{"id":25389,"date":"2016-10-31T05:45:50","date_gmt":"2016-10-31T09:45:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?p=25389"},"modified":"2016-10-30T19:28:52","modified_gmt":"2016-10-30T23:28:52","slug":"pope-praises-luther","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2016\/10\/pope-praises-luther\/","title":{"rendered":"Pope praises Luther"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Pope Francis is set to celebrate Reformation Day in a joint service with Swedish Lutherans. \u00a0A story from NPR quotes him praising Luther.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s appropriate for Catholics to celebrate Reformation Day! \u00a0As Pope Francis says, the church had become extremely corrupt. \u00a0Without the Reformation, there would be no Counter-Reformation, which is where much of today\u2019s\u00a0Catholicism and Catholic lay piety comes from (the Rosary, frequent Communion by the laity, Catholic schools, the Jesuits, etc.).<\/p>\n

From\u00a0500th Anniversary Of The Reformation: Pope Francis To Honor The Man Who Splintered Christianity : Parallels : NPR<\/a>:<\/em><\/p>\n

One of the greatest rifts in Christianity \u2014 between Catholics and Lutherans \u2014 isn\u2019t what it used to be. As a sign of those much improved relations, Pope Francis is traveling Monday to Sweden, an overwhelmingly Lutheran country, to kick off a yearlong commemoration of the Protestant Reformation that split the churches 500 years ago.<\/p>\n

\n

It was the year 1517 when the German monk Martin Luther pinned his 95 Theses to the door of his Catholic church, denouncing the Catholic sale of indulgences \u2014 pardons for sins \u2014 and questioning papal authority. That led to his excommunication and the start of the Protestant Reformation.<\/p>\n

The Catholic Church reacted with the Counter Reformation, and mutual enmity led to decades of religious wars that devastated central Europe.<\/p>\n

Gerard O\u2019Connell, Vatican correspondent for the Jesuit magazine America<\/em>, says the pope\u2019s participation in commemorating the Reformation is proof of the extraordinary change in Catholic-Lutheran relations.<\/p>\n

\u201cA recognition, perhaps, that both sides missed something at the time of the Protestant Reformation,\u201d says O\u2019Connell. \u201cThe Catholic Church missed ways of reforming itself. Luther and those around him pressed in a way that just couldn\u2019t be taken on board, so, in a way, both sides misspoke.\u201d<\/p>\n

The pope\u2019s trip is in keeping with his efforts to reach out to other branches of Christianity \u2014 like the Russian Orthodox Church \u2014 and other faiths, including Islam and Judaism.<\/p>\n

A reconciliation<\/strong><\/p>\n

The animosity and resentments left by the Reformation only began to heal after the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, with the start of an ecumenical dialogue aimed at promoting Christian unity.<\/p>\n

There are still some doctrinal disputes. But Pope Francis says that while theologians iron out their differences, the two churches can work together on social issues like caring for the poor, migrants and refugees, and combating persecution of Christians.<\/p>\n

Jens-Martin Kruse, pastor of the Lutheran Church in Rome, says Francis\u2019 approach has been dubbed \u201cwalking ecumenism.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are moving together, this is a new experience that we are together on this walk,\u201d Kruse adds. \u201cWalking together, we find that we have lots of things more in [common than] we thought before.\u201d<\/p>\n

That raises the question of whether the Reformation might have been a complete misunderstanding.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe not a misunderstanding,\u201d says Kruse, \u201cbut today, we are at the point where a lot of these topics from Luther are common for Catholics and Lutherans.\u201d<\/p>\n

Praising Martin Luther<\/strong><\/p>\n

Last June, Pope Francis went so far as to praise Luther \u2014 once deemed a heretic by the Catholic Church \u2014 as a great reformer.<\/p>\n

On his flight back to Rome from Armenia, the pope told reporters: \u201cThe church was not a role model, there was corruption, there was worldliness, there was greed, and lust for power. He protested against this. And he was an intelligent man.\u201d<\/p>\n

[Keep reading. . ]<\/a><\/em><\/p><\/div>\n<\/blockquote><\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pope Francis is set to celebrate Reformation Day in a joint service with Swedish Lutherans. \u00a0A story from NPR quotes him praising Luther. It\u2019s appropriate for Catholics to celebrate Reformation Day! \u00a0As Pope Francis says, the church had become extremely corrupt. \u00a0Without the Reformation, there would be no Counter-Reformation, which is where much of today\u2019s\u00a0Catholicism […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1281,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,21,38],"tags":[4257,389,1386,2481,1854],"class_list":["post-25389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-church","category-holidays","category-reformation","tag-catholic-lutheran-dialogue","tag-catholicism","tag-martin-luther","tag-pope-francis","tag-reformation-day"],"yoast_head":"\nPope praises Luther<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Pope Francis is set to celebrate Reformation Day in a joint service with Swedish Lutherans. \u00a0A story from NPR quotes him praising Luther. 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