“Luther”
New film wages holy war on
extra Ecclesiam nulla salus
Michael J. Matt
Editor, The Remnant
“Never
has a movie bashed the Catholic Church like this one.
I
loved it.”
Pastor
Jack Cascione,
Christian
News, Vol, 41, No. 39
|
T |
his past week I subjected myself to “Luther”, the new film about
Martin Luther, starring Joseph Fiennes and Peter Ustinov. I’d seen a trailer for the film which
featured a statue of the Blessed Virgin being blown to bits. The film, like its
trailer, is as offensive as it is provocative. From an artistic point of view,
I’m sorry to say, the film is impressive. The cinematography is easy on the
eyes and the acting (especially a riveting performance turned in by 83-year-old
Sir Peter Ustinov) is above average. Joseph Fiennes’ powerful portrayal of
Martin Luther is as outstanding from the artistic perspective as it is absurd
from the historical. The actor is about
as German-looking as Sidney Poitier, and his
performance is critically flawed by a general lack of the reckless bravado for
which the Father of Protestantism was famous. The new and improved Luther is
too much the pretty boy; he has no warts, isn’t fat, isn’t a drunkard, isn’t
even foul mouthed (there’s only one scatological reference in the entire
film!). Even the reliably liberal Roger Ebert gave “Luther” the thumbs down,
complaining in the Chicago Sun-Times that the real Luther wouldn’t have recognized
the sanctimonious victim soul portrayed in the new film.
Incidentally,
the 1938 classic “The Adventures of Robin Hood” starring Errol Flynn tells the
same story sans the Catholic slurs. Both films are schmaltzy, of course, but
the corny fable is more entertaining in its original Robin Hood package. Martin
Luther is Sir Robin of Locksley (both squeaky-clean heroes have a messiah
complex that’s so overblown that the viewer doesn’t know whether to laugh or
cry); Pope Leo X is the evil Prince John (both tyrants have an uncanny ability
to flat-out revel in the misery of their starving subjects); the Dominican John
Tetzel is the sinister Sir Guy of Gisbourne
(played by the great Basil Rathbone, Sir Guy is one
of the silver screen’s all-time great bad guys); and, of course, Lady Marian Fitzwalter (the former Norman and future Mrs. Robin Hood)
is Katerina von Bora (the
former nun and future Mrs. Father Martin Luther). In the end, both Martin and Robin are
rewarded for having saved the world by winning the hands of their respective
heroines, and it goes without saying that they all live happily ever after.
For the historically challenged,
“Luther”—like “Robin Hood”—is a true story.
Though its anti-Catholic bent is unrelenting, it’s also about as subtle
as a freight train, transforming “Luther” into an overdone parody. It’s basically “Batman” with a Bible.
Still,
there are plenty of stones hurled at the Church. There’s the pasty-faced
corpulent pope, priests in a brothel, a bevy of disturbingly pretty cardinals,
peasants lying in the gutter while affluent churchmen race by in golden
carriages. The film seems so eager to bash the Catholic Church, in fact, that
it overlooks key elements of the story it’s attempting to tell, something even
a Washington Times review noted in its October 1st edition:
It would have been edifying,
too, to learn why Luther felt so beset by Satan and demons or why he so doubted
his salvation—psychological afflictions that at least partly inspired his
search for a lenient God in Paul, in tension with the works-emphasizing book of
James, which “Luther” downplayed.
Lutherans
Love “Luther”
“Luther”
is no “A Man for All Seasons”, but our Protestant friends are still pretty
excited about. This isn’t surprising since the film was partially funded by Thrivent Financial for Lutherans, a faith-based financial
services organization. In the October 13th
issue of the normally serious Christian News, Pastor Jack Cascione gushes over “Luther” and the venom the
film spews against the Church: “Never has a movie bashed the Catholic Church
like this one. I loved it.”
Not to
be outdone, James B. Romnes takes up where Pastor
Jack left off: “As a Lutheran I would like to see this movie get a universal
two thumbs up and gross more than ‘Spiderman.’” Romnes
then observes that “the film’s centerpiece is Ralph Fiennes…” No doubt Ralph Fiennes is a terrific actor,
but there’s just one problem—he’s not in “Luther”…prompting this writer to
wonder if Lutheran film critics should be taken about as seriously as Lutheran
scripture scholars.
