Posted on 03/12/2015 9:30:16 PM PDT by Steelfish
Increasing Number of Lutherans Are Coming Into The Catholic Church
BY Tim Drake
One of the most under-reported religious stories of the past decade has been the movement of Lutherans across the Tiber. What first began with prominent Lutherans, such as Richard John Neuhaus (1990) and Robert Wilken (1994), coming into the Catholic Church, has become more of a landslide that could culminate in a larger body of Lutherans coming into the collectively. In 2000, former Canadian Lutheran Bishop Joseph Jacobson came into the Church.
“No other Church really can duplicate what Jesus gave,” Jacobson told the Western Catholic Reporter in 2006. [How could it? Had Jesus desired that there could be more than one Church, He would have said that or He would have founded more than one.] In 2003, Leonard Klein, a prominent Lutheran and the former editor of Lutheran Forum and Forum Letter came into the Church.
Today, both Jacobson and Klein are Catholic priests. Over the past several years, an increasing number of Lutheran theologians have joined the Church’s ranks, some of whom now teach at Catholic colleges and universities. They include, but are not limited to: Paul Quist (2005), Richard Ballard (2006), Paul Abbe (2006), Thomas McMichael, Mickey Mattox, David Fagerberg, Bruce Marshall, Reinhard Hutter, Philip Max Johnson, and most recently, Dr. Michael Root (2010).
“The Lutheran church has been my intellectual and spiritual home for forty years,” wrote Dr. Root. “But we are not masters of our convictions. A risk of ecumenical study is that one will come to find another tradition compelling in a way that leads to a deep change in mind and heart. Over the last year or so, it has become clear to me, not without struggle, that I have become a Catholic in my mind and heart in ways that no longer permit me to present myself as a Lutheran theologian with honesty and integrity.
This move is less a matter of decision than of discernment.” [I was nothing like a theologian at the time, but what he describes I could have written about my own conversion and entrance into the Catholic Church.] It’s been said that “no one converts alone,” suggesting that oftentimes the effect of one conversion helps to move another along a similar path. [Take a look at Joseph Pearce’e Literary Converts.]
That’s exemplified through Paul Quist’s story. He describes attending the Lutheran “A Call to Faithfulness” conference at St. Olaf College in June, 1990. There, he listened to, and met, Richard John Neuhaus, who would announce his own conversion just months later. “What some Lutherans were realizing was that, without the moorings of the Church’s Magisterium, Lutheranism would ineluctably drift from it’s confessional and biblical source,” wrote Quist.
Many of the converts have come from The Society of the Holy Trinity, a pan-Lutheran ministerium organized in 1997 to work for the confessional and spiritual renewal of Lutheran churches. Now, it appears that a larger Lutheran body will be joining the Church. Father Christopher Phillips, writing at the Anglo-Catholic blog, reports that the Anglo-Lutheran Catholic Church (ALCC) clergy and parishes will be entering into the U.S. ordinariate being created for those Anglicans desiring to enter the Church.
According to the blog, the ALCC sent a letter to Walter Cardinal Kasper, on May 13, 2009, stating that it “desires to undo the mistakes of Father Martin Luther, and return to the One, Holy, and True Catholic Church established by our Lord Jesus Christ through the Blessed Saint Peter.” That letter was sent to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Surprisingly, in October 2010, the ALCC received a letter from the secretary of the CDF, informing them that Archbishop Donald Wuerl had been appointed as an episcopal delegate to assist with the implementation of Angelicanorum coetibus. The ALCC responded that they would like to be included as part of the reunification.
Benedict XVI is the Pope of Christian Unity.
Nope. Ain’t happening.
Of course ostriches bury their heads in the sand.
Welcome home, everyone.
Sure. Martin Luther didn’t know anything about the Church.
Luther taught that salvation is not earned by good deeds but is received as a gift of God’s grace through faith in Jesus Christ as redeemer from sin and with an eternity in Hell. The office of the pope was broken in an important break from the all powerful monarchic alliances of Europe, by teaching that the Bible is the only source of divinely revealed knowledge from God. Pretty powerful stuff.
