Are you ready to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the Reformation? part 3

Letter to Calvin Martin continued...

Last week I left off with the Luther quote, “It is not forbidden that a man should have more than one wife.”  Luther said this for a very specific reason.  In 1523 Phillip the Fair, Duke of Hesse, married Christine of Saxony, daughter of Frederick of Saxony. Remember him, Martin Luther’s first protector who hid Martin in the Wartburg Castle? She was as ugly as the back side of a mud fence and a heavy drinker. This was not a problem for Phillip, an aristocrat; there were plenty of women available. Still, the whole thing was bothersome. Luther said that Phillip was living in sin and thus could not receive communion. Phillip was grieved in conscience, but he couldn’t just dump the daughter of the duke of Saxony.

One of Luther’s collaborators, Phillip Melanchthon came up with a novel solution that he thought might apply just as well to Henry VIII of England. Why couldn’t the King of England or Phillip the Fair or another rich important person have more than one wife? After all, the patriarchs and kings in the Bible had busloads of wives. Hadn’t Doktor Luther said as much?  Armed with this deep spiritual insight, Phillip the Fair decided to marry the daughter of one of his sister's ladies-in-waiting, Margarethe von der Saale. Margarethe hesitated. She wanted to hear from theologians as well as Philip’s first wife and her family back in Saxony.

Philip’s first wife, Christine was fine with the arrangement as was her family, probably glad to have the old sot living elsewhere. The Lutheran theologians were hesitant. After all Luther, like Henry VIII of England, disputed the pope’s right to give dispensations. Now Philip the Fun Loving wanted a dispensation to have two wives. Bucer, another collaborator of Luther’s, understood Phillip’s logical argument that Phillip would ally himself with the Catholic Emperor if the Protestant theologians didn’t agree to the marriage, and the new religion would be toast. The Wittenberg theologians wisely acceded to the Duke’s finely crafted arguments. Martin the brave, Martin who probably didn’t say at the Diet of Worms, “Here I stand I can do no other!” acquiesced, but told Phillip to keep it a secret.  Having secured the “secret advice of a confessor” namely Luther and Melanchthon, Philip married wife number two on March 4, 1590. A few weeks later Philip's sister spilled the beans and the scandal ran through Germany like beer through a German. 

Luther, refused to admit his part in the mess, claiming that it was a matter of the seal of confession. Apparently Luther could still be Catholic went he wanted to be. After all, he had warned Phillip that, “When it comes to writing, I shall be quite competent to wriggle out of it and to leave your Grace in the lurch.” In other words Luther was smart enough not to leave a paper trail. The dodge didn’t work. Luther lost the leadership of the reformation to John Calvin, the disciple of Luther’s archenemy Huldrych Zwingli, who became the rising star of the protestant revolt. Most protestant and so called non- denominational churches trace their roots back to Calvin, not to Luther. Lutheranism is a relatively small part of modern Christianity. There are probably around 100 million Lutherans in the world. There are 1billion, 200 million Catholics in the world. The other 600 or 700 million Protestants in the world are various mutations of Calvinism.

I have already mentioned Luther’s humility. I would like to revisit the topic. He once humbly said, “What I teach and write remains true even though the whole world should fall to pieces over it.”  He had no idea how prophetic these words would be. In his tract, “On War Against the Turk”, Luther is far less critical of the Muslim Turks than he is of the Pope, whom he calls an anti-Christ, or the Jews, whom he describes as “the Devil incarnate.” Christianity has fractured into a myriad of sects, some large some small. Luther weakened Europe just as the Caliphs of Islam were about to overwhelm her. Were it not for the steadfastness of the Hapsburgs and Spain and especially the bravery of the Poles, all of the women in Europe would be wearing burkas and walking behind their husbands.

All the deprecation of marriage and women, all the polygamy and violence would not have bothered Luther one little bit, though the Islamic prohibition against alcohol might have been difficult for him, despite his many tea-totaling followers:

“Whoever drinks beer, he is quick to sleep; whoever sleeps long, does not sin; whoever does not sin, enters Heaven! Thus, let us drink beer!”  A couple more Luther quotes: “I am but a man prone to let himself be swept off his feet by society, drunkenness, and the movements of the flesh.” And, “Why, do you think, do I drink too much wine ...? It is when the Devil prepares to torment me and mock me and I wish to take the lead.” 

In a couple of years, the man will be lionized, but he sounds more like Rasputin than Christ. In Luther are laid the seeds of our current disaster, the redefinition of the family, a private, self-serving morality and all the rest. Our licentious age finds its parent in Luther;

“Be a sinner, and let your sins be strong, but let your trust in Christ be stronger, and rejoice in Christ who is the victor over sin, death, and the world. We will commit sins while we are here, for this life is not a place where justice resides… No sin can separate us from Him, even if we were to kill or commit adultery thousands of times each day.”