And the Jewish Reaction?
After
all the dust kicked up over Mel Gibson’s film “The Passion of Christ,” one
naturally expected that “Luther” would fare similarly at the hands of the ADL
and other Zionist groups who’ve been so quick to call for Gibson’s head. After all, when it comes to the Jews, Martin
Luther makes David Duke look like Shirley Temple.
Oddly
enough, though, the ADL doesn’t seem concerned in the least over the new film’s
glorification of the fellow who encouraged John Frederick to expel the Jews
from
The
anti-Semitic “values” of Adolph Hitler, in fact, appear to have deep roots in
the theology of the German Martin Luther, whose hatred of Catholics was
eclipsed only by his hatred of Jews.
(While Luther was still a Catholic there was no sign of this virulent
anti-Semitism. The further he drifted from
Don’t
take my word for it— read Luther’s tracts “On Shem Hamphoras
and the Generation of Christ,” or “On the Last Words of David,” where Dr.
Luther makes his impassioned appeal to the authorities to inflict violence upon
the Jews. As the Jesuit Father Grisar explains in his masterwork Martin Luther:
Once more he [Luther] raised
his voice against that persecuted race [the Jews] in his last sermon at Eisleben, on February 14, 1546: “you rulers,” he said,
“ought not to tolerate, but to expel them.”
By indirection it was a summons to rise against the Jews.2
Let’s
take a few more examples from the horse’s mouth, so to speak. In his tract “The
Jews and Their Lies,” Luther displays that characteristic subtlety and nuance
for which he would become famous:
Therefore the blind Jews are
truly stupid fools…
Now just behold these
miserable, blind and senseless people…
Therefore be on your guard
against the Jews, knowing that wherever they have their synagogues, nothing is
found but a den of devils…
And,
finally, advocating a course of action that Adolf
Hitler would take pretty seriously 400 years later, Luther writes:
Eject them forever from this
country [
What we
have here is the ultimate Zionist dilemma— a vicious anti-Semite whose global
fame stems primarily from his hatred of the Catholic Church….What’s an ADL to
do? While “Passion” is dragged up one side of the street and down the other by
the ADL, nary an eyebrow is lifted against a film that celebrates one of
history’s most notorious anti-Semites.
Strange that in this post-Christian era, when an open season on
everything Christian has long since been
declared, a movie about Our Lord is crucified while a movie about Martin Luther
wins critical acclaim. Maybe this isn’t
so strange—if Christianity were your primary target, would you go after its
biggest critic in history?
“If I am prompted to say: ‘Thy Kingdom
come,’ I must perforce add: ‘cursed, damned, destroyed must be the papacy.’”
-Martin Luther
Anti-Christians
Is it
possible that Protestantism itself is the Antichrist? The great St. Thomas More certainly thought
so. Since Luther had married a Cistercian nun, More observed
that the Augustinian monk had “toke out of relygyon a
spouse of Cryste” and “that Antecryste
sholde be borne between a frere
and a nunne.”3
More made frequent references to Luther as the “false prophet of the
great Beast.” Indeed, considering the
eradication of Christendom that’s been expertly accomplished since the
Protestant Revolt, it’s difficult to imagine how the Antichrist could have
improved on Luther’s work.
In
“Luther” there are scenes in which the man certainly appears to be
possessed by demons. He’s seen flailing around his room, shouting at the Devil
in the dead of night, crying out unintelligibly… weeping uncontrollably. This is a surprisingly accurate portrayal of
Luther who we know was prone to panic attacks and who
could not look at a crucifix nor linger near the Blessed Sacrament for more
than a few moments.
