Posted on 03/17/2016 7:49:46 AM PDT by ebb tide
Rome has found a name for a new Square in the heart of the city, an open space in the middle of a leafy garden park in a choice area near the Coliseum: Martin Luther Square.
Almost 500 years after Augustinian monk Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the Cathedral of Wittenberg, Swabia (October 1517), and 494 years after the bull of excommunication issued by Pope Leo X ("Decet Romanum Pontificem", January 1521), the city of Rome has honored the man who sparked the Protestant Reformation, a movement premised on what Luther condemned in that very city, the headquarters of the Catholic Church.
The nameplate “Martin Luther – German Theologian (1483-1546)” is assigned to an area laden with history: nearby are Emperor Nero's Domus Aurea and the boulevard named after the Greek-Egyptian goddess Serapide. The square was officially inaugurated on Wednesday, September 16 of last year.
The decision came six years after an official request was advanced by the Union of Seventh Day Adventist Churches and the Union of the Lutheran Evangelical Churches in Italy.
While no official comment was issued by the Vatican, Lutheran circles have understandably been all abuzz. “I'm very pleased that our request has come true before the anniversary of the Reform in 2017,” said Pastor Heiner Bludau, senior pastor of the Lutheran Evangelical Church in Italy:
When we researched [in 2010] the meaning of Martin Luther's visit to Rome … we saw that his stay was clearly a part of the history of the Reformation and therefore of the history of Europe. So to dedicate a square in Rome to the great reformer is a highly symbolic and momentous step; in the light of world history it is a step that reflects the level reached by the process of European unification. On both counts I am extremely grateful.
The news, however, barely registered on the press radar, not only because Italy is grappling with engrossing social and economic troubles, but also because the revival of the memory and cult of Martin Luther has become almost normal fare now, both in secular and ecclesiastical circles.
In secular circles it has been powered in part by Germany's effort to unify the separate cultures which were shaped in the formerly partitioned East and West sides of the country, quietly renewing pride in a common national history so as to get over the country’s guilt complex for the World Wars and the Holocaust, so often mentioned in post-war German education.
The endeavor to get past the memories of the twentieth century, not to mention the economic morass inherited from East Germany in the 1990s, has been so successful that Germany today enjoys a hegemony over the European Union. (Germany trails only the U.S. and the U.K. on the “Elcano Global Presence Report 2015”.) This is the case not just from an economic point of view but also a renewed admiration for the country’s apparent efficiency, moral rigor and hard work.
The process can be illustrated by the success among children and families of the plastic toy Luthers recently marketed by Playmobil, which is the fastest-selling Playmobil figure in the company’s history. Related toy replicas have also been popular, including one of Wittenberg Cathedral, one of the castle of Warburg, and one of Luther’s wife, Katharina von Bora, the ex-Cistercian nun he married in 1525, which are sold as specially numbered collector's items.
Gemany's Catholic authorities also had a part in the revival and unprecedented universality of respect for the father of Protestant Christianity. In January 2015, the Archbishop of Munich, Cardinal Reinhard Marx—President of the German Bishops’ Conference and coordinator of Pope Francis's Board of Economic Advisors—summed up Martin Luther’s long march through the institutions of ecumenism in Politik & Kultur: “Now having completed fifty years of dialogue, a Catholic Christian, too, may respectfully read the texts penned by Luther and benefit from his ideas.” The same acceptance has been variously expressed by Cardinal Walter Kasper, German Swiss Cardinal Kurt Koch, and Fr. Hans Kung. In his 2008 publication “Night-time Conversations in Jerusalem”, written in German, Jesuit Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini praised Luther as having somehow inspired the changes that came after Vatican Council II, thereby effectively recasting as the greatest of reformers he who had previously been seen as the prototypical excommunicated heretic.
Last November, Pope Francis caused a stir when, in the words of Vatican reporter Edward Pentin, he appeared “to suggest that a Lutheran wife of a Catholic husband could receive holy Communion based on the fact that she is baptized and in accordance with her conscience.” Pentin reported a month later that Pastor Jens Kruse of Rome’s Evangelical Lutheran Church “said he believes Pope Francis ‘opened the door’ to intercommunion when the Holy Father spoke to his church last month, and that his parishioners generally have the same opinion.” When asked if he interpreted the Pope’s remarks as “allowing Lutherans to receive holy Communion, leaving it up to their conscience?”, Kruse replied in the affirmative:
The Pope said that’s a question each person has to decide for himself. I think it’s typical for Pope Francis to open doors, and now we, as churches, have the duty to find ways to fill this open door with more of a life of ecumenism, of unity. The image of an open door is, I think, a very good one because we are in front of this door at this moment and now we have to find ways to go through this open door.
