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Posted on 03/13/2017 8:58:52 AM PDT by ebb tide
Two trials, two appeals to conscience.
Trial 1: I cannot and will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand, I can do no other, so help me God. Amen.
Trial 2: If the number of bishops and universities should be so material as your lordship seems to think, then I see little cause, my lord, why that should make any change in my conscience. For I have no doubt that, though not in this realm, but of all those well learned bishops and virtuous men that are yet alive throughout Christendom, they are not fewer who are of my mind therein. But if I should speak of those who are already dead, of whom many are now holy saints in heaven, I am very sure it is the far greater part of them who, all the while they lived, thought in this case the way that I think now. And therefore am I not bound, my lord, to conform my conscience to the council of one realm against the General Council of Christendom.
What is the difference of these two quotes?
The first, from the friar Martin Luther, asserts the primacy of conscience over the universal consent of the Church and the tradition.
The second, from a laymen Thomas More, notes the agreement of conscience to the faith of Christendom, the history of the Church, and the saints of Heaven.
Why are these appeals to conscience significant? I think Belloc is fundamentally correct in his assessment of the nature of Protestantism as a denial of religious authority, resting in a visible Church:
The Protestant attack differed from the rest especially in this characteristic, that its attack did not consist in the promulgation of a new doctrine or of a new authority, that it made no concerted attempt at creating a counter-Church, but had for its principle the denial of unity. It was an effort to promote that state of mind in which a “Church” in the old sense of the word-that is, an infallible, united, teaching body, a Person speaking with Divine authority-should be denied; not the doctrines it might happen to advance, but its very claim to advance them with unique authority.
The individual quickly emerged to fill the vacuum left by the Church, as the dominant religious factor in the modern period.
Martin Luther: Revolutionary, Not Reformer In this year of the five hundredth anniversary of the Reformation, we have to take stock of the legacy of the renegade, Catholic priest, Martin Luther. What were his intentions? It is commonly alleged, even among Catholics, that he had the noble aim of reforming abuses within the Church.
In fact, Martin Luther discovered his revolutionary, theological positions about a year before he posted his 95 theses. Probably in the year 1516, while lecturing on Romans at the seminary in Wittenburg, Luther had a pivotal experience, which shaped the way he viewed the Christian faith. Essentially, his “tower experience,” resolved his difficulty of conscience. He saw God and His commandments as a moral threat:
But I, blameless monk that I was, felt that before God I was a sinner with an extremely troubled conscience. I couldn’t be sure that God was appeased by my satisfaction. I did not love, no, rather I hated the just God who punishes sinners. In silence, if I did not blaspheme, then certainly I grumbled vehemently and got angry at God. I said, “Isn’t it enough that we miserable sinners, lost for all eternity because of original sin, are oppressed by every kind of calamity through the Ten Commandments? Why does God heap sorrow upon sorrow through the Gospel and through the Gospel threaten us with his justice and his wrath?” This was how I was raging with wild and disturbed conscience. I constantly badgered St. Paul about that spot in Romans 1 and anxiously wanted to know what he meant.
Reading Romans 1, while in the tower of his monastery, Luther suddenly saw the resolution of his troubled conscience through faith: “All at once I felt that I had been born again and entered into paradise itself through open gates. Immediately I saw the whole of Scripture in a different light.”
As we see in Trent’s teaching on justification and the Joint Declaration of Faith, there is nothing wrong with the realization that righteousness (same word as justification) comes through faith alone, moved by the grace of God. The problem is the re-reading of Scripture and all of the Christian tradition in a different light through this realization. Luther’s troubled conscience and experience of faith led him eventually (as it took him a while to work it out) to reject many of the Sacraments, books of the Bible, and the Church’s authority all in the name of liberty of conscience. A great schism would follow from Luther’s personal experience.
The Significance of Luther’s Teaching on Conscience No doubt reforms were needed in the Catholic Church in 1517. Contrary to popular opinion however, Luther primarily sought to spread his understanding of the Gospel, not to correct abuses. Catholic practices became abuses precisely because they contradicted his tower experience of 1516.
One of Luther’s early tracts, Appeal to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation (1520), lays out the implications of his view in more detail:
Besides, if we are all priests, as was said above, and all have one faith, one Gospel, one sacrament, why should we not also have the power to test and judge what is correct or incorrect in matters of faith? What becomes of the words of Paul in I Corinthians 2:15: “He that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man,” II Corinthians 4:13: “We have all the same Spirit of faith”? Why, then, should not we perceive what squares with faith and what does not, as well as does an unbelieving pope?
