Luther's Break with the CC-When

[april32010]

There is no exact date when Martin Luther broke away from the Catholic Church. Although the date October 31, 1517 has often been cited since it’s the day he published the 95 Theses, at that time he still considered himself a Catholic and agreed with most of the Church’s teaches. If he just published the Theses and left it at that, no one would ever have heard of him. The schism occurred over many years as Luther became more and more opposed to Catholicism. Here is a good (but pretty anti-Protestant) video explaining it:

youtube.com/watch?v=kd66KXIbAjc

Yes, I know and understand that the makers of this video are not in good standing with the Church, and that their form of so-called Traditional Catholicism is itself schismatic. This video, though, says nothing contrary to the teaching of the Church; it just says things in an excessively negative manner. PLEASE do not make ad hominem arguments.

links to sedevacantist sites are not appreciated on this board.

 

[Truthstalker]

Isn’t that precisely what I was saying?

Pretty good all things considered, yes. I’m certainly not going to point fingers at him, though he did plenty of things that can be criticized. Attacking Luther’s character is not a very good approach for Catholics, I think. Best to keep the focus where he put it–on doctrine. Luther’s doctrinal innovations, particularly with regards to sola fide, don’t hold up.

I was criticizing the view that it was all about abuses. You seem somehow to have gotten the impression that I’m saying the opposite of what I’m saying. This seems to happen often between us.

Edwin

Edwin,

I’d like your comments on the situation regarding church teaching authority in 1520. I think I’ve read that their was a great deal of confusion about where the true center of church teaching was - some held it was with the universities, especially Paris, and some with the Pope. But papal authority had been severely weakened since the time of the two popes and there was what could be charitably described as a disinterest in teaching authority on the part of the papacy. Luther was actually a professor of theology, charged with defending the teaching of the Church, and I think his understanding was that he was simply doing his job in this regard. The CAF “myth” is that Church teaching was unified and solid when actually there were many theories going around, most of which had not been officially ruled on, and there was a lot of bad teaching (bad in a sense that both Catholics and Protestants would agree is bad) that had not been cleaned up by the Church. Luther saw himself as cleaning it up, in line with his official duties.