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“Never has a
movie bashed the Catholic Church like this one. I loved it.”
Pastor Jack
Cascione,
Christian News, Vol, 41, No. 39 This past week I
subjected myself to “Luther”, the new film about Martin Luther,
starring Joseph Fiennes and Peter Ustinov. I’d seen a trailer for
the film which featured a statue of the Blessed Virgin being blown
to bits. The film, like its trailer, is as offensive as it is
provocative. From an artistic point of view, I’m sorry to say, the
film is impressive. The cinematography is easy on the eyes and the
acting (especially a riveting performance turned in by 83-year-old
Sir Peter Ustinov) is above average. Joseph Fiennes’ powerful
portrayal of Martin Luther is as outstanding from the artistic
perspective as it is absurd from the historical.
The actor is about as German-looking as Sidney Poitier, and his
performance is critically flawed by a general lack of the reckless
bravado for which the Father of Protestantism was famous. The new
and improved Luther is too much the pretty boy; he has no warts,
isn’t fat, isn’t a drunkard, isn’t even foul mouthed (there’s only
one scatological reference in the entire film!). Even the reliably
liberal Roger Ebert gave “Luther” the thumbs down, complaining in
the Chicago Sun-Times that the real Luther wouldn’t have recognized
the sanctimonious victim soul portrayed in the new film.
Incidentally, the 1938 classic “The Adventures of Robin Hood”
starring Errol Flynn tells the same story sans the Catholic slurs.
Both films are schmaltzy, of course, but the corny fable is more
entertaining in its original Robin Hood package. Martin Luther is
Sir Robin of Locksley (both squeaky-clean heroes have a messiah
complex that’s so overblown that the viewer doesn’t know whether to
laugh or cry); Pope Leo X is the evil Prince John (both tyrants have
an uncanny ability to flat-out revel in the misery of their starving
subjects); the Dominican John Tetzel is the sinister Sir Guy of
Gisbourne (played by the great Basil Rathbone, Sir Guy is one of the
silver screen’s all-time great bad guys); and, of course, Lady
Marian Fitzwalter (the former Norman and future Mrs. Robin Hood) is
Katerina von Bora (the former nun and future Mrs. Father Martin
Luther). In the end, both Martin and Robin are rewarded for having
saved the world by winning the hands of their respective heroines,
and it goes without saying that they all live happily ever after.
For the historically challenged, “Luther”—like “Robin Hood”—is a
true story. Though its anti-Catholic bent is unrelenting, it’s also
about as subtle as a freight train, transforming “Luther” into an
overdone parody. It’s basically “Batman” with a Bible.
Still, there are plenty of stones hurled at the Church. There’s the
pasty-faced corpulent pope, priests in a brothel, a bevy of
disturbingly pretty cardinals, peasants lying in the gutter while
affluent churchmen race by in golden carriages. The film seems so
eager to bash the Catholic Church, in fact, that it overlooks key
elements of the story it’s attempting to tell, something even a
Washington Times review noted in its October 1st edition:
It would have been edifying, too,
to learn why Luther felt so beset by Satan and demons or why he
so doubted his salvation—psychological afflictions that at least
partly inspired his search for a lenient God in Paul, in tension
with the works-emphasizing book of James, which “Luther”
downplayed.
Lutherans Love “Luther”
“Luther” is no “A Man for All Seasons”, but our Protestant friends
are still pretty excited about. This isn’t surprising since the film
was partially funded by Thrivent Financial for Lutherans, a
faith-based financial services organization. In the October 13th
issue of the normally serious Christian News, Pastor Jack Cascione
gushes over “Luther” and the venom the film spews against the
Church: “Never has a movie bashed the Catholic Church like this one.
I loved it.”
Not to be outdone, James B. Romnes takes up where Pastor Jack left
off: “As a Lutheran I would like to see this movie get a universal
two thumbs up and gross more than ‘Spiderman.’” Romnes then observes
that “the film’s centerpiece is Ralph Fiennes…” No doubt Ralph
Fiennes is a terrific actor, but there’s just one problem—he’s not
in “Luther”…prompting this writer to wonder if Lutheran film critics
should be taken about as seriously as Lutheran scripture scholars.
And the Jewish Reaction? After
all the dust kicked up over Mel Gibson’s film “The Passion of
Christ,” one naturally expected that “Luther” would fare similarly
at the hands of the ADL and other Zionist groups who’ve been so
quick to call for Gibson’s head. After all, when it comes to the
Jews, Martin Luther makes David Duke look like Shirley Temple.
