Thank God for Blessed Father Luther
- an imperfect man, like every other man God uses -
who was used to recover the Glorious Gospel of Grace!
Praise to God for His Indescribable Gift!!
Posted on 08/12/2016 3:59:59 PM PDT by ebb tide
Germany’s Catholic bishops have praised Martin Luther as a “Gospel witness and teacher of the faith” and called for closer ties with Protestants.
In a 206-page report, “The Reformation in Ecumenical Perspective”, Bishop Gerhard Feige of Magdeburg, chairman of the German bishops’ ecumenical commission, said the “history of the Reformation has encountered a changeable reception in the Catholic Church, where its events and protagonists were long seen in a negative, derogatory light”.
“While the wounds are still felt to the present day, it is gratifying that Catholic theology has succeeded, in the meantime, in soberly reconsidering the events of the 16th century,” he said in the report, published this week by Germany’s Bonn-based bishops’ conference.
Bishop Feige said the “history and consequences” of the Reformation would be debated during its upcoming 500th anniversary, but added that there was consensus that previous mutual condemnations were invalid.
“Memories of the Reformation and the subsequent separation of Western Christianity are not free from pain,” Bishop Feige said. “But through lengthy ecumenical dialogue, the theological differences rooted in the period have been re-evaluated – as is documented in the work presented by our ecumenical commission.”
Martin Lazar, the Magdeburg diocesan spokesman, told Catholic News Service on Wednesday that the Reformation still caused tensions in Germany, especially “in religiously separated families.”
The bishops’ report said the “Catholic Church may recognise today what was important in the Reformation – namely, that Sacred Scripture is the centre and standard for all Christian life.
“Connected with this is Martin Luther’s fundamental insight that God’s self-revelation in Jesus Christ for the salvation of the people is proclaimed in the Gospel – that Jesus Christ is the centre of Scripture and the only mediator.”
The Reformation is traditionally dated from the October 1517 publication of Luther’s 95 Theses, questioning the sale of indulgences and the Gospel foundations of papal authority.
Luther was excommunicated by Pope Leo X in January 1521 and outlawed by Holy Roman Emperor Charles V.
The German bishops describe Luther as “a religious pathfinder, Gospel witness and teacher of the faith,” whose “concern for renewal in repentance and conversion” had not received an “adequate hearing” in Rome.
They said the reformer’s work still posed a “theological and spiritual challenge” and had “ecclesial and political implications for understanding the Church and the Magisterium.”
The report said a joint Catholic-Lutheran statement in 1980 commemorating the Augsburg Confession, which set out the new Lutheran faith, had been crucial in bringing churches closer, while another ecumenical statement in 1983, on the 500th anniversary of Luther’s birth, had started an “intensive engagement” with the reformer’s work.
A historic 1999 joint declaration on the doctrine of justification was a “milestone in ecumenical dialogue,” the report said, by recognising that remaining differences should “no longer have a church-dividing effect.”
The bishops’ report includes June 2015 conciliatory letters between the German bishops’ conference president, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, and Lutheran Bishop Heinrich Strohm, president of the Evangelical Church of Germany, outlining plans for a 2017 ecumenical pilgrimage to the Holy Land and a Lent service devoted to “healing memories.”
In an interview with CNS, the ecumenical commission’s deputy chairman, Bishop Heinz Algermissen of Fulda, said Catholic-Lutheran ties had improved since the Second Vatican Council, but that churches must work for “visible unity, not just reconciled diversity.”
“This means not only praying together, but meeting the challenge of speaking with one voice as Christians when we are all challenged by aggressive atheism and secularism, as well as by [radicalised] Islam. Otherwise we will lose more and more ground,” he said.
“In commemorating the Reformation, we cannot just see it as a jubilee, but should also admit our guilt for past errors and repent on both sides for the past 500 years,” he added.
Catholics make up 29 per cent of Germany’s 82 million inhabitants, with the Evangelical Church of Germany accounting for 27 per cent, although all denominations have faced declining membership.
Thank God for Blessed Father Luther
- an imperfect man, like every other man God uses -
who was used to recover the Glorious Gospel of Grace!
Praise to God for His Indescribable Gift!!
Understanding that you’re just trying to get under people’s skin, care to explain how Luther could have “recovered” something that wasn’t lost in the first place?
He was.
Hey, why the negativity, dude?
I'm here to celebrate, agreeing with Catholic Bishops!
Blessed Luther recovered the Gospel of Grace, which had been lost into a sacramental system of earned grace and works.
Luther was used to lead hundreds of millions to Christ - after he approached his own Church, asking it to return to its roots. They expelled him.
The Jews did the same when Messiah came to them. The Gentiles still benefit to this day. All glory to God.
Just lost in practice and tradition, just like today.
Better late than never!
I think it’s obvious that you’ve seriously misunderstood Matthew 18:3. But you haven’t explained how Luther could have recovered something was not only never lost, but had in fact been preserved and preached at great cost.
Amen and Amen!
Exactly.
It’s not often I get the opportunity to agree whole-heartedly with Roman Catholic Bishops.
What a fun thread.
AAAH the cafeteria protestants....giddy over luther on this subject, but very quiet on his words on mary as ever virgin, and the eucharist as the literal body and blood of christ, etc.....
We’ve reached a point in history where traditional Catholics now have much more in common with Luther and the Reformers than they do with most contemporary Catholic bishops and theologians.
Chapter 9 of the Apocalypse opens with Saint John’s terrifying vision:
“And the fifth Angel sounded the trumpet; and I saw a star fall from Heaven upon the earth, and to him was given the key to the bottomless pit.
“And he opened the bottomless pit: and the smoke of the pit ascended as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun was darkened, and the air with the smoke of the pit:
“And from the smoke of the pit, there came out locusts upon the earth, and power was given to them, as the scorpions of the earth have power.” (Apoc: 9:1-3)
Devout Catholic Scriptural commentators for the past 500 years have seen in this vision a prediction of Luther and his Protestant Revolt.
Father Herman Bernard Kramer, in The Book of Destiny, explains, “Luther did truly open the pit and let loose against the Church all the fury of hell. Therefore modern interpreters almost universally see in this fallen star, Luther.”[1] Father Kramer references the eminent Scriptural commentator, Cornelius a Lapide as making this point.[2]
“The whole description of the locusts”, Father Kramer explains, “fits down to the last detail the kings and princes who established by force the heresy of the 16th Century.” He continues:
“When Luther propounded his heretical and immoral doctrine, the sky became as it were obscured by smoke. It spread very rapidly over some regions of the earth, and it brought forth princes and kings who were eager to despoil the Church of her possessions. They compelled the people of their domains and in the territories robbed from the Church to accept the doctrines of Luther. The proponents of Protestantism made false translations of the Bible and misled the people into their errors by apparently proving from the ‘Bible’ (their own translations) the correctness of their doctrines. It was all deceit, lying and hypocrisy. Bad and weak, lax and lukewarm, indifferent and non-practicing Catholics and those who had neglected to get thorough instruction were thus misled; and these, seeing the Catholic Church now through this smoke of error from the abyss and beholding a distorted caricature of the true Church, began both to fear and hate her.”[3]
One of the many things I have learned through participating in the forum is how much of an influence Augustine had on Luther. Luther himself acknowledged that Augustine’s theology greatly influenced his rediscovery of the gospel of grace.
I can't speak for others, but I've addressed every one of those issues and more on these threads over the past 18 years.
Like Luther, Augustine got a lot right. I’m thankful for his ministry.
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