Lutherans, according to Reuters, “bristle” at the idea that the Catholic Church might offer a group for converts from Lutheranism who want to keep aspects of their tradition, as Anglicans wee offered an “ordinariate” in Benedict’s Anglicanorum Coetibus.
Rev Martin Junge, the Chilean-born secretary general of the World Lutheran Federation (WLF), said in a statement that the suggestion caused great concern and would “send wrong signals to LWF member churches around the world.”
“Bishop Friedrich Weber, the German Lutheran liaison with the Catholic Church, said the idea was unthinkable and amounted to ”an unecumenical incitement to switch sides.”
. . . This Vatican welcome has raised suspicions among some Protestants that the huge Catholic Church, which makes up half the world’s 2.2 billion Christians, now wants to woo away believers from smaller churches torn by internal debate.
I think, from the Vatican’s point of view, the better metaphor than wooing is sending a lifeboat out to a ship that’s sinking. But in any case, the Lutheran leaders’ indignation avoids the painful fact of ecumenical relations: that even with all the mutual respect and fellow-feeling in the world, the two sides disagree about where the Christian ought to be. If the Catholic Church thinks that — ideally — they ought be Catholics, the Lutherans think they ought not to be, at least for now. Both would be derelict in their duties did they not invite in those who were interested.
Weber, says the story, “said subjugation to papal authority was alien to the Lutheran view of religious freedom, which Martin Luther set out after he challenged the corrupt papacy in 1517 with the 95 Theses that led to the Protestant Reformation.” I’d be curious to know whether he actually said “subjugation” rather than “submission,” but more interesting is his (or the reporter’s) idea of what Luther was up to. As a conservative Lutheran I know wrote:
What drivel. Dr Luther had no interest in, or patience with, “religious freedom.” How could it be otherwise for a man who famously said “my conscience is captive to the Word of God”? Of course, freedom of religion with respect to the State is good, true, and important; but that is perfectly consistent with orthodox Roman Catholicism, classic Lutheranism, or with any “Lutheran Ordinariate” that might come to pass in the future.
Our problem as Lutherans with Papal authority is not that it violates the modern notion of “religious freedom” (a notion which owes nothing to Luther). Lutherans have no problem with the expectation of obedience to proper religious authority. The problem with the Papacy is (a) that its authority as conceived by Catholicism is an innovation that cannot be supported from Scripture and the Tradition rightly read; and (b) the Papacy has used its authority to teach and enforce heterodox doctrine. I don’t bring those up to debate them, but only to indicate that a modern and generalized notion of religious freedom has nothing to do with Lutheranism.
There’s a Lutheran with whom the Catholic an actually talk. It’s easier to talk with someone who says “Oh, you’re quite wrong” than one who says (in effect) “You’re cheating” or “That’s unfair.”
January 22nd, 2013 | 4:16 pm
Well, he will not be joining the Lutheran Ordinariate, but many will….
January 23rd, 2013 | 1:34 am
Oh well, that stubborn pride! The Lutherans should just get over it and come on home to the Catholic Church. They all will be welcomed back with great rejoicing and love. Come on home to Christ’s Church, brothers and sisters.
January 23rd, 2013 | 10:55 am
Susan, you are caricaturing very complicated and difficult theological issues as just a matter of stubbornness that people should “get over.” I find that offensive.
January 24th, 2013 | 1:11 am
Crowhill, I find your overreaction to Susan’s genuine and charitable offer to be offensive.
January 24th, 2013 | 7:01 am
I agree with Crowhill. And I’m a born and bred cradle Catholic. The theological debates stemming from this divide will benefit both churches, I trust. We just may not (and likely won’t) live on this earth long enough to see the end of it ourselves.
I am curious about the addition of “the Tradition” to the notion of Sola Scriptura made in Point a) above, and I would welcome a Cliff-notes version of the heterodox doctrines referred to in Point b).
January 24th, 2013 | 9:07 am
Perhaps this could be a first step into taking the Lutheran Church into the Catholic Church. As several Lutheran Pastors have told me, they believed that even with a return to Rome Lutherans would insist that there would be a Lutheran “order” (probably not quite the right word) in which they could be truly Catholic AND proclaim the “Lutheran message” to the entire world.
