The new year will be one of great commemorations in the Church. We will mark the 500th anniversary of the commencement of the Reformation, dated from October 31, 1517, when, on the vigil of the patronal feast of All Saints’ Church at Wittenberg, the Augustinian priest Martin Luther posted his “95 Theses” in the church square.
In May, the Church will celebrate the centenary of the mysterious and mystical appearances of the Blessed Mother to three peasant children outside their small rural hometown of Fatima in Portugal.
The two commemorations will stand juxtaposed. Each not only will cause a re-examination of the times and events it marks, but will also illuminate the conflicting currents coursing through the life of the Church in 2017.
The Reformation
To apprehend it in its widest and most profound sense is to understand the beginning of the Reformation as the very onset of modernity itself. In the life of the Church, the Reformation only began in earnest five centuries ago. It has been, and is today, a current event, rolling on continuously, in various guises – religious, political, philosophical, and cultural – across the Western world in every epoch of the last half-millennium, up to and including the present.
The Reformation draws continued relevance not from the concepts with which it is often most readily associated – the debates over the means of justification and the extent of man’s free will. Rather, it remains a living force due to the quasi-political ideas to which Luther gave voice and that came to undergird the whole modern order.
In the three years between his posting at Wittenberg on All Hollow’s Eve and his burning of the bull of excommunication published against him in 1520, Luther became a radical. By the close of 1520, Luther had completed his “Three Treatises,” wherein he would dismantle the whole foundation of the Church as it had been built up over preceding millennium and a half.
In To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, Luther indicted the institution of the papacy as an evil corruption that trampled upon the liberties of the German people. It is here that he proclaimed his notion of the “priesthood of all believers,” the grand egalitarian principle that obliterates any distinctions among the lowliest layman, the priest, the bishop, and the Roman pontiff himself. “As for the unction by a pope or a bishop, tonsure, ordination, consecration, and clothes differing from those of laymen – all this may make a hypocrite or an anointed puppet, but never a Christian or a spiritual man. Thus we are all consecrated as priests by baptism, as St. Peter says: ‘Ye are a royal priesthood, a holy nation’ (1 Peter ii. 9); and in the book of Revelations: ‘and hast made us unto our God (by Thy blood) kings and priests’ (Rev. v. 10).” Here, then, is the beginning of the modern attack on religious life, as well as upon the concept of hierarchy and ecclesial authority. It is the seed of modern egalitarian thinking.
He would proceed from this principle to advocate for a disparate array of “reforms” that will ring familiar to us in the present day: the elimination of priestly celibacy as an unnatural and useless burden (deconstruction of the sacral nature of the priesthood), the vast reduction of feast days so people could tend to work instead of marking religious festivals (secularization of daily life), the abandonment of canon law (doctrine equated with un-Christian, fabricated legalism).
In addition, Luther called for the civil government to stand over and govern the Church. Because he held that there is no difference between layman and priest, Luther asserted that any Christian king had as much right – indeed, a greater prerogative – to rule over the Church as had the Roman pontiff. Fourteen years after the publication of To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, Henry VIII declared himself the head of his own national church, and the modern ascendancy of the secular power over the religious took flight.
Luther’s second treatise of 1520, The Babylonian Captivity of the Church, built on the first. The Babylonian Captivity is devoted to the demolition of the sacramental theology of the Church, with a particular focus on a reformulation of the Mass. Luther recasts the Mass as a kind of memorial where a person of faith may hear the words of Christ, accept them, and cherish them, and then take and eat and drink of the sacrament as a sort of symbolic re-enactment of the Last Supper. He takes great pains to deny absolutely that the Mass is, in any way, a sacrifice offered to God. (To read Luther’s passages on the Mass in The Babylonian Captivity and to deny that he is, indeed, the first architect of our Novus Ordo is folly.) For good measure, Luther’s motu proprio reduces the number of sacraments to two.