Oddly enough, though, the ADL doesn’t seem concerned in the least
over the new film’s glorification of the fellow who encouraged John
Frederick to expel the Jews from Saxony in 1536. Even our old buddy
Rabbi Marvin Hier hasn’t muttered a word of outrage against a film
that immortalizes the author of the “Epistle against the
Sabbatarians” which savaged German Jews for observing their own
Sabbath. No foul is called against the film’s adulation of one who,
beginning in 1542, launched a violent attack on the Jews which was
“intended to annihilate the hostile Jewry.”1
The anti-Semitic “values” of Adolph Hitler, in fact, appear to have
deep roots in the theology of the German Martin Luther, whose hatred
of Catholics was eclipsed only by his hatred of Jews. (While Luther
was still a Catholic there was no sign of this virulent
anti-Semitism. The further he drifted from Mother Church, however,
the more hateful his rhetoric against the Jews.)
Don’t take my word for it— read Luther’s tracts “On Shem Hamphoras
and the Generation of Christ,” or “On the Last Words of David,”
where Dr. Luther makes his impassioned appeal to the authorities to
inflict violence upon the Jews. As the Jesuit Father Grisar explains
in his masterwork Martin Luther:
Once more he [Luther] raised his voice against that persecuted
race [the Jews] in his last sermon at Eisleben, on February 14,
1546: “you rulers,” he said, “ought not to tolerate, but to expel
them.” By indirection it was a summons to rise against the Jews.2
Let’s take a few more examples from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.
In his tract “The Jews and Their Lies,” Luther displays that
characteristic subtlety and nuance for which he would become famous:
Therefore the blind Jews are
truly stupid fools… Now
just behold these miserable, blind and senseless people…
Therefore be on your guard against
the Jews, knowing that wherever they have their synagogues,
nothing is found but a den of devils…
And, finally, advocating a course of action that Adolf Hitler
would take pretty seriously 400 years later, Luther writes:
Eject them forever from this
country [Germany]. For, as we have heard, God’s anger with them
is so intense that gentle mercy will only tend to make them
worse and worse, while sharp mercy will reform them but little.
Therefore, in any case, away with them!
What we have here is the ultimate Zionist dilemma— a vicious
anti-Semite whose global fame stems primarily from his hatred of the
Catholic Church….What’s an ADL to do? While “Passion” is dragged up
one side of the street and down the other by the ADL, nary an
eyebrow is lifted against a film that celebrates one of history’s
most notorious anti-Semites. Strange that in this post-Christian
era, when an open season on everything Christian has long since been
declared, a movie about Our Lord is crucified while a movie about
Martin Luther wins critical acclaim. Maybe this isn’t so strange—if
Christianity were your primary target, would you go after its
biggest critic in history?
“If I am prompted to say: ‘Thy Kingdom
come,’ I must perforce add: ‘cursed, damned,
destroyed must be the papacy.’”
Martin Luther
Anti-Christians Is it possible that Protestantism
itself is the Antichrist? The great St. Thomas More certainly
thought so. Since Luther had married a Cistercian nun, More
observed that the Augustinian monk had “toke out of relygyon a
spouse of Cryste” and “that Antecryste sholde be borne between a
frere and a nunne.”3 More made frequent references to
Luther as the “false prophet of the great Beast.” Indeed,
considering the eradication of Christendom that’s been expertly
accomplished since the Protestant Revolt, it’s difficult to
imagine how the Antichrist could have improved on Luther’s work.
In “Luther” there are scenes in which the man certainly
appears to be possessed by
demons. He’s seen flailing around his room, shouting at the
Devil in the dead of night, crying out unintelligibly… weeping
uncontrollably. This is a surprisingly accurate portrayal of
Luther who we know was prone to panic attacks and who could not
look at a crucifix nor linger near the Blessed Sacrament for
more than a few moments.
