Posted on 10/31/2025 10:29:22 AM PDT by sopo
In 1517, in the famous act of defiance that launched the Protestant Reformation, Luther nailed his “95 theses” on indulgences to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg. Among them was this devastating question: ” 82. Why does not the pope, whose wealth is today greater than the wealth of the richest Croesus, build this one basilica of St. Peter with his own money rather than with the money of poor believers ?”
In exposing the empty claims of the church to be God’s authority on earth, Luther challenged the entire hierarchy responsible for exploiting Catholic believers. In his Address to the Nobility of the German Nation, which was published in 1520, Luther proclaimed this revolutionary idea: “we are all consecrated as priests through baptism, as St. Peter says in Peter 2: “you are a royal priesthood, and a priestly kingdom.””
Thus did the “priesthood of all believers” become the central liberating doctrine of the Protestant Reformation. It established a spiritual equality between believers by declaring that the relationship to God would no longer be mediated by a priesthood or a pope or the Holy Roman Empire; no longer by mere mortals elevated above them with the power to determine their eternal fate. By declaring all believers equal, Luther had transferred spiritual power to the people themselves.
This was heresy, and on January 3 1521, Luther was excommunicated by the Catholic Church. Five months later, the German monk was summoned to the Diet of Worms where the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V presided. At the Diet, Luther was called to recant his beliefs or be burned at the stake. He refused. This was his answer: “my conscience is captive to the Word of God. Thus, I cannot and will not recant, for going against conscience is neither safe nor salutary. I can do no other, here I stand, God help me. Amen”
“My conscience is captive to the Word of God.” It was a declaration of individual freedom that would resound through the annals of very struggle for freedom in the centuries to come. Every individual’s freedom of conscience was an assertion of independence from temporal power. An unalienable right to think and speak freely, which derives from the individual’s inviolable relation to their creator-beyond the reach of the church or state, or any institution created by mortal beings. No man or woman was bound to surrender their freedom of conscience to others seeking to coerce them into service of a rival belief. Luther may not have intended the full freedom to which his proclamation led, but he had loosed the idea upon the world, and the world responded by making it the cornerstone of Protestant belief. Pp28-29
Yes, but it gets clicks.
See the thing is, though, Martin Luther’s original gripe wasn’t with the sale of indulgences per se but rather with the fact the *Dominicans* were given (by Pope Leo X and Archbishop Albrecht of Mainz) the franchise to sell the indulgences to fund the renovation of St. Peter’s Basilica . Luther was peeved that his own Augustinian order didn’t have the gig.
There are places named Luther in at least 4 states, all of them quite small, only one with over 1,000 people.
I think Horowitz-s testimony is remarkable on all of this, an outsider to Christianity who examined the controversies over decades.
Thank God the Reformation, flawed as some of its adherents were, blocked the King of Spain from extending hegemony to the north. That’s a dispositive statement.,
And it's important to not let the "us vs them" mentality get bogged down into denominational fanboy thinking (us Protestants vs Catholics, or us evangelical Protestants vs Anglicans). It really comes down to us Christians who want to do things right with God and by God, vs church leaders at the time who had gotten too control-freak for personal gain at the expense of defaming God.
Only with that kind of mindset can each of us try to reform our own church leaders. Imagine right-minded Catholics fussing more at the problems in the RCC, and right-minded Protestants fussing more at problems in the hedonist "high church" Protestant churches, way way more than good minding Catholics and good minded Protestants fighting each other.
Wash, rinse, repeat with the spiritual warfare taking place in the political class. The Dims truly operate way more like a cult than a political party, pushing their hedonism, race baiting, doomsday warmageddon, and child sacrifice abortion more than they do actual political policies like tax policies and road maintenance, etc.
PS, I forgot my other major ancestral line: Huguenots. Like my G-G-Grandma.
All of us heretics were dancin’ in the woods of Virginia and the Carolinas back 300 years ago. Finally free of Rome and even London! Still hard to govern these three centuries later.
But keep tryin’ bubba! I remember Arizona when it was mostly WASPy. Nice place back then, pretty much no corruption. Then we got Judge Castro as the gov, which he was eminently un-qualified for. Nice guy though. Friend of the family an’ all that. But it only got worse from there: Louis Grijalva, just another dirty barefoot Indio from Magdalena grabbed hold of the “Ceevil Rights Por Los Chicanos” movement and spent his whole life jumpin’ up and down screaming “dees ees ahr lahnd, el papa, he geev eet to us!” and then he croaked from cirhossis of the liver or something...and of course they put up his moron daughter to take his place. How very Catolico of them! Monarchial Nepotism! Forget qualifications - mob rule is better!
And of course, that brought you to Kartel Katie, Adrian Fontes (el abogado de cartel Sinaloa) and the nauseating Kris Mayes, who is some sort of sacrifice to the sex deviant Left.
Real accomplishments of your “church” there. Used to have decent ofays like Jack Williams, Barry Goldwater, Jon Kyl, or even a Mormon dork like Jeff the Flake. Gosh, ain’t it all great now? Mexo/Irish Catholics and LGBT enforcers. Real Arizonans!