The
film’s vicious attacks on the Catholic Church are themselves satanic, of
course. And I’m not just referring to exploding statues of Our Lady or the
usual clunkers that unimaginative Protestants have been slow-pitching over the
plate for the past five centuries— e.g.,
the word “indulgence” doesn’t appear in the Bible, ergo preaching indulgences is an abomination (Note
to Protestant: Since the word “Bible” doesn’t appear in the Bible, either,
does that make the Bible an abomination?), purgatory, the Mass, the papacy,
etc., are all unholy inventions of men and, as such, constitute an affront to
God. …Yawwwwwn…
No, what
is far more Luciferian than these “terrors for
children” is the vehemence with which the film attacks one particular dogma by
name and in Latin, no less— outside the Church there is no salvation. When extra Ecclesiam
nulla salus was savaged
in “Luther,” I sat bolt upright in the theater and listened carefully. Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus—the collapse of
Christendom and the rise of neo-paganism in the world followed close on the
heels of the rejection of this dogma.
Luther nailed his rejection of it to the wood of the Cross, standing up
as he did to Christ’s Church and Christ’s Vicar… while insisting that he
nonetheless remained Christ’s follower.
The last
line in “Luther” speaks to this:
“Millions of people today worship in churches inspired by Luther’s
revolt.” While millions of Catholics worship in a Church founded by Jesus
Christ, millions of Protestants do indeed worship outside the Church in
heretical sects started by a man who tossed out those parts of the Bible he
didn’t like, who burned canon laws he couldn’t hack, who rejected dogmas
embraced by every saint, virgin, martyr, and theologian for the first fifteen
hundred years of Christianity, and who believed that men’s good deeds have
nothing to do with salvation. Yes,
Luther, even before Calvin, was the apostle of predestination. For him, man has
no free will…which is why he waged his bloody war against good works. In his Assertio
omnium articulorum of
1520, Luther explains:
Do you have anything to growl
at here, you miserable Pope? For you it
is necessary to revoke this article [Leo’s excommunication Bull]. For I have
incorrectly said that free will before grace exists in name only. I should have said candidly: free will is a
fiction, a name without substance. Because no one indeed has the free power to
think good or evil but all things happen by absolute necessity.4
Luther
the Anarchist
Essentially,
Luther was preaching ecclesiastical anarchy, which in Catholic Europe
translated automatically into civil unrest. The result was a bloodbath
called the Peasants’ Revolt, which left as many as one hundred thousand dead in
the streets. His “liberating” notion that “God made us this way and we have no
choice but to sin” released the mob from every civic and moral responsibility. Death and destruction ensued…death of souls, death of bodies, even
death of science and the arts. “Where Lutheranism flourishes,” the great
humanist Erasmus remarked, “the sciences perish.”
The Duke
of Saxony also feared the temporal consequences of Luther’s gospel. He warned
Luther that his “doctrine of by faith alone would only make the people
presumptuous and mutinous.”5 Events proved the Duke prophetic! Like Erasmus, More, Cajetan, Leo, even a
young Henry VIII (who for his defense against Luther was dubbed “Defender of
the Faith” by Pope Leo X), the Duke understood that laws are not always as
popular as they are vital in an ordered society; that the Catholic Church—the
loving mother who knows well the weaknesses of her children—is founded on laws,
laws which mandate moral living, laws which are the only barricade that stands
between society and chaos…between the soul and damnation.
Luther
rejected this notion by saying: No pope, no priest, no Church is above my
will. I am already saved…what need have
I of laws?
By the
nineteenth century, men such as the renowned Satanist, Aleister
Crowley, would be taking Luther’s theology to its unnatural end. In Magik,
[W]ith
Luther, a murderer could raise his bloodstained hands to heaven and say, “Thank
God I’m a Christian.” If the murderer was one of the “elect”—for Luther
believed in predestination—he was assuredly saved. The murderer, in any event,
was not responsible for his actions, because Luther, unlike the Catholic
Church, denied that man had free will. These ideas of Luther were, as history
would show, extremely dangerous.
Erasmus
understood this danger right away. His
position against Lutheranism is summed up as follows:
If the will of man is not free
to choose the good, who will try to lead a good life? Will not everyone find a ready excuse for all
sins and vices by saying: “I could not help falling?” What is the meaning of God’s law, if the
people for whom it was made cannot obey?
The whole legislation of God becomes a farce and a mockery if man has
not the power to observe it. How, finally, can God punish or reward those who
cannot choose between good and evil, but merely do what they must?6
Herein the great humanist gave
the 16th century a glimpse of the twenty-first
century’s frightening reality, five hundred years after Luther’s non serviam.