The film’s vicious attacks on the Catholic Church are themselves
satanic, of course. And I’m not just referring to exploding
statues of Our Lady or the usual clunkers that unimaginative
Protestants have been slow-pitching over the plate for the past
five centuries— e.g., the word “indulgence” doesn’t appear in
the Bible, ergo preaching indulgences is an abomination (Note to
Protestant: Since the word “Bible” doesn’t appear in the Bible,
either, does that make the Bible an abomination?), purgatory,
the Mass, the papacy, etc., are all unholy inventions of men
and, as such, constitute an affront to God. …Yawwwwwn…
No, what is far more Luciferian than these “terrors for
children” is the vehemence with which the film attacks one
particular dogma by name and in
Latin, no less— outside the
Church there is no salvation. When
extra Ecclesiam nulla salus
was savaged in “Luther,” I sat bolt upright in the theater and
listened carefully. Extra Ecclesiam
nulla salus—the collapse of Christendom and the rise of
neo-paganism in the world followed close on the heels of the
rejection of this dogma. Luther nailed his rejection of it to
the wood of the Cross, standing up as he did to Christ’s Church
and Christ’s Vicar… while insisting that he nonetheless remained
Christ’s follower.
The last line in “Luther” speaks to this: “Millions of people
today worship in churches inspired by Luther’s revolt.” While
millions of Catholics worship in a Church founded by Jesus
Christ, millions of Protestants do indeed worship outside the
Church in heretical sects started by a man who tossed out those
parts of the Bible he didn’t like, who burned canon laws he
couldn’t hack, who rejected dogmas embraced by every saint,
virgin, martyr, and theologian for the first fifteen hundred
years of Christianity, and who believed that men’s good deeds
have nothing to do with salvation. Yes, Luther, even before
Calvin, was the apostle of predestination. For him, man has no
free will…which is why he waged his bloody war against good
works. In his Assertio omnium
articulorum of 1520, Luther explains:
Do you have anything to growl
at here, you miserable Pope? For you it is necessary to
revoke this article [Leo’s excommunication Bull]. For I have
incorrectly said that free will before grace exists in name
only. I should have said candidly: free will is a fiction, a
name without substance. Because no one indeed has the free
power to think good or evil but all things happen by
absolute necessity.4
Luther the Anarchist
Essentially, Luther was preaching ecclesiastical anarchy, which
in Catholic Europe translated automatically into civil unrest.
The result was a bloodbath called the Peasants’ Revolt, which
left as many as one hundred thousand dead in the streets. His
“liberating” notion that “God made us this way and we have no
choice but to sin” released the mob from every civic and moral
responsibility. Death and destruction ensued…death of souls,
death of bodies, even death of science and the arts. “Where
Lutheranism flourishes,” the great humanist Erasmus remarked,
“the sciences perish.”
The Duke of Saxony also feared the temporal consequences of
Luther’s gospel. He warned Luther that his “doctrine of by faith
alone would only make the people presumptuous and mutinous.”5
Events proved the Duke prophetic! Like Erasmus, More,
Cajetan, Leo, even a young Henry VIII (who for his defense
against Luther was dubbed “Defender of the Faith” by Pope Leo
X), the Duke understood that laws are not always as popular as
they are vital in an ordered society; that the Catholic
Church—the loving mother who knows well the weaknesses of her
children—is founded on laws, laws which mandate moral living,
laws which are the only barricade that stands between society
and chaos…between the soul and damnation.
Luther rejected this notion by saying:
No pope, no priest, no Church is
above my will. I am already saved…what need have I of laws?
By the nineteenth century, men such as the renowned Satanist,
Aleister Crowley, would be taking Luther’s theology to its
unnatural end. In Magik, Crowley writes: “Do what thou wilt
shall become the whole of the law.” Indeed, the modern world is
doing just that. But Luther is the one who put the ball in play.
As historian Harry Crocker notes on page 239 of his Triumph: The
Power and Glory of the Catholic Church:
[W]ith Luther, a murderer
could raise his bloodstained hands to heaven and say, “Thank
God I’m a Christian.” If the murderer was one of the
“elect”—for Luther believed in predestination—he was
assuredly saved. The murderer, in any event, was not
responsible for his actions, because Luther, unlike the
Catholic Church, denied that man had free will. These ideas
of Luther were, as history would show, extremely dangerous.
Erasmus understood this danger right away. His position
against Lutheranism is summed up as follows:
If the will of man is not
free to choose the good, who will try to lead a good life?
Will not everyone find a ready excuse for all sins and vices
by saying: “I could not help falling?” What is the meaning
of God’s law, if the people for whom it was made cannot
obey? The whole legislation of God becomes a farce and a
mockery if man has not the power to observe it. How,
finally, can God punish or reward those who cannot choose
between good and evil, but merely do what they must?6
Herein the great humanist gave the 16th century a glimpse of
the twenty-first century’s frightening reality, five hundred
years after Luther’s non serviam.
