Posted on 03/15/2008 10:17:55 AM PDT by big'ol_freeper
More than once during these talks I referred to Luther and what always occurred to me as his destructive influence. I pointed out that even in such an admirable book as Rohan Butler's “The Roots of National Socialism” the spiritual origins of Nazism and Luther's influence had not been given the necessary importance. Then I was asked if I would be prepared to elaborate to them—about a dozen of the very senior boys, that is—my own views on Luther and Lutheranism. I agreed—with the proviso that they would be my own views and nothing else. Admittedly, I had read more on Luther and about Luther than on most other subjects. But I wanted to make it quite clear that I would not speak to them with the voice of a great authority, but would merely give them my own interpretation. I told them, moreover, that I should try to prove how dangerous it is to accept legends; and that the picture I had of Luther and his influence was thoroughly contradictory of the customary Luther of the legend.
(Excerpt) Read more at catholicapologetics.info ...
Those maps are magnificent.
By the way, it appears all sins keep people in the Catholic church, according to Campion.
You wrote:
“Well, the RCC doesn’t anathematize actions, but men themselves.”
Luther was excommunicated. Was he anthematized? Off hand I don’t recall. Even so, anathema would not imply hate on the part of the Church or of Catholics. You are throwing in everything including the kitchen sink but none of this shows Catholics hate Luther.
“In fact, the RCC calls up the demons from hell to curse the head of anyone who has been anathematized for believing they are justified by faith alone and by believing they are saved.”
Anathema has several meanings. Did you know the word originally referred to offerings to pagan gods? Did you know St. Paul handed people over to Satan? See 1 Timothy 1:20 and 1 Corinthians 5:5. Is this news to you?
“Kindly spare me from that kind of “affection.”
Kindly then shun heresy and schism and attacking the Christian faith. It’s not hard to do.
That map really illuminates the breakdown.
My Lutheran Bavarian (Munich) family was a Nazi supporter, and my Alsace-Lorraine Catholic family hated him. Alsace is on the Western Border with France.
One cannot slide past the facts.
“He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust: his truth shall be thy shield and buckler.”
You are always welcome into the fullness of Christ’s Church.
I should have posted those maps earlier...they are in the author’s document. I got sidetracked though. They tell a big story. While others are busy posting straw men to divert attention from the topic, these maps demonstrate that the multitudes who were captive to “Popery” voted against Nazism, while those free of “the slavery of Popery” preferred Adolph Hitler. The author asserts that Luther bears some responsibility because of the culture he created. Does he? I don’t know. But I do know that Catholics in general bear less responsibility than Reformed in Germany.
So the Pope, the apparent representative of God and Christ here on earth, couldn’t proclaim the Gospel or stand true publically for God and Christ, because he was trying to protect certain innocent lives?
Sounds like a stand up sort of guy, that Pope. Yeah, I want him representing Christ.
“I have greater confidence in my wife and my pupils than I have in Christ,” he said on one occasion quite shamelessly (“Table Talk”, 2397b). “When I beheld Christ I seemed to see the Devil”. I had a great aversion for Christ”. “Often I was horrified at the name of Christ, and when I regarded Him on the Cross, it was as if I had been struck by lightning; and when I heard His name mentioned, I would rather have heard the name of the Devil” (see Janssen **, 72; also Maritain, “Three Reformers”, p. 169). “I did not believe in Christ,” wrote Luther in 1537. The example of Jesus Christ Himself very often meant nothing to Luther (see E29, 196).
Yes I can. And if you want to start a thread on that topic I will glad to contribute, but I’m not going to support your efforts to obfuscate on this thread about Martin Luther.
Luther knew that he was superior to any man or saint. “St. Augustine or St. Ambrosius cannot be compared with me.” “They shall respect our teaching which is the word of God, spoken by the Holy Ghost, through our lips”. “Not for a thousand years has God bestowed such great gifts on any bishop as He as on me” (E61, 422). “God has appointed me for the whole German land, and I boldly vouch and declare that when you obey me you are without a doubt obeying not me but Christ” (W15, 27).
This from Wikipedia...