I recognize you missed Horowitz’ point at the outset, that freedom of expression and conscience, in his own opinion, was foundational to the founding of the US, though you want to conflate that with the explorer finding the land mass. Lots of back and forth with other posters as you have defended your views. If you want to go back and include air breathing vertebrates in your focus, please do.Freedom of conscience , expression does tower above the ebbs and flows of the other ideas you have considered, in my opinion, no need to agree with me.
“all your arguments do not put forward the idea that America was a development from Luther”
Well dear, he got the ball rolling, and undoubtedly there would be none of us Hard Line Heretics (did I mention that Cromwell was supposedly my 6th great uncle?!) had he not nailed that document to the door. For us off the deep end Dunkards, it is true that Lutheran AND Catholic princes in Teutonia pushed us out: the Treaty of Westphalia excluded all but those two gangs.
So it’s undisputable that his ideas were foundational for the United States.
Now that was really good.
“air breathing vertebrates” especially!
A little off topic, but this reminded me of one of my all time favorite movies, that you probably never heard of, Black Robe.
“Set in 1634, this film follows the travels of Father LaForgue (Lothaire Bluteau), a Jesuit priest called upon to search for a remote Canadian mission surrounded by Huron settlements. LaForgue, guided by a group of distrustful yet kind Algonquin natives, embarks on a trek across unfamiliar and treacherous terrain. The young priest’s small party fends off the vicious attacks of the Iroquois tribe before finally reaching their destination. There, LaForgue finds the mission in a tragic state.”
https://www.google.com/search?q=black+robe+movie&ie=UTF-8
The church we’ve been attending is conservative Presbyterian - PCA. They borderline worship Luther, and are gung ho about celebrating the Reformation (we had “Reformation Sunday” last week). They’re big on Calvin, too — all five points.
Growing up Baptist, we didn’t do that. We studied the Reformation and Luther as a great movement in religious history, but didn’t dwell on it.
PS:
Phoenix in the 1950s, although with so many Ford Falcons in view, was probably sometime in 1960 or ‘61.
See any signs in Spanish?
Nah. Only a few of them down in Guadalupe, which was then, and still is, a shantytown. Pobrecitos.
I like this vid. It’s what I grew up in. 65 years later we gotta bunch of Pancho Villa types like Rooben Galapagos doin’ the Mexican jumping bean act telling us “dees ees Mehico!”.
Um, having a little evidence from the past is always helpful to stomp on loudmouths like that.
But y’all keep trying! Have multi multi babees, and try to convince us that the 14th Amendment tells us that they are American, just like you! Then ya can take over and turn the US into just another Latin American S**thole.
Thank you for the video. I was shocked at the number of DeSotos.
There are classes of Hispanics, just like there are in many cultures. I have known not only cultured Cubans, but also Venezuelans, Colombians, Argentinians, and Mexicans. They were better educated, more polite, and more civilized than many anglos. They tend not to leave their homeland so much (except for school, as students or professors) because they do not need to leave home to make their way.
I tried to recognize the neighborhoods in the video, and I really couldn’t. Too much has changed. I have lived in the Phoenix area for seven years, and know north central, South Mountain, Scottsdale, and now East Mesa quite well.
I sometimes wish I could have come of age in that era, but then I realize that I would have to see the crumbling all over again, and could do little to stop it.
We are in a time of upheaval, and it could get very, very bad, or we could have mass repentance before it explodes. We pray and trust that God’s Will be done.
Funny Horowitz likes Luther’s line about the Pope being so fabulously wealthy that he should fund the Vatican.”
The main cause for which the Catholic Church was raising funds during Luther’s time was the defense of Christendom against the Muslim horde. Luther, that founding father that he was, thought the Muslim invaders were just wonderful, cheering them on. He only opposed the Islamic horde when they approached Germany.
If one is to claim, however, that America represents more Luther’s theology, one only needs to study St. Thomas Aquinas, whose treatises on Natural Law were widely cited by the founding fathers. Whereas Luther taught that the common Man was worthless in the eyes of God, “born to be mere cannon fodder,” Aquinas taught that every life was equally sacred to Christ and thus entitled to full access to the protection of law regardless of worldly station.
(That is, the Catholic Church held that although a King who acts as a godly protector of his people exercises valid authority over his subjects, his eternal soul is as cherished by Christ. In Summa Theologica, Thomas Aquinas, named “the angelic doctor” by the Church for such teachings, argues that the best form of government is a just, elected (!!!), Christian protector king, whose polity is governed by elected ministers; and that when a king does not act for his kingdom as Christ did for the Church (that is, laying down his life for it), but rather acts manifestly sinfully and unjustly, the people retain the right to overthrow their king and govern themselves, electing ministers.)
What does this sound like?
(I would argue that inasmuch as the kingship is elected bestowed by election rather than by inheritance, he’s describing something more akin to a President, except for the lack of limited terms. Still, not a bad description of a presidency for AD 1225!)
Of course, no man is to be worshiped, but in a time of ecumenism, great Reformers should be remembered for the truths they espoused.
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