Posted on 11/13/2005 12:46:30 PM PST by NYer
Coulda, woulda, shoulda. We could play those games too.
If Pope Leo X and Cardinal Cajetan hadn't excommunicated Luther, but recognized his 95 theses raised some valid objections, there wouldn't have been a Lutheran schism.
It's water under the bridge. What matters today is what you recongized - that Luther rediscovered what had been obscured, as you rightly observed, by the popular piety of the Catholic church.
Interestingly, Leo only demanded that Luther retract 41 of the 95...
Which ones did he accept, or at least not reject?
I remain convinced that too much of the Reformation was a series of entrenchments and overreactions due to strawmen that the other side allegedly believed - the pendulum hypothesis. There were very real differences, to be sure, but I honestly believe much of the Reformation was due to prideful failures to communicate.
You must be delusional. Everybody knows the Catholic Church invented all that stuff (/sarcasm).
How about Dr. Scott Hahn's first experience attending a Catholic Mass .......
"There I stood, a man incognito, a Protestant minister in plainclothes, slipping into the back of a Catholic chapel in Milwaukee to witness my first Mass. Curiosity had driven me there, and I still didn't feel sure that it was healthy curiosity. Studying the writings of the earliest Christians, I'd found countless references to "the liturgy," "the Eucharist," "the sacrifice." For those first Christians, the Bible - the book I loved above all - was incomprehensible apart from the event that today's Catholics called "the Mass."
"I wanted to understand the early Christians; yet I'd had no experience of liturgy. So I persuaded myself to go and see, as a sort of academic exercise, but vowing all along that I would neither kneel nor take part in idolatry."
I took my seat in the shadows, in a pew at the very back of that basement chapel. Before me were a goodly number of worshipers, men and women of all ages. Their genuflections impressed me, as did their apparent concentration in prayer. Then a bell rang, and they all stood as the priest emerged from a door beside the altar.
Unsure of myself, I remained seated. For years, as an evangelical Calvinist, I'd been trained to believe that the Mass was the ultimate sacrilege a human could commit. The Mass, I had been taught, was a ritual that purported to "resacrifice Jesus Christ." So I would remain an observer. I would stay seated, with my Bible open beside me.
As the Mass moved on, however, something hit me. My Bible wasn't just beside me. It was before me - in the words of the Mass! One line was from Isaiah, another from Psalms, another from Paul. The experience was overwhelming. I wanted to stop everything and shout, "Hey, can I explain what's happening from Scripture? This is great!" Still, I maintained my observer status. I remained on the sidelines until I heard the priest pronounce the words of consecration: "This is My body . . . This is the cup of My blood."
Then I felt all my doubt drain away. As I saw the priest raise that white host, I felt a prayer surge from my heart in a whisper: "My Lord and my God. That's really you!"
I was what you might call a basket case from that point. I couldn't imagine a greater excitement than what those words had worked upon me. Yet the experience was intensified just a moment later, when I heard the congregation recite: "Lamb of God . . . Lamb of God . . . Lamb of God," and the priest respond, "This is the Lamb of God . . ." as he raised the host. In less than a minute, the phrase "Lamb of God" had rung out four times. From long years of studying the Bible, I immediately knew where I was. I was in the Book of Revelation, where Jesus is called the Lamb no less than twenty-eight times in twenty-two chapters. I was at the marriage feast that John describes at the end of that very last book of the Bible. I was before the throne of heaven, where Jesus is hailed forever as the Lamb. I wasn't ready for this, though - I was at Mass!
Perhaps “Crusades” are in your genes.
I suggest you read what is beyond doubt one of the great Christian classics….. Foxe's Book of Martyrs by Foxe, John (1516-1587) written around the time that the Roman Catholic faith added the errant apocrypha to their Bible in 1546.
http://www.myhomepage.net/~jhdearmore/foxeindex.htm
Sounds just like the service at my church...
"9 times out of 10, it is the writings of the early church fathers that eventually convict these individuals that the Catholic Church is the original church."
You know, it goes the other way to. This is not meant to be inflamitory, but I have met a lot of ex catholics in my life. I am always very interested to hear their stories as to why they left the Catholic church.
90% of the time they say it is because they started to read the Bible and they began to see things in it that were in opposition to what they had learned in the Catholic church. They would go to their priest for answers but found none.