All these and many other texts should make us bold and free, and we should not allow the Spirit of liberty, as Paul calls Him, to be frightened off by the fabrications of the popes, but we ought to go boldly forward to test all that they do or leave undone, according to our interpretation of the Scriptures, which rests on faith, and compel them to follow not their own interpretation, but the one that is better….
Thus I hope that the false, lying terror with which the Romans have this long time made our conscience timid and stupid, has been allayed.
Luther never condoned license (though he did condone Philip of Hesse’s bigamy), as he said his conscience was captive to the Word of God, but he did separate the decision of his conscience from the authority of the Church. This proved absolutely foundational for Protestantism and modern, religious experience.
Father of the Modern World The claim that Luther stands at a crucial moment between medieval Christendom and the modern world is not contentious. This is need for care, however. His separation of faith and reason and insistence on the spiritual nature of the Church, in my opinion, did quicken the advance to secularism. However, Luther did not directly intend the creation of the modern, secular world as know it. Yet his stand on conscience and his individualistic interpretation of faith did lend itself to modern individualism, which I would even say is the heart of modern culture.
Cardinal Ratzinger suggested that Luther stood at the forefront of the modern movement, focused on the freedom of the individual. I recommend looking at this piece, “Truth and Freedom” further, but his central insight on Luther follows:
There is no doubt that from the very outset freedom has been the defining theme of that epoch which we call modern…. Luther’s polemical writing [On the Freedom of the Christian] boldly struck up this theme in resounding tones…. At issue was the freedom of conscience vis-à-vis the authority of the Church, hence the most intimate of all human freedoms…. Even if it would not be right to speak of the individualism of the Reformation, the new importance of the individual and the shift in the relation between individual conscience and authority are nonetheless among its dominant traits (Communio 23 [1996]: 20).
These traits have survived and at times predominate our contemporary religious experience. The sociologist, Christian Smith, has noted in his study of the faith life of emerging adults, Souls in Transition, that an evangelical focus on individual salvation has been carried over into a new religious autonomy. He claims that…
the places where today’s emerging adults have taken that individualism in religion basically continues the cultural trajectory launched by Martin Luther five centuries ago and propelled along the way by subsequent development of evangelical individualism, through revivalism, evangelism and pietism…. Furthermore, the strong individualistic subjectivism in the emerging adult religious outlook—that “truth” should be decided by “what seems right” to individuals, based on their personal experience and feelings—also has deep cultural-structural roots in American evangelicalism.
Luther’s legacy clearly points toward individualism in religion, setting up a conflict with religious authority and tradition. The average Western Christian probably follows his central assertion that one must follow one’s own conscience over and against the Church.
Luther’s View of Conscience in the Catholic Church The key issue in debating Luther’s legacy on conscience in the Catholic Church entails whether the teachings of the Church are subordinate to one’s own conscience or whether conscience is bound by the teaching of the Church.
I know an elderly Salesian priest who told me with all sincerity that the purpose of Vatican II was to teach us that we could decide what to believe and how to live according to our conscience. This is clearly the “Spirit of Vatican II,” as Gaudium et Spes, while upholding the dignity of conscience, enjoins couples in regards to the transmission of life: “But in their manner of acting, spouses should be aware that they cannot proceed arbitrarily, but must always be governed according to a conscience dutifully conformed to the divine law itself, and should be submissive toward the Church’s teaching office, which authentically interprets that law in the light of the Gospel” (50). Dignitatis Humanae, Vatican’s Declaration on Religious Liberty, holds together two crucial points, stating that one cannot “be forced to act in a manner contrary to his conscience,” (3) as well as that “in the formation of their consciences, the Christian faithful ought carefully to attend to the sacred and certain doctrine of the Church” (14). The Council upheld the dignity of conscience as well as its obligation to accept the authority of the Church.
The misinterpretation of the Council’s teaching on conscience as license found its first test case just three years after the Council closed in Humanae Vitae. Theologians such as Bernard Härring and Charles Curran advocated for the legitimacy of dissent from the encyclical on the grounds of conscience. The Canadian Bishops, in their Winnipeg Statement, affirmed: “In accord with the accepted principles of moral theology, if these persons have tried sincerely but without success to pursue a line of conduct in keeping with the given directives, they may be safely assure that, whoever honestly chooses that course which seems right to him does so in good conscience.”
