Two Popular stories about Luther

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  1. A schism of another nature and of less importance was that of the so-called Petite Eglise or the Incommunicants, formed at the beginning of the nineteenth century by groups who were dissatisfied with the Concordat and the concordatory clergy. In the provinces of the west of France the party acquired a certain stability from 1801 to 1815; at the latter date it had become a distinct sect. It languished on till about 1830, and eventually became extinct for lack of priests to perpetuate it. In Belgium some of its members call themselves Stevenists, thus abusing the name of a reputable ecclesiastic, Corneille Stevens, who was capitular vicar-general of the Diocese of Namur until 1802, who afterwards wrote against the Organic Articles, but accepted the Concordat and died in 1828, as he had lived, in submission to the Holy See.
(21) In 1831 the Abbé Chatel founded the French Catholic Church, a small group which never acquired importance. The founder, who at first claimed to retain all the dogmas, had himself consecrated bishop by Fabre Palaprat, another self-styled bishop of the “Constitutional” type; he soon rejected the infallibility of the teaching Church, celibacy of priests, and abstinence. He recognized no rule of faith except individual evidence and he officiated in French. The sect was already on the point of being slain by ridicule when its meeting-places were closed by the Government in 1842.

(22) About the same time Germany was the scene of a somewhat similar schism. When in 1844 the Holy Coat was exposed at Trier for the veneration of the faithful, a suspended priest, Johannes Ronge, seized the occasion to publish a violent pamphlet against Arnoldi, Bishop of Trier. Some malcontents ranged themselves on his side. Almost simultaneously John Czerski, a dismissed vicar, founded in the Province of Posen, a “Christian Catholic community”. He had imitators. In 1845 the “German Catholics”, as these schismatics called themselves, held a synod at Leipzig at which they rejected among other things the primacy of the pope, auricular confession, ecclesiastical celibacy, the veneration of the saints, and suppressed the Canon in their Eucharistic Liturgy which they called the “German liturgy”. They gained recruits in small numbers until 1848, but after that date they declined, being on bad terms with the Governments which had at first encouraged them but which bore them ill-will because of their political agitations.

(23) While this sect was declining another sprang up in antagonism to the Vatican Council. The opponents of the recently-defined doctrine of infallibility, the Old Catholics, at first contented themselves with a simple protest; at the Congress of Munich in 1871 they resolved to constitute a separate Church. Two years later they chose as bishop the Professor Reinkens of Breslau, who was recognized as bishop by Prussia, Baden, and Hesse. Thanks to official assistance the rebels succeeded in gaining possession of a number of Catholic churches and soon, like the German Catholics and schismatics in general, they introduced disciplinary and doctrinal novelties, they successively abandoned the precept of confession (1874), ecclesiastical celibacy (1878), the Roman liturgy, which was replaced (1880) by a German liturgy, etc. In Switzerland also the opposition to the Vatican council resulted in the creation of a separate community, which also enjoyed governmental favour. An Old Catholic faculty was founded at Berne for the teaching of theology, and E. Herzog, a professor of this faculty, was elected bishop of the party in 1876. A congress assembled in 1890, at which most of the dissident groups, Jansenists, Old Catholics, etc., had representatives, resolved to unite all these diverse elements in the foundation of one Church. As a matter of fact, they are all on the road to free-thinking and Rationalism. In England a recent attempt at schism under the leadership of Herbert Beale and Arthur Howarth, two Nottingham priests, and Arnold Mathew, has failed to assume proportions worthy of serious notice.
 
Once again there are many many different groups encompassed in these definitions Rimini-Seleucia, Sabellius etc.
 
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Shibboleth:
Once again there are many many different groups encompassed in these definitions Rimini-Seleucia, Sabellius etc.
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There is a distinction to be made of a schism and the churches anathemization of a heretic and his followers.
 
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Scott_Lafrance:
There is a distinction to be made of a schism and the churches anathemization of a heretic and his followers.
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Like Luther?
 
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Shibboleth:
Well according to the Joint Doctrine of Justification, Lutheran’s do not disagree all that much on Sola Fide and works.
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No, not now. Most Lutherans have come to a Catholic POV on Justification.
Perhaps Sola Scriptura would be a better target.
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Christ did not teach SS, the Bible does not teach it, and the Church Fathers did not teach it. SS is unhistorical, unbiblical, and unworkable. There is in progress a full frontal assault on this false doctrine by Catholic scholars.
I don’t think that Sola Fide was the problem. I think we should perhaps put more emphasis or blame on the continuing disagreements between Germany and Rome, the fact that the Donation of Constantine turned out to be a huge fraud, and terrible Shepards in God’s church - to name just a few.
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Sola Fide remains a major Protestant heresy.
We must never forget that before the time of Luther there had already been a thousand schisms.
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Luther established the three pillars of Protestantism: Sola Scriptura, Sola Fide, and Sola Gratia. The battle of forensic imputation vs.Catholic infused grace has raged ever since. The Church is still accused of teaching Works Salvation (a heresy which she condemined in 592 at the Council of Orange).