How many time do we have to go over this? There is plenty of documentary evidence that the Deuterocanonical books were universally used in Christian worship as Holy Scripture from the time of the Apostles and that they were officially confirmed as such by Pope Innocent I at the beginning of the 5th century. The periodic questions that were raised about them were private opinions that never effected their use in worship or their official recognition by the Church.
BEhold the lamb of God,
Behold him to takes away the sins of the world.
O Lord,
at that moment,
we are taken back,
standing in the dust,
touched with the smell of blood,
and fear,
and grief,
and pain,
and looking up,
both to you in the white host,
broken in the priest's hands,
to you on the cross of calvary,
to you, at that last supper,
holding the bread that was you,
that would feed your followers
and all the followers who followed them.
Behold,
him who is Love Incarnate,
him, who to whom every knee will bow,
him, who was wounded for our transgressions,
him, who brings us back,
a re-presentation of that moment in time,
where he who was master,
bled for we who are slave,
on a slave's cross,
in a slave's death
so that we might live.
Blessed are we,
because he called us,
the undeserving,
the lost,
the ungrateful,
the cruel,
the lusting,
the sin-sick,
all called to be healed,
Lord, I will never be worthy to receive you under the roof of my soul,
but only say the word,
the word that heals,
the word that lifts me out of the dust of my deserved death,
and my soul,
so stained, aching and lost,
shall truly be healed.
Amen.
Did you not even read this article? Apparently not, or you are willfully ignorant of what you read, since the whole "errant addition" in 1546 is FALSE. Read a little history--if it was added, as is claimed, in 1546, why would Luther leave the deuterocanonical books in the Bible he compiled (don't forget when he broke away from the Church--1517)?
Sheesh. Read some of the writings by Justin Martyr, a 2nd Century Christian, and tell me I'm wrong...
As for the Crusade against Islam, you mean to tell me that its current onslaught is OK, and we should do nothing about it? Get real.
It was the popular piety of Luther's time I was speaking of, not that of today. Also, the philosophy of the day was decrepit, and that infected the theology.
You're right that both sides did a poor job of communicating, though. Leo X was not an evil Pope, but not a very competent one, either.
Your facts are much in error. As are the apocryphal books.
First, the Jewish Canon does not include the Apocrypha.
This is significant as it was to the Jews that the OT was entrusted (Rom 3:1,2) and they are the custodians of the limits of their own canon.
Josephus (A.D. 30-100), a Jewish historian explicitly excluded the Apocrypha.
The Jewish Talmud teaches that the Holy Spirit departed from Israel after the time of Malachi. How do you explain this?
How did the Council of Trent ever declare the Apocrypha was Scripture in the first place? Much in the same way Vatican I decreed papal infallibility.
Admit it, that is the crux of this matter, my friend.
They reiterated what other councils had taught for the previous millenium, back to a time before either the OT or NT canon was firmly decided. Please try to keep up, we get tired of refuting the same ahistorical errors over and over again.
"Rise, Peter, and fulfill this pastoral office divinely entrusted to you as mentioned above. Give heed to the cause of the holy Roman Church, mother of all churches and teacher of the faith, whom you by the order of God, have consecrated by your blood. Against the Roman Church, you warned, lying teachers are rising, introducing ruinous sects, and drawing upon themselves speedy doom."
Well, since the Prots did not meet a "speedy doom", it would seem that Peter was either disinclined to hear Leo's petition or had need to attend to other, more important matters.
And given that the Prots went on to evangelize half the world and now account for roughly 2/5ths of Christianity (+700 million) - it would seem that the tree bore good fruit.
Ah, but a thousand years are as a day, and a day is as a thousand years :-)
Read the article.
"33. That heretics be burned is against the will of the Spirit."
You guys really believe the Holy Spirit would have you burn folks at the stake???
There is no disputing the fact that as Christians, we are all part of the Body of Christ. So, the "good fruit" is not disputed. The "deposit of truth" is disputed, as the RCC is the only church that has claimed and can claim it. As for the "speedy doom," we are talking about a Church that traces its roots back 2000 years, and an offshoot going back 500...who knows what is to come? Seriously, though, "lying teachers" is the key--Prots profess the message of Christ as much as Catholics do, so where are the lies?
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