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To: count-your-change
as he lays down an understanding of the roots of the Protestant Reformation.

So he wrote a biography about the paranoid, schizophrenic, ant-semitic, alcoholic monk who couldn't control his libido, Martin Luther?

12 posted on 10/11/2011 3:14:09 PM PDT by A.A. Cunningham (Barry Soetoro is a Kenyan communist)
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To: A.A. Cunningham
If Luther had been all those things (you have a source I presume) he would have been only one of many according to the Catholic reformers from Peter Damian to John Gerson.
13 posted on 10/11/2011 4:18:30 PM PDT by count-your-change (You don't have to be brilliant, not being stupid is enough.)
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To: A.A. Cunningham

That’s wrong. You are doing, from a Catholic side, what Protestants do to us. Dismissing Luther as an alcoholic and sex-pervert was once done in Catholic propaganda. It’s unfair. Benedict XVI (who has read widely in Luther’s writings) made that point at Erfurt on his recent trip to Germany and has made it many times in the past. Luther was a solidly religious reformer. He was rightly concerned about abuses. He made the fatal error, when confronted on the merits of his theological arguments about penannce, confession, and indulgences by Cardinal Cajetan, of defying the Church and labeling Cajetan unbiblical simply because Cajetan was not persuaded by Luther’s arguments.

Luther may have lacked healthy discretion in that case. He should have counted to ten and rethought his positions. He removed himself from the Catholic faith. He also had plenty of personal flaws and sins, like you and I do.

But he was not driven by alcoholism or libido or mental illness any of that crap. You do the Catholic faith a disservice by cheap argumentation. Yes, I know it was routinely taught to Catholics 50 years ago. But the days of Helmut Grisar are long past.

You would do well to read Jared Wicks, _Man Yearning for Grace_ about the young Luther. Wicks does a good job of pinpointing the places where Luther began to argue himself out of the Church. But he is also fair to Luther as a person. Luther was an honest, decent, sincere man but hotheaded and lacking discernment in some ways.


18 posted on 10/11/2011 5:53:22 PM PDT by Houghton M.
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