Luther’s
Private Judgment
Luther’s
overbearing pride would ultimately induce him to denounce Catholics, Jews,
fellow “reformers” (i.e., Henry, Zwingli
and Calvin) and anyone else in the world with whom he disagreed. He’d become a magisterium unto himself and, as such, exhibited much more
egregious judgmentalism than had ever been laid at
the feet of a bad pope. Luther was an egomaniac. Who but one with Titanic pride
could level the following judgment against the hierarchy of the Catholic
Church—the institution which had overseen the civilization of the western world
and which was responsible for the greatest works of literature, art,
statesmanship, scholarship, poetry, architecture, and theology known to man:
…the true Antichrist is
sitting in the temple of God and is reigning in Rome—that empurpled Babylon—and
that the Roman curia is the Synagogue of Satan….there will be no remedy left
except that the emperors, kings, and princes, girt about with force of arms,
should attack these pests of the world, and settle the matter no longer by
words but by the sword. Why do we not
attack in arms these masters of perdition, these cardinals, these popes, and
all this sink of the Roman Sodom which has without end corrupted the Church of
God, and wash our hands in their blood?7
Of the
Mass of his own priestly ordination, beloved liturgy of his fathers and
forefathers, saints and martyrs, for a thousand years, Luther hisses:
I declare that all the
brothels…all the manslaughters, murders, thefts and adulteries have wrought
less abomination than the popish
This from one who, by his own
admission, was “inspired”—while on his toilet, no less—with the
certainty that the Church was the great Whore of Babylon, that four of her
seven Sacraments were abominations, as were her priesthood, celibacy, papacy
and monastic life. On his toilet, Luther
figured it out—all that’s needed is Faith alone…and the laws of Christianity be damned!
“Be a
sinner and sin on bravely,” said Luther, “but have stronger faith and rejoice
in Christ, who is the victory of sin, death, and the world. Do not for a moment imagine that this life is
the abiding place of justice: sin must be committed… sin cannot tear you away
from Him, even though you commit adultery a hundred times a day and commit as
many murders.”8
Compare
these words to similar ones written by the Satanist Aleister
Crowley:
Are we walking in eternal fear
lest some “sin” should cut us off from “grace”? By no means…Live as the kings
and princes, crowned and uncrowned, of this world, have always lived, as
masters always live… make your self-indulgence your religion…When you drink and
dance and take delight, you are not being “immoral,” you are not “risking your
immortal soul”; you are fulfilling the precepts of our holy religion
[Satanism]…
Is not this better than [to] go oppressed by
consciousness of “sin,” wearily seeking or simulating wearisome and tedious
“virtues”?9
Protestantism, Satanism, Freemasonry—these
are but brothers-in-arms in the ancient war against the holy Church…a war
fomented by disorder.
Luther’s
friends readily admitted what his modern-day followers vigorously deny—the
“Reformation” was indeed anarchistic. For example, the ex-priest Martin Bucer, who’d benefited from Luther’s moral dispensations
where an ex-nun and his vows were concerned, nevertheless admits:
The whole Reformation was one
grand indulgence for libertinism. The
greater part of the people seem only to have embraced the gospel in order to
shake off the yoke of discipline and the obligation of fasting and penance,
which rested upon them in popery, and that they may live according to their own
pleasure, enjoying their lusts and lawless appetites without control. That was
the reason they lent a willing ear to the teaching of justification by faith
alone and not by good works, for the latter of which they had no relish.10
It is no wonder that Erasmus
(who also advocated reform) would write:
“Lutheranism has but two objects at heart—money and women.”11
Today,
when Protestantism sanctions divorce,
homosexual marriage, contraception, and even abortion in some cases, while
still claiming to be Christian, it’s a simple thing to see where the
libertarianism of Martin Luther was heading from the moment he uttered: “Here I
stand”. As the late Malachi Martin once remarked to the
present writer: “The great evil of
heretics such as Martin Luther is that, because of them, millions will be
damned.”
Saint
Thomas More wasn’t quite as diplomatic as Erasmus or Malachi Martin in his own
colorful evaluation of the heresiarch.