At the heart of The Babylon Captivity we find not only the specific theological precepts Luther proposes, but the notion that a single man’s ideas can triumph over centuries of Tradition, of the received teachings of popes, councils, doctors, and saints. From here comes forth the modern conceit that continuity with the past is neither wise nor necessary in light of the novel genius of modern man. Herein lies the difference between legitimate, measured “reform” and the unfettered “revolution” that would characterize the modern political ideologies, from Henry VIII to the French Revolution to the rise of the Bolsheviks. It is a fundamentally un-Catholic outlook and one with which the Church has ever been at odds, or was up until the throwing open of the windows in the 1960s.
The last of Luther’s treatises of 1520, The Freedom of a Christian, was enclosed as part of Luther’s “open letter” to Pope Leo X, offered as an attempt, halfhearted at best, to reconcile with Rome. Here Luther rhapsodizes about the nature of spiritual freedom in Christ, a freedom that flows from faith in Christ and His promises – and from faith alone. “A Christian has no need of any work or any law in order to be saved since through faith he is free from every law and does everything out of pure liberty and freely.”
While there is much to admire in The Freedom of a Christian, the practical political ramifications of Luther’s incessant insistence on the total freedom that results simply from faith are far more apparent than the work’s theological applications. Thus, only four years after the publication of The Freedom of a Christian, the catastrophic Peasants’ Revolt took its inspiration, in part, from the political dimension of Luther’s teaching. After initially expressing sympathy with the peasants’ grievances, Luther was horrified by their anarchy. He strongly advocated for the revolt’s violent destruction. The revolt ended with deaths of approximately 100,000 peasants. Luther and his movement never fully recovered.
In Luther and his movement, therefore, we find the germ of modernity and the ideological constructs that the Church would labor against in the coming centuries: radical egalitarianism; individualism that begets a subjective relativism; aversion to ecclesial authority and the propriety of hierarchy; the elevation of the power of the state and the insistence on a thoroughly secular society; and the utter disregard, and contempt, for Tradition.
This is the living legacy of the Reformation.
Fatima
The miracle of Fatima occurred in 1917, just as the catastrophic effects of all the modern ideologies were coming crashing down upon the world. Into the this chaos came the Blessed Mother, appearing in a small backwater to poor, unknown little children.
The Fatima event is, in its essence, anti-modern – a rebuke to modernity, in fact. Luther and his successors held the “miraculous” in varying degrees of contempt, and yet into a modern world dominated by mere rationalism came a mysterious and shocking vision from Heaven, given to these simple shepherd children.
The visions offered at Fatima give a divine condemnation to the manifestations of the modern ideological madness that had taken hold in Luther’s wake. It had reached new levels of depravity with the French Revolution and finally morphed into the Marxist Communism that arose in Russia. This ideology the Blessed Mother declared an “error,” and she seemed to further warn of the coming of the most hideous form of this godless system, soon to be known as National Socialism.
The children were also given an allegory of the suffering Church, of persecuted priests and religious, and of “a bishop in white,” affirming that, contrary to Luther’s theology, the special character of religious life has heavenly sanction, as does the papacy.
Perhaps the most important part of the Fatima messages is that which concerns sin and Hell itself. Against the modern aversion to the concepts of guilt and judgment, the Blessed Mother showed the children of Fatima a terrifying vision of souls suffering in torment. While she spoke to them of grace and mercy, the Virgin nonetheless granted to us, through the children, a fearful warning and a call for reparation, prayer, and penance.
The Blessed Mother asked for the establishment of a devotion to her Immaculate Heart, for the recitation of the rosary, and for the observance of the First Saturday – all heavenly endorsements of traditional modes of popular piety within the Church.
