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closetcatholic
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Posted: Tue Jun 5th, 2007 09:13 pm |
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No, I don't know much about Church History, but I have been to Wittemberg, and saw the door with the 95 Theses. This sparked my curiosity. Yes, I am almost completely ignorant on this matter, so please don't take offense to any wording.
Not to assume that any of Luther's arguments were valid, but assuming some of them were, how many of the 95, if any, has the Church adopted or come to be in agreement with? Any of them?
I guess my question in the most basic terms, of Luther's "Reformation/Revolution" whatever you want to call it - has the Church altered any of her views that Luther originally opposed? Is the "reformation" over, and it is time for Protestants to come home, or have none of the 95 issues been accepted (if that is an appropriate word for it)?
Again, not that I agree to any of the theses - but if Luther was alive today, how many these would he have left????
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CajunRick
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Posted: Tue Jun 5th, 2007 09:22 pm |
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You can find an interesting article on Luther and his 95 theses from a Catholic viewpoint at St. Catherine Review.
The Church changed many practices following the Protestant heresies, but none of its doctrine. The doctrines of the Church cannot be changed. Still, conversations continue, resulting on agreements in such areas as the 1999 Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification between the Lutheran World Federation and the Catholic Church, which has subsequently also been accepted by the United Methodist Church.
The Council of Trent dealt primarily with the Protestant revolt, including Luther's 95 theses.
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closetcatholic
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Posted: Tue Jun 5th, 2007 09:28 pm |
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Thanks for sharing the website, Rick. So, he wasn't a "catholic reformer," but were any of the 95 later accepted by the church at all?
Thanks again for your help - I did enjoy the read.
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mrsbmoo
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Posted: Wed Jun 6th, 2007 01:24 pm |
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| I am not actually sure what the 95 theses were. Anybody got a link for the list?
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CajunRick
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Posted: Wed Jun 6th, 2007 02:32 pm |
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mrsbmoo wrote: I am not actually sure what the 95 theses were. Anybody got a link for the list?
Here's a reliable source: http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/wittenberg/luther/web/ninetyfive.html
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Tina in Ashburn
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Posted: Wed Jun 6th, 2007 02:52 pm |
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how many of the 95, if any, has the Church adopted or come to be in agreement with
I thnk I heard Marcus Grodi state that one thesis caused changes; the others were found to be without substance. But this needs to be researched.
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CajunRick
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Posted: Wed Jun 6th, 2007 03:20 pm |
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Tina in Ashburn wrote: how many of the 95, if any, has the Church adopted or come to be in agreement with
I thnk I heard Marcus Grodi state that one thesis caused changes; the others were found to be without substance. But this needs to be researched.
I think if you read them with the understanding that Luther was addressing abuses in the Church, such as the selling of indulgences, most of them make a lot of sense and did indeed result in corrections to the practices (not doctrines) of the Church. For example, Luther says:
45. Christians are to be taught that he who sees a man in need, and passes him by, and gives [his money] for pardons, purchases not the indulgences of the pope, but the indignation of God.
And this certainly fits with the teachings of the Church since the Council of Trent. One of the practices of the time was for a wealthy man to pay the pope for a "get out of hell free" document. They were worthless, and Luther called them on it. The only statement I find really objectionable in the 95 theses is in #26 where he says the pope does not possess the Keys to the Kingdom. He possesses them, but he cannot use them imprudently, and I believe that was Luther's point. Elsewhere he certainly indicates that at the time, he accepted the authority of the pope.
The 95 theses were not truly 95 separate points. Many of them are part of the same complaint. "95 sentences" or "95 statements" would probably be a better term today, but they would comprise only about a dozen paragraphs, and most of them deal with indulgences. And it is an absolute fact that there were great abuses in the selling of indulgences during Luther's time, and that the selling of indulgences was banned by the Council of Trent.
Had Luther stopped with his 95 theses, there is a chance he would be considered a canonized saint today. However, his problems with the Church were not completely contained within his 95 theses, and as the article cited above mentions, his other writings before and especially after were much more vitriolic and poisonous to his relationship to the Church.