Following the November 2015 event, Cardinal Robert Sarah, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments, told Aleteia.org, “Intercommunion is not permitted between Catholics and non-Catholics. You must confess the Catholic Faith. A non-Catholic cannot receive Communion. That is very, very clear. It’s not a matter of following your conscience.” In order to receive Holy Communion, Cardinal Sarah emphasized, “I need to be in the state of grace, without sin, and have the faith of the Catholic Church. … It’s not a personal desire or a personal dialogue with Jesus that determines if I can receive Communion in the Catholic Church.”
Prior to his pontficate, Josef Cardinal Ratzinger invited the faithful to reflect “very seriously” on Luther's message and “save the great things in his theology”. But he did so without blurring the lines that define the radical change that Luther brought about in “the relationship between the Church and the individual, between the Church and the Bible”, which to this day prevents Catholics and Protestants from sharing “the certainty that recognizes in the Church a common conscience which is greater than private intelligence and interpretations”.
On his trip to Germany, less than a year and a half before abdicating, Pope Benedict XVI stopped at Erfurt, where Luther studied theology and celebrated his first Mass. In the talk given on that occasion, Benedict dwelled on the importance attributed by Luther to the issue of sin, a particularly significant facet of Luther’s teaching in the light of the current emphasis on mercy that often seems to downplay the reality of sin and the real possibility of judgment. Benedict stated:
“How do I receive the grace of God?” The fact that this question was the driving force of his whole life never ceases to make a deep impression on me. For who is actually concerned about this today – even among Christians? What does the question of God mean in our lives? In our preaching? Most people today, even Christians, set out from the presupposition that God is not fundamentally interested in our sins and virtues. He knows that we are all mere flesh. And insofar as people believe in an afterlife and a divine judgement at all, nearly everyone presumes for all practical purposes that God is bound to be magnanimous and that ultimately he mercifully overlooks our small failings. The question no longer troubles us.
In January, it was announced that Francis plans to travel to Sweden in October of this year “for a joint ecumenical commemoration of the start of the Reformation, together with leaders of the Lutheran World Federation and representatives of other Christian Churches.” The event will be the start of events marking the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation; it will also “highlight the important ecumenical developments that have taken place during the past 50 years of dialogue between Catholics and Lutherans.”
I hope, however, that the warmth to Luther’s ideas will not go even further and fashion the formerly excommunicated heretic into a hero and a saint, whitewashing history until even actual events lose all meaning. For the former Augustinian monk was as much a man of the flesh and of turbulent spirits as Pope Alexander VI (1492-1503), whose sins we are in no danger of being allowed to forget.
If there is a reciprocal owning up of mistakes all around, on the part of the Protestants this might include, for example, a formal disowning of Luther's most virulent invectives, such as the ones against the Jews, contained in Luther’s 1543 book On the Jews and Their Lies, and the ones in his “Admonition to Peace”. In the latter, with regard to “The Twelve Articles of the Christian Union of Upper Swabia” (April 1525), Luther pleaded with the German nobility to suppress all the “murderous and thieving hordes of peasants” in the following terms:
What reason be there for leniency with the peasants? If there be any innocents among them, God will know how to best defend and rescue them. If God doesn't rescue them, then that means they are criminals. I think it's best for God to kill farmers rather than princes and judges, as the peasants have no Divine authority on which to base their wielding of the sword. No mercy, no patience towards the peasants, only wrath and indignation, from God and from man. This moment is so exceptional that a prince can earn heaven through bloodshed. Therefore, dear gentlemen, go ahead and exterminate, slay, strangle, and may whoever has power, use it.
Ironically, it was reported that at the September 2015 event in Rome, Michael Kretschmer, representative of the Bundestag (the national Parliament of the Federal Republic of Germany), “remembered the sensitivity of the father of the Reformation for the last (of the world). ‘If he were here today, he would tell us to take care of the poor,’ he said.” Meanwhile, the mayor of Rome, Ignazio Marino, stated: “Today gesture means that Rome has to respect every religion and faith. It is easier to smash an atom than a prejudice, Einstein said. And here we have broken some prejudices.” By all means, let’s welcome the ridding of wrong prejudices, but let’s not reject a prejudice for the truth.
