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steido01
Guest
Thank you! At least one person on the boards has read what I recommended earlier!
Which protestant denomination is most close in doctrine to the catholic church?
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Lochias
Guest
Pretty big exception, there.
“We’re pretty close, except when we’re not close at all…”
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andrewstx
Guest
I am really not so sure about that. I am starting to doubt if this site is completely representative of American Catholicism as a whole and is somewhat biased toward the far right.Episcopalian & Lutheran “emergent” Anglo-Catholic here.
Except for being more liberal theologically and socially than Catholicism allows for, we’re pretty close…
This was brought home to me as I watched and compared the EWTN Mass to the Christmas Eve midnight Mass from the National Shrine. The Mass at the shrine was completely in English while the EWTN Mass is at least half Latin.
Mass at the shrine the people overwhelmingly received Holy Communion in the hand, standing. While on EWTN they all receive on the toungue and many of them kneel on the floor. It’s like there are two different churches.
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House_Harkonnen
Guest
I think orthodox Lutherans are much closer to RC and EO than our more liberal counter parts. At least we agree generally on social issues.
I still feel miles away in terms of justification though.
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House_Harkonnen
Guest
I disagree, the LCMS would have to largely repudiate their doctrine of justification as well as accept the papacy, as well as reject the Augsburg Confession.
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EvangelCatholic
Guest
If I am not mistaken, the Missouri Synod did participate in the Lutheran-Catholic Dialogue on Papal Primacy and the Universal Church [1973], right?
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Peter_J
Guest
Rest assured that I’d never claim that any website – especially not a forum like this – is representative of Catholicism, American or otherwise.
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pocohombre
Guest
C. S. Lewis in regards to the papacy, “Those ignorant of history are slaves to the recent past”… #2 is still in the nature or “essence” of the developed papacy. That he does not exercise it today is not because of divine revelation not to do so, but because governments came to refuse submission to that kind of papal authority. The more things change the more they remain the same. The way things are today as far as secular power is the way it was in the beginning-non-existent , save for example and bully pulpit, putting forth “light” in a dark world.
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TertiumQuid
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Deleted: duplicate post, my apologies.
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TertiumQuid
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I think these are intriguing questions. They are the same sort of questions that come up with such Biblical verses like these:
Somewhere earlier someone said of Luther’s comments, “Talk about a war on women!” Based on the standard being applied to Luther, Holy Scripture falls under the same condemnation.
When one studies the Reformation period, it becomes very obvious that the entire concept of marriage was a topic of great controversy. I would argue that it is one of the most overlooked topics by both Protestant and Catholic polemicists today. That is, the very concept of what the word *marriage *meant was probably just as important of a topic then as it is today. For Luther and the Reformers, theirs was a reaction to the canon laws concerning marriage. If one takes the time to actually read Luther’s treatise / sermon, one finds the majority of the treatise is dedicated to examining the regulation of the institution of marriage.
I would certainly agree that Luther’s comment that “the civil government must compel the wife, or put her to death” was extreme. I wonder if he would have written such thing after he was married? While I think he was being extreme here, his reasoning is that to willfully deny the other spouse is to rob the other spouse, and is something that is so contrary to marriage, it’s like dissolving it. Luther recommends the state step in to compel the spouse, or face the death penalty. That is, marital duties are so crucial to marriage, they need to be taken very seriously. To willfully deny the other spouse is to rob the other, and is actually an act of killing a marriage. To kill a marriage is so terrible, it should meet with severe penalties. On the other hand, Luther did strive for balance: as to an invalid spouse, Luther recommends taking care of the spouse, and says those who can’t remain continent because of an invalid spouse are lying. You must serve your invalid spouse.
When Luther suggested the death penalty, the point then was the seriousness of violating marriage ordinances. That’s how seriously Luther took spouses being committed to each other. Recall as well, the Catholic Church also believed in the death penalty for certain sins during the 16th century. The question is, should Luther’s ideas about these marital sins warrant the death penalty? In Luther’s mind, the sin was so grievous, it did. I am not an advocate of the death penalty and think Luther was making a too extreme conclusion, but I can’t help but wonder what would happen if a society took marriage and sexuality as seriously as Luther did in this treatise.
For anyone interested in 16th century marriage and the impact of the Reformation, Here is a very helpful article:
John Witte, The Reformation of Marriage Law in Martin Luther’s Germany: Its significance Then and Now (Journal of Law and Religion, Vol. 4, No. 2 (1986), pp. 293-351.
I don’t think this article is free on-line anywhere, but it’s worth tracking down for anyone interested in the history of the understanding of marriage and why the Reformers reacted the way they did.
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GKC
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I’ve been a Lewis collector for over 45 years. That quote, in the abstract, sounds like him. But as a specific reference to the Papacy, or with any connection to the Papacy, I can’t give a source for it. Can you?
GKC
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steido01
Guest
A fair point, Poco. Thanks. Perhaps in my bid to find common ground with Rome, I’ve too hastily overlooked what is still taught, even if it is no longer practiced. I’ll have to think this one over.
