Luther wanted to be a Catholic just before his death?

[jay29]

This is from poster cyberjacques on this thread:

forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=225039

"Martin Luther realized shortly before his death that he had made a terrible mistake, and started the process of coming back into communion with the Church. Unfortunately, due to the long transit time of messages, he died before it was complete. So if you really think he’s in hell, perhaps you could explain to us how sincere repentance is good enough for the thief on the cross and other sinners, but not for Luther."

Is there any proof of this I can look up???

 

[Contarini]

This is from poster cyberjacques on this thread:

forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=225039

"Martin Luther realized shortly before his death that he had made a terrible mistake, and started the process of coming back into communion with the Church. Unfortunately, due to the long transit time of messages, he died before it was complete. So if you really think he’s in hell, perhaps you could explain to us how sincere repentance is good enough for the thief on the cross and other sinners, but not for Luther."

Is there any proof of this I can look up???

There is no proof of it because it isn’t true, period. I don’t know where these stories come from, but they are completely unfounded.

Luther did become increasingly pessimistic about the effects of the Reformation in his later years, and Catholics have often cited these statements to discredit the entire movement. However, this pessimism did not (unfortunately) lead him to conclude that he was wrong on any important point, but rather to conclude that Satan was launching an all-out attack on the newly recovered “Gospel” in what Luther believed to be the End Times.

Edwin

 

[reteeks21]

There is no proof of it because it isn’t true, period. I don’t know where these stories come from, but they are completely unfounded.

Luther did become increasingly pessimistic about the effects of the Reformation in his later years, and Catholics have often cited these statements to discredit the entire movement. However, this pessimism did not (unfortunately) lead him to conclude that he was wrong on any important point, but rather to conclude that Satan was launching an all-out attack on the newly recovered “Gospel” in what Luther believed to be the End Times.

Edwin

Thanks for pointing out the truth. I hope it isn’t overlooked and/or thrown aside by others who won’t look at history objectively.

 

[garytb]

This is from poster cyberjacques on this thread:

forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=225039

"Martin Luther realized shortly before his death that he had made a terrible mistake, and started the process of coming back into communion with the Church. Unfortunately, due to the long transit time of messages, he died before it was complete. So if you really think he’s in hell, perhaps you could explain to us how sincere repentance is good enough for the thief on the cross and other sinners, but not for Luther."

Is there any proof of this I can look up???

Death bed conversions always make for a good story, without ever needing to provide any proof, because afterall it happened on the death bed.
peace-

 

[TriuneUnity]

Death bed conversions always make for a good story, without ever needing to provide any proof, because afterall it happened on the death bed.
peace-

In addition to that, if Luther had gone back to Rome prior to his death, the event would’ve had to have been recorded by a Church official, such as a priest. In which case, that would’ve filtered back to the Vatican.

At the height of the Reformation, would Rome have failed to announce to the entire world that Luther “reverted?!?”

 

[Jabronie]

Here’s a sort of related dumb question that should probably have its own thread: Why didn’t Luther just look East during his spat with Rome?

 

[TriuneUnity]

Here’s a sort of related dumb question that should probably have its own thread: Why didn’t Luther just look East during his spat with Rome?

Probably because they shared some of the same theology that Luther disagreed with on Rome. Melancthon did extend invitations to meet with various bishops from the East, but they declined. I can’t say I blame them. Considering the Ottomans were going crazy at this point and the last thing they wanted, I imagine, was get involved with a Roman dispute.

 

[raumzeitmc2]

“Martin Luther realized shortly before his death that he had made a terrible mistake, and started the process of coming back into communion with the Church.”

There doesn’t seem to be any evidence for this whatsoever. Hartmann Grisar, S. J. gives the following account of Luther’s last hours.

End of Luther’s Life, Chapter xxxix.

About one o’clock Luther suddenly felt very unwell. “Oh, my God, how ill I feel,” he said to Jonas, and, getting out of bed, he dragged himself into the sitting-room, saying he would probably die at Eisleben after all, and repeating the prayer: “Into Thy hands I commend my spirit.”

He complained of an intolerable burden on his chest. Two physicians, one a doctor and the other a master of medicine, were now summoned in haste. Before they arrived the patient seems to have suddenly collapsed; they found him on the sofa, unconscious and with no perceptible pulse. Recovering consciousness he said, all bathed in the cold sweat of death: " My God, I feel so ill and anxious, I am going," and then, according to Jonas, he said a short prayer of thanks to God for having revealed to him His Son Jesus Christ in Whom he believed and Whom he had preached and confessed, whilst the hateful Pope and all the ungodly had blasphemed this same Christ; thereupon, all trustfully, he commended his soul to the Lord.