The Anniversaries in the Church of 2017
It is a contradiction to celebrate both the Reformation and the messages of Fatima. But the Church plans to do both in 2017, and the dual commemorations will serve to highlight the conflicting strains of thought within the Church that have caused so much disarray for more than 50 years. They will encapsulate the schizophrenia that has divided the Church between what Pope Benedict famously called “the hermeneutic of rupture” and “the hermeneutic of continuity.” The great debate between the hermeneutics has taken on unprecedented stakes in the marriage controversy unleashed by Amoris Laetitia.
Lutheranism lies at the heart of the rupture hermeneutic. In myriad ways, the so-called “spirit of Vatican II,” manifested by the manner in which the teachings of the Council were implemented, was the application of Luther’s thinking four and a half centuries after such thinking was rejected at Trent. Now, despite all of the ample evidence of decline over the decades, the Lutheranizers still do not recognize that their approach is bound to fail, because the essential character of Catholicism and the essential character of Luther’s modernizing Protestantism cannot coexist. We cannot be at once Catholic and Protestant.
The Church is not a modern institution – not chronologically, theologically, or philosophically. Since we are bound by Tradition, and since our Tradition began and developed over centuries that long precede that fateful night in Wittenberg, the Church can never fully reconcile itself to modernity. The efforts of these last 50 years to force the Church to do so, given renewed emphasis in the present pontificate, have resulted in a tragic and unprecedented auto-demolition of religion.
This is not to say the Church is fated to remain forever at war with the present and future ages. On the contrary, the Church can and must again lead the modern world, pointing it to the reality beyond what its work-a-day and rationalistic outlook would otherwise permit it to see, proclaiming the Gospel, and offering in the sacraments the ancient, sacred, and mysterious access to the grace of God, necessary for salvation. But the Church can do none of these things if it does not retain its essential character and remains marred by division, confusion, and ideological cancers that destroy its very mission and purpose.
The messages of Fatima call us back to those essentials. Fatima reminds us that the Church is here to save souls through the teaching of pious practices and moral living. It tells us that God’s judgment is just as much a reality as is His mercy. It is a message given in modernity for modernity, and it is a challenge to modernity.
So commemorate the Reformation, but do not celebrate or laud it. Mark Fatima, but do not treat it with sentimentality. Rather, let the Church heed the message of the Blessed Mother: the Church is charged with saving souls from sin and death through the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It has no other or greater end.
I don’t see why Catholics should commemorate Luther’s Revolt. It was & is still revolting.
Scottish Catholics Pelted with Eggs as They Go to Mass @ creativeminorityreport.com.
We should certainly be pulling out all the stops to celebrate throughout this year the centenary of Our Lady’s apparitions to the three children in Fatima. Not only celebrating but actively trying to get our Pope’s & Hierarchy’s attention to the message she relayed regarding the importance of Russia being consecrated to Her Immaculate Heart & the revealing of the Third Secret (in full) which PB acknowledged was not yet fully transmitted.
We should commemorate it the way us Americans commemorate 9/11…as a great tragedy which threatened to destroy us…but did not. However, it architects and thus inspired by it are still at large, and must be dealt with…
With the CC in turmoil & PF & Vatican being so enthusiastic about Luther,”Pope Francis: Martin Luther wanted to ‘renew the Church, not divide her’ ” @catholicherald.co.uk. & now the rush to intercommunion, it’s hard to feel obliged to commemorate this man’s destruction of Christianity. The instigators of the present flux within the Church are still very much at centre stage & haven’t been dealt with, & until the formal correction is made known we have no idea whether they will be.
We must commemorate it all the poor but do it properly…as a tragedy and a warning. Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it
Luther, who wanted to wash his hands with the blood of bishops, did not want to renew the Church. He wanted his own way. He wanted to abandon his vows. He hated the teachings of the Church. He wanted his own way. That he was a renewer is a lie from the pit of hell.
Thanks for your bold & true words.
It was PF that said he was a renewer, just as he sees himself no doubt. The outcome will probably be the same – another schismatic sect. A heavy weight rests on the shoulders of the four Cardinals to preserve the Deposit of Faith etc. of the One Holy Catholic Apostolic Church. They need our prayers & public support.