Conscience also stands at the center of the current controversy over the interpretation of Amoris Laetitia. I’ve already written on how Amoris stands in relation to the Church’s efforts to inculturate the modern world in relation to conscience. Cardinal Caffarra claimed that the fifth dubium on conscience was the most important. He stated further: “Here, for me, is the decisive clash between the vision of life that belongs to the Church (because it belongs to divine Revelation) and modernity’s conception of one’s own conscience.” Recently, the German bishops, following those of Malta, have decided: “We write that—in justified individual cases and after a longer process—there can be a decision of conscience on the side of the faithful to receive the Sacraments, a decision which must be respected.”
In light of the current controversy on conscience, it is troubling that Luther is now upheld as genuine reformer. The most troubling is from the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity in its Resources for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity and throughout the year 2017: “Separating that which is polemical from the theological insights of the Reformation, Catholics are now able to hear Luther’s challenge for the Church of today, recognising him as a ‘witness to the gospel’ (From Conflict to Communion 29). And so after centuries of mutual condemnations and vilification, in 2017 Lutheran and Catholic Christians will for the first time commemorate together the beginning of the Reformation.” The Vatican also announced a commemorative stamp (which to me sounds like the United States issuing a stamp commemorating the burning the White House by British troops).
Pope Francis has spoken of Luther several times in the past year, including in an inflight press conference returning from Armenia: “I think that the intentions of Martin Luther were not mistaken. He was a reformer. Perhaps some methods were not correct.” In response I ask, what did Luther reform? Francis pointed to two things in his journey to Sweden. The Reformation “helped give greater centrality to sacred scripture in the Church’s life,” but it did so by advocating the flawed notion of sola scriptura. Francis also pointed to Luther’s concept of sola gratia, which “reminds us that God always takes the initiative, prior to any human response, even as he seeks to awaken that response.” While the priority of God’s initiative is true and there are similarities to Catholic teaching in this teaching (that faith is a free gift that cannot be merited), Luther denied our cooperation with grace, our ability to grow in sanctification and merit, and that we fall from grace through mortal sin. Francis also noted, while speaking to an ecumenical delegation from Finland: “In this spirit, we recalled in Lund that the intention of Martin Luther 500 years ago was to renew the Church, not divide Her.” Most recently he spoke of how we now know “how to appreciate the spiritual and theological gifts that we have received from the Reformation.”
It is true that Martin Luther did not want to divide the Church. He wanted to reform the Church on his own terms, which was not genuine reform. Luther said he would follow the Pope if the Pope taught the pure Gospel of his conception: “The chief cause that I fell out with the pope was this: the pope boasted that he was the head of the Church, and condemned all that would not be under his power and authority; for he said, although Christ be the head of the Church, yet, notwithstanding, there must be a corporal head of the Church upon earth. With this I could have been content, had he but taught the gospel pure and clear, and not introduced human inventions and lies in its stead.” Further he accuses the corruption of conscience by listening to the Church as opposed to Scripture: “But the papists, against their own consciences, say, No; we must hear the Church.” This points us back to the crucial issue of authority, pointed out by Belloc.
Conclusion: More Over Luther We should not celebrate the Reformation, because we cannot celebrate the defense of erroneous conscience held up against the authority of the Church. As St. Thomas More rightly said in his “Dialogue on Conscience,” taken down by his daughter Meg: “But indeed, if on the other side a man would in a matter take away by himself upon his own mind alone, or with some few, or with never so many, against an evident truth appearing by the common faith of Christendom, this conscience is very damnable.” He may have had Luther in mind.
More did not stand on his own private interpretation of the faith, but rested firmly on the authority of Christendom and, as Chesterton put it, the democracy of the dead: “But go we now to them that are dead before, and that are I trust in heaven, I am sure that it is not the fewer part of them that all the time while they lived, thought in some of the things, the way that I think now.”
More is a crucial example of standing firm in a rightly formed conscience. We should remember why he died and not let his witness remain in vain. He stood on the ground of the Church’s timeless teaching, anchored in Scripture and the witness of the saints. If we divorce conscience from authority, we will end in moral chaos. As Cardinal Ratzinger asked in his lucid work, On Conscience: “Does God speak to men in a contradictory manner? Does He contradict Himself? Does He forbid one person, even to the point of martyrdom, to do something that He allows or even requires of another?” These are crucial questions we must face.
Rather than celebrating the defender of erroneous conscience, let’s remember and invoke the true martyr of conscience, who died upholding the unity of the faith.