Last edited on Wed Jun 6th, 2007 03:26 pm by CajunRick
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Tina in Ashburn
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Posted: Wed Jun 6th, 2007 03:51 pm |
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Had Luther stopped with his 95 theses, there is a chance he would be considered a canonized saint today
I've excerpted some quotes out of this article I found in the St. Catherine Review at http://www.aquinas-multimedia.com/catherine/reformer.html Was Luther a "Catholic Reformer"? from the July-August 1996 issue
"In our era of facile and intemperate ecumenism, there has been a movement afoot to "revise" history and rehabilitate the character of Martin Luther as a "Catholic reformer" while dismissing the Catholic Church's objections to his teachings as "misunderstandings". In such a climate, it is incumbent upon the Catholic people to recall the facts of history surrounding the so-called "reformation" and to reaffirm the reasons why the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman Church rejected Luther and his views as heretical.
First of all, the theology Luther rejected was not classical Catholicism but the via moderna, the perverted "scholarly view" of his day which roundly rejected the classical theories of truth and knowledge which underlay the teachings of the great minds in the Christian tradition such as St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, and St. Bonaventure. His faith had been poisoned by the 16th century equivalent of modernist catechetics.
His "reformed" theology was derived not only from the via moderna but based in part on the new humanistic scholarship and its advocation of getting back to the original texts and ignoring subsequent interpretations in favor of modern ones. He decided that the only reliable theology text was the Bible and that anything written afterwards was to be judged on how well it conformed to what the scriptures said. Naively, Luther assumed that the Bible was "perspicuous" (i.e., clear to understand) so that everyone would come away from the text with essentially the same interpretation. Based on this prejudice, he dispensed with the historic teachings of the Fathers, Doctors, Popes, Creeds, and Church Councils.
One of the consequences of Luther's via moderna program was a general denial of universal truths in theology. Salvation was conceived in purely personal terms without reference to the Church. Despite the fact that the Bible portrays salvation as communal and refers to the Church as the bride of Christ, Luther was preoccupied with his own salvation and developed a system in which he thought he could be absolutely certain that he was among the elect based solely on a trusting or fiduciary faith in his being saved. "
The article is fairly short if you want to use the link and find the whole thing.
Also at http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09438b.htm "At the request of Bishop von Eyb, of Eichstätt, he [Johann Eck] subjected the Theses to a closer study, singled out eighteen of them as concealing the germ of the Hussite heresy, violating Christian charity, subverting the order of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, and breeding sedition."
Readers may also want to research "Modernism" which was condemned by Pope St Pius X for better understanding of the context. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10415a.htm
Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modernism_(Roman_Catholicism) which states "In his encyclical Pascendi Dominici gregis of 1907, Pius X declared that Modernism was not only heretical, but even condemned it as "the synthesis of all heresies", because it undermined defined Catholic doctrine in a fundamental way, denying the idea of objective unchanging truth and authoritative teaching. In his decree Lamentabili Sane, Pius X presented 65 condemned and proscribed errors of Modernism."
Luther's approach to Catholicism and Modernism are related because both deny Authority and Truth.
Peace! Last edited on Wed Jun 6th, 2007 04:05 pm by Tina in Ashburn
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CajunRick
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Posted: Wed Jun 6th, 2007 04:07 pm |
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Tina in Ashburn wrote:
Had Luther stopped with his 95 theses, there is a chance he would be considered a canonized saint today
I've excerpted some quotes out of this article I found in the St. Catherine Review
Yes, I cited the St. Catherine Review article above. As I said, the problem with Luther (in my opinion) was not in the 95 theses themselves but in his other writings and teachings, which he no doubt used to support the theses. If these 95 theses had been the sum total of his objections to the Church, there would have been grounds for agreement. He went much farther, however, both before and after these theses were written, so that they have to be taken in context with the totality of his teaching, which was indeed heretical. I'm sorry if I didn't make that fully clear.
In other words, the 95 theses themselves did not represent even a small part of his complaints and heresies against the Catholic Church.
