Posted on 01/06/2017 8:06:18 AM PST by ebb tide
A newly released document from the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Christian Unity promotes the upcoming January 18-25 ‘Week of Prayer for Christian Unity’ with the theme ‘Reconciliation: The love of Christ compels us.’ Encouraging commemorations in all dioceses of the world, the Pontifical Council notes the theme is drawn from the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. In 2017, it says, “Lutheran and Catholic Christians will for the first time commemorate together the beginning of the Reformation.” The text also states that “Catholics are now able to hear Luther’s challenge for the Church of today, recognizing him as a ‘witness to the gospel.’”
The announcement follows on the heels of Pope Francis’ controversial trip to Lund, Sweden, where he joined in the launch of the 500th year anniversary of the most devastating split in Christianity in its history. The Lutheran Church of Sweden to which Pope Francis went for the celebration accepts contraception, abortion, homosexuality, and female clergy, all of which are strictly and unalterably forbidden in the Catholic Church.
Nevertheless, the Vatican is pushing the joint celebration of the Reformation focusing on the common element of “Jesus Christ and his work of reconciliation as the center of Christian faith.”
The theme of the week of Christian unity has Vatican watchers wondering if the Pope may announce that in certain limited cases intercommunion for Protestants might be possible. The Pope suggested such previously in an informal talk at a Lutheran parish in Rome where in November 2015 he told a Lutheran woman asking about receiving Communion with her Catholic husband to “go forward” guided by individual conscience.
That suspicion was given momentum last month when Cardinal Walter Kasper, one of the Pope’s closest advisors, said he hoped that the Pope’s “next declaration opens the way for shared Eucharistic communion in special cases.”
Eucharistic intercommunion is the main desire for Lutheran and Catholic leaders involved in the Papal participation in the Lutheran commemoration. Swedish Professor Dr. Clemens Cavallin in an essay on “Sweden and the 500-year reformation anamnesis” notes that the Church of Sweden webpage states explicitly about the pope’s visit: “What we foremost wish is that the common celebration of the Eucharist will be officially possible. This is especially important for families where members belong to different denominations.”
The severity of the change, if implemented, was stressed by Monsignor Nicola Bux, a former consulter to the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith. If the Church were to change its rules on shared Eucharistic Communion, it would “go against Revelation and the Magisterium,” leading Christians to “commit blasphemy and sacrilege,” Bux told Ed Pentin of the National Catholic Register.
Regarding the Eucharist, Lutherans have a fundamentally different faith from Catholics, who believe that during the consecration at Mass the bread used becomes the body and blood of Jesus Christ while still looking like bread. Lutherans believe in a fleeting presence – that while Christ is present in the bread during the service, it is just normal bread again outside the service.
The approach of Pope Francis to a joint commemoration of the Reformation is partially based on a “naïve” understanding of the theological dialogue between Lutherans and Catholics, according to former Anglican, now Catholic priest Fr. Dwight Longenecker. Fr. Longenecker points to this statement of Pope Francis about Martin Luther as problematic: “Today, Lutherans and Catholics, Protestants, all of us agree on the doctrine of justification. On this point, which is very important, he did not err.”
Pope Francis draws his enthusiasm for this agreement on a Joint Declaration between Catholics and Lutherans on the Doctrine of Justification. However, Fr. Longenecker points out that the Vatican issued a detailed official clarification document wherein Pope Benedict (while still serving as Cardinal Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith) pointed out that there was not a consensus between Catholics and Lutherans on the understanding of justification. “The level of agreement is high, but it does not yet allow us to affirm that all the differences separating Catholics and Lutherans in the doctrine concerning justification are simply a question of emphasis or language,” said the document. “Some of these differences concern aspects of substance and are therefore not all mutually compatible.”
Lutherans don’t have a pope. The largest Lutheran groups are in Sweden and Africa. ELCA is by far the wealthiest and also the largest in the English-speaking world.
Goodness so many half truths and falsehoods in one post! Henry VIII broke away from the Catholic Church because they would not grant an annulment on his first marriage. Not satisfied with his second wife either he went on to 4 more wives, none after the first were recognized outside of his breakaway national church in England.
Annulment is not a legal fiction though it is abused in modern times. Many bishops, priests and others will have to answer at their judgment for the marriages they declared annulled that were in fact true marriages.
Away in a Manger is a traditional English hymn, not German. You are thinking of Silent Night. And just because we do not find error in that specific hymn does not mean we accept anything else Luther taught as true.
Latin is the official language of the Church and is what official documents are published in. There is value in having a specifically liturgical language in that meanings are fixed and not subject to drift with the popular culture. Liturgy in the vernacular damages unity within parishes where large Latino populations have prompted separate Spanish and English Masses. Understanding Latin improves with practice and if it was used in church more commonly then people would be more familiar with it. Learning Latin is also very valuable in understanding the roots of many English words as well as a foundation for all the Romance languages. To dismiss Latin because a small portion of the population speaks it is foolishness, much like the rest of your post.
It sure does seem like they do. His name is Jorge Bergoglio.
It's the Catholics that don't have a pope.
“Bad” popes don’t teach heresy. They may sin, but they do not teach the Universal Church heresy.
Good one!
:-)
So the question is if there are traditional Lutheran groups who endorse Luther’s ‘On the Jews and Their Lies’?
I’ve never heard of such a group, but there are FReepers very familiar with groups that hate Jews so perhaps they might share their knowledge of such Lutheran groups.
Trying to pin anti-Semitism on Martin Luther is plainly untruthful.
http://www.sullivan-county.com/news/mine/timeline.htm
According to Josephus, Titus killed over a million Jewish civilians in Jerusalem. He wasn't a Catholic, he was a pagan.
The previously mentioned Emperor Claudius wasn't a Catholic, he was a pagan.
Open your Bible. Haman wasn't a Catholic, he was a pagan.
Read up on the origin of the word "pogrom". It's not a word that came from a Catholic country, and it wasn't Catholics who were running the original Russian "pogroms".
There are many other examples.
And yet you conveniently whitewash the Catholic Church from among your examples.
The point here, unless you just jumped in to the discussion without reading the prior posts, is that Luther’s anti-Semitism was singled out as if Catholic hands were clean on that score, and as if he largely invented anti-Semitism as a consequence of his conflicts with the Catholic leadership of that day, neither of which could be further from the truth.
Then when Catholic anti-Semitism gets pointed out, you deflect attention from that to other examples of anti-Semitism that involve neither Luther or the Catholic Church as a straw man tactic, since no one here has denied the anti-Semitism of these other people and groups or claimed they are Catholic, either explicitly or implicitly.
The fact is, there is plenty of anti-Semitism in the Catholic Church’s history, whether you choose to keep dancing around that fact or not.
No, that would have been Greece.
Since the Pope upheld the marriage bond between Henry VIII and his first and only wife (the only wife he married via a valid Catholic Sacrament of Matrimony, Queen Catherine) -— and since Henry married SIX times, it would be hard to credit your claim that “... they (the Catholic Church) allowed Henry VIII to get up to wife #8 before raising objections.”
Where do you get tht? Just curious.
Catholics did come up with the Inquisition!
If Luther was so wrong why the Counter Reformation?
Duh... Maybe it was because Luther was so wrong. Did you ever think of that?
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