The new presence of a jesuit pope will not increase the “flight” of devout Lutherans and other Protestants to the roman church. Other than those who have always followed the great wealth the church has amassed. That will never change.
The deists who were our greatest Founders would understand this, in founding the only country to largely escape euro-tyranny. Until now, of course.
How very welcoming of you.
There are so many reasons why Luther broke off from Catholicism, pretty much all of them applicable yet today.
Until the Catholic church reforms, there will be a large schism.
It has nothing to do with wealth, and everything to do with theological truth and the Petrine Doctrine. These converts are among the most pre-eminent Lutheran theologians with a lifetime of scholarship and instruction. I venture to suggest they know far more than any of the Bible-Christians who are on FR who have this habit of throwing out snippets of scripture.
Before the Bible there was the Church. The same infallibility that informed the assembly of the books in the Bible (the books in the Bible did not fall from the skies and self-assemble) continues to this day. The canonical texts were approved in the Synod of Rome n AD 382 after hundreds of years of sorting out various writings and having them cross-checked with the received oral tradition.
That infallible authority of one Church did not suddenly evaporate eleven centuries later with the Reformation. As America’s leading Lutheran convert to Catholicism, Rev. Richard Neuhaus remarked on his conversion, “the fullest expressions of scripture are found in the Catholic Church.”
The rest is all heresy ala Joel Osteen, Billy Graham, Jim Jones, David Koresh, Moonies, Mormons, and the list never ends.
See post #8. This is all about one theological truth.
This ex-Catholic Lutheran will never turn back.
You are still a Catholic, just not a practicing one. The marks of Baptism and Confirmation are still on your soul. We welcome you back at any time.
This Catholic would become an atheist before he joins any other religion.
So some theologists convert—that isn’t a “movement”- it’s more a statement of their lost faith. Pay to play is quite appealing. Luther was right. And so was Cromwell.
Before the Bible there was the Church? That’s a good one— there was no Old Testament? And Jesus formed the Catholic Church, did He? Don’t think so, despite all the teachings. There is, after all Greek Orthodox, Eastern Orthodox, Coptics, etc. Jesus would be first to deride the “moneychangers”. But that is an age-old conflict between the court jews and other “banks” of the euro-states (you know people like the Holy Roman Emperors and the monarchies we escaped).
A simple perusal of the Reformation would put pay to the “our way or the highway” mentality.
Thank God for the United States of America and the deist Founders who saw the wisdom of freedom of religion, and freedom from established religion— freedom from ANY of the sects you listed, including the europolitical religious swamps that embroiled our young nation then as it does now. That said, even disparate sects can unite around the concept of freedom vs. islamofascism since islam kills infidels, and especially any Christian. The sects cannot unite with the new world socialism posited by Francis. Can appreciate catholic need to feel as one- after so many scandals and purposeful house cleaning. As one who despises the spiritual abuse of any emotionally needy person by any so-called “person” of the cloth- it’s understandable there is a need for positive PR for the roman church. It’s what they do— evangelize for the world church and world govt.
In Hoc Signo Vinces exists in other Christian denominations,Constantine’s vision aside. Deo Vindice. Et Lux Aeterna.
Nope. Francis will tell them that they’re okay where they are — no need to come over.
If any really are, they are coming from the liberal denominations, not the conservative ones.
The schism between the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholicism happened five centuries BEFORE the Reformation and that rift has not been mended. Like you said, until or unless the Roman Catholic church reforms those dogmas that caused those splits, the schisms will remain. People may come and go, but the problem is with Rome.
Welcome, Lutherans!
P.S. - Bring your hymnals and pipe organs with you - please! (-:
The fruits of the Reformation were division and violence. Luther was a very gift theologian and writer, but if he had been put to death as Huss was, Christendom might have been spared more than a hundred years of bloodletting and lasting hatred, and the kind of political division that almost allowed Europe to be overwhelmed by the Turk. That said, only God knows why he was spared. Perhaps some greater evil might have occurred if he had not.
That Pope Frank is a real draw for the Mother Church.
I don’t know if 4 makes a landslide...
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