I am with you on this Ana. Martin Luther and all he stood for was a disaster for the Church – nothing to commemorate here. It is an event to mourn.
Hi Ana – I think of it as the Protestant Deformation.
I agree.
How about Revolution?
It is a pleasant examination of the topic and an easy read following upon a big headline:
“Fatima versus Martin Luther’s Revolution: The Church in 2017”
I do not mean to be critical, it is temperately written, but having read this peice I was reminded of the Wendy’s Hamburger commercials which ran in the 1980s.
“Where is the beef?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ug75diEyiA0
Hey, I remember those commercials! You’re making me feel my age! ?
There is a place for anger and this is one of them: Luther was a madman who destroyed the Catholic Faith of hundreds of thousands of simple people. Once he got some greedy princes and other leaders on board this poison spread throughout Europe. We must HATE this, and get angry!
I agree with you; I’m just wondering how the commercial fits in.
As in, the article while very well done did not have “the beef,” that is, the ire that the commentator who posted the commercial felt appropriate to the topic.
Thank you!
No flies on you, Julia! The headline of this article to me implied a bit more ‘beef’ than found within the soft bun offered up.
Ana.Tradition will prevail.I am off to Latin Mass and orthodox sermons while the rest of ,what was Catholicism,is going down the pan.God bless .
Aren’t you lucky. Maybe someday I & family will too. God Bless.
You forgot the founding of Freemasonry in 1717.
300 Years of Freemasonry, and also Russian Revolution of 1917.
Truth Seeker, I saw a recent upvote from you on a post having to do with an upcoming Rosary On the Coasts and Boarders: we’re gathering in cyberspace from each state to pray for the USA on Dec. 12. We’re praying to Our Lady of Guadalupe, for a threefold intention: for protection from Islamic jihad, from the denial of the Christian Faith, and for an end to abortion. Would you like to say a Rosary on that day for that intention, representing your state?
Although I do live in Europe it will be my pleasure to do so.
Regards
Sent from my iPad
Thank you, Great! May I state your country, Truth Seeker?
And if you like, you may access our organizing discussion at (I’m going to insert hard breaks to break up the address, so I won’t get “pended” and you can delete the breaks):
https://
disqus.com
/home/discussion/channel-tobecatholic/rosary_on_the_coasts_and_borders/
Presently I live in Dubrovnik Croatia.
Kind regards
Wow, you are far away, and yet here we chat! How exotic. I’ll put you down as representing Dubrovnik Croatia, praying with the States on Dec. 12 our Rosary to protect our country from Islamic jihad, from the denial of the Christian Faith, and for an end to abortion. Hvala lijepo (Thank you very much, right?)! It’s very kind of you. Cheers in Christ.
Our Lady of Fatima will be celebrated in heaven, for all eternity. Enough Said?
I wonder how many Catholics actually understand the spiritual and political legacy of the Protestant Revolution. If they only knew the grave evils introduced into civilization by that satanic uprising: no-fault divorce and legalized contraception, abortion, euthanasia, and homosexual pseudo-marriage; slavery, the nation state, and public schools; rampant atheism, moral relativism, subjectivism, hedonism, materialism, nihilism, consumerism; the rise of Islam and the loss of countless souls to world wars, a thousand man-made religions, and the New Age occult.
Oh, and here in America, incredibly ugly architecture.
Right on every count unfortunately
Luther also agitated to wash hands in the blood of the bishops. He fomented civil war. He was an apostate heretic with much hatred and not only for the Catholic Church.