Europe is dying. It was Luther who killed it. The terminal illness was made obvious by the German Nationalism that caused the Franco-Prussian war when the Prussian Lutherans and Calvinist tried to make an empire. It matured in the First World War and finally exploded in an orgy of hatred, murder and racism in the Nazi madness which gripped the German-speaking peoples in the middle of the 20th century. Hitler and his Nazis skillfully used Luther’s anti-Semitism to inflame an entire people to insanity. These are Luther quotes, not Hitler quotes:

“My advice, as I said earlier, is: First, that their synagogues be burned down, and that all who are able toss sulfur and pitch; it would be good if someone could also throw in some hellfire… Second, that all their books– their prayer books, their Talmudic writings, also the entire Bible be taken from them, not leaving them one leaf, and that these be preserved for those who may be converted…Third, that they be forbidden on pain of death to praise God, to give thanks, to pray, and to teach publicly among us and in our country…Fourth, that they be forbidden to utter the name of God within our hearing. For we cannot with a good conscience listen to this or tolerate it… He who hears this name [God] from a Jew must inform the authorities, or else throw sow dung at him when he sees him and chase him away.” (Martin Luther; On the Jews and Their Lies).

It sounds a lot like Kristallnacht, when the Nazis burned the synagogues and the scrolls. Martin continues:

 “Burn their synagogues. Forbid them all that I have mentioned above. Force them to work and treat them with every kind of severity, as Moses did in the desert and slew three thousand… If that is no use, we must drive them away like mad dogs, in order that we may not be partakers of their abominable blasphemy and of all their vices, and in order that we may not deserve the anger of God and be damned with them. I have done my duty. Let everyone see how he does his. I am excused.”

and

“If I had to baptize a Jew, I would take him to the bridge of the Elbe, hang a stone round his neck and push him over with the words I baptize thee in the name of Abraham.”

 “The Jews deserve to be hanged on gallows seven times higher than ordinary thieves.”

Doktor Luther wrote the prescription for the death camps of the Nazi monsters. Hitler was the pharmacist who filled the prescription.  So what will I be doing to celebrate Reformation day 2017? I suppose I will be hiding under my bed saying the Rosary.

Yours,

The Rev. Know-it-all

Are you ready to celebrate the 500th Anniversary of the Reformation? part 2

Letter to Calvin Martin continued...

Martin Luther and the Poor of the Land

Martin had let the genie out of the bottle.  In January of 1521, Martin was summoned to the Diet of Worms by Emperor Charles VI.  A note on the Diet of Worms:  The word Diet comes for the Latin word “dies” meaning “day.” A parliament was referred to in German as a Reichstag or Landtag, (tag meaning day in German) and Worms is a city in west central Germany. Worms is derived from a Celtic word meaning settlement in a swampy area. Swamptown, more or less.  It has the sense of “days of meeting” or “court days,” or, in a sense, “a day in court.” This has nothing to do with slimy invertebrates. The town is pronounced “Vawrms.” The invertebrates are Wuermer, pronounced “Voeermer.” Sort of.

To properly pronounce some German vowels it is necessary to first suck on a lemon for half an hour. I suppose it could be called the Swamptown Parliament, but it is great fun to call the parliament of the city of Worms Germany by its classic name the Diet of Worms. It has provided endless school boy jokes, things about Charles downing a Fifth and forcing Luther to eat a diet of worms. This is not what happened.

Martin was given a safe passage to and from the Diet, but he was declared an outlaw by the Emperor. He mysteriously disappeared on the way home. He was kidnapped by Prince Frederick of Saxony who hid him in Wartburg Castle, where he lived under an assumed name (Juenker Joerge, translated Sir George, more or less) and translated the Bible the way he thought it should be translated. He also drank beer and went hunting wild boar. The castle did not have cable TV or Wi-Fi)

After about a year, Martin got bored with boar hunting and boring translation work and decided to risk going back to Wittenberg. The place was a mess. Luther wrote, “During my absence, Satan has entered my sheepfold, and committed ravages which I cannot repair by writing, but only by my personal presence and living word.” Fr. Martin preached a series of Latin sermons in which he talked about patience, and taught that violence was not the way.

The peasants loved Luther’s new religion because if the priests didn’t need popes and bishops, they certainly didn’t need the landlords and the aristocracy. “Do you know what the Devil thinks when he sees men use violence to propagate the Gospel? He sits with folded arms behind the fire of hell, and says with malignant looks and frightful grin: ‘Ah, how wise these madmen are to play my game! Let them go on; I shall reap the benefit. I delight in it.’ But when he sees the Word running and contending alone on the battle-field, then he shudders and shakes for fear.”

Wittenberg calmed down, but the rest of the German-speaking world was up for grabs. The Zwickau prophets Nicholas Storch and Thomas Muentzer encouraged the peasants to rise up and smash the gentry. Luther the nonviolent decided that enough was enough, so he wrote a tract with the charming name, “Against the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of Peasants,” in which he implored the nobility to smash the peasants.