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GKC
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I thank you. The quote itself seems likely. And I doubtless own the source, whatever it might be. But none of my reference books (as checked so far) contain it, or, what is more to the point, attach it to the concept of the Papacy. Which I doubt, in fact, it was addressing, in the original context,
Hmm. Now that you mention it, LIVES OF THE POPES/Walsh, sounds familiar. I wonder… Maybe I got it.
GKC
Added: Progress. It’s in THEY ASKED FOR A PAPER. I suspected an essay. More research ahead.
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GKC
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Going to be more trouble with Walsh. I might have it, and it be pacsed away. But Lewis is all out on the shelf.
THEY ASKED FOR A PAPER has 12 essays. I’m on the track.
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GKC
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Got it. “De Descriptione Temporum”, the first essay in THEY ASKED FOR A PAPER, also found in SELECTED LITERARY ESSAYS, and read by Lewis, on the tapes of him speaking that are on the shelf over there. One of his best known speeches, made when he assumed the Chair in Medieval and Renaissance literature at Cambridge in 1954, No wonder I was ready to believe it was an accurate quote.
And, as I suspected, no relationship, to the Papacy; no mention of it, at all.
GKC
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Topper17
Guest
Hi All,
I hope that everyone had a wonderful and holy Christmas.
Chances are that most people here know about Luther’s sanctioning of the bigamous marriage of Philip of Hess, but I would bet that a lot of people here believe that that was just some odd situation that Luther found himself in, and that the rest of his actions and writings about marriage were very ‘Christian’. Not so. In fact, Luther had a pattern of more than two decades of writing and recommending shocking things about marriage. As an example, based on his personal interpretation of Scripture, he decided that the accepted traditional impediments to marriage were not Scriptural, and thus, must be abolished.
“I am forbidden to marry the following persons related to me by consanguinity:
I am forbidden to marry the following persons related to me by affinity:
As to other forbidden persons or degrees of relationship, our clerical tyrants have forbidden them for the sake of money.” (1522) Martin Luther, M. (1999). Luther’s Works, Vol. 45, pp. 7–8
First of all, why would Luther feel compelled to write about marriage and challenge/refute so much of what had been considered Christian marriage for centuries? Do we as modern day Christians think he was right about Christians being allowed to marry our nieces, or do we feel that Luther was way off base here? Did this nuttiness have an impact on the culture? You bet it did.
“Because of the importance attached to companionship in marriage, the reformers tolerated bigamous attachments, particularly among powerful rulers, whose protection they needed and whose reckless behavior they could not curb anyway. The also endorsed for the first time in Western Christendom genuine divorce and remarriage. Although the reformers viewed marriage as a spiritual bond transcending all other human relationships, it did not in their opinion create a permanent state……Protestants….generally permitted divorce and remarriage……Luther personally preferred secret bigamy to divorce and remarriage, when a marriage had irretrievably broken down. He sanctioned such an arrangement for women with impotent husbands as early as 1521.” Ozment, “Birth”, pg. 162-3
“In 1537, Nuremburg Protestant leaders Andreas Osiander and Lazarus Spengler reported disruptions in their city brought on by the new Protestant domestic reforms. According to Osiander, people in Nuremburg were marrying not only within relationships long forbidden by the church – as Lutheran teaching permitted them to do – but many “false saints” ignored traditional kinship barriers to sex and marriage altogether, threatening Nuremburg with the spectacle of “incestuous whoring and adultery” among the closest family members. Spengler reports rumors from outside the city that Nuremburgers “marry each other like dogs, with discretion……judgment, and differentiation among the degrees of relationship between them.” Faced with such license and criticism, the city fathers had little choice but to reimpose traditional marriage practices, thereby postponing liberal changes in Nuremburg’s marital laws until the last quarter of the century.” Steven Ozment, “Protestantism, The Birth of a Revolution”, pg. 61
Clearly the Reformation, and especially the teachings of Luther, had a very negative effect on the institution of marriage. The situation got so bad that the civil authorities in Protestant controlled lands had to backtrack and reinstitute traditional (Catholic) practices.
“Fr. Staphylus, “who returned to the Catholic Church, wrote, in 1562: " So long as matrimony was looked upon as a Sacrament, modesty and an honorable married life was loved and prized, but since the people have read in Luther’s books that matrimony is a human invention … his advice has been put in practice in such a way, that marriage is observed more chastely and honorably in Turkey than amongst our German Evangelicals." Hartman Grisar, Luther, Vol IV, pg. 167, F. Staphylus, " Nachdruck zu Verfechtung des Buches vom rechten Verstandt des gottlichen Worts," Ingolstadt, 1562, fol. 202 .
By what authority did Luther presume to refute and change so much of Christian practice in regards to marriage? Was it on the basis of Scripture? What do we think about Luther’s ‘performance’ in the area of marriage, as in this case and also in the executing of reluctant wives, and does these things that he taught cause us to have more or less respect for his ability to correctly interpret the Scriptures?
God Bless, Topper
I hope that everyone had a wonderful and holy Christmas.