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Darlene
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Posted: Thu Jun 7th, 2007 01:57 pm |
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In other words, the 95 theses themselves did not represent even a small part of his complaints and heresies against the Catholic Church. Ok Rick, you have me a little concerned here. Did you mean to say "heresies?" I thought the Catholic Church's teachings and dogmas were and have always been true and without error, that is, not heretical. How can one say that the Catholic Church contained heresies if her claim is that within her abide the fullness of the truth? Please help me out here. Thanks. Darlene
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David W. Emery
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Posted: Thu Jun 7th, 2007 03:46 pm |
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Darlene, the heresies were Luther’s, not the Church’s. Rick was saying that Luther did not express his opinions completely in the 95 Theses, and therefore they did not manifest just how heretical he had become even by the time he posted the Theses. We would therefore have to look to other of Luther’s works to see all of his ideas and how they worked out.
Nevertheless, not all of the ideas contained in the 95 Theses are heretical. I read them through a few years ago and found that about one third of them were tenable in Catholic terms.
David
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Jackie
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Posted: Mon Jun 18th, 2007 01:35 pm |
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I have the same thought. It was not the Church's heritical teaching that was in question, it was Luthers. The Church has none.
Darlene, was the statement below a cause for confusion, because I guess we might make the mistake of thinking that since Luthers writings were considered heretical and if the Church thought there was room for agreement on some issues, would the Church then be heretical in some of it's teachings?!?
Not that I need to know where you misunderstood as a disrespectful means of attack but perhaps with clarification, so that I might understand why the question in the first place.
Cajunrick wrote:
If these 95 theses had been the sum total of his objections to the Church, there would have been grounds for agreement.
David Wrote:
Nevertheless, not all of the ideas contained in the 95 Theses are heretical. I read them through a few years ago and found that about one third of them were tenable in Catholic terms.
Explain? Tenable How?
Last edited on Mon Jun 18th, 2007 01:37 pm by Jackie
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CajunRick
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Posted: Mon Jun 18th, 2007 09:41 pm |
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Jackie wrote: Darlene, was the statement below a cause for confusion, because I guess we might make the mistake of thinking that since Luthers writings were considered heretical and if the Church thought there was room for agreement on some issues, would the Church then be heretical in some of it's teachings?!?
Cajunrick wrote:
If these 95 theses had been the sum total of his objections to the Church, there would have been grounds for agreement.
David Wrote:
Nevertheless, not all of the ideas contained in the 95 Theses are heretical. I read them through a few years ago and found that about one third of them were tenable in Catholic terms.
In reading Luther's theses alone, without considering his subsequent teachings, in my opinion most of them are not absolutely heretical statements. They contain the "germs" of his later heresies. Of the 95, most are not single statements, but ideas contained in multiple statements. It might take 5 or 6 statements ("theses") to convey a single idea, so not all of the 95 are heretical (in my opinion -- your mileage may vary).
I believe if there had been a real effort made on both sides to reach a mutual understanding, it's possible Luther's ideas would not have hardened to the point of breaking away from the Church. Instead, for political and other reasons that really had nothing to do with doctrine, neither side was willing to yield an inch, and the result was the multitude of Protestant denominations we see today. Neither side was willing to put God's will first, and I do not exempt the Church from responsibility.
Luther saw that the Church was being operated corruptly, but he confused the call for reform with revolution. He went too far. I think this is a case where Satan was alive and well and living in Europe. The schism was his ultimate conquest in the middle of the last millennium. He scored another triumph at the end of the millennium with abortion on demand, promiscuity, "gay rights", and what amounts to a breakdown in morality. He seems to win a big one about every 500 years.
Don't misunderstand me. Luther was wrong in all of this doctrinal challenges to the Church. But most of his theses dealt with corrupt practices and the breakdown of moral leadership in the Church.
But that's just my opinion. I'm the guy who got kicked out of college for protesting unfair rules, so I can't honestly say I wouldn't have been tempted to do the same thing.
Last edited on Mon Jun 18th, 2007 09:45 pm by CajunRick
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David W. Emery
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Posted: Mon Jun 18th, 2007 10:33 pm |
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Jackie, I made a new perusal of the 95 Theses, with a close eye to what is actually heretical, and these are the figures I came up with:
Heretical – 13
Possibly heretical – 5
True or correct – 17
Matters of discipline – 5
Factually false (but not heretical) or mere rhetoric – 50
You can see that most of the theses were in fact what we could call “debatable.” Only 17 were definitely or possibly heretical, while 22 were either doctrinally acceptable or were matters of discipline not bearing on doctrine per se.
