If Europe maintains it’s current course, there wont’ be any Protestants or Catholics left in Germany in 5 years;
There will only be Muslims...
...and the ashes and bones of Martyrs.
View it as being polite over the Thanksgiving table with you nutty inlaws.
Though the Free Church Lutherans won't be at the party one way or the other. The State Church has little use for them.
ping
Can’t vee all yust get along?
He himself never claimed to have done this, and he boasted about many exploits in his writings and in his "Table Talk" conferences without ever mentioning it.
The first reference to this imaginary event was written years later by someone who lived hundreds of miles away from Wittenberg and had no direct knowledge of the events.
The real beginning of the schismatic movement was not his theses (which were likely presented in the course of a disputation at the university, like every other formal disputation), but when Johannes Tetzel publicly defended his views - against Luther's - in front of a panel that included Luther, when Tetzel was obtaining his doctoral degree in theology.
Tetzel was given his doctorate over Luther's objections.
The fact that Luther was an Augustinian, that Tetzel was a Dominican, and that Dominicans were considered by Augustinians to have a very high opinion of their own scholarship and a low opinion of everyone else's, was probably a factor.
Luther was enraged, and publicly preached against Tetzel's views from the pulpit.
Tetzel was also enraged by the public airing of the dispute and Luther's characteristically aggressive verbiage and he took to the pulpit.
What started as a personal battle between Tetzel and Luther became a local cause celebre so that by three years later, Luther had become famous and the leader of a movement.
Another interesting thing is that the Magisterium rejected both Tetzel's high view of indulgences and Luther's low view.
What Germany and the rest of Europe needs is a Christian revival. We used to send missionaries to spread Christianity to places like Africa and East Asia. Maybe some of the thriving Christian churches in places like Korea and Uganda should start sending missionaries to Europe.
The Protestants have invited the Catholics to join in, a gesture in harmony with the good relations the two halves of German Christianity enjoy and the closeness many believers feel across the denominational divide.
But even after five centuries, being asked to commemorate a divorce that split western Christianity and led to many bloody religious wars is still hard for some Catholics to swallow.
"It's not impossible in principle, but it depends on the character of the events planned," Bishop Gerhard Feige, the top Catholic official dealing with Protestants, said in a statement for the Protestant Reformation Day holiday on Wednesday.
I've got an idea on how it can be inclusive and respectful! The German Lutherans can hire actors to portray the Borgia popes, Pope Leo X, and Johann Tetzel, and they can all throw chocolate-candy-coins to the crowd along the parade route :)
Be rooted in Christ!
I am NOT "offended" that an invitation was extended to the Catholic Church for the Luther celebration.
At least the offer was made in a very nice gesture.
I'm also NOT "offended" if the invite is rejected with good grace. My world will not crash.
This is how to get along in these "across the aisle" efforts and situations.....no one's principles are compromised, no one is offended, no one is a "victim"....the celebration and world goes on.
I should get the Nobel Peace Prize if someone will nominate me.
Leni
Huh? Luther's princes battled Catholics? When? Charles V the Holy Roman Emperor ordered that Luther and his followers all be arrested and burned at the stake--along with all of his books. The year after Luther died, in 1547, Charles tried it in the Smalkaldic war--and nearly succeeded.
In the 1570s the French systematically murdered TENS OF THOUSANDS of Calvinist civilians there (and even about 500 were murdered in what is now Jacksonville, Florida, by Spanish Roman Catholics--who went on to establish St. Augustine, FL.).
Throughout the 1500s it was clearly the Roman Catholics who had the upper hand...with vast amounts of money, and most of Europe's Royalty...and Protestants were nearly always defensive, not offensive.
The 30 Years War of the 1600s...which had about 1/3 of Germany killed, started on religious lines, but soon changed to nationalist lines...(French and German Catholics (or Protestants)found it easier to kill each other, than to keep alliances to kill opposite religionists of their own nationality).