“Martin Luther is an ape,” said the Lord High Chancellor of
After
dispensing himself and Sister “Katie” from their sacred vows of celibacy,
Luther went ahead and dispensed every husband from his marital vows, as well:
“If the mistress of the house is unwilling, let the maid come.” (See Luther’s Sermon De Matrimonio)
According
to biographer Stefan Zweig, Luther’s religious
awakening took place quite suddenly while he was at Mass one morning. All at once and in front of God and
everybody, Luther fell to the floor and began to rave “as if in the grip of
demonic possession. ‘Non sum! Non sum!’” (I am not
present! I am not present!)13
On this
point, at least, we can all agree with Martin Luther—surely, he wasn’t all
there.
Indulgences
“Luther” has a lot of fun with the issue of indulgences. The
outlandish definitions of indulgences
placed on Catholic lips in the film— e.g., indulgences release souls from hell,
indulgences are the Pope’s permission to commit sin, unless you buy an
indulgence you’ll be damned—are far enough removed from Catholic teaching as to
convince the viewer that the film’s script writers were either daft or
malicious. Quite simply, an indulgence
is the extra-sacramental remission of the temporal punishment due, in God’s justice,
to sin that has been forgiven, which remission is granted by the Church in the
exercise of the power of the keys, through the application of the superabundant
merits of Christ and of the saints, and for some just and reasonable motive.14
So
maligned have been indulgences and, by extension, the popes who preached them,
that the Catholic Encyclopedia has a special section under “Indulgences”
called: “What An Indulgence Is Not”.
There we read the following:
To facilitate explanation, it may be well
to state what an indulgence is not. It is not a permission to commit sin, nor a
pardon of future sin; neither could be granted by any power. It is not the
forgiveness of the guilt of sin; it supposes that the sin has already been
forgiven. It is not an exemption from any law or duty, and much less from the
obligation consequent on certain kinds of sin, e.g., restitution; on the
contrary, it means a more complete payment of the debt which the sinner owes to
God. It does not confer immunity from temptation or remove the possibility of
subsequent lapses into sin. Least of all is an indulgence the purchase of a
pardon which secures the buyer’s salvation or releases the soul of another from
Purgatory. The absurdity of such notions must be obvious to any one who forms a
correct idea of what the Catholic Church really teaches on this subject.15
In
“Luther,” this dead horse is kicked to the point of absurdity. For example, the
film’s portrayal of a leering, Fu Manchu-type Johann Tetzel
(superbly overplayed by Alfred Molina), busying himself with the fleecing of
widows and orphans, is almost too droll to be offensive. The inspiration for it could only have come
from those Protestant superstars such as Jim and Tammy Baker or Oral Send-me-$8million-or-the-Lord-will-call-me-home
Roberts. The logical corollary is that
if charlatans in her ranks were reason enough to reject the Catholic
Church then, well surely Protestantism
today must be vigorously rejected due to that army of televangelists who make
Johann Tetzel look like Mother Teresa.
Serious
scholars have long since tried Tetzel and found him
innocent of the spurious charges Martin Luther leveled against him. In “Luther,” for example, the charge of
preaching irreverently concerning the Virgin Mary (Luther’s invention), is once
again hurled at Tetzel. “I can release the soul,”
hisses Tetzel in the film, “of a man who violated the
Virgin Mary, if only he’ll buy this piece of paper…this indulgence.” Long ago, scholars refuted and dismissed this
as slander, as the Catholic Encyclopedia explains:
The charge made by Luther in his
seventy-fifth thesis, that Tetzel had preached
impiously concerning the Blessed Virgin, and repeated in Luther’s letter to
Archbishop Albrecht (Enders, I, 115) and in most explicit terms in his pamphlet
“Wider Hans Worst”, was not only promptly and indignantly denied by Tetzel (13 Dec., 1518), declared false by official
resolution of the entire city magistracy of Halle (12
Dec., 1517), where it was claimed the utterance was made, but has now been successfully
proved a clumsy fabrication (Paulus, op. cit.,
56-61).16
Tetzel is
not a canonized saint, of course. He may
have been overzealous in his assigned task of preaching Leo’s indulgence. But, especially when compared to the
heretical notions and lewd living of so many of his Protestant accusers, Tetzel was above serious reproach. As the Encyclopedia explains, there is no
moral blemish on his character:
If Tetzel
was guilty of unwarranted theological views, if his advocacy of indulgences was
culpably imprudent, his moral character, the butt of every senseless burlesque
and foul libel, has been vindicated to the extent of leaving it untainted by
any grave moral dereliction.17
Unfortunately,
the same cannot be said of many high profile televangelists today. Surely, Tetzel had nothing on Reverend Jimmy Swaggart,
for example, who, aside from a messy scandal involving a woman of ill repute,
once declared that Mother Teresa would burn in hell for failing to accept Jesus
as her personal savior. Speaking of the good Reverend, who could forget this whopper: “If I
do not return to the pulpit this weekend, millions of people will go to hell.”
