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To: HarleyD
What's to say that God didn't appoint Martin Luther in much the same way?
  1. It is appalling that men should take this filthy talker, whose hopelessly dirty language indicated the morally diseased state of his mind, as a guide to expound Eternal Law, and that they should hang upon his words, hold him up for imitation and entrust to him their salvation. It is pitiable but true that men have eyes and see not, they have ears and hear not, they have hearts and feel not. Oh! that the eyes and the ears and the hearts of our separated brethren, if their faculties are not blunted, would come to recognize the unspeakable character of the heresiarch's utterances, his obscene remarks, his vulgar jokes, his habitual nasty references to sexual matters, and discover in time that this open, brazen and shameless violator of all conventional decency could not in any sense have been raised up by the All-Holy to lead men to the Kingdom of Heaven.
  2. Martin Luther - "The Jews & Their Lies"
  3. The prevailing view[28] among historians is that Luther's anti-Jewish rhetoric contributed significantly to the development of antisemitism in Germany,[29] and in the 1930s and 1940s provided an ideal foundation for the Nazi Party's attacks on Jews.[30] Reinhold Lewin writes that "whoever wrote against the Jews for whatever reason believed he had the right to justify himself by triumphantly referring to Luther." According to Michael, just about every anti-Jewish book printed in the Third Reich contained references to and quotations from Luther. Diarmaid MacCulloch argues that Luther's 1543 pamphlet On the Jews and Their Lies was a "blueprint" for the Kristallnacht.[31] Shortly after the Kristallnacht, Martin Sasse, Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Thuringia, published a compendium of Martin Luther's writings ; Sasse "applauded the burning of the synagogues" and the coincidence of the day, writing in the introduction, "On November 10, 1938, on Luther's birthday, the synagogues are burning in Germany." The German people, he urged, ought to heed these words "of the greatest anti-Semite of his time, the warner of his people against the Jews."[32] In 1940, Heinrich Himmler wrote admiringly of Luther's writings and sermons on the Jews.[33] The city of Nuremberg presented a first edition of On the Jews and their Lies to Julius Streicher, editor of the Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer, on his birthday in 1937; the newspaper described it as the most radically antisemitic tract ever published.[34] ... Regarding Luther's treatise, On the Jews and Their Lies, the German philosopher Karl Jaspers wrote: "There you already have the whole Nazi program".[38]
  4. The prevailing scholarly view[42] since the Second World War is that the treatise exercised a major and persistent influence on Germany's attitude toward its Jewish citizens in the centuries between the Reformation and the Holocaust. Four hundred years after it was written, the Nazi Party displayed On the Jews and Their Lies during Nuremberg rallies, and the city of Nuremberg presented a first edition to Julius Streicher, editor of the Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer, the newspaper describing it as the most radically antisemitic tract ever published

506 posted on 07/27/2014 8:18:41 PM PDT by af_vet_1981 (The bus came by and I got on, That's when it all began)
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To: af_vet_1981
Wiki? Really? ‘The prevailing view’, like the ‘prevailing view’ on Global Warming? If the Nazis wanted anti-semitic acts to hang their death head caps on, they needn’t have gone back 400 years, they had ample evidence from ‘the Church’ in their own lifetime.

The baptized and confirmed Catholic Adolf Hitler didn’t get his anti-semitism from Luther, probably got it the same place Luther did, the Catholic church. But it is interesting that the Nazis used Luther’s work, perhaps because they needed to convince Lutherans and Protestants about Jews. It seems the Catholics were already onboard.

The Bull Hebraeorum gens ("The Jewish Race") 1569, of Saint Pius V, which expelled Jews from some of the Papal states, began with these words:

"The Jewish people fell from the heights because of their faithlessness and condemned their Redeemer to a shameful death. Their godlessness has assumed such forms that, for the salvation of our own people, it becomes necessary to prevent their disease. Besides usury, through which Jews everywhere have sucked dry the property of impoverished Christians, they are accomplices of thieves and robbers; and the most damaging aspect of the matter is that they allure the unsuspecting through magical incantations, superstition, and witchcraft to the Synagogue of Satan and boast of being able to predict the future. We have carefully investigated how this revolting sect abuses the name of Christ and how harmful they are to those whose life is threatened by their deceit. On account of these and other serious matters, and because of the gravity of their crimes which increase day to day more and more, We order that, within 90 days, all Jews in our entire earthly realm of justice -- in all towns, districts, and places -- must depart these regions."

20 years after ML was dead.

A listing of Papal actions against Jews.

Papal_Bulls_Jews.

From the 19th century, 300 years after Luther:

Pope Leo worked diligently -- some would say harshly -- to reestablish firm control over the Papal States. Pope Leo re-instituted difficult rules against Jews living in the Papal States and followed a diplomatic policy that supported the royal houses of Europe.

Pius IX began rudimentary representative political reforms in the Papal States. He removed many of the restrictions on Jews and tore open the gates of the Jewish ghetto in Rome.

“removed many” not all.

In the three decades of his papacy, Pius IX would develop an enormous personal following among Catholics worldwide.

Pope Pius IX

While Luther’s excesses regarding Jews are deplorable, all Luther had were words, the Papacy had the deeds, while Luther talked, the Papacy acted.

596 posted on 07/28/2014 7:57:40 AM PDT by xone
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To: af_vet_1981
It's interesting how when Dr. Luther was a Catholic theologian they didn't harbor such ill will. It was only when he left the Church the seeds of bitterness sprung open. As far as Luther's stance on Jews, I would call your attention to Church And The Jews In The Middle Ages, The by Catholic Culture. This was a common view held by many Catholics, not just Luther. Catholic Culture makes the same point that I often have argued here:

We can't judge people's behavior through the lens of our today's standards. Certainly they had their faults. But, quite frankly, we probably have far many more then they had.
649 posted on 07/28/2014 4:22:35 PM PDT by HarleyD ("... letters are weighty, but his .. presence is weak, and his speech of no account.")
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