Posted on 03/12/2015 9:30:16 PM PDT by Steelfish
Increasing Number of Lutherans Are Coming Into The Catholic Church
BY Tim Drake
One of the most under-reported religious stories of the past decade has been the movement of Lutherans across the Tiber. What first began with prominent Lutherans, such as Richard John Neuhaus (1990) and Robert Wilken (1994), coming into the Catholic Church, has become more of a landslide that could culminate in a larger body of Lutherans coming into the collectively. In 2000, former Canadian Lutheran Bishop Joseph Jacobson came into the Church.
“No other Church really can duplicate what Jesus gave,” Jacobson told the Western Catholic Reporter in 2006. [How could it? Had Jesus desired that there could be more than one Church, He would have said that or He would have founded more than one.] In 2003, Leonard Klein, a prominent Lutheran and the former editor of Lutheran Forum and Forum Letter came into the Church.
Today, both Jacobson and Klein are Catholic priests. Over the past several years, an increasing number of Lutheran theologians have joined the Church’s ranks, some of whom now teach at Catholic colleges and universities. They include, but are not limited to: Paul Quist (2005), Richard Ballard (2006), Paul Abbe (2006), Thomas McMichael, Mickey Mattox, David Fagerberg, Bruce Marshall, Reinhard Hutter, Philip Max Johnson, and most recently, Dr. Michael Root (2010).
“The Lutheran church has been my intellectual and spiritual home for forty years,” wrote Dr. Root. “But we are not masters of our convictions. A risk of ecumenical study is that one will come to find another tradition compelling in a way that leads to a deep change in mind and heart. Over the last year or so, it has become clear to me, not without struggle, that I have become a Catholic in my mind and heart in ways that no longer permit me to present myself as a Lutheran theologian with honesty and integrity.
This move is less a matter of decision than of discernment.” [I was nothing like a theologian at the time, but what he describes I could have written about my own conversion and entrance into the Catholic Church.] It’s been said that “no one converts alone,” suggesting that oftentimes the effect of one conversion helps to move another along a similar path. [Take a look at Joseph Pearce’e Literary Converts.]
That’s exemplified through Paul Quist’s story. He describes attending the Lutheran “A Call to Faithfulness” conference at St. Olaf College in June, 1990. There, he listened to, and met, Richard John Neuhaus, who would announce his own conversion just months later. “What some Lutherans were realizing was that, without the moorings of the Church’s Magisterium, Lutheranism would ineluctably drift from it’s confessional and biblical source,” wrote Quist.
Many of the converts have come from The Society of the Holy Trinity, a pan-Lutheran ministerium organized in 1997 to work for the confessional and spiritual renewal of Lutheran churches. Now, it appears that a larger Lutheran body will be joining the Church. Father Christopher Phillips, writing at the Anglo-Catholic blog, reports that the Anglo-Lutheran Catholic Church (ALCC) clergy and parishes will be entering into the U.S. ordinariate being created for those Anglicans desiring to enter the Church.
According to the blog, the ALCC sent a letter to Walter Cardinal Kasper, on May 13, 2009, stating that it “desires to undo the mistakes of Father Martin Luther, and return to the One, Holy, and True Catholic Church established by our Lord Jesus Christ through the Blessed Saint Peter.” That letter was sent to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Surprisingly, in October 2010, the ALCC received a letter from the secretary of the CDF, informing them that Archbishop Donald Wuerl had been appointed as an episcopal delegate to assist with the implementation of Angelicanorum coetibus. The ALCC responded that they would like to be included as part of the reunification.
Benedict XVI is the Pope of Christian Unity.
Apparently you, like so many others, judge a person by their outward appearance...You seem to equate education to Christianity...The bible teaches just the opposite...The people who think they are wise (man's philosophical wisdom) are ignoramuses in God's eyes...
I suspect there are many on FR who have more time studying the bible (as opposed to studying religion) than any one of those you mentioned...
Those 'snippets' of scripture as you call them are what brings life to a fallen world...That's why we post them...So that the blind might see...
Really??? Jesus says the O.T. canon was finished long before your religion ever showed up...The New Testament was being taught and thousands/millions being saved hundreds of years before your religion had a council...
And for 2000 years, your religion has failed to come up with a single oral tradition that originated with the apostles...
As America’s leading Lutheran convert to Catholicism, Rev. Richard Neuhaus remarked on his conversion, “the fullest expressions of scripture are found in the Catholic Church.”
The bible says not even one bishop can be an unmarried man...It's clear to me that this Neuhaus fella wouldn't know the full expression of scripture if it bit him...
The Catholic Church has had a good recent run of popes, whose intellectual and theological rigor did much to form a united front with conservative Christians of all denominations. (While alienating many liberals ....) Now: well, the problem of authority is getting complicated again, and there appears to be a lot of shuffling of the hierarchy, so that the damage may be long-lasting. The jury is still out on Francis, but a lot of us are getting nervous.
The problem of authority is where the rubber meets the road.
Luther was vindicated in part by the counter-reformation, but the fact is that today much of American Lutheranism bears little resemblance even to that of twenty years ago.
Scripture ??????
Does this mean Scott Hahn has a PCA marked soul???
Maybe Luther was spared because of the importance of the Catholic Church to discover or rediscover God’s Holy Bible word.
We have a pipe organ, just no one to play it. It would be awesome to find that person.