Luther’s sin and the sin of the Protestant is to set up oneself as infallible. To set up Luther as the oracle. All his invented doctrines are cloaked, he appeals to scripture but only books he likes and those that contradict him are excluded. Luther makes himself a demagogue and what lies behind it is pure self importance, narcissism and will. He like Lucifer he sets himself up at the centre. Spreading scorn and mistrust for historic Christianity so he can substitute himself and his sect. Those that follow him just perpetuate the error and do as Luther did deform and tailor what faith remains to fit their vices leading to lesbian Lutheran bishops!
Your last word should be in quotation marks I.e. “bishops”. Cf. Sacerdotalis ordinatio by PJPII (actually written by then-Cardinal Ratzinger).
Thank you.
Of course the prelates in Rome are blind and cannot see the Spiritual Punishment through the recent Earthquakes! Luther’s heresies are being promoted by our current Pope with a “stamp” of approval. Predictions: More natural disasters and man-made disasters in Rome!
LUTHER’S HERESIES WILL LEAD SOULS INTO ETERNAL DAMNATION!
“And at that hour there was made a great EARTHQUAKE, and the tenth part of the city fell: and there were slain in the earthquake names of men seven thousand: and the rest were cast into a fear, and gave glory to the God of heaven.” – Revelation 11:13
This pope is not a true Catholic IMO, he’s a pretender, false, fake, a schmoozer, a PC figurehead willing to lie down with dogs and get up with fleas. The media loves him, which should be enough to scare anyone. Libs, Leftists, Marxists, all love this sorry excuse for a Holy Father. It’s harsh, but I knew when he said “I am not able to judge” on the gay marriage issue that he was abdicating his responsibility because it was unpopular. He is the leader of a billion Catholics, he should be able to judge and provide leadership toward the ultimate truth, not what’s popular at the moment. I was born a Catholic and I will die one, but I am sad to see my leaders, the fathers of y church being such cowards they are unable to stand up to the world. I wouldn’t want to be them when they meet Jesus, because just this past Sunday in our readings He said I will deny you in front of My Father if you deny Me in front of anyone on earth.
He’s no “leader” for sure. I cringe to even hear him spoken of as the “Holy Father.” I think he’s in for lots of surprises in this life & next.
Thank God, literally, Christ is our leader.
It is wonderful that you discuss the Protestant Revolt and the apparitions at Fatima and their relationships particularly the effects of Protestanism in today’s world. Nothing was said of the 3rd secret of Fatima and the need for Papal and ecclesiastical consecration of Russia to Our Lady’s Immaculate Heart. Fr. Gruner would have mentioned those aspects of the Fatima apparitions first because they effect the present and future of our church and our world.
No, don’t commemorate schism and heresy promoted by an apostate priest. It’s not a reformation but a deformation.
1717-2017 The 300th Anniversary of the Crowning of the Icon of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Czestochowa Poland.
The icon in Czestochowa is actually from Belz, Ukraine. The Polish troops that invaded Ukraine took the icon and gave it to the monks at Jasna Gora.
In 1982, some of the Polish and Ukrainian bishops got together and asked for mutual forgiveness. One Polish Bishop said that Our Lady had waited 600 years for Her children to come together again.
According to tradition the Icon was written by St. Luke with the Blessed Virgin Mary as a model for the icon. It was written on the top of the dining room table made by St. joseph and jesus in nazareth. It traveled from the Holyland to Constantinople to Ruthenia and brought to Belz. it was often a dowry gift. The icon is not ofUkrainian Origin. Wladyslaw of Opole brought it to Poland. in 1382. It has been at the Monastery staffed by the Paulin fathers of St. Paul the Hermit for 635 years. 2017 marks the 300th Anniversary of it coronation. The mutual Polish Ukrainian forgiveness has nothing to do with Czestochowa.
Sycthia and Ruthenia are the old names for Ukraine. Ruthenia is Latin for the Land of Rus, which consisted of present-day Ukraine, Belarus and part of what is now Russia.
By contrast, the old name for Russia was Muscovy.
