Yes. That is well summed up. I think the same can be said for society as a whole at that time.
I don’t believe anyone has tried to white wash Church corruption.
I’ll give you one more:
I’m not fetishizing anything. There were several factors that led to the Protestant Reformation. The particular ills facing the Church at that time was one of them.
There need be no reluctance in admitting this. Nor do we need to couch this admission with proclamations of Luther’s evils every time.
Fer instance, at a personal level. Let’s say you are having a squabble with the wife. Sometimes its best to just admit your portion of the fault and work from there on the deeper issues. Otherwise it ends up in a battle of fault rather than one of substance.
It doesn’t matter if Luther was an angel or a devil or something in between. What matters is the division and solving the real issues.
Really, the only reasons I can think of to bring up Luther’s faults at all in apologetics are: 1) someone is arguing that Luther had a particular and peculiar calling. 2) someone can’t get past a bigoted historical midset and needs a dose of balance.
Otherwise, its more a matter of history than apologetics.
(Not that history isn’t part of apologetics etc. etc.)
It caught on because it was illegal to follow a religion not approved by the early Reformers – on pain of death or seizure of property:
continued…
The boundaries of Church and State had become blurred by centuries of collaboration during the Crusades. Now this collaboration was no longer collaboration but collusion among a lamentable number of higher clergy and their secular patrons.
The lower clergy were sometimes neglected, their education not attended to. This was exacerbated by the Crusades and waves of plagues which decimated the numbers of educated priests.
However, in some respects the Church was not moving fast enough to help Her people to negotiate the huge changes brought about by the Renaissance. The enthusiastic and wholesome reforms prior to Luther were inadequate checks to the greed and ambition stalking the land at that time.
continued…
and other crises, the erection of churches and monasteries [led to] abuses [which] were heightened by the fact that secular rulers frequently forbade the promulgation of indulgences within their territories, consenting only on condition that a portion of the receipts should be given to them.
Our Lord acceded to this request on condition that the pope should ratify the Indulgence. Francis thereupon set out for Perugia, with Brother Masseo, to find Honorius III. The latter, notwithstanding some opposition from the Curia at such an unheard-of favor, granted the Indulgence, restricting it, however, to one day yearly. He subsequently fixed 2 August in perpetuity, as the day for gaining this Porziuncola Indulgence, commonly known in Italy as il perdono d’Assisi. link
– the Catholic Church had accrued wealthy lands by this point, and the minor nobility wanted them. This was most prevalent in England, where a whole class of millionaires made by stealing monastic lands fueled Elizabeth’s rise to the throne and paved the way for Protestant England. link
Out of this chaos Luther emerged. Recall that the Crusades and Plagues had decimated Europe of educated clergy. Luther entered the monastery, fleeing the violence of his family to within an inch of his life.
I’ve heard this from mental health professions before. My take was that he had post-traumatic stress disorder, onset in a violent family, relapse during the Plague in Wittenburg where he had enormous responsibilities and was terribly overworked. He could have had dual diagnosis. Whatever he had, it sure was not a healthy cheerful disposition.
Not every time. Only when Luther is happily painted inaccurately as the champion of justice and purity. I see no problem with discussing history with some degree of balance. Some folks, however, would prefer that the frailties of Luther and his friends be ignored.
Yeah, exactly. But look at the evidence. It has been Teflon, estesbob, and myself who have consistently admitted the role of the Church in the Reformation – over and over and over. Yet we have consistently been accused of ignoring the role of the Church in order to ‘bash Luther’ because we are ‘anti-Protestant.’
Yes, it does matter very much.
The real issues are what sprang from Luther’s example and from the example of those who would silence criticism of Luther.
:dts: Well those are your limitations then. Given the mountain of information provided for you to examine, you really have no excuse for such faulty dichotomy and such unselfconscious condemnation of others.
Oh I see. I see very clearly now. An attempt to extricate history from apologetics. And what will be extricated next from apologetics after history goes the way of all flesh? In other words, what will be extricated from reason and reference after reference goes the way of all flesh?
From David MacDonald’s website:
Um, Ani Ibi, no offense, but this thread had absolutely nothing to do with you or anyone else on this message board. It has to do with me being able to see where the Catholic Church was at fault, so that I could present it to my Protestant friends as (hopefully) nowhere near what gets portrayed by Protestants. My comment about trashing Martin Luther was in no way meant to insinuate disapproval with anything that may have gone on in any other threads. Look at my join date. If this is some issue that has been going on for months, it was before my time, here. I was merely agreeing that we could easily trash Martin Luther(by stating the facts) but that was not my purpose for starting this thread.
Please provide one instance of me condemning anyone about this topic.
Trust me, I know that history and apologetics are intimately tied together. What I was getting at is sometimes it is more fruitful to stick to doctrinal issues rather than hashing out historical squabbles. This is a tactical point, not any sort of nefarious or evil scheme on my part.
I replied to your example. You ignored my reply and chose merely to tautologize your own application of the husband and wife example.
You are a bit hasty in your judgements, Ani. I don’t think you get what I was trying to say back there, and that’s fine. It’s probably my own lack of clarity. Let’s leave it at that, or if you have any specific condemnations or questions, go ahead. I don’t want to de-rail this thread, though.
But there isn’t only yourself on this thread, Frank. I brought up a recurring and disruptive problem not as a comment on yourself but because it was time that someone stated clearly what has been happening.
We have.