Short of this, one of the frustrating things about discussions with Catholics is a certain tone-deafness to Lutheran concerns. Lutherans believe the message of “Saved by Grace Alone” is the doctrine by which the Lutheran Church stands or falls. This doctrine is a paramount concern among Lutherans. But in speaking with Catholics, their side of the discussion boils down to: “Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Look. Just return to Rome. We’ll sort all the doctrine stuff out later.”
Unlike late Father Neuhaus, Lutherans don’t put much stock in the notion of “a Church rightly ordered”. To put a not to fine point on it, we don’t give a fig about it. Theological agreement is the ground for fellowship under one roof. In any event, even if it were that truly important, Lutherans don’t particularly regard the Catholic Church as necessarily the “rightly ordered” Church.
Short of a true meeting of the minds on doctrine, the great lion’s share of Lutherans will never even think of returning to Rome.
January 24th, 2013 | 11:06 am
Some Lutherans may believe that the Catholic Church takes the Lutheran Confessions more seriously than their own Lutheran church bodies do.
January 24th, 2013 | 2:11 pm
St Francis de Sales, who converted 72,000 Calvinists back to the Catholic faith, on this your feastday, pray for us that we may bring back to the fullness of Catholic truth those Lutherans in this article. Amen
January 24th, 2013 | 2:45 pm
Lutheranism is not supported by Scripture.
January 24th, 2013 | 4:24 pm
That’s true. Lutherans don’t claim the Scripture conveys Lutheranism, but that Scripture conveys Christ. Lutherans aren’t, or shouldn’t be, interested in perpetuating Lutheranism, but in rightly interpreting and proclaiming the message of the Scriptures through Word and Sacrament.
January 24th, 2013 | 5:17 pm
I’m a Lutheran who, disechanted by what I now see as the error of Lutheranism, would love to come home to the Catholic church.
January 25th, 2013 | 7:07 am
These are not discussion between two “Churches” as with the Catholic and Orthodox. These are discussion with the Church and a faith community divided amongst itself and factioned along various lines it’s own founder would not recognize today. The fact is, most Lutherans today, pastors included, do not know or care what Luther taught. The various Lutheran bodies emphasize and teach sometimes contradictory and confusing doctrine. That the federation spokesman glosses over this is telling.
January 25th, 2013 | 5:46 pm
The problem here is identifying the LWF (it’s the Lutheran World Federation, not the “World Lutheran Federation”) as Lutheran. There are comparatively few tenets of the Lutheran Confessions the LWF (or the ELCA, it’s American component) consider particularly binding.
On the other hand, that Lutheran with whom you “can talk” is not only common among the confessional Lutheran churches, but also common (though not as common as he should be) among their clergy. The first step is understanding that if you want to talk to Lutherans, you need to talk to people who walk the walk, and don’t just talk the talk.
January 25th, 2013 | 5:49 pm
And Adoration Servants, as long as Catholics insist on praying to those who are neither God nor whom we have any Scriptural reason to believe can hear us, no true Lutheran will ever consider rejoining a Roman church whose defection from the teaching of the apostles was, in our view (and that of the Apostles, insofar as they are represented by the New Testament) the problem in the first place.
January 25th, 2013 | 5:52 pm
Oh. And Steve… Lutheranism is nothing more or less than the distilled teachings of Scripture. The 66 books Jesus and the Early Church recognized, that is- though admittedly not the ones the Council of Trent added to the list a millenium and a half later.
January 26th, 2013 | 8:34 am
From how I understand it, the ‘heterodox doctrines’ that Luther took such great issue with were the teachings of the Scholastics in general and Aquinas in particular. Luther was especially offended with the naturalism embedded in the Thomistic system. Much of the Protestant Reformation was a reaction against Thomism.
I’ve always considered that deeply ironic, considering that the commonly held view is that Protestantism was a reaction against the rigidity and superstition of the Church when it was really a reaction against the Church’s engagement with science and the natural world.
January 26th, 2013 | 12:10 pm
I think it would be fair to say, Paul, that Luther had a problem with philosophical theology generally. Not only his differences with Rome, but also with the Reformed, flowed from his unwillingness to have revelation mediated through human philosophical systems, be they that of Aristotle or Plato.
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