So Ruthenia = Ukraine
Russia = Muscovy
The Catholic Church still uses the term Ruthenian. There’s the order for vespers, Divine Liturgy and matins according to the Ruthenian recension published in 1958. It was used to refer to both Ukrainian and Byzantine Catholics; now it used to describe the Byzantine Catholic Church in the US (Metropolia of Pittsburgh PA vs the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia PA.
Belz has vacillated between Ukraine, Poland and Austria over the centuries but is now in Ukraine.
I know about the origins of the icon, but I meant to say that it was in Belz before it was in Czestochowa.
Truth about Martin Luther video.
Are we all Lutherans now?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDgLskJox-Y&t=6s
Is it my imagination, or is Francis exhibiting an increasingly belligerent, Martin Luther-like “I am the sole arbiter of truth” posture. He has just lambasted those “lazy Christians who do not have the will to continue, Christians who do not struggle for a change of things, for new things to come, those that, if changed, would be good for everybody.” Maybe the Vatican hosting abortion extremists and global population reduction proponents Paul Ehrlich and the Population Council is an exercise in “pastoral accompaniment”. Maybe, in order to be “welcoming and inclusive” the Eucharist will be freely handed out like After Eight Mints at the forthcoming “how to save the planet” conference.
Thank God for rigid Christians!
AMEN, Ana! In the half-century since Vatican II closed its doors, the vast majority of Catholics have lost their compass, to a greater or lesser degree. If we were able to step outside of ourselves and look at ourselves objectively, we would surely see that we have all been deceived, and we are all wallowing in confusion. The real tragedy is that the vast majority don’t know it. They go on their merry way, imagining that everything’s just fine.
Lack of catechesis has a lot to do with their ignorance, because that is what it is. It was a wilful decision taken at VII in the name of false ecumenism from which most of our trials emanate from. The wake-up call is coming very soon. We should all prepare ourselves as best we can & pray for those who don’t yet realise the danger we are all facing. Maybe God will remove the scales from their eyes in time. We can only hope.
Yes, according to the latest pew research, 87% of Catholics have a favorable view of Pope Francis. I was shocked by this number. Then I thought about it. Isnt it easier to go about our sinning without guilt. Isnt it comforting to know that we are the arbiters of truth. All is good in the world if everyone is right no matter what. Black can be white, if we want it to be. Male can be female as well.
The problem is that there is truth and as Jesus Christ said, we must be separate from the world or we too will be destroyed in the lake of fire. Yes, as we see the majority of our friends and relatives following the devil with the worldly pleasures and enticements, we must fight the fine fight. Take heart, everything is good, for our king does rule in heaven and he promised that if we follow the narrow path, we will be heaven bound. We can and do get more peace and joy from the graces of God than world does from it’s ongoing race for pleasure that they never quite reach.
Though the pew research showed support for evil, in other research it finds an ever greater unhappiness and suicide. There is only one place to find true joy, in the arms of our loving savior.
Bottom line observations:
—Pope Francis is the Martin Luther of our time.
—The purpose of Vatican II was to Protestantize the Church which has been largely accomplished.
—Vatican II must be overturned most probably resulting in a much smaller Church.
—Since Pope John XXIII the Popes have refused to obey our Lady of Fatima
—We have reached a point where divine intervention should be expected at any time because of disobedience.
—We should pray and do penance every day for Pope Francis and the Church.
“To read Luther’s passages on the Mass in The Babylonian Captivity and to deny that he is, indeed, the first architect of our Novus Ordo is folly” – yes, indeed, and this will be even more apparent to the man who reads both Luther and Bugnini.
(How many defenders of the Novus Ordo Rite have read both Luther and Bugnini, and of that small subset, how many are so confused that they’re among those cheering the former’s rehabilitation?)
Catholics will not be commemorating a priest who ran off with a nun, but will instead be celebrating the Queen’s apparitions and instructions given at Fatima.
We have a very bad pope and we need to be praying for a Pauline conversion for his soul.