I know of thousands of heresies, but only one schism – that of the Eastern and Western Churches. ???

JMJ Jay
 
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Katholikos:
No, not now. Most Lutherans have come to a Catholic POV on Justification.
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I see it the other way - but that is what makes you Catholic and me Lutheran.
 
:Two more Luther stores – documented history, not mythical:

Hardly!

:QUOTE . . . Martin Luther was originally a servant of the Church, though not out of a sense of fidelity or spiritual calling.:

This is false.

: He became a monk to escape and affront his abusive parents – :

This is pseudo-psychological balderdash. He became a monk because he promised St. Anne to do so when in danger of death. Sure, there were other reasons. But it’s a silly old trick to explain everything in terms of parent-child conflict. I could explain away St. Francis and St. Thomas Aquinas in exactly the same way.

:both of whom beat him severely.:

Which was normal parental discipline in the 16th century. If every child whose parents beat him in that era had become a monk, European civilization would have ended in one generation (unless they were bad monks).

: Luther’s father was not a Catholic,:

Ridiculous. Was he an open heretic? Was he Jewish? If not (and there’s no evidence for either of these things), then he was Catholic.

: but an occultist:

Absurd. There’s not a shred of evidence for this.

:who believed in darker Germanic witches, hobgoblins, and demons.:

In other words, he wasn’t an Enlightenment rationalist. Anyone who could make a statement like this with a straight face has no business writing about the Middle Ages or the 16th century. These beliefs were perfectly normal for the period and were not condemned by the Church (in fact the Church was moving away from a more skeptical attitude toward the paranoid view that the forces of evil were everywhere).

: These would also haunt the imagination of Martin Luther who had visions, which he believed to be actual physical occurrences, of the devil hurling “[fill in the blank]” at him and his hurling it back. Indeed, in one of his many anal combats with the devil – in which Luther would challenge the devil to “lick” his posterior – Luther thought the best tactic might be to “throw him into my anus, where he belongs.” How one wishes for an exegesis by Dr. Sigmund Freud of that passage.:

I don’t. Freud’s ability to understand historical figures is not particularly impressive.

What about the story in the Little Flowers of St. Francis about St. Francis telling one of his friars to tell Satan to open his mouth so the friar could defecate in it?

:Quoted in William Manchester, A World Lit Only by Fire: The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance (Little, Brown & Company, 1993, p. 140).:

Of course. It would be this ridiculous secularist hatchet job that turns out to be your “documented history.” Manchester’s work is slightly more reliable than a Chick tract, but that’s all I’ll say for it.

:QUOTE . . . Being, in the words of the historian William Manchester,:

Crocker cites Manchester. How totally not surprising.

: “the most anal of theologians,” [ibid, p. 139] it is not surprising that . . . His “thunderbolt” idea that faith alone was sufficient for salvation came, in his own words, as “knowledge the Holy Spirit gave me on the privy in the tower.” END QUOTE (ibid).:

If Crocker had done his homework, he would have traced this misunderstanding to Erik Erikson’s Young Man Luther, although Erikson didn’t even come up with it himself (I’m not sure who did). This interpretation is completly bogus, because it rests on bad grammar. Luther’s words were “auf dem cl.” Some bright person came up with the idea that “cl.” means “cloaca” (privy). Problem is, “cloaca” is feminine and “dem” is masculine or neuter. So there’s no way that could be Luther’s meaning. (Luther frequently shifted from German to Latin, and since both languages are inflected you can quite easily use a Latin word as if it were German, which Luther is probably doing here.)

I’m sorry, but your “documented history” is nothing of the sort. Neither of the works you cite are credible historical sources, and both are riddled with errors.

In Christ,

Edwin
 
Contarini said:
:
Of course. It would be this ridiculous secularist hatchet job that turns out to be your “documented history.” Manchester’s work is slightly more reliable than a Chick tract, but that’s all I’ll say for it.
. . .
I’m sorry, but your “documented history” is nothing of the sort. Neither of the works you cite are credible historical sources, and both are riddled with errors.Edwin
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Thank you, Contarini. It’s so seldom that a distinguished, published, accredited, peer-reviewed historian like yourself is available and willing to take the time to correct a poor ignorant know-nothing peasant like me who knows no better than to quote acclaimed historians like William Manchester and H.W. Crocker III. :bowdown:

As I recall from previous battles with you, the only “histories” you find satisfactory are those that extol Luther as the “Great Deformer” – uh, I mean Reformer – savior of “true Christianity.”