His research on the question led him to spend 14 months in Ludwigsburg, Germany, examining relevant documents, before returning to Harvard to draw the material together in the first of his books.[2] In "Hitler's Willing Executioners," Goldhagen posited that ordinary Germans not only knew about, but also supported, the Holocaust because of a unique and virulent "eliminationist" antisemitism in the German identity, which had developed in the preceding centuries. This book, successful but controversial,[3] began as Goldhagen's Harvard doctoral dissertation, which won the American Political Science Association's 1994 Gabriel A. Almond Award in comparative politics. According to The New York Times, Hitler's Willing Executioners, met with widespread hostility in Germany at its debut,[4] has been credited for launching national discussion on the topic in that country.[5] In late 1996, Goldhagen visited Berlin to participate in the debate on television and in lecture halls before capacity crowds.[6][7] Goldhagen was awarded the prestigious Democracy Prize in 1997 by the German Journal for German and International Politics, which asserted that "...because of the penetrating quality and the moral power of his presentation, Daniel Goldhagen has greatly stirred the consciousness of the German public." The laudatio, awarded for the first time since 1990, was given by Jürgen Habermas and Jan Philipp Reemtsma.[8][7] Hitler's Willing Executioners also drew controversy with the publication of two critical articles: "Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's 'Crazy' Thesis", written by political scientist Norman Finkelstein and initially published in UK political journal New Left Review, and "Historiographical review: Revising the Holocaust", written by historian Ruth Bettina Birn and initially published in the Historical Journal of Cambridge.[3] These articles were later published as the book A Nation on Trial: The Goldhagen Thesis and Historical Truth.[3] In response to their work, Goldhagen sought a retraction and apology from Birn, according to Salon declaring Finkelstein "a supporter of Hamas".[3] Goldhagen's second book, A Moral Reckoning: The Role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust and Its Unfulfilled Duty of Repair, an account of what he maintains was the Catholic Church's role in the Holocaust, has also been controversial, garnering both praise and strong criticism.[9][10] Goldhagen wrote the book following a request by The New Republic to review several books concerning Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust.[10] The book has been criticised as being a "misuse of the Holocuast to advance [his] anti-Catholic agenda" and as being poor scholarship, including a lack of any primary sources and being riddled with factual errors.[11][12][13] Because of these criticisms and because he says the recommendations of the book would mean the end of the Church as it has been for two millenia, William A. Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, has labeled Goldhagen an "anti-Catholic bigot".[14] Goldhagen noted in an interview with The Atlantic that the title and the first page of the book reveal its purpose as a moral, rather than historical analysis, asserting that he has invited European Church representatives to present their own historical account in discussing morality and reparation.[10] "...(Havard Professor) Goldhagen is the son of retired Harvard professor Erich Goldhagen, who survived the Holocaust in a Romanian Jewish ghetto in Czernowitz, and credits his father with creating a framework for intellectual discussion about the subject.[2] Goldhagen spent his youth in Newton, Massachusetts before entering Harvard, where his interest in the origins of the Holocaust was sparked by a lecture in 1983 given by Saul Friedlander.[2] Goldhagen told The New York Times in 1996 that "everyone was talking about why the order was given, but not about why it was carried out."[2]
Once again, everyone is out of step but the RCC.
God, on the other hand, seemed to him “a master armed with a stick”. “God did mischievously blind me”; “God often acts like a madman”; “God paralyses the old and blinds the young and thus remains master”; I look upon God no better than a scoundrel”; “God is stupid” (“Table Talk”, No. 963, W1, 48)
Neat graphics. Not only did the Protestants help in a big way to put Hitler in power, but it was Catholics who tried to remove him from power or resist him even if it meant their lives:
Col. von Stauffenberg: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claus_Schenk_von_Stauffenberg
White Rose Movement: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_rose
Strange sayings from the mouth of the reformer! But stranger still are his references to God and Christ when it comes to Luther’s own shortcomings. We shall see later his own attitude to sex and morality. But he excused his own adultery—to quote merely one more example—by the teachings of Christ. “Christ”, says Luther, “committed adultery first of all with the woman at the well about whom Saint John tells us. Was not everybody about Him saying: `Whatever has he been doing with her?” Secondly, with Mary Magdalene, and thirdly with the woman taken in adultery whom He dismissed so lightly. Thus even Christ, who was so righteous, must have been guilty of fornication before He died” (“Table Talk”, 1472) (W2, 107).
“Be a sinner, and sin boldly, but believe more boldly still.” Not only men, but the Saints and Apostles must be sinners. “The Saints must be good, downright sinners.” “The Apostles themselves were sinners, yea, regular scoundrels…I believe that the prophets also frequently sinned grievously” (E62, 165).
Hate? No. BTW, Martin Luther was born a Roman Catholic and was an ordained Catholic priest. What does that prove? Being born into a faith does not guarantee or predict what one will do with the free will God gave them.
If you're going to mention a Freeper in a post, it's considered common courtesy to put them in the "To" list.
I would also appreciate it if you would not attempt to paraphrase what I said; it's easy enough to cut and paste the quotation or at least a reference to the post.
You seem to be using "excommunicate" as a synonym for "remove". That isn't quite correct.
A Catholic who is excommunicated does not become a non-Catholic; he becomes a Catholic who is deprived of the right to receive the sacraments until such time as he repents of his evil. Typically this means that he needs to confess to a bishop.
(Priests may have the faculties to absolve from certain excommunicable offenses. Certain other offenses can only be absolved by the Pope.)
Specific latae sententiae excommunicable offenses are listed in canon law. Put "catholic canon law" into Google; it's online in several places.
The Pope cannot remove anyone from the Church. He doesn't have that power.
A person can remove themselves by a "formal defection" -- by joining another religion, or formally announcing (in a letter to their bishop, for example) that they are leaving the Church.
Even then, they have a different relationship to the Church than a non-Catholic does, because they can return simply by making a good confession.
The Catholic understanding of Catholic baptism in canon law is much like the Jewish understanding of being born of a Jewish mother in halacha. It can't really be un-done.
You wrote:
“Once again, everyone is out of step but the RCC.”
Abortion, infanticide, gay marriage, pornography, Islam, paganism, drugs, greed, communism....yep, pretty much everyone is out of step but the Catholic Church.
For once you got something right.
Very often Martin Luther’s rantings against Christ indicates that he might have been secretly stealing and heavily indulging in the alter wine outside of the Mass.
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