No less than three times, according to this witness, did he repeat in Latin the familiar Bible text : " God so loved the world that He gave His Only Begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life." This text (John iii. 16) he had, indeed, always esteemed highly, and seen in it the seal of his doctrine. He is also said to have repeated other Bible texts while medicines were being given him. Count Albert and his relatives, who had come in, also offered him various remedies. Soon after he seemed again to lose consciousness.

In spite of the confessions just mentioned Jonas and Coelius shouted once more in his ear the question, whether he remained steadfast in the faith in Christ and His doctrine which he had preached; to which they caught the reply “Yes." That was his last word. To all appearance his death was due to an apoplectic seizure.

Luther, Hartmann Grisar, Six Volumes,vol. 6, pp. 378-379.

volumes 1-6

---

“But it would greatly distress me to think that the soul after death passes into a state of torpor, being as it were buried, just as it is during sleep while it is in the body, living only in hope, but having nothing and knowing nothing, especially if in its sleep it be not even stirred by any dreams. This notion causes me very great horror, and seems to indicate that the life of the soul is extinguished at death.”

St. Augustine - Letter 158:7

 

[gurneyhalleck1]

Here’s a sort of related dumb question that should probably have its own thread: Why didn’t Luther just look East during his spat with Rome?

I think because the Orthodox, like the Roman, Oriental Orthodox, and every other Catholic Church for 2,000 years has believed in justification through faith as well as an individual response to the transformed grace that Christ gives us in reconciliation. Catholics in east or west believe that our own personal response, search for purity and holiness, and love of Christ must be evident, not simply an acceptance of grace. The orthodox never have believed in the “sola scriptura” type message that Luther taught in the 16th century. They wouldn’t have gone along with his priesthood of all believers or his idea that confession is optional or that the Eucharist does not need apostolic succession to be made valid and present. Luther’s teachings were too far from traditional Catholic understandings for any Catholic in any place to create an alliance. The orthodox flirted with the Anglican Churches for a period of time until the Anglicans got nuttier and nuttier with lady priests, homosexuals, protestant notions of justification through faith “alone,” etc.

 

[raumzeitmc2]

Why didn’t Luther just look East during his spat with Rome?

Perhaps he did at some point; but to my knowledge, no serious attempts were made to win the Orthodox to the Protestant cause until some years after Luther’s death in 1546.

I recommend you read the following work which contains the “correspondence between the Lutheran theologians of Tubingen and Orthodox Patriarch Jeremiah II.”

Augsburg and Constantinople: The Correspondence between the Tubingen Theologians and Patriarch Jeremiah II of Constantinople on the Augsburg Confession, George Mastrantonis, (1981), Holy Cross Orthodox Press (July 8, 2005), ISBN 0916586820

And this:

Justification by Faith Alone?
The Reply of Patriarch Jeremiah II to the Lutheran Tubingen Theologians, Concerning the Augsburg Confession (16th cent.)

See also:

No long time had elapsed, after the Church split in Germany, before the followers of Luther sought to win the Greek schismatics to the cause of their heresy. As early as 1559 Melanchthon sent to the Patriarch Joasaph of Constantinople, a Greek translation of the Augsburg Confession, with a very artful letter to accompany it. The patriarch, however, saw through the hypocrite, and returned him no answer. The professors of Tubingen, James Andrea, Crusius, and others, who had entered into correspondence with the Patriarch Jeremias, fared no better; for he refuted their Augsburg Confession and admonished them to forsake their errors and to give him no further annoyance….

History of the Catholic Church, (1885), Heinrich Brück, Joseph Hergenröther, Joseph Adam Gustav Hergenröther, Benziger Brothers, vol. II, p. 289.

The Orthodox Church and the Lutherans -
An ecumenical correspondence from 1573 to 1581.

If you read Latin (I only read a smidgen), below is Melanchthon’s letter to the Patriarch Joseph (Iosepho Patriarchae) of Constantinople dated September 25, 1559.

Source: Philip Melanchthon’s *Opera Quae Supersunt Omnia *in the Corpus Reformatorum, vol. 9, pp. 922-923, No. 6825. (Epistolarum Liber XIII, 1559)

---

“Hence, let us celebrate the birthday of the Lord with a joyous gathering and appropriate festivity…. A woman brought death upon us; a woman has now brought forth life…. Exult, you holy virgins. A Virgin has brought forth for you One whom you may wed without defilement…”

– St. Augustine, Sermon 184:2, For the Feast of the Nativity.
, vol. 38. Sermons on the Liturgical seasons (184- 265)Fathers of the Church: A New Translation, pp. 4-5.