminar in interdisciplinary urban and regional planning, I pulled the screen down about one foot after chalking atop the green board “planning is the opiate of the intellectuals.”
For writing space and midway through the class the screen was lifted, and was met with a long and blank silence at both the front of the class and among all the students. I realized that no one in the group even recognized what was being parsed. An eraser fixed the cognitive dissonance and we moved collectively into the future, some would say a bit like rhetorically erasing the magisterium.
Well, Peter, I do sort of say that (that Francis probably really does believe that religion is merely an opiate) with a little smile, sort of how I respond when people use that saying, “Is the Pope Catholic”? Hmm…. But my conclusions come from, yes, a very deep cynicism which has developed because of my insights into the minds and politics of the clergy or more so, the hierarchy, and the scales sort of fell away; my naivety was very traumatically dissolved; and all I saw before me where men who weren’t just sinners – I can cope with that – but more so, men who when push came to shove, really didn’t care about those they said they cared for; really didn’t believe in the Gospels, and what they taught us; holiness; prayer; purity; none of it, and for some not even God. But, they had found a lifestyle in which they were so well catered for, so why leave? They don’t really practice poverty in any meaningful way (I do, or have to not the least becasue of the effects of abuse), they in turn have all their needs catered for; obedience has come to mean more or less nothing, but I need to practice ‘obedience’ because of my committment to my wife and family; and as for cchastity, well, the research suyggests its a myth – so easy for clergy to get sex on the side. HOWEVER, when this is exposed, they have a huge institution of other men who when it comes to sex and relationships are for the most, stuck in an adolescent mentality anyway so they just don’t get it, and so are ready to defned them like Francis has done with Rupnik, (this is also clericalism by the way), and who have so much money and power with which to do this. As such, generally, any accusations are dismissed by clergy who have little sense of the damage that has been caused – to have this would be too convicting – as well as a general attitude of the flock that those on the noble journey of celibacy are more readily believed over those who it is too often believed, must have tempted them off that journey.
So, yes, I really have come to believe that the RCC and its leaders are mere politicians and sociologists but fully understand the power of spiritual language not because they actually really do believe what they say but because they believe people need to believe it, so this is what they give them – ‘spiritual’ opioids. The only thing that makes me doubt my conclusion here, is Frank’s fight against the traditional Catholics about whom many might say are fully addicted to a certain type of opiate. And then I came across this little gem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t02XoELK1Xo
Dear Stephen, thank you for your insightful analyses of our dire situation.
Thanks for the brilliant Cardinal Sheen clip; I’ve never appreciated a prophet in action as much as by this.
Stay strong in The Love of The LORD; blessings from marty
An act of mutual contradiction! History tells us that such cooperation is an illogical proposition! The Marxist leftists hate the unborn in particular and are at the forefront of ensuring that they perish! Where Is there even a hint of basic logic in what the Pope is asking?
With all the questionable goings on in the Vatican finances, shouldn’t the Vatican be working on its own problems to establish its competency to speak?
How long before even the secular media start to wonder if Francis has rocks in his head?
Marxists cannot be taken lightly. As human beings, Marxists have a lot to contribute in enriching fellow mortals to realize their true and full potential.
And, brain washing camps, are a great marxist tool to do that!
It is for freedom that Christ has set us free!
An absolutely ridiculous and shameful comment. I think the 500 million bodycount argues against that. There is nothing that Marxists say that believers need to hear.