Luther’s Private Judgment
Luther’s overbearing pride would ultimately induce him to
denounce Catholics, Jews, fellow “reformers” (i.e., Henry,
Zwingli and Calvin) and anyone else in the world with whom he
disagreed. He’d become a magisterium unto himself and, as such,
exhibited much more egregious judgmentalism than had ever been
laid at the feet of a bad pope. Luther was an egomaniac. Who but
one with Titanic pride could level the following judgment
against the hierarchy of the Catholic Church—the institution
which had overseen the civilization of the western world and
which was responsible for the greatest works of literature, art,
statesmanship, scholarship, poetry, architecture, and theology
known to man:
…the true Antichrist is
sitting in the temple of God and is reigning in Rome—that
empurpled Babylon—and that the Roman curia is the Synagogue
of Satan….there will be no remedy left except that the
emperors, kings, and princes, girt about with force of arms,
should attack these pests of the world, and settle the
matter no longer by words but by the sword. Why do we not
attack in arms these masters of perdition, these cardinals,
these popes, and all this sink of the Roman Sodom which has
without end corrupted the Church of God, and wash our hands
in their blood?7
Of the Mass of his own priestly ordination, beloved liturgy
of his fathers and forefathers, saints and martyrs, for a
thousand years, Luther hisses:
I declare that all the
brothels…all the manslaughters, murders, thefts and
adulteries have wrought less abomination than the popish
Mass.
This from one who, by his own admission, was “inspired”—while
on his toilet, no less—with the certainty that the Church was
the great Whore of Babylon, that four of her seven Sacraments
were abominations, as were her priesthood, celibacy, papacy and
monastic life. On his toilet, Luther figured it out—all that’s
needed is Faith alone…and the laws of Christianity be damned!
“Be a sinner and sin on bravely,” said Luther, “but have
stronger faith and rejoice in Christ, who is the victory of sin,
death, and the world. Do not for a moment imagine that this life
is the abiding place of justice: sin must be committed… sin
cannot tear you away from Him, even though you commit adultery a
hundred times a day and commit as many murders.”8
Compare these words to similar ones written by the Satanist
Aleister Crowley:
Are we walking in eternal
fear lest some “sin” should cut us off from “grace”? By no
means…Live as the kings and princes, crowned and uncrowned,
of this world, have always lived, as masters always live…
make your self-indulgence your religion…When you drink and
dance and take delight, you are not being “immoral,” you are
not “risking your immortal soul”; you are fulfilling the
precepts of our holy religion [Satanism]…
Is not this better than [to] go
oppressed by consciousness of “sin,” wearily seeking or
simulating wearisome and tedious “virtues”?9
Protestantism, Satanism, Freemasonry—these are but
brothers-in-arms in the ancient war against the holy Church…a
war fomented by disorder.
Luther’s friends readily admitted what his modern-day followers
vigorously deny—the “Reformation” was indeed anarchistic. For
example, the ex-priest Martin Bucer, who’d benefited from
Luther’s moral dispensations where an ex-nun and his vows were
concerned, nevertheless admits:
The whole Reformation was one
grand indulgence for libertinism. The greater part of the
people seem only to have embraced the gospel in order to
shake off the yoke of discipline and the obligation of
fasting and penance, which rested upon them in popery, and
that they may live according to their own pleasure, enjoying
their lusts and lawless appetites without control. That was
the reason they lent a willing ear to the teaching of
justification by faith alone and not by good works, for the
latter of which they had no relish.10
It is no wonder that Erasmus (who also advocated reform)
would write: “Lutheranism has but two objects at heart—money and
women.”11
Today, when Protestantism sanctions divorce, homosexual
marriage, contraception, and even abortion in some cases, while
still claiming to be Christian, it’s a simple thing to see where
the libertarianism of Martin Luther was heading from the moment
he uttered: “Here I stand”. As the late Malachi Martin once
remarked to the present writer: “The great evil of heretics such
as Martin Luther is that, because of them, millions will be
damned.”
Saint Thomas More wasn’t quite as diplomatic as Erasmus or
Malachi Martin in his own colorful evaluation of the heresiarch.
