Rand Al'Thor:
Peace be with you!
I know how big of a Luther fan you are, James, but this statement is completely inaccurate. The Church did not attack Luther’s condemning of the sale of indulgences by corrupt priests;
Hi Rand,
Nice talking with you again. My comment was directed toward the indulgence controversy. I realize eventually the papacy attempted to reform the corrupted practice, but initially, Luther’s protest as waged in the 95 Theses was not met with a spirit of thanksgiving.
The bull by Pope Julius II from 1510 which promoted an indulgence to help rebuild St. Peter’s was part of an extremely corrupted money-making web. Thus, there was a lot of money at stake, and Luther needed to be silenced.
The Catholic writer John Todd notes the bull said, “Moreover all Christians of either sex, secular as well as regular… who shall effevtively place a pious alms in the chest for the above-mentioned building {St. Peter’s}, may gain the fullest remission of their sins…” Todd notes the bull “seems
deliberately loose in places” that would lead one to believe that sins are forgiven by an indulgence.
Now the money collected from this indulgence campaign did not go directly to Rome. No less than half of the money collected went to German bankers, because (according to the Catholic writer John Todd) the Archbishop of Mainz had
"bargained with Rome to be allowed to keep half what was contributed for the indulgence…" which he owed to the German bankers. Todd also notes that Tetzel’s pay for his preaching work was a “
princely sum”. There was a lot of money involved. Luther needed to be silenced rather than understood.
When Tetzel got a copy of Luther’s 95 Theses, he said " The heretic would be in the flames within 3 weeks." Recall, Tetzel was a Dominican, and recall the Dominicans directed the Inquisition. Todd notes the Dominicans “
were all-powerful in the Curia at Rome.” The request to charge Luther for heresy did come, because Luther attacked not only indulgences, but a Dominican as well.
In notifying Rome about Luther, the Dominicans charged Luther’s 95 Theses were teaching “new doctrines.” They prepared counter-theses against Luther. The ball began to roll. Luther had to be silenced because the Dominicans wanted it so. Thus began the unjust attack against Luther by the Papacy.
A review of Todd’s work states,
"Moreover, with a praiseworthy frankness, Todd describes again Rome’s attitude in the conflict following on the affair of the indulgences. Imbued with a sense of her own power, caught up by all sorts of political demands, the Papacy was incapable of taking Luther seriously, incapable of conducting a careful examination of the Ninety-five Theses and their manifold theological implications. To the appeals for reform addressed to her from Germany, she replied “in the form of a personal and canonical attack”. When he was accused of heresy and excommunicated by the Bull, Exsurge Domine, Luther began to doubt Papal authority. And when he had broken his ties with Rome by burning the code of the Canon Law, opposition to the Pope became a “psychological necessity” to him. Yet even when he was convinced that the Papacy was the Antichrist, he never set out to create a new institution; he still continued “to see himself simply as a 'reformer* of the Church”.
The Catholic writer Father Leonard Swidler said it best:
“The kindred temptation for the catholic historian is, after having found unpleasant facts in the history of the Church, to attempt to explain them away with specious, post-factum arguments; to maintain that the actions taken were necessary, were the best possible at the time and under those circumstances, and that if those measures had not been taken, matters would have been worse. Sometimes, this will be true. But to assume that it is always true is to canonize the past merely because it is past, a slightly paraphrased version of Hegel’s dictum ‘Whatever is, is right.”
Regards,
James Swan
ntrmin.org/rccorner-reformation.htm
