Editor’s Note. This was published in The Wanderer November 9, 1967
By Jerome Docherty, O.S.B
Being a senior citizen I am an Oldster, and therefore just 60 years out of date to the Youngsters. And as for the Council of Trent, well that is just 400 years out of date! It is very strange therefore to me, an Oldster, to see the Youngsters resurrecting Luther who died just 430 years ago! If their only fault were inconsistency one could be tolerant. But their main fault is very grave. Their efforts to re-evaluate and rehabilitate Luther constitute a severe judgment and condemnation of all the Popes who dealt with Luther or managed the Council of Trent, of that same Ecumenical Council itself, and of all the contemporary theologians, many of whom were saints.
WHOLESALE CONDEMNATION
OF SAINTS AND SCHOLARS
OF SAINTS AND SCHOLARS
The Popes, the Council and the theologians are all condemned as lacking the ability to enter into Luther’s mind or rise to the level of his lofty thought. Is not this presumption on the part of men who lack the mental acumen of the Popes, scholars and saints of Luther’s day? These were all learned men, and at the least, masters in-theology, and knew more about Catholic theology than Dr. Martin Luther. Many of them were intellectual giants, like Lainez, Salmeron, Peter Canisius, Baronius. Ignorance of this fact may excuse your presumption, but cannot change it. Just list the Popes and scholars of the day: Leo X, Adrian VI, Clement VII, Paul III, Marcellus, Julius III, Pius IV, Pius V, taking in the period from 1513 to 1572. Then the theologians: St. John Fisher, Cardinal Cajetan, St. Cajetan, Fr. John Eck, St. Ignatius Loyola, St. Francis Xavier, St. Francis Borgia, St. Charles Borromeo, St. Philip Neri, St. Peter Canisius, Lainez, Salmeron, Baronius, Cardinal Pole, Fr. Sanders. Now it is plain matter of history that all these Popes, scholars and saints passed exactly the same judgment upon Luther. They could not all have been dumb. They could not all have conspired to treat him badly. Then how explain the fact of their unanimity? The explanation is very simple. They all called him and Calvin and the rest “Novatores —
The Innovators,” because that is precisely what they were. They threw out the old dogmas of the Church and introduced their own new and revolutionary views. Now the Protestant historian, Harnack, goes along with that: “In Luther’s Reformation the old dogmatic Christianity was discarded and a new evangelical view substituted.” Harnack thought Luther was right in doing so. He never suggests that the Popes and theologians did not understand what he was doing.(...)
May I quote a born Catholic? Philip Hughes puts all this in a nutshell: “What Luther, Calvin and the rest did, was not to reform the Catholic system in which they were bred, but to build up new systems, systems based on their revolutionary theological theories.” (Popular History Of The Catholic Church, Image Book, p. 158.) Again, “What the movement will be chiefly, in Luther’s intention, is not a crusade to reform the moral lives of Catholics, clerics as well as layfolk, but rather a crusade against Catholicism itself, .observant, conscientious, dutiful Catholicism, now considered to be a corruption of the Gospel of Christ. And on his own showing, according to his own account, the origins of his stupendous conviction lie in his own personal experience of the ineffectiveness and the mischievousness of Catholicism as a solution offered him for his spiritual troubles, and in his own divinely guided discovery of the true meaning of the religion of Christ.” (Popular History Of The Reformation, p. 9 1 . )
I always show these two passages to anybody, priest, Religious or lay, who comes to me with the wishful thinking about Luther and the phantasy that he never would have left the Church had he foreseen the consequences. What astonishes me is that without exception my students and friends are amazed at these statements of a great historian, and their admission that they never got that angle before. What has happened to history in our Catholic schools and seminaries?
This leads me naturally to discuss another phantasy dear to many Protestants and Catholics alike. Let the Protestant historian, Meissinger, formulate it: “If Luther returned today . . . he would finds to his astonishment a Roman Church which he never would have attacked in her present aspect . . . above all he would see . . . that not one of the abuses Which were the occasion of his break with Rome remains in existence.” (Quoted and endorsed by Karl Adam in Roots Of The Reformation, Canterbury Books, Sheed and Ward, p. 62.) I find it hard to have to contradict two such fine scholars. But I must as this phantasy is just too widespread among Catholics. A regards the abuses, none of which now remains in. existence, if Luther had been the only person to raise his voice, or the first to protest, I might consider the statement. But it is totally false. Has nobody ever read the almost abject admissions of Pope Adrian VI, that most holy man so shabbily treated by Luther? Has nobody read St. Thomas More, or Erasmus’ or the opening address at the Council of Trent? Very likely not. And this is my pet gripe. Today people want to discuss history without reading history.
Anyhow, we have to face up to the plain fact that it was not only abuses which he (Luther) labeled as abuses. He dubbed abuses the things most sacred to the faith of Catholics: the Papacy, the priesthood, the Sacrifice of the Mass, etc., etc.
So, were he to come back today, I ask you to consider what kind of a headache he would have with the following:
Papal infallibility,
The Council’s teaching about the Magisterium of the Church,
The Church’s firm adherence to the principle of monasticism, with a special stress on the contemplative orders,
The encyclical, “Humani Generis,” with its reassertion of Trent’s doctrine on Original Sin,
The encyclical “Sacra Virginitas,” and Pope Paul’s recent one on celibacy,
The encyclical on the Holy Eucharist, with its strong reaffirmation of Transubstantiation, the power of the priesthood, etc.,
The great Biblical encyclicals stressing the old principles of interpretation, especially two:
The Bible is not the sole rule of faith,
The Church alone has the exclusive authority and right to interpret Scripture.
Do you think he would be happy about any of these “Popish corruptions” as he called them all in his own day? I think the answer is patent.