“Martin Luther is an ape,” said the Lord High Chancellor of
England, “an arse, a drunkard, a lousy little friar, a piece of
scurf, a pestilential buffoon, a dishonest liar.”12
More was certainly not the only sixteenth-century intellectual
to hold the German monk in less than high regard….And who could
blame him! There are aspects of Luther’s life story that are so
preposterous that it’s a wonder anyone took the man seriously.
His decision to become a priest, for example, took place
literally in a flash, after he’d been nearly struck by
lightening: “Help me, St. Anne,” he shouted in fear, as he lay
on the ground in the pouring rain. “I want to become a monk.”
After dispensing himself and Sister “Katie” from their sacred
vows of celibacy, Luther went ahead and dispensed every husband
from his marital vows, as well: “If the mistress of the house is
unwilling, let the maid come.” (See Luther’s
Sermon De Matrimonio)
According to biographer Stefan Zweig, Luther’s religious
awakening took place quite suddenly while he was at Mass one
morning. All at once and in front of God and everybody, Luther
fell to the floor and began to rave “as if in the grip of
demonic possession. ‘Non sum! Non
sum!’” (I am not present! I am not present!)13
On this point, at least, we can all agree with Martin
Luther—surely, he wasn’t all there.
Indulgences “Luther” has a
lot of fun with the issue of indulgences. The outlandish
definitions of indulgences placed on Catholic lips in the film—
e.g., indulgences release souls from hell, indulgences are the
Pope’s permission to commit sin, unless you buy an indulgence
you’ll be damned—are far enough removed from Catholic teaching
as to convince the viewer that the film’s script writers were
either daft or malicious. Quite simply, an indulgence is the
extra-sacramental remission of the temporal punishment due, in
God’s justice, to sin that has been forgiven, which remission is
granted by the Church in the exercise of the power of the keys,
through the application of the superabundant merits of Christ
and of the saints, and for some just and reasonable motive.14
So maligned have been indulgences and, by extension, the popes
who preached them, that the Catholic Encyclopedia has a special
section under “Indulgences” called: “What An Indulgence Is Not”.
There we read the following:
To facilitate explanation, it
may be well to state what an indulgence is not. It is not a
permission to commit sin, nor a pardon of future sin;
neither could be granted by any power. It is not the
forgiveness of the guilt of sin; it supposes that the sin
has already been forgiven. It is not an exemption from any
law or duty, and much less from the obligation consequent on
certain kinds of sin, e.g., restitution; on the contrary, it
means a more complete payment of the debt which the sinner
owes to God. It does not confer immunity from temptation or
remove the possibility of subsequent lapses into sin. Least
of all is an indulgence the purchase of a pardon which
secures the buyer’s salvation or releases the soul of
another from Purgatory. The absurdity of such notions must
be obvious to any one who forms a correct idea of what the
Catholic Church really teaches on this subject.15
In “Luther,” this dead horse is kicked to the point of
absurdity. For example, the film’s portrayal of a leering, Fu
Manchu-type Johann Tetzel (superbly overplayed by Alfred
Molina), busying himself with the fleecing of widows and
orphans, is almost too droll to be offensive. The inspiration
for it could only have come from those Protestant superstars
such as Jim and Tammy Baker or Oral
Send-me-$8million-or-the-Lord-will-call-me-home Roberts. The
logical corollary is that if charlatans in her ranks were reason
enough to reject the Catholic Church then, well surely
Protestantism today must be vigorously rejected due to that army
of televangelists who make Johann Tetzel look like Mother
Teresa.
Serious scholars have long since tried Tetzel and found him
innocent of the spurious charges Martin Luther leveled against
him. In “Luther,” for example, the charge of preaching
irreverently concerning the Virgin Mary (Luther’s invention), is
once again hurled at Tetzel. “I can release the soul,” hisses
Tetzel in the film, “of a man who violated the Virgin Mary, if
only he’ll buy this piece of paper…this indulgence.” Long ago,
scholars refuted and dismissed this as slander, as the Catholic
Encyclopedia explains:
The charge made by Luther in
his seventy-fifth thesis, that Tetzel had preached impiously
concerning the Blessed Virgin, and repeated in Luther’s
letter to Archbishop Albrecht (Enders, I, 115) and in most
explicit terms in his pamphlet “Wider Hans Worst”, was not
only promptly and indignantly denied by Tetzel (13 Dec.,
1518), declared false by official resolution of the entire
city magistracy of Halle (12 Dec., 1517), where it was
claimed the utterance was made, but has now been
successfully proved a clumsy fabrication (Paulus, op. cit.,
56-61).16
Tetzel is not a canonized saint, of course. He may have been
overzealous in his assigned task of preaching Leo’s indulgence.