And Tetzel was nuts? Please!
So
preoccupied is “Luther” with telling scary stories about a boogeyman named Tetzel that it forgets to explain how the sale of
indulgences justified Luther’s denial of the Church’s dogmas on
transubstantiation, the Papacy,
Purgatory, the Mass, and all the
Sacraments but three! What the sale of indulgences had to do, exactly, with
Luther’s war on the Blessed Virgin Mary, intercessory prayers to the Saints,
and a whole host of Christian doctrines that every Church father, theologian,
philosopher and saint from Augustine to Cyprian to Aquinas would have died
for…is anyone’s guess.
For fifteen
hundred years Christians believed that the Church was founded by Christ on the
rock of the Papacy. The fathers and doctors of the Church down through the
ages—without whom there would have been no Christianity for Luther to “reform”—
would have shed their blood rather than deny that the Church was founded on
Peter and that the popes were his successors. In Luther’s own day, possibly the
most brilliant mind in Europe and the second most powerful figure in
England—Sir Thomas More—willingly mounted the scaffold and gave his head to the
executioner rather than deny this reality.
Nevertheless,
this childish film insults the intelligence of its audience by asking them to
believe that, merely because of overzealous indulgence preachers, the Papacy
was rightly to be condemned as bogus and the Catholic Church denounced as the
great Whore of Babylon!
In his
rage against the Church, Luther was simply raging against Christianity as it
had existed for well over a thousand
years. His rage led to the founding of a
new church, in fact, which has been dividing and re-dividing itself ever since.
Today, there seem to be nearly as many Protestant denominations as there are
Protestants, all divided—not over mere trifles—but over the morality of
rudimentary moral issues such as abortion, homosexual marriage, and
contraception. Without a visible head, canon law, and a
priesthood, Protestantism exists today in a permanent state of
theological pandemonium.
Thomas More used the Greek term “anarchos” to describe it. He believed that the “whole great
change of European consciousness in the sixteenth century was due to the hatred
that they [Protestants] bear to all good order and the great hunger they have
to make [everything] disordered.”18 More regarded Lutherans as “daemonun satellites” (“agents of demons”) who had to be
stopped before they brought civilized society to ruin. In his book, The Life of Thomas More,
Peter Akroyd explains:
This was no longer a time for
questioning, or innovation, or uncertainty of any kind. He [More] blamed Luther for the Peasants’
Revolt in
Down
With Celibacy!
In
“Luther,” no bones are made of the fact that the Father of Protestantism was
incapable of living up to his own vows of celibacy. After falling in love with Sister “Katie,”
Luther encourages his brother priest Ulrich to follow suit and “choose from the
nuns, as there are still one or two unclaimed.” At this point, the film takes a
rather odd detour down what might be called
A
casually dressed Luther and his brother priests appear lounging in a garden
where “Katie” von Bora and her nuns are tiptoeing
through the tulips and singing love songs to the “boys”. The “rebel,” the “genius,” the
“liberator”—Dr. Luther—is seen all smiley-faced and silly, even making goo-goo
eyes at “Katie.” Since Sister “Katie’s”
attire already includes a far-out headband, the only thing missing from the
extraordinarily schmaltzy scene is a daisy in a gun barrel. During this most
peculiar interlude, Martin and Katie become John and Yoko. Imagine that!