When you aren’t railing against your recent Popes, you rail against a man dead for five hundred years! Explain how you aren’t guilty of hypocrisy for the SAME denial of religious authority?
Im in no way omniscient.
After reading ‘pleading my case’, a snoozy ‘whats your point?’ today, carries the same enigma as ‘know wha’ ahm sayin’ does.
I can hear Paul saying: "So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!" - Romans 7
This is the Bible-based understanding of what the Christian faith is about:
Are we reconciled to God? Do we love Him and trust Him? Do we submit to His will to the extent that we’re truly able to, and do we truly want to? Are we pursuing Him and following Him out of love for Him? Inside, are we devoted to Him, so that we truly live a life of that devotion? Do we believe that God is God, and our Creator, and we have broken His righteous commandments? Do we believe we’ve sinned against Him and our sin grieves us? All of this goes hand-in-hand with believing the truth He’s revealed to us, especially the Gospel, the Good News that He gave His only begotten Son for the world, so that we could be reconciled to Him, our sins washed away, and we receive eternal life. Now if someone truly loves God, sincerely submits to His will, and truly believes what He’s revealed about His Son, Jesus Christ, then how would that person still be God’s enemy? How would someone who has renounced Satan’s rebellion against God, and embraced God and His truth be rejected by Him? Would God reject someone who sincerely admits he has sinned against Him and is in need of His mercy, forgiveness and salvation, someone who has sincerely turned away from sin and to Him, and has a heart like David’s, who had a heart after God’s own heart?
“The corruption of Rome was so extreme that it sickened any one with a conscience.”
That’s really more myth than anything else. http://the-orb.arlima.net/non_spec/missteps/ch11.html If your claim was true, then someone would have to ask, “If the Protestant Revolution (and revolution it was rather than reformation) happened because of “Rome’s corruption” then why were the new sects that sprang up in its wake so corrupt?”
“Catholics continue to live under the delusion that everyone not catholic is running around with whatever Luther wrote.”
It’s funny you should make that claim in the same post you post this: “The translation “she” of the Vulgate is interpretative; it originated after the fourth century, and cannot be defended critically.”
After all when one thinks of how Luther twisted the translation of the Bible to serve his own “interpretative” needs, well, you should get the picture. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2801154/posts
And the reason why so many Catholics bring up Luther is simple - he is the father of Protestantism. Any historian can trace back Protestant sects and realize that they didn’t exist before 1517-1520. Sola scriptura, sola fide - these are Luther’s creations. Some Protestants deny that, of course, and even go to ridiculous lengths to establish some sort of historical pedigree for Protestantism (”Trail of Blood nonsense for example) but that’s all made up nonsense.
Protestantism, whether it is to be considered right or wrong, rests upon the shoulders of one man, one inventor, one creator, one father - and that’s Martin Luther.
Our founder was Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God. Your ultimate founder was a brilliant, but possibly mentally ill, rebel monk named Martin Luther. That will never change.
If Christians relied only on Luther you might have a point. Fortunately we have the original texts to compare our translations to.
The history of the RCC and Protestantism has long been debated.
. Was Luther perfect? No.
Is the RCC with its practices of idolatry and a priesthood not found in the NT perfect? No.
The Christian is to base their belief on what we have in the Word. It is the only inspired word we have from God.
Exactly how Christian is your tag line?
“Fortunately we have the original texts to compare our translations to.”
No, we don’t. No one does. There is not a single autograph of any Biblical book known to exist anywhere in the world. What you just said is OBJECTIVELY false. All we have are copies - and even some of those might be translations of copies.
“Was Luther perfect? No.”
No, but Jesus was.
“Is the RCC with its practices of idolatry and a priesthood not found in the NT perfect? No.”
Except there is no idolatry and the priesthood IS found in the NT. See, you actually have to make things up to attack the Catholic Church there. That actually hints at perfection logically.
“The Christian is to base their belief on what we have in the Word. It is the only inspired word we have from God.”
It always fascinates me that Protestants invent things about how the Word is to be viewed that are not actually “in the Word” and exclude the actual Word made flesh as well as the work of the Holy Spirit.
The idols of Mary say otherwise.
“Exactly how Christian is your tag line?”
Perfectly - when taken in the context in which it was written. It’s no different in that context than Galatians 3:1 was in Paul’s usage.
Allow me to clarify....we have the original languages to compare our texts to. You are correct....we don’t have a copy of the original texts....but we’ve got some that are close....at least for the NT.
Not really sure how you get your tagline from that verse....but I've seen other Catholics attempt to use Scripture to justify their use of profanity.