But, especially when compared to the heretical notions and lewd
living of so many of his Protestant accusers, Tetzel was above
serious reproach. As the Encyclopedia explains, there is no
moral blemish on his character:
If Tetzel was guilty of
unwarranted theological views, if his advocacy of
indulgences was culpably imprudent, his moral character, the
butt of every senseless burlesque and foul libel, has been
vindicated to the extent of leaving it untainted by any
grave moral dereliction.17
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of many high profile
televangelists today. Surely, Tetzel had nothing on Reverend
Jimmy Swaggart, for example, who, aside from a messy scandal
involving a woman of ill repute, once declared that Mother
Teresa would burn in hell for failing to accept Jesus as her
personal savior. Speaking of the good Reverend, who could forget
this whopper: “If I do not return to the pulpit this weekend,
millions of people will go to hell.” And Tetzel was nuts?
Please!
So preoccupied is “Luther” with telling scary stories about a
boogeyman named Tetzel that it forgets to explain how the sale
of indulgences justified Luther’s denial of the Church’s dogmas
on transubstantiation, the Papacy, Purgatory, the Mass, and all
the Sacraments but three! What the sale of indulgences had to
do, exactly, with Luther’s war on the Blessed Virgin Mary,
intercessory prayers to the Saints, and a whole host of
Christian doctrines that every Church father, theologian,
philosopher and saint from Augustine to Cyprian to Aquinas would
have died for…is anyone’s guess.
For fifteen hundred years Christians believed that the Church
was founded by Christ on the rock of the Papacy. The fathers and
doctors of the Church down through the ages—without whom there
would have been no Christianity for Luther to “reform”— would
have shed their blood rather than deny that the Church was
founded on Peter and that the popes were his successors. In
Luther’s own day, possibly the most brilliant mind in Europe and
the second most powerful figure in England—Sir Thomas
More—willingly mounted the scaffold and gave his head to the
executioner rather than deny this reality.
Nevertheless, this childish film insults the intelligence of its
audience by asking them to believe that, merely because of
overzealous indulgence preachers, the Papacy was rightly to be
condemned as bogus and the Catholic Church denounced as the
great Whore of Babylon!
In his rage against the Church, Luther was simply raging against
Christianity as it had existed for well over a thousand years.
His rage led to the founding of a new church, in fact, which has
been dividing and re-dividing itself ever since. Today, there
seem to be nearly as many Protestant denominations as there are
Protestants, all divided—not over mere trifles—but over the
morality of rudimentary moral issues such as abortion,
homosexual marriage, and contraception. Without a visible head,
canon law, and a priesthood, Protestantism exists today in a
permanent state of theological pandemonium.
Thomas More used the Greek term “anarchos” to describe it. He
believed that the “whole great change of European consciousness
in the sixteenth century was due to the hatred that they
[Protestants] bear to all good order and the great hunger they
have to make [everything] disordered.”18 More
regarded Lutherans as “daemonun satellites” (“agents of demons”)
who had to be stopped before they brought civilized society to
ruin. In his book, The Life of Thomas More, Peter Akroyd
explains:
This was no longer a time for
questioning, or innovation, or uncertainty of any kind. He
[More] blamed Luther for the Peasants’ Revolt in Germany,
and maintained that all its havoc and destruction were the
direct result of Luther’s challenge to the authority of the
church; under the pretext of “libertas” Luther preached “licentia,”
which had in turn led to rape, sacrilege, bloodshed, fire
and ruin.19
Down With Celibacy!
In “Luther,” no bones are made of the fact that the Father of
Protestantism was incapable of living up to his own vows of
celibacy. After falling in love with Sister “Katie,” Luther
encourages his brother priest Ulrich to follow suit and “choose
from the nuns, as there are still one or two unclaimed.” At this
point, the film takes a rather odd detour down what might be
called Penny Lane.
A casually dressed Luther and his brother priests appear
lounging in a garden where “Katie” von Bora and her nuns are
tiptoeing through the tulips and singing love songs to the
“boys”. The “rebel,” the “genius,” the “liberator”—Dr. Luther—is
seen all smiley-faced and silly, even making goo-goo eyes at
“Katie.” Since Sister “Katie’s” attire already includes a
far-out headband, the only thing missing from the
extraordinarily schmaltzy scene is a daisy in a gun barrel.