Incredibly,
in the very next scene, the following profundity is placed on the lips of the
great doctor: “Most days I’m so
depressed I can’t get out of bed.” That
woke me up. It was almost as funny, in
fact, as another howler uttered earlier on in the film by Pope Leo X to the
great Giacomo de Vio—Cardinal
(St.) Cajetan—Superior General of the Dominicans,
champion of the Fifth Lateran Council, papal legate in Germany, statesman who
helped secure the elections of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and Pope Adrian VI,
the man whose commentaries are published with the pontifical editions of the Summa.
It’s at this intellectual giant that a chubby-faced Leo shouts: “I’m tired of you, Cajetan,
always missing the big picture!”
By this
point, I was practically on the floor… tears of laughter streaming down my
face. How a serious Protestant could
look at such rot and not shake his head in embarrassment is beyond me. But it’s
also well beyond my ken how anyone can look at the spectacle that was the
founding of Luther’s “church” and not be reduced to fits of laughter.
Translating
the Bible
Protestants
always enjoy telling each other that the Devil stirred up Catholic Popes to
“pull with violence the holy Bibles out of the people’s hands.” This may make good copy but, historically,
it’s utter nonsense! Even Luther himself debunks it when he casually admits
that, upon his entrance into the Augustinian monastery, a Bible was quite
unceremoniously handed over to him for his own private use.
It is a
known fact that from the time of the invention of the printing press to the
beginning of Luther’s studies at the University of Erfurt,
more than 100 editions of the Bible had already been published.20 Considering the physical
size of the Bible as well as the high cost and laborious process of printing,
the rapid publication of those hundred editions is tantamount to our posting it
on the Internet today. In other words,
as fast as they could be printed, Bibles were made available.
Even
Lutheran scholars are beginning to leave this lame horse in the barn. In an
article by the late Professor Rietschel, a luminary
of
The
melodramatic scenes in “Luther” of the reformer feverishly translating the
Bible “for the people,” are
dramatizations of a five-hundred-year-old fairy tale for adults. The
undeniable fact remains that, had it not been for those Catholic Popes and
Catholic monks whom Luther so enjoyed reviling with his mighty pen, there would
have been no Bible for him to translate.
The Catholic Church preserved Holy Scriptures just as surely as she
preserved the Seven Sacraments and doctrine from the earliest days of
Christianity, down through the Middle Ages and on into the modern era.
Conclusion
Luther’s
Last Laugh
Perhaps
some will protest that we’ve been too hard on Dr. Luther, and that his well
meaning spiritual descendents in our day surely mustn’t share his anathemas. I
have no desire, were it somehow within my power, to condemn baptized Lutherans
to eternal hellfire. As the Church has
always taught, we must leave such judgments to God. But, when considering how Protestantism came
into being—in protest (protestant) of Christ’s Church and in defiance of
His vicar—it seems foolhardy to presume that all good Lutherans are guaranteed
eternal bliss. If I cannot say as much
about myself or my beloved wife, family and friends who are Catholic (and who
are, as Christ advocated, trying to “work out” their salvation by the “sweat of
their brow”), how can I say it of these poor souls who’ve been robbed of the
grace of Christ’s Sacraments and who languish outside His Mystical Body?
Protestants
are not “pious Hindus” living on that proverbial desert island. They know Jesus
Christ; reason tells them where His Church is and where it is not. They cannot stand behind the shield of
invincible ignorance. We must pray for
them, then, as we must recognize our own sacred duty before God to commit
ourselves entirely to their conversion to the only true and sure means of salvation
known to man—the Holy Catholic Church, outside of which there is no salvation.
If our
critique of “Luther” seems unduly harsh, consider what the man wrote of us:
I will curse and scold the
scoundrels until I go to my grave, and never shall they hear a civil word from
me. I will toll them to their graves with thunder and lightening. For I am unable to pray
without at the same time cursing. If I am prompted to say: “hallowed be
Thy name,” I must add: “cursed, damned, outraged be
the name of the papists.” If I am prompted to say: “Thy Kingdom come,” I must
perforce add: “cursed, damned destroyed must be the papacy.” 22
And,
yet…and yet…the author of such hate might be given the last word. The modern
Catholic Church over the past forty years has implemented many changes designed
to transform the Church into something pleasing to Protestant eyes. Those
statues—so detested by Protestants—have been smashed; that altar—so reviled by
Luther—has been fashioned into a table
that would make Cranmer proud; belief in the Real
Presence is rare enough in 2003 as to bring a smile to Calvin’s lips. There is talk of lifting Luther’s
excommunication; there are rumors of
Protestant “martyrs” being canonized. As
the horrific priest scandals illustrate, this false ecumenism is the forerunner
to ecclesiastical chaos.