Peace, Jay
 
If he had not been such a ranting lunatic of a nut job he could have started his own order.
 
My thoughts on myth includes the notion that the “reformers” were doing nothing more than following the trends of their day - the reawakening of critical thought from the great days of the Greeks and Romans.

However, what they were “re-thinking” was the Word of God as guarded by the Church, with the strength of the Holy Spirit, as deposited with her by Jesus Christ through Peter and the Apostles, and as passed to their followers.

In my mind, that’s where we get “reformed theology” also known as Calvinism, OSAS, Sola Fide and Sola Scriptura. The thought was that the savages of the 1st century could not possibly have it right, as they were not the learned, enlightened sophisticates of the renaissance.

However, the error of their logic is that they were trying to “outhink” God, wherein they hit short and wide of the mark.

In my humble opinion, as always.
 
Another Jacka$$ in the history of the Catholic CHurch. Alls he had to do is say. We cant take $20 to mention your dead uncle at offetory. So how about you just donate the $20 and we mention your name in the bulletin to pray for you or put flowers on the alter or some idea.

A one sentance thesis and a paragraphy to substantiate what he was saying would have been fine. Than another pargraph that says in my church we will not make offetory for parishners in exchange for $20 and call it the order of luthern. Everythign would have been fine. Pope would have made an order but nope. This guy writes a ten page letter about how this is a plot to put meat in the government pies. So out he goes. Ecomunicataondo. See yah. Dont let the door hit you in the *** on the way out.
 
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Bill_A:
Another Jacka$$ in the history of the Catholic CHurch. Alls he had to do is say. We cant take $20 to mention your dead uncle at offetory. So how about you just donate the $20 and we mention your name in the bulletin to pray for you or put flowers on the alter or some idea.

A one sentance thesis and a paragraphy to substantiate what he was saying would have been fine. Than another pargraph that says in my church we will not make offetory for parishners in exchange for $20 and call it the order of luthern. Everythign would have been fine. Pope would have made an order but nope. This guy writes a ten page letter about how this is a plot to put meat in the government pies. So out he goes. Ecomunicataondo. See yah. Dont let the door hit you in the *** on the way out.
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Luther did talk at length with the practitioners of indulgences for some time before he released the 97 Thesis.
 
:It’s so seldom that a distinguished, published, accredited, peer-reviewed historian like yourself:

I recognize that you’re being sarcastic, but just to avoid any misunderstanding, let me get the record straight. I’m a grad student in church history, and solely by my own sloth have not yet finished my dissertation. However, I still have more credentials as a historian than Crocker. I don’t know Manchester’s credentials, but I do know that my advisor David Steinmetz didn’t seem to take the book very seriously when I mentioned it to him (some time ago, in response to a reference to the book in Franky Schaeffer’s Dancing Alone).

: is available and willing to take the time:

If I hadn’t wasted my time arguing on the Internet, I might have my Ph.D. now and really be able to put on airs!

: to correct a poor ignorant know-nothing peasant like me who knows no better than to quote acclaimed historians like William Manchester and H.W. Crocker III. :bowdown: :

Crocker is not a historian. He’s a journalist. That doesn’t mean that he can’t write good history. But in this case he hasn’t. This is not hard to show.

:As I recall from previous battles with you, the only “histories” you find satisfactory are those that extol Luther as the “Great Deformer” – uh, I mean Reformer – savior of “true Christianity.” :

Well, your memory is faulty. But generally I do think that sympathetic works are more likely to get someone right than deliberate hatchet jobs, yes. This is true across the board. However, there are serious Catholic critiques of Luther. Crocker’s just isn’t one of them.

I’m sorry for my tone. I know it makes it easier for you to dismiss what I’m saying. But please look at the facts and try to get beyond hurt feelings. I have reason for being annoyed. The “facts” you presented make no sense.

How can you defend defining someone as an “occultist” because he shared the folk beliefs of most Catholics of his day?

How can you defend perpetuating the view that “auf dem cl.” can possibly refer to the feminine word “cloaca” when “dem” is either masculine or neuter?

How can you defend defining corporal punishment of children as “abuse” and using it to explain Luther’s behavior, when (reprehensible as this is) it was common parental discipline in the 16th century?

I’m not attacking Manchester and Crocker out of blind prejudice against people who are not specialists in 16th-century history. I’m glad that people are writing those sort of books. I want to write those sort of books myself, if I can get finished with the darned dissertation. The problem is that their information is bad. This is not about personalities. It’s about facts.

In Christ,

Edwin
 
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