During this most peculiar interlude, Martin and Katie become
John and Yoko. Imagine that!
Incredibly, in the very next scene, the following profundity is
placed on the lips of the great doctor: “Most days I’m so
depressed I can’t get out of bed.” That woke me up. It was
almost as funny, in fact, as another howler uttered earlier on
in the film by Pope Leo X to the great
Giacomo de Vio—Cardinal (St.)
Cajetan—Superior General of the Dominicans, champion of the
Fifth Lateran Council, papal legate in Germany, statesman who
helped secure the elections of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and
Pope Adrian VI, the man whose commentaries are published with
the pontifical editions of the Summa. It’s at this intellectual
giant that a chubby-faced Leo shouts: “I’m tired of you, Cajetan,
always missing the big picture!”
By this point, I was practically on the floor… tears of laughter
streaming down my face. How a serious Protestant could look at
such rot and not shake his head in embarrassment is beyond me.
But it’s also well beyond my ken how anyone can look at the
spectacle that was the founding of Luther’s “church” and not be
reduced to fits of laughter.
Translating the Bible
Protestants always enjoy telling each other that the Devil
stirred up Catholic Popes to “pull with violence the holy Bibles
out of the people’s hands.” This may make good copy but,
historically, it’s utter nonsense! Even Luther himself debunks
it when he casually admits that, upon his entrance into the
Augustinian monastery, a Bible was quite unceremoniously handed
over to him for his own private use.
It is a known fact that from the time of the invention of the
printing press to the beginning of Luther’s studies at the
University of Erfurt, more than 100 editions of the Bible had
already been published.20 Considering the physical
size of the Bible as well as the high cost and laborious process
of printing, the rapid publication of those hundred editions is
tantamount to our posting it on the Internet today. In other
words, as fast as they could be printed, Bibles were made
available.
Even Lutheran scholars are beginning to leave this lame horse in
the barn. In an article by the late Professor Rietschel, a
luminary of Lutheran Church, published in the Protestant
Realencyclopadie, edited by
Professor Hauck, we read the following: “If one considers the
whole period of the Middle Ages, there is no question of any
general prohibition of Bible-reading for the laity.”21
The melodramatic scenes in “Luther” of the reformer feverishly
translating the Bible “for the people,” are dramatizations of a
five-hundred-year-old fairy tale for adults. The undeniable fact
remains that, had it not been for those Catholic Popes and
Catholic monks whom Luther so enjoyed reviling with his mighty
pen, there would have been no Bible for him to translate. The
Catholic Church preserved Holy Scriptures just as surely as she
preserved the Seven Sacraments and doctrine from the earliest
days of Christianity, down through the Middle Ages and on into
the modern era.
Conclusion
Luther’s Last Laugh Perhaps some will
protest that we’ve been too hard on Dr. Luther, and that his
well meaning spiritual descendents in our day surely mustn’t
share his anathemas. I have no desire, were it somehow within my
power, to condemn baptized Lutherans to eternal hellfire. As the
Church has always taught, we must leave such judgments to God.
But, when considering how Protestantism came into being—in
protest (protestant) of Christ’s Church and in defiance of His
vicar—it seems foolhardy to presume that all good Lutherans are
guaranteed eternal bliss. If I cannot say as much about myself
or my beloved wife, family and friends who are Catholic (and who
are, as Christ advocated, trying to “work out” their salvation
by the “sweat of their brow”), how can I say it of these poor
souls who’ve been robbed of the grace of Christ’s Sacraments and
who languish outside His Mystical Body?
Protestants are not “pious Hindus” living on that proverbial
desert island. They know Jesus Christ; reason tells them where
His Church is and where it is not. They cannot stand behind the
shield of invincible ignorance. We must pray for them, then, as
we must recognize our own sacred duty before God to commit
ourselves entirely to their conversion to the only true and sure
means of salvation known to man—the Holy Catholic Church,
outside of which there is no salvation.