Chances are that most people here know about Luther’s sanctioning of the bigamous marriage of Philip of Hess, but I would bet that a lot of people here believe that that was just some odd situation that Luther found himself in, and that the rest of his actions and writings about marriage were very ‘Christian’. Not so. In fact, Luther had a pattern of more than two decades of writing and recommending shocking things about marriage. As an example, based on his personal interpretation of Scripture, he decided that the accepted traditional impediments to marriage were not Scriptural, and thus, must be abolished.
“I am forbidden to marry the following persons related to me by consanguinity:
- Father
- Mother
- Stepmother
- Sister
- Stepsister
- Son’s daughter
- Father’s sister
- Mother’s sister
I am forbidden to marry the following persons related to me by affinity:
- Father’s brother’s wife
- Son’s wife
- Brother’s wife
- Stepdaughter
- The child of my stepson or stepdaughter
- My wife’s sister, while my wife is still alive.
As to other forbidden persons or degrees of relationship, our clerical tyrants have forbidden them for the sake of money.” (1522) Martin Luther, M. (1999). Luther’s Works, Vol. 45, pp. 7–8
First of all, why would Luther feel compelled to write about marriage and challenge/refute so much of what had been considered Christian marriage for centuries? Do we as modern day Christians think he was right about Christians being allowed to marry our nieces, or do we feel that Luther was way off base here? Did this nuttiness have an impact on the culture? You bet it did.
Code:
“He recognized as valid only those impediments of consanguinity and affinity as set forth in Leviticus 18:6-18. This position made it possible for Luther to accept such previously forbidden marriages as those between first cousins, step-relations, and the siblings of deceased spouses and fiancées, and to deny altogether impediments based on contrived spiritual and legal grounds, such as god parentage and adoption. According to Luther, ‘one may take as (one’s) spouse whomsoever (one) pleases, whether it be godparent, godchild, or the daughter or sister of a sponser (i.e., a godparent) and disregard those artificial money-seeking impediments’.” Steven Ozment (Harvard Professor of History), “Protestantism, The Birth of a Revolution”, pg. 158“In 1537, Nuremburg Protestant leaders Andreas Osiander and Lazarus Spengler reported disruptions in their city brought on by the new Protestant domestic reforms. According to Osiander, people in Nuremburg were marrying not only within relationships long forbidden by the church – as Lutheran teaching permitted them to do – but many “false saints” ignored traditional kinship barriers to sex and marriage altogether, threatening Nuremburg with the spectacle of “incestuous whoring and adultery” among the closest family members. Spengler reports rumors from outside the city that Nuremburgers “marry each other like dogs, with discretion……judgment, and differentiation among the degrees of relationship between them.” Faced with such license and criticism, the city fathers had little choice but to reimpose traditional marriage practices, thereby postponing liberal changes in Nuremburg’s marital laws until the last quarter of the century.” Steven Ozment, “Protestantism, The Birth of a Revolution”, pg. 61
Clearly the Reformation, and especially the teachings of Luther, had a very negative effect on the institution of marriage. The situation got so bad that the civil authorities in Protestant controlled lands had to backtrack and reinstitute traditional (Catholic) practices.
“Fr. Staphylus, “who returned to the Catholic Church, wrote, in 1562: " So long as matrimony was looked upon as a Sacrament, modesty and an honorable married life was loved and prized, but since the people have read in Luther’s books that matrimony is a human invention … his advice has been put in practice in such a way, that marriage is observed more chastely and honorably in Turkey than amongst our German Evangelicals." Hartman Grisar, Luther, Vol IV, pg. 167, F. Staphylus, " Nachdruck zu Verfechtung des Buches vom rechten Verstandt des gottlichen Worts," Ingolstadt, 1562, fol. 202 .
By what authority did Luther presume to refute and change so much of Christian practice in regards to marriage? Was it on the basis of Scripture? What do we think about Luther’s ‘performance’ in the area of marriage, as in this case and also in the executing of reluctant wives, and does these things that he taught cause us to have more or less respect for his ability to correctly interpret the Scriptures?
God Bless, Topper
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pocohombre
Guest
I googled a bit also. Several Catholic historians have quoted it. One did say it was not written “appropo” to papal topic. However both authors I saw used it to apply to papal history. Walsh did again with book on “Cardinals”. Apparently some Catholic historians see lewis quote as a problem they encounter within CC, in their quest to apply their vocation (history) to practice and theology. That is, to see doctrines and practices as “developing”, and not as if they were there in form, from the beginning.
It seems the quote deeply affected Walsh the Jesuit quite a bit, perhaps helping motivate the future historian. Thanks for making me dig. I will try to be careful in my quoting it properly ,apart from Lewis’s thoughts on papacy (don’t know what they were).
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GKC
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I agree with your interpretation of how some historians might see it. And I found it, in Walsh’s words, on line, with respect to the Cardinals book. What I didn’t find was Walsh using the “with regard to the Papacy”. Which was what set me to looking. As I often do, with quotes on some subjects and from some people. And the first 3 citations of it I found were in a definite anti-Catholic context. Which ensured I’d dig deeper.
Lewis’ views on the Papacy were mixed.
GKC
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