Catholic Church Asked to Revoke Luther's Excommunication

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Irish_Polock said:
Wasn’t Pope Formosus excommunicated after his death? The whole Cadaver Synod story (I forget the stories details, he was put on trial at very least) IF so why does bringing a soul back into communion with the church after death sound so radical? 😃

Just being the devils advocate here :hey_bud:
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All of that was more showmanship than actual theological pronouncement.

Besides, bringing a soul back into communion after death is what purgatory is for 😛
 
The mutual lifting of excommunications, by Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras, in 1965 was certainly a key event. It would really be something if there could be a similar event with respect to the Lutherans – but, as others have said, that seems like a pretty remote possibility.
 
Peter_J said:
The mutual lifting of excommunications, by Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras, in 1965 was certainly a key event. It would really be something if there could be a similar event with respect to the Lutherans – but, as others have said, that seems like a pretty remote possibility.
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For it to be a remote possibility implies an “all or nothing” approach. I don’t think it has to be. It is clear that Rome and Orthodoxy still have significant differences.

Jon
 
Peter_J said:
The mutual lifting of excommunications, by Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras, in 1965 was certainly a key event. It would really be something if there could be a similar event with respect to the Lutherans – but, as others have said, that seems like a pretty remote possibility.
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Depends upon what one means by “lifting” of excommunications. The declaration itself no where uses that term. However, if one means a “gesture” of mutual “regret” and a removal from “memory” then yes, Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras did make this gesture in their joint declaration. I don’t think, however, such a gesture had any affect on the validity or canonical force of an excommunication made over 1000 years ago, which no longer had canonical effect once the persons involved had died.

Moreover, “excommunication” has also a broader meaning than is typically used today. This meaning included “a refusal of episcopal communion.” This is not the kind of censure of excommunication given to heretics. Instead, it meant the refusal by a bishop to communicate in sacris with another bishop and his church, in consideration of an act deemed reprehensible and worthy of chastisement. Such bishops, for example, were permitted to continue to govern their diocese and publicly to hold ecclesiastical services. (see here: Catholic Encyclopedia - Excommuncation, under the heading “refusal of episcopal communion”).

It also seems that both Paul VI and Athenagoras both stopped short of declaring the excommunications invalid. From a Catholic perspective, even if an excommunication is deemed “unjust,” it still retains canonical effect so long as the excommunication was valid.

According to the article, Catholic Encyclopedia - Excommuncation:
An excommunication is said to be null when it is invalid because of some intrinsic or essential defect, e.g. when the person inflicting it has no jurisdiction, when the motive of the excommunication is manifestly incorrect and inconsistent, or when the excommunication is essentially defective in form. Excommunication is said to be unjust when, though valid, it is wrongfully applied to a person really innocent but believed to be guilty… In chapter xxviii, de sent. excomm. (Lib. V, tit. xxxix), Innocent III formally admits the possibility of this conflict. Some persons, he says, may be free in the eyes of God but bound in the eyes of the Church; vice versa, some may be free in the eyes of the Church but bound in the eyes of God: for God’s judgment is based on the very truth itself, whereas that of the Church is based on arguments and presumptions which are sometimes erroneous. He concludes that the chain by which the sinner is bound in the sight of God is loosed by remission of the fault committed, whereas that which binds him in the sight of the Church is severed only by removal of the sentence. Consequently, a person unjustly excommunicated is in the same state as the justly excommunicated sinner who has repented and recovered the grace of God; he has not forfeited internal communion with the Church, and God can bestow upon him all necessary spiritual help. However, while seeking to prove his innocence, the censured person is meanwhile bound to obey legitimate authority and to behave as one under the ban of excommunication, until he is rehabilitated or absolved.
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Hmmm…appearantly, there IS (or was) a means to absolve a person from excommunication after death, so as to allow them ecclesiastical burial:
…the Roman Ritual contains the rite for absolving an excommunicated person already dead (Tit. III, cap. iv: Ritus absolvendi excommunicatum jam mortuum). However, these sentences or absolutions concern only the effects of excommunication, notably %between%ecclesiastical burial. Catholic Encyclopedia - Excommuncation]
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Irish_Polock said:
Thoughts? 🤷

ekklesia.co.uk/node/9021
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From my readings on what Martin Luther pronounced against the Jewish people I think that you were onto something to kick him out. What comes out of us, must already be in us, or it could not spew forth!

jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/anti-semitism/Luther_on_Jews.html
First to set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them. This is to be done in honor of our Lord and of Christendom, so that God might see that we are Christians, and do not condone or knowingly tolerate such public lying, cursing, and blaspheming of his Son and of his Christians. For whatever we tolerated in the past unknowingly * and I myself was unaware of it * will be pardoned by God. But if we, now that we are informed, were to protect and shield such a house for the Jews, existing right before our very nose, in which they lie about, blaspheme, curse, vilify, and defame Christ and us (as was heard above), it would be the same as if we were doing all this and even worse ourselves, as we very well know.
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Second, I advise that their houses also be razed and destroyed. For they pursue in them the same aims as in their synagogues. Instead they might be lodged under a roof or in a barn, like the gypsies. This will bring home to them that they are not masters in our country, as they boast, but that they are living in exile and in captivity, as they incessantly wail and lament about us before God.
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Third, I advise that all their prayer books and Talmudic writings, in which such idolatry, lies, cursing and blasphemy are taught, be taken from them.
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i read about this the other day in a newsletter and wondered if someone would start a thread on this topic.

do the lutherans have a guilty conscience? do they think this would make their faith seem more justifiable by this action?

i do think it would be a mistake for the Catholic church to act on this, but i don’t see any problem with dialogue.
 
JonNC said:
That would be great! Perhaps at the same time Lutherans would edit out all references to the “papacy as anti-Christ” from the Book of Concord. In any event, both would be meaningless (except to engender better relations) unless they lead to greater doctrinal unity. I have more faith in that eventuality than some.
Jon
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I personally suspect that the unity that we need will actually come through the power of God being poured out. I talked Maria into going to an Alpha closing ceremony meeting a few weeks ago. A Catholic Priest from Halifax gave the main address. My gifted Pentecostal wife was so blown away by the presence of God with this man as he spoke and taught us all a couple of songs that this week as we discussed attending a church in Halifax sometime my wife mentioned that she wanted to go to the meetings where that Catholic Priest teaches!

Did I mention that my wife is Pentecostal?

I will sure appreciate your prayers for guidance in my political “career?!”

facebook.com/home.php?#/topic.php?uid=10844183650&topic=5732
We CAN STOP global warming and WE CAN keep St. Mary’s Education Centre!
 
DennisTate said:
From my readings on what Martin Luther pronounced against the Jewish people I think that you were onto something to kick him out. What comes out of us, must already be in us, or it could not spew forth!

jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/anti-semitism/Luther_on_Jews.html
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All Lutherans condemn Luther’s anti-judaism comments near the end of his life, just as all Catholics condemn the anti-judaism that was widespread in the Church during Luther’s time.

Respect for Jews and their faith is a characteristic shared by modern-day Lutherans and Catholics, and is not an issue in current dialogue.
Jon
 
LutheranDK said:
It would be SO cool to take this step further in healing the relations between the churches. But to revoke Luther’s excommunication would, to me, seem to be the same as saying that the basis of the excommunication (heresy) was not true, thus saying that Luther was no heretic, thereby signalling that his rediscoveries were true.

And that would leave the RC church with endless other problems…
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Luther was only a heritic by those who chose to define him as one. God did not say Luther was a heritic. The Catholic church said God Said he was a Heritic.
 
augsburg said:
Luther was only a heritic by those who chose to define him as one.
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The same could be said of St. Paul and those he deemed a heretic. Yet, according to the Gospel of Matthew (ch. 18), we are told to listen to the Church as the final arbiter of sins between brethren. We do.

Nonetheless, Luther’s own writings condemn himself. For example, when Luther claimed that Jesus committed the sin of adultery with the woman at the well, I think Luther made clear to all that he was a heretic.