Luther once boasted that if his new gospel
would be but preached for two years, “pope, bishops, cardinals, priests, monks,
nuns, bells, bell-towers, masses…rules, statues and all the riff-raff of the
Papal government will have vanished like smoke.”23 Well, Luther was wrong—it took longer than
two years; almost five centuries were required before priests, nuns, bells,
Masses, rules and statues began to vanish like smoke from the Catholic Church.
Luther’s
boast is coming to fruition—the Catholic Church is being Protestantized.
World wars rage, millions of souls languish in religious indifferentism,
generations of babies are slaughtered in the womb….Clearly, “popery” is dying,
and when it’s cold in the ground—when that “light on the hill” goes out— what
will then stand between the world and chaos?
Is St. Pius V again waiting in the wings to save the world by saving the
Church? Who can say! What is clear is
that after five centuries of Protestant assaults, the human element of the
Catholic Church appears to be acquiescing….
Listen…you
can almost hear Luther laughing.
Epilogue
In the
spirit of true ecumenism, let us conclude this essay with a beautiful
description of the Catholic Church as penned by the Protestant minister Rev. T.
B. Thompson of the Plymouth Congregational Church in Chicago some years ago.
Truer words than these have rarely been written:
It must be admitted in all
fairness that popular ignorance, superficial knowledge and malicious slander
have in many instance misrepresented the teachings of the Roman Catholic
Church. To contemplate her history is to admire her. Reformation, wars, empires and kingdoms have
been arrayed against her. After all
these centuries she stands so strong and so firmly rooted in the lives of
millions that she commands our highest respect.
As an illustration, she is the most splendid the world has ever
seen. Governments have arisen and gone
to the grave of the nations since her advent.
Peoples of every tongue have worshipped at her altars. The Roman Catholic Church as stood solid for
law and order. Her police power in controlling millions untouched by
denominations has been great. When she speaks, legislators, statesmen,
politicians and governments stop to listen, often to obey. In the realm of
worship, her ministry has been of the highest. In employing beads, statues,
pictures and music she has made a wise and intelligent use of symbolism. Her
use of the best in music and painting has been the greatest single inspiration
to those arts, and her cathedrals are the shrines of all pilgrims.24
(Footnotes)
1
Hartmann, Grisar S.J., Martin Luther His Life and
Work, (The Newman Press, 1953) p. 543
2 Ibid.
3 Akroyd, Peter, The Life
of Thomas More, (Doubleday) p. 310
4
Sungenis, Robert A., Not By Faith
Alone (Queenship Publishing Compay),
p. 448
5 Durant,Will, The Reformation: A
History of European Civilization from Wyclif to
Calvin: 1300-1564 (MJF Books, 1985), p. 404
6 Msgr.
O’Hare, The Facts About Luther (TAN) p. 263
7 Durant,
p. 404
8 Catholic Encyclopedia, Encyclopedia Press,
1912, entry for Martin Luther.
9
10 Quoted
by Msgr. Patrick F. O’Hare, The Facts About
Luther (TAN), p. 91
11 Ibid.
12 Ackroyd, Peter,
The Life of Thomas More (Doubleday) p. 230
13 Ibid.
p 224
14
Catholic Encyclopedia, see “Indulgences”, newadvent.org
15 Ibid.
16 Ibid.
17 Ibid.
18 Ackroyd, Peter. The Life of Thomas
More. p. 68
19 Ibid.
p. 248
20
Thurston, Herbert, S. J., No Popery, p. 168, Roman Catholic Books, Fort
Collins, CO
21 Ibid.
22 Ibid.
23
O’Hare, The Facts About Luther, p. 218
24 Ibid.
p. 151