Pope Francis seems to have taken a new turn today with an interview in the left-wing Spanish newspaper, El Pais. Throwing aside usual Vatican reticence to interfere in the internal politics of nations, he openly attacks Donald Trump, all the while saying he will wait to judge the new president’s actions. As an American and a Catholic, I find this simply outrageous behavior on the pontiff’s part. He lowers his office by using it as a vehicle for broadcasting what are nothing but his own personal political opinions. (We can leave aside the dubious nature of the short lesson in German history he provides us.)
https://www.yahoo.com/news/pope-warns-against-populism-saviours-hitler-001439301.html
“Pope warns against populism and ‘saviours’ like Hitler”. His behavior is odious. And I wonder in what service are his personal political opinions, which he promotes from his position as pope. How curious that just at this moment the world’s establishment elite, whose agendas the Vatican under Pope Francis appears to have much sympathy, are having their yearly meet at Davos, and the topic of their discussion is–you guessed it–“populism”:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-01-16/davos-elites-address-populism-while-8-richest-men-have-much-wealth-poorest-half-worl
Yes, the gratuitous mention of Hitler, totally outside any realistic context but totally in sync with left-wing propaganda current in the US and Europe, caught my attention sharply. There is no doubt this pope is himself a leftist, not an unusual thing given that he’s a Jesuit and from Latin America. What is alarming is that he feels authorized to cover his personal political notions with a veneer of religious authority. That, it seems to me, simply goes beyond the pale, way beyond the pale.
According to the latest pew research, 87% of Catholics have a favorable view of Pope Francis. I was shocked by this number. Then I thought about it. Isnt it easier to go about our sinning without guilt. Isnt it comforting to know that we are the arbiters of truth. All is good in the world if everyone is right no matter what. Black can be white, if we want it to be. Male can be female as well. Luther can be right at the same time as the Church is right.
The problem is that there is truth and as Jesus Christ said, we must be separate from the world or we too will be destroyed in the lake of fire. Yes, as we see the majority of our friends and relatives following the devil with the worldly pleasures and enticements, we must fight the fine fight. Take heart, everything is good, for our king does rule in heaven and he promised that if we follow the narrow path, we will be heaven bound. We can and do get more peace and joy from the graces of God than world does from it’s ongoing race for pleasure that they never quite reach.
Though the pew research showed support for evil, in other research it finds an ever greater unhappiness and suicide. There is only one place to find true joy, in the arms of our loving savior.
The Reformation was one of the worst things to happen to the Western World. Commemorate it? No way. Luther was an evil man. Henry VIII was worse.
My dad’s family came from Poland, which, despite the worst done by the Partition, two world wars, Nazis and communists, is still Catholic. They stayed Catholic. So will I.
You people (commentators) are so insightful.
I get as much from your comments as from the original article.
Yes, Thomas J. McIntyre, I will commemorate it as we do 9/11 and Dec. 7th (“a day that will live in infamy”)
Even a bust of Luther was placed in St. Peter’s (or so I read on another blog).
It is to cry for. Do we now honor heretics? Why cannot the Pope see this?
As “Wisdom is a Tree of Life” commented , I too have noted the earthquakes in Italy.
The four earthquakes of January 18 that caused the avalanche the following day fell on quite a telling date:
January 18th is the Feast of the “Chair of Peter”.
The reformation was a deformation of the faith, in short the sin of Adam and Eve, “eating the apple” was demonstrating pure disobedience to God. This exact same disobedience goes on today, lay people priests bishops and even Popes, thinking they know better than God.
I would not even commemorate Luther’s Revolt. This heretic doesn’t deserve any kind of recognition. I’m a revert and was shocked at what the Catholic church had become and how it changed! I now drive across town to attend the TLM
Me too = across town driving.
And I thank God every mass for this blessing – wow.
One World Government & One World Religion, that’s what the Elitist’s & the EU have been attempting to push for the past century