**Martin Luther: **
“Christ was an adulterer for the first time with the woman at the well, for it was said, ‘Nobody knows what he’s doing with her’ [John 4:27]. Again [he was an adulterer] with Magdalene, and still again with the adulterous woman in John 8 :2–11], whom he let off so easily. So the good Christ had to become an adulterer before he died.” [Luther’s Works 54:154]
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Apologists for Luther tend to speculate about the possible “context” of the above statement (not given in Luther’s Works), thinking maybe he was kidding or drunk, or some other lame excuse. Yet, I find it difficult to “spin” this remark of his in any way that is not heretical. This is just one example of Luther’s absurd teachings. There so many others that one can, with confidence, follow St. Paul’s teaching with regard to Luther: “A man that is an heretic after the first and second admonition reject.” (Titus 3:10).
 
amontoya said:
What does “simul iustus et peccator” mean?
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“righteous and sinner simultaniously”

It means that although we are still sinners, because we commit sins, we are also righteous, because of what Christ did for us.

Very basically put - and unnuanced of course 🙂
 
itsjustdave1988 said:
The same could be said of St. Paul and those he deemed a heretic. Yet, according to the Gospel of Matthew (ch. 18), we are told to listen to the Church as the final arbiter of sins between brethren. We do.

Nonetheless, Luther’s own writings condemn himself. For example, when Luther claimed that Jesus committed the sin of adultery with the woman at the well, I think Luther made clear to all that he was a heretic.

**Martin Luther: **
Apologists for Luther tend to speculate about the possible “context” of the above statement (not given in Luther’s Works), thinking maybe he was kidding or drunk, or some other lame excuse. Yet, I find it difficult to “spin” this remark of his in any way that is not heretical. This is just one example of Luther’s absurd teachings. There so many others that one can, with confidence, follow St. Paul’s teaching with regard to Luther: “A man that is an heretic after the first and second admonition reject.” (Titus 3:10).
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Context is not given in “Luther’s Works” because there is no context. It comes from Table Talk, written down primarily by students of Luther’s. I don’t think any of my professors would want their reputation dependent on what I wrote down in their class.
For what it is worth, a quote from *Catholic *scholar Thomas O’Meara:
“…Catholics are using inaccurately rhetorical arguments when they make the value of Luther’s theology and reform depend upon his table-talk language. Rhetoric appeals to the mind- but it appeals through emotions. It reaches the mind not through a purely intellectual act, examining the case thoroughly and logically, but by leaps and bounds, driven by emotions and will, faculties incapable of a calm judgment of what is true.”
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beggarsallreformation.blogspot.com/2005/12/luther-said-christ-committed-adultery.html

Jon
 
He is dead, I doubt he really cares whether the RCC revokes his excommunication or not lol.
 
Dave,

You used the following quote from Luther:
“Christ was an adulterer for the first time with the woman at the well, for it was said, ‘Nobody knows what he’s doing with her’ [John 4:27]. Again [he was an adulterer] with Magdalene, and still again with the adulterous woman in John 8 :2–11], whom he let off so easily. So the good Christ had to become an adulterer before he died.” [Luther’s Works 54:154]
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In the culture of Jesus’ time, it was improper for a man to so much as converse with a woman who was not related to him. Even more, to do so without anyone else around would be cause for suspicion that unseemly behavior had occurred. I don’t believe that Luther believed that Christ was an adulterer of any sort, but Christ left himself open to having his actions second-guessed – good heavens, he sat down to eat with tax collectors and sinners:eek:

It would have been as easy for the disciples to think that Jesus might have engaged in inappropriate actions as it is for any of us to think the worst of someone based on circumstantial evidence. Luther, I believe, was simply relating what Jesus’ action could have looked like to people in his place and time.

Oh, and on the subject of the OP, I agree with those who say that Luther’s excommunication is not of any effect in the 21st century. He’s long gone and there’s nothing to revoke. No one can bring him back into communion in a temporal sense. On the other hand, I believe, his is a part of that great cloud of witnesses in God’s nearer presence.

What would be good – and some Catholic theologians have been doing so – is to have some attention paid to the good in Luther’s teaching and theology, including his role in getting the Church to take a good look at itself.

Even we Lutherans need to do a better job of understanding him. Most Lutherans would likely be shocked to read of his devotion to the Blessed Virgin. Most are similarly shocked to read of his encouragement of private confession. He has much to say apart from the hyperbolic and polemic writings and sayings that are constantly brought up in an effort to say that nothing he did is of any value.
 
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