I am a member of the WELS church. My husband has been a member since birth, we have 3 ministers in our immediate family. In my 30 years of membership, I have never heard this mentioned. In his 55 years of membership, my husband has never heard it mentioned. Three ministers have never mentioned and did not even know about the statement until they were in seminary.
BTW, the statement doesn't mean what people think it does. Luther considered the pope the antichrist because at that time, the pope was pretty anti- anything that didnt' bring in money for the church.
This statement, while part of the church, does not shape the sermons.
As you said, your husband has not heard this mentioned, let alone preached in 55 years in the WELS church.
So, why is it raised by a leftist author? Does he actually give a whatever about Lutheran or Catholic beliefs and differences? Does he really care about any Christian beliefs? Or did he write this to get folks to fight and "hopefully" not vote Bachmann?
She must be really scaring the left if they are using this ploy -- what is stupid is a lot of us are falling for it -- there's another thread here where the usual crowd have made it into an anti-Catholic thread. So, the left's ploy is working...
You wrote:
“Luther considered the pope the antichrist because at that time, the pope was pretty anti- anything that didnt’ bring in money for the church.”
Sorry, but that is NOT the reason why Luther considered the pope the anti-Christ. Luther felt free to use every possible money connected caricature he could find to attack the pope, but in reality Luther considered the pope the anti-Christ because the pope did not support the heretical doctrines Luther invented. Look at the bottom of this page:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/apocalypse/explanation/martinluther.html
Luther was more than willing to accept the pope’s authority - and even suck up to the pope - until the pope definitely denounced Luther’s views.
In 1518 Luther wrote to Pope Leo X:
Wherefore, most blessed Father, I cast myself at the feet of your Holiness, with all that I have and all that I am. Quicken, kill, call, recall, approve, reprove, as you will. In your voice I shall recognize the voice of Christ directing you and speaking in you. If I have deserved death, I shall not refuse to die. For the earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof. He is blessed forever. Amen.
In 1520, Luther wrote this to the pope:
AMONG those monstrous evils of this age, with which I have now for three years been waging war, I am sometimes compelled to look to you and to call you to mind, most blessed father Leo. In truth, since you alone are everywhere considered as being the cause of my engaging in war, I cannot at any time fail to remember you; and although I have been compelled by the causeless raging of your impious flatterers against me to appeal from your seat to a future council—fearless of the futile decrees of your predecessors Pius and Julius, who in their foolish tyranny prohibited such an action—yet I have never been so alienated in feeling from your Blessedness as not to have sought with all my might, in diligent prayer and crying to God, every best gift for you and for your See. But those who have hitherto endeavoured to terrify me with the majesty of your name and authority, I have begun quite to despise and triumph over. One thing I see remaining, which I cannot despise, and this has been the reason of my writing anew to your Blessedness; namely, that I find that blame is cast on me, and that that rashness, in which I am judged to have spared not even your person, is imputed to me as a great offence.
Luther abandoned his loyalty a few weeks later when the document announcing his impending excommunication (unless he recanted) was announced and when talks with a papal nuncio came to nothing.