Care to explain your thought process on this?
“Allow me to clarify....we have the original languages to compare our texts to. You are correct....we don’t have a copy of the original texts....but we’ve got some that are close....at least for the NT.”
You need to clarify your clarification. We ASSUME “we have the original languages to compare our texts to”. Do we actually have them? There is evidence to suggest that some of the gospels were written in Hebrew or Aramaic and NOT Greek.
“Not really sure how you get your tagline from that verse....”
Where did I claim I did? You really need to improve your reading comprehension.
“but I’ve seen other Catholics attempt to use Scripture to justify their use of profanity.”
I’ve seen Protestants attempt to use Scripture to justify their use of heresy.
“Care to explain your thought process on this?”
I already said all that needs to be said in regard to the origin or use of the tagline. Whether or not you agree is immaterial.
“Exactly how Christian is your tag line?”
Perfectly - when taken in the context in which it was written. It’s no different in that context than Galatians 3:1 was in Paul’s usage.
“Perfectly” - or that’s what you claim. “When taken in the context in which it was written” - but that context is *nowhere* to be found. This is your *tagline* after all. There is no “context” to it. Instead, you’re aiming that remark at every one who reads it, and in particular, those who don’t agree with you. And calling them stupid, “empty headed.” Matthew 5:22:
http://www.usccb.org/bible/mt/5:22#48005022
And you would justify that by saying “It’s no different in that context than Galatians 3:1 was in Paul’s usage.” It’s already different from Galatians 3:1 in that it’s clearly an insult, no matter the context, which, again, isn’t present. You took it out of context to make it your tag line. Paul was fervently reasoning with the Galatians not to abandon faith in Christ for works of the law, and trying to wake them up using strong language. He called them foolish out of personal love for them, and concern for them apparently moving away from faith in Christ:
Justification by Faith.*
1 O stupid* Galatians! Who has bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified?a
2 I want to learn only this from you:b did you receive the Spirit from works of the law, or from faith in what you heard?*
3 Are you so stupid?c After beginning with the Spirit, are you now ending with the flesh?*
4 Did you experience so many things* in vain?—if indeed it was in vain.
5 Does, then, the one who supplies the Spirit to you and works mighty deeds among you do so from works of the law or from faith in what you heard?d
6 Thus Abraham “believed God,e and it was credited to him as righteousness.”*
7 * Realize then that it is those who have faith who are children of Abraham.f
8 Scripture, which saw in advance that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, foretold the good news to Abraham, saying, “Through you shall all the nations be blessed.”g
9 Consequently, those who have faith are blessed along with Abraham who had faith.h
10 * For all who depend on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, “Cursed be everyone who does not persevere in doing all the things written in the book of the law.”i
11 And that no one is justified before God by the law is clear, for “the one who is righteous by faith will live.”j
12 But the law does not depend on faith; rather, “the one who does these things will live by them.”k
13 Christ ransomed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written, “Cursed be everyone who hangs on a tree,”l
14 that the blessing of Abraham might be extended to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.m
The Law Did Not Nullify the Promise.
15 * Brothers, in human terms I say that no one can annul or amend even a human will once ratified.n
16 Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his descendant.* It does not say, “And to descendants,” as referring to many, but as referring to one, “And to your descendant,” who is Christ.o
17 This is what I mean: the law, which came four hundred and thirty years afterward,* does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to cancel the promise.p
18 For if the inheritance comes from the law,q it is no longer from a promise; but God bestowed it on Abraham through a promise.*
19 * Why, then, the law? It was added for transgressions, until the descendant* came to whom the promise had been made; it was promulgated by angels at the hand of a mediator.r
20 Now there is no mediator when only one party is involved, and God is one.s
21 Is the law then opposed to the promises [of God]? Of course not! For if a law had been given that could bring life, then righteousness would in reality come from the law.t
22 But scripture confined all things under the power of sin, that through faith in Jesus Christ the promise might be given to those who believe.u
What Faith Has Brought Us.*
23 Before faith came, we were held in custody under law, confined for the faith that was to be revealed.v
24 Consequently, the law was our disciplinarian* for Christ, that we might be justified by faith.w
25 But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a disciplinarian.x
26 For through faith you are all children of God* in Christ Jesus.y
27 * For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.*
28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free person, there is not male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.a
29 And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s descendant, heirs according to the promise.b
In other words you can’t explain how you’re attempting to use Scripture to justify your tagline. Got it.
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