All right, I’ve been quietly reading to this point, but now I must speak.
Do you have ANY understanding of the doctrine of justification outside of the bounds of the RCC? There is NO presumption here for the person who believes that CHRIST’S sacrifice that we celebrate this coming Friday provided us the garment for the wedding feast (eternal life). The commenter never stated he/she had never sinned. Before you attack me for the same, let me say, along with St. Paul that I am the CHIEF OF SINNERS; it’s just that Christ’s blood and God’s grace to me are sufficient to cover my sins.
When I stand at judgment and Satan (the Accuser) accuses me before the Throne of Almighty God, Jesus will step forward and speak (since He is the Word) on my behalf and my sins, “though they be as scarlet, shall be white as snow.” The verdict will be NOT GUILTY on the basis of Jesus’ sacrifice for me and ALL other believers.
Because of Christ’s sacrifice, the coming of the Holy Spirit that I received through Baptism, the forgiveness of sins I receive each week in the Lord’s Supper, I KNOW that I will be in heaven, provided I don’t walk away from Christ’s promises.
How sad to be so completely uncertain of your fate, and how completely unnecessary.
yeah, right, up until Trent they just guessed their way through....sheesh.
try real hard to name someone else who led more people away from Christ's church than did Luther....
Your error is in conflating The Ekklesia with the man-made-by-power-hungry religious leaders Church in Rome.
“try real hard to name someone else who led more people away from Christ’s church than did Luther.... “
Blessed Father Luther opened the door to the Gospel for hundreds of millions.
So very many of your “popes” have stood in the way of the truth.
Blessed Father Luther opened the door to the Gospel for hundreds of millions.
So very many of your “popes” have stood in the way of the truth.
Yep
Nonsense...no Pope ever stood in the way of the TRUTH...but some certainly did stand in the way of false writings and biblical versions at certain times in history. The truth was ALWAYS there but because most people couldn't read, it was unavailable to many. Before the printing press, books, including Bibles, were EXTRAORDINARILY expensive because they were hand written masterpieces. They were available to libraries, royalty, and the very rich. The printing press put the Bible within reach of almost everyone....Luther didn't, Gutenberg did.
We’ll never know will we. However, we do it was at Trent that the rcc officially proclaimed the contents of it’s Bible.
Why don’t you get back to your original claim about Luther sending people to hell.
I’m still waiting for any facts to support that. Whatcha got terycarl?
I said it was fact free. It was. Do you want to backfill some facts now?
But that would require an objective examination of the words, attitudes and actions toward the Jews by both Luther, popes and Rome, but it convenient for myopic RC rage against Protestantism to personify the latter in the person of Luther, and construe him in the worse possible light. To objectively examine both the words, attitudes and actions toward the Jews by both Luther, popes and Rome must include examining the merit of the charges against Jews, and yet what the Christian response should be, which both Luther and Rome acted contrary to.
And in so doing one must determine whether the charge would be Anti-Semitism or Anti-Judaism, meaning whether the attitude toward the Jews was due to their beliefs and behavior that flowed from it, or whether it was based on race.
Would criticizing the Jews for strongly opposing gospel preaching and attributing their suffering to being Divine judgment be antisemitism?
Should characterizing a race as being overall gluttons and liars be considered sinful racism?
The same holds true for racism today. Is opposition to those of Middle Easter ethnicity or blacks moving into an area due to belief in white (or Latino) supremacy, or due to what their culture typically manifests? I myself am a minority where I live, and see liberal conceited "yuppies" (who overall want pets rather than kids) as more of a threat to the mostly working, family-orientated community with its many Christians, but not because of race. Protestantism
In addition, in order for the hypocritical anti-Luther tirade to have much polemical value against Protestantism as a whole, not only must it be shown that such is not hypocritical in the light of papal and RC attitudes and actions, but Protestantism looks to him as a pope, or that the faults of a founder impugn or invalidate any claims to the validity of any of his distinctive teaching.
That Luther was guilty of an inexcusable attitude words and counsel against Jews is admitted by many evangelicals, such as Michael Brown, even though we do not hold the same, not operate under the papal model, and are the strongest supported of the Jews and their state. I believe a special love for the Jewish people, who are yet beloved for their father's sake, is a normal mark of regeneration.
But certain self-righteous RCs seem to demand we treat Luther as a Hitler and never liken Rome's attitude and actions toward the Jews to that of Luther, or or apologize for it, even though unlike us, their one basic duty is to simply follow their pastors.