If our critique of “Luther” seems unduly harsh, consider what
the man wrote of us:
I will curse and scold the
scoundrels until I go to my grave, and never shall they hear
a civil word from me. I will toll them to their graves with
thunder and lightening. For I am unable to pray without at
the same time cursing. If I am prompted to say: “hallowed be
Thy name,” I must add: “cursed, damned, outraged be the name
of the papists.” If I am prompted to say: “Thy Kingdom
come,” I must perforce add: “cursed, damned destroyed must
be the papacy.” 22
And, yet…and yet…the author of such hate might be given the
last word. The modern Catholic Church over the past forty years
has implemented many changes designed to transform the Church
into something pleasing to Protestant eyes. Those statues—so
detested by Protestants—have been smashed; that altar—so reviled
by Luther—has been fashioned into a table that would make
Cranmer proud; belief in the Real Presence is rare enough in
2003 as to bring a smile to Calvin’s lips. There is talk of
lifting Luther’s excommunication; there are rumors of Protestant
“martyrs” being canonized. As the horrific priest scandals
illustrate, this false ecumenism is the forerunner to
ecclesiastical chaos.
Luther once boasted that if his new gospel would be but preached
for two years, “pope, bishops, cardinals, priests, monks, nuns,
bells, bell-towers, masses…rules, statues and all the riff-raff
of the Papal government will have vanished like smoke.”23
Well, Luther was wrong—it took longer than two years; almost
five centuries were required before priests, nuns, bells,
Masses, rules and statues began to vanish like smoke from the
Catholic Church.
Luther’s boast is coming to fruition—the Catholic Church is
being Protestantized. World wars rage, millions of souls
languish in religious indifferentism, generations of babies are
slaughtered in the womb….Clearly, “popery” is dying, and when
it’s cold in the ground—when that “light on the hill” goes out—
what will then stand between the world and chaos? Is St. Pius V
again waiting in the wings to save the world by saving the
Church? Who can say! What is clear is that after five centuries
of Protestant assaults, the human element of the Catholic Church
appears to be acquiescing….
Listen…you can almost hear Luther laughing.
Epilogue In the spirit of
true ecumenism, let us conclude this essay with a beautiful
description of the Catholic Church as penned by the Protestant
minister Rev. T. B. Thompson of the Plymouth Congregational
Church in Chicago some years ago. Truer words than these have
rarely been written: It must be
admitted in all fairness that popular ignorance, superficial
knowledge and malicious slander have in many instance
misrepresented the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. To
contemplate her history is to admire her. Reformation, wars,
empires and kingdoms have been arrayed against her. After all
these centuries she stands so strong and so firmly rooted in the
lives of millions that she commands our highest respect. As an
illustration, she is the most splendid the world has ever seen.
Governments have arisen and gone to the grave of the nations
since her advent. Peoples of every tongue have worshipped at her
altars. The Roman Catholic Church as stood solid for law and
order. Her police power in controlling millions untouched by
denominations has been great. When she speaks, legislators,
statesmen, politicians and governments stop to listen, often to
obey. In the realm of worship, her ministry has been of the
highest. In employing beads, statues, pictures and music she has
made a wise and intelligent use of symbolism. Her use of the
best in music and painting has been the greatest single
inspiration to those arts, and her cathedrals are the shrines of
all pilgrims.24
(Footnotes)
1 Hartmann, Grisar S.J., Martin Luther His Life and Work, (The
Newman Press, 1953) p. 543
2 Ibid.
3 Akroyd, Peter, The Life of Thomas More, (Doubleday) p. 310
4 Sungenis, Robert A., Not By Faith Alone (Queenship Publishing
Compay), p. 448
5 Durant,Will, The Reformation: A History of European
Civilization from Wyclif to Calvin: 1300-1564 (MJF Books, 1985),
p. 404
6 Msgr. O’Hare, The Facts About Luther (TAN) p. 263
7 Durant, p. 404
8 Catholic Encyclopedia, Encyclopedia Press, 1912, entry for
Martin Luther.
9 Crowley, Aleister. Liber AL vel Legis – The Book of the Law,
www.skepticsfile.org
10 Quoted by Msgr. Patrick F. O’Hare, The Facts About Luther
(TAN), p. 91
11 Ibid.
12 Ackroyd, Peter, The Life of Thomas More (Doubleday) p. 230
13 Ibid. p 224
14 Catholic Encyclopedia, see “Indulgences”, newadvent.org
15 Ibid.
16 Ibid.
17 Ibid.
18 Ackroyd, Peter. The Life of Thomas More. p. 68
19 Ibid. p. 248
20 Thurston, Herbert, S. J., No Popery, p. 168, Roman Catholic
Books, Fort Collins, CO
21 Ibid.
22 Ibid.
23 O’Hare, The Facts About Luther, p. 218
24 Ibid. p. 151 |