The pope later published a list of heretical statements made by Luther, which were about 30 in number, but this included writings other than the 95 Theses.
David
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Juan
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Posted: Wed Jun 20th, 2007 12:47 am |
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No, I don't know much about Church History, but I have been to Wittemberg, and saw the door with the 95 Theses. This sparked my curiosity. Yes, I am almost completely ignorant on this matter, so please don't take offense to any wording.
Not to assume that any of Luther's arguments were valid, but assuming some of them were, how many of the 95, if any, has the Church adopted or come to be in agreement with? Any of them?
If you read the 95 theses, you will see that Luther was building a case against the wrong use of indulgences by certain Catholics. There were not 95 arguments against the Church. However, Luther either didn't say things the way he intended or or he intended more than just to revise the practice of indulgences.
Luther's first thesis:
1. When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, "Repent" (Mt 4:17), he willed
the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.
This has always been Church teaching, which Luther, a Catholic Priest, very well knew. See the Catechism.
1431 Interior repentance is a radical reorientation of our whole life, a return, a conversion to God with all our heart, an end of sin, a turning away from evil, with repugnance toward the evil actions we have committed. At the same time it entails the desire and resolution to change one's life, with hope in God's mercy and trust in the help of his grace. This conversion of heart is accompanied by a salutary pain and sadness which the Fathers called animi cruciatus (affliction of spirit) and compunctio cordis (repentance of heart).
Note how his second thesis builds on the first:
2. This word cannot be understood as referring to the sacrament of penance,
that is, confession and satisfaction, as administered by the clergy.
Here he opposes the Sacrament of Penance which is a Catholic doctrine. Thesis number three goes on in the same vein:
3. Yet it does not mean solely inner repentance; such inner repentance is
worthless unless it produces various outward mortification of the flesh.
Note how number three could easily be understood as an argument against faith alone. We all know the Church doesn't teach faith alone.
4. The penalty of sin remains as long as the hatred of self (that is, true
inner repentance), namely till our entrance into the kingdom of heaven.
This, #4, seems to refer to what we call the Purgative way. True repentance is life long. Again, this is Catholic Teaching.
Anyway, if you read it you will find that the 95 theses are an attempt at a logical, point by point case against a false understanding of indulgences. However, in this frame of mind, he made many errors. Such as this one:
26. The pope does well when he grants remission to souls [in purgatory], not by the power of the keys (which he does not possess), but by way of intercession.
The last few theses are a judgemental tirade against the riches of the Vatican.
95 theses
I guess my question in the most basic terms, of Luther's "Reformation/Revolution" whatever you want to call it - has the Church altered any of her views that Luther originally opposed?
No. The Church still grants indulgences and the Sacrament of Penance is still in effect. What Luther claimed to oppose, the wrongful use of indulgences, the Church also opposed, however Luther also opposed the authority of the Pope and the Church.
Is the "reformation" over, and it is time for Protestants to come home, or have none of the 95 issues been accepted (if that is an appropriate word for it)?
As I understand it, there are not 95 issues.
Again, not that I agree to any of the theses
There is nothing wrong with agreeing with some of the theses. Many, if not most of the theses are Catholic Teaching. Luther was using these Catholic doctrines to explain his opposition to the wrongful use of indulgences.
In essence Luther is saying, "indulgences don't save your soul if you aren't contrite and repent of your sins." This is in fact true and it has always been Catholic Teaching.
- but if Luther was alive today, how many these would he have left????
None. In my opinion, there were none then. The Church was reforming HER SINFUL PEOPLE before Luther and after Luther and continues to reform Her people to this day. The Church Herself and Her Doctrines did not need reforming then or now. Popes have always excommunicated heretics and canonized Saints. That is Peter's mission:
Luke 22 31 And the Lord said: Simon, Simon, behold Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat: 32 But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and thou, being once converted, confirm thy brethren.
Sincerely,
Juan
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