The road to Hell is paved with the bones of priests and monks, and the skulls of bishops are the lamp posts that light the path.”
– or –
“The road to hell is paved with the skulls of erring priests, with bishops as their signposts.”
St. John Chrysostom attributed.1
“I do not think there are many among Bishops that will be saved, but many more that perish.”
St. John Chrysostom, Extract from St. John Chrysostom, Homily III on Acts 1:12.2
“The floor of hell is paved with the skulls of bishops.”
St. Athanasius, Council of Nicaea, AD 325 attributed.3
“The road to hell is paved with the skulls of bishops.”
Saint John Eudes, attributed.4
the Orthodox church is fully Catholic.
Are you saying the pope is the head of the Greek Orthodox Church?
The Pope is the head of the Roman Catholic church, from which the Orthodox church is in schism....they have a leader but both Roman and Orthodox branches are fully Catholic. When the reunion takes place, probably fairly soon, the Pope will AGAIN be the head of all Catholics, Eastern and Western.
Oh come on now. Greek Orthodox consider the five cities as equals: Jerusalem, Antioch, Constantinople (Istanbul), Alexandria, and Rome. They even call the head man at Alexandria a "pope", where the term originated (it didn't originate in Rome). Are you saying that the Greek Orthodox Church is going to give up their belief in Christ being head of the Church and take up Rome's nutty popes?
Now believe it or not, I think it is possible when the AntiChrist comes it is possible that the other 4 cities will worship the pope of Rome as Christ, but this will be Satan himself and the very latter days, fulfilling Revelation, but I cant see the Greek Orthodox Church propping up ole Frank over Jesus. lol
The Roman church, like the Eastern church, believe that Christ is he head of the church. The Patriarch and the Pope are merely leaders of their respective groups. The Pope is considered the Vicar of Christ, that is, the titular head of CHRISTIANITY on Earth....Christ is certainly in charge, but by naming Peter as the titular head, ans declaring that what he bound on Earth would be bound in Heaven and what he loosed on Earth would be loosed in Heaven, He gave the Pope the authority to sort of act in His behalf as the head of the church.
It must be really convenient to be a Catholic, just believe in things that make no sense and there is no evidence for.
The Greek Orthodox has never been part of the RCC and up to now have had no desire to worship anybody but Christ as Christ.
What Christ referred to as the rock was obeying the first commandment of putting God first as Peter said, and helping others to see that. If anyone does that the gates of hell cannot prevail against them because God will always be with them. Any church organization can be toppled, as we saw with Rome itself, the rock is not the organization. The RCC has now adopted Obama's agenda and is headed to destruction, to be burned with fire, as the bible says. That is certainly not the rock.
Peter had no primacy with the apostles. John was the apostle Jesus loved. Peter was possessed by Satan when he cut the ear and had to be exorcised by Christ. John was the apostle who received the great honer of recording Jesus' Revelation, not the bishop of Rome. John stood with Jesus at the cross, Peter fled and denied Christ thrice. John became the son of Mary at the cross. Peter was the most talkative of the apostles, sure, but the leader?...no. Remember in school the most talkative kids usually weren't the best students. Peter was a great man, sure, Jesus chose him as one of the twelve. No apostle had primacy though over the other apostles, not even John, and certainly not Peter.
Peter was never in Rome anyway. An impostor recorded by Eusebius was in Rome pretending to be Peter, his name was Simon Magus. Rome was Paul's mission, not Peter's. Peter died of old age as Jesus said he would, in Jerusalem. His ossuary was found there in the 1950s.
Sure they were, for about 1,100 years...that's why they call it a schism and not a revolution an in Protestant. The rest of your post is interesting and certainly proves that you have a vivid imagination....
You're the one with the imagination. The schism was in communion only and went on the whole time the Roman Catholic Church came into being until the schism was finalized in 1054. The RCC never owned or ran the Greek Orthodox Church, and the Greek Orthodox certainly have never used any Roman Catholic bible. Between the formation of the Roman Catholic Church and 1054, bishops of Rome and popes kept claiming they had power over the earth and the other churches, and the other churches said "no you don't". They were never united. Eastern Orthodox then never even recognized Peter as Rome's first pope. They were right about that!
The rest of your post is interesting and certainly proves that you have a vivid imagination....
Renowned Catholic archaeologist Milik confirmed Peter's ossuary in Jerusalem. The rest is biblical.
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