Ah, the good old days when the Roman Catholic Church could burn heretics or maybe saw them in half. Sigh. What's become of the world...
Well, the Catholic Church is for intellectuals and scholars, after all.
Neither John the Apostle nor Jesus would have qualified, huh? Ridiculous.
Really? Yes. The oral tradition was carried by the early Church fathers. If you have even the foggiest idea of early Church history you would know- as even prominent Lutheran theologians now admit- that the books in the Bible were assembled by infallible Petrine authority and that authority did not disappear eleven centuries later with the Reformation.
Bible Christians can swim only in the shallow end of scriptural interpretation, take them over to the deep end and they drown. Hence, the reference to this “Neuhaus fella’
Is this the best you could do?
The Church is to not just for intellectuals and scientists, but also sinners and saints. But of course the deep understanding of Augustine, Aquinas, Newman, and Benedict go over the heads of Bible-Christians: Moonies, Rev. Schuller, Rev. Wright, Billy Graham, Jim Jones and the rest of the heretical interpretations.
If you had THOROUGHLY read ALL the "church fathers" you would find THEY did not agree with what Rominists call tradition and they did not always agree with each other... so tell us steelfish how does one "cherry pick" the truth from false teaching or error ?
Such a tired line. You do realize that the Roman Catholic New Testament wasn't settled with infallible Pertine authority until the council of Trent, which opened in 1545 and wasn't accepted by the Pope until 1564. You know this right?
Even New Advent acknowledged this by stating, "The Catholic New Testament, as defined by the Council of Trent".
Before Trent, the Roman Catholic Church has never made an infallible Pertine decree about the canon. What about the council of Rome in 382? eclectic, but not ecumenical, so it wasn't infallible and wasn't universally binding.
Sure, there were plenty of people who gave their opinion, but it never met the criteria to be considered infallible. The protestant reformation begin 47 years before the Roman Catholic Church determined canon with infallible Petrine authority.
Quite a list. Would you add Leo X, Medici princeling and pope, a cardinal at 13, Renaissance family dynast and warlord, patron of the arts, rumored to be homosexual, seller of indulgences, remembered for "God has given us the Papacy, so let us enjoy it," and probably second only to Martin Luther as an architect of the Reformation?
I think you were discussing infallible Petrine authority.
Fine words, but they do not make the problem of corrupt or abusive authority go away. The Roman Catholic Church is a noble institution with its fair share, and more, of saints, scholars, and heroes. But it also has its Leos, and that is what the Reformation was about.
A benevolent and wise monarchy is a wonderful thing, until it throws up an incompetent, a fool, a scoundrel, a criminal, or all of the above. As sooner or later it will. And did. Which is why Martin Luther turned to scripture and right reason as an answer to and refuge against corrupted authority, and off we go.
I don't have much opportunity to rehearse Reformation history these days except when young Mormon missionaries come around, and I raise the question of prophetic and (Mormon) Church infallibility. I don't get a good answer from them either.
Your view is completely wrong as it is absurd.
It is interesting that we now have neophyte internet theologians embarrassed by the fact that several leading intellectual scholars and theologians have in droves decamped from the rot of Protestantism and have embraced Catholicism as being the fullest expression of scripture. They did not abandon their long held beliefs on a dime. It was only after years and years of intent study, writing, and teaching they came to the understanding that Protestantism and its thousand and one variations was an evil outcome of the Reformation.
It was not until the Synod of Rome (382) and the Councils of Hippo (393) and Carthage (397) that we find a definitive list of canonical books being drawn up, and each of these Councils acknowledged the very same list of books. Including the Council of Trent. From this point on, there is in practice no dispute about the canon of the Bible, the only exception being the so-called Protestant Reformers, who entered upon the scene in 1517, an unbelievable 11 centuries later.
It is this command to go out to the whole world (all nations) that marks the Church that Christ established, which is why that Church came to be known as “Catholic”, from the Greek word katholikos (kata “about”, and holos, “whole”). In the year 110 A.D., not even fifteen years after the book of Revelation was written, while on his way to execution St. Ignatius of Antioch wrote: “Where the bishop is present, there let the congregation gather, just as where Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic church”. The Church believes that when the bishops speak as teachers, Christ speaks; for he said to them: “He who hears you, hears me; and he who rejects you, rejects me” (Lk 10, 16).
St. Paul in his letters also warns the faithful to hold fast to the tradition they received: “We command you, brothers, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, to avoid any brother who wanders from the straight path and does not follow the tradition you received from us” (2 Th 3, 6).
There is only ONE teaching path till the end of time. Every Tom, Dick, and Harry and neighborhood foursquare church pastor does not get to provide an authentic interpretation of scripture.
You say, "St. Paul in his letters also warns the faithful to hold fast to the tradition they received: “We command you, brothers, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, to avoid any brother who wanders from the straight path and does not follow the tradition you received from us” (2 Th 3, 6).
Do you not agree that Leo, and far too much of the hierarchy, had wandered from the straight path? And if they had, was it the duty of the reformers to remain silent? Or to confront error?
You conclude “corrupt” authority but Christ made sure that His teaching and its infallibility (the same infallibility that informed the assembly of the canonical texts) will last till the end of time
Until the Lord Jesus Christ returns and rules and reigns over all the earth, no mere human form of it will ever be the best.
Oops, I guess I've just committed Protestantism again.
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