“Therefore let everyone who can, smite, slay, and stab, secretly or openly, remembering that nothing can be more poisonous, hurtful, or devilish than a rebel ... For baptism does not make men free in body and property, but in soul; and the Gospel does not make goods common, except in the case of those who, of their own free will, do what the apostles and disciples did in Acts 4.  They did not demand, as do our insane peasants in their raging, that the goods of others, of Pilate and Herod, should be common, but only their own goods. Our peasants, however, want to make the goods of other men common, and keep their own for themselves. Fine Christians they are! I think there is not a devil left in hell; they have all gone into the peasants. Their raving has gone beyond all measure.”

“What strange times are these when a prince can enter heaven by the shedding of blood more certainly than others by means of prayer!"           

"It is no longer a question of tolerance, patience, pity. It is the hour of wrath and for the sword; the hour for mercy is past... No one need think that the world can be ruled without blood. The civil sword shall and must be red and bloody.”

Thus Luther the nonviolent reformer and friend of the poor.

Martin and Katarina

Luther slowly changed form Father Martin to Dr. Luther over the next few years. In 1523 Martin helped 12 nuns escape from the convent by hiding them in herring barrels. He managed to get them all married off, except one, Katharina von Bora, so he married her. She ever after called him “Herr Doktor.”  They had six children together. Katharina was 26. Martin was 41.

Doktor Luther really believed that sex was an accommodation to human lust. For Catholics marriage is a sacrament, human sexual activity in marriage is a source of grace. For Luther marriage was a roll in the hay. Here are some quotes collected by Frank Nelte which I have borrowed from the web.

“The body asks for a woman and must have it; to marry is a remedy for fornication...”

“Since wedlock and marriage are a worldly business, we clergy and ministers of the Church have nothing to order or decree about it, but must leave each town ... to follow its own usage and custom.”

In other words marriage is not a sacrament. It is a civil contract. In this sense, Luther is the inventor of civil marriage.

Intimacy in marriage is essentially sinful according to Luther. “In spite of all the good I say of married life, I will not grant so much to nature as to admit that there is no sin in it ... no conjugal due is ever rendered without sin… The matrimonial duty is never performed without sin. The matrimonial act is a sin differing in nothing from adultery and fornication.”

Doktor Luther doesn’t seem to have held women in very high regard either “The Word and work of God is quite clear, that women were made either to be wives or prostitutes... Even though they grow weary and wear themselves out with child-bearing, it does not matter; let them go on bearing children till they die, that is what they are there for.” And, most interesting, “It is not forbidden that a man should have more than one wife.”

PS If you don’t believe this stuff, look it up. I am not making any of it up.

Next week, Luther bobbles the ball!

Is Charismatic Renewal for Real? part 7

(Letter to Kerry Zmatick continued)

Once again, I apologize to my faithful readers (a group of about eight, two of whom are canaries anxiously staring at the bottom of their cages.) You probably have no interest in all this nonsense, but I think it may be of some importance.

The  Charismatic movement is bigger and more dynamic that most people think. It has lost a lot of steam here in the USA where it started, but among African, Asian, and Latin American Catholics it is huge and very influential. Years ago, in 2002 in his article “The Next Christianity”, (Atlantic Monthly October 2002) Phillip Jenkins claimed that the future of the world is the southern hemisphere, it is Christian and it is Charismatic. This was before the recent explosion of Christianity in China. He challenges the much touted claim that Islam is the fastest growing religion. It seems that in terms of adult conversions to the faith, Charismatic Christianity is the wave of the future. We don’t see that here because not only is the “American” church dying, America is dying. The vitality of the Church in this country is pretty much found among immigrants from Asia, Latin America and Africa.

Face it. If this is true, then we Catholics had better make sure we get it right and continue to offer the unchanging truth of Catholic Faith and its two thousand years of unbroken tradition. That means that those who are Charismatic had better do their best to understand what the Holy Spirit is doing among them and to integrate what they have received into the whole Church for the well being of the whole Church. To summarize the axe that I have been grinding for the past few weeks, I will try to get it into a sentence so simple that even the two canaries above mentioned and I can understand. Here goes:

About a hundred years after the Reformation, there was a reaction to the dryness of classical Protestantism that resulted in the Pietist movement (1725). This in turn resulted in the Methodist movement (1800) which in its turn engendered the  Pentecostal movement (1900) now called the Charismatic movement. This world-wide movement is thus an odd hybrid of Catholic spirituality clothed in definitions and theology taken from Protestantism. Such phrases as “Are you saved?” and “Have you been baptized in the Holy Spirit?” are understood more in terms of Reformation legalism than Biblical conversion. The terms in which these realities are described are important.

The movement is important and so the terms are important. To inaccurately define these experiences limits and even diminishes them. If for example you have a forensic -- that is legal -- understanding of salvation, you will answer certain questions differently. To the question, "Are you saved?"  You might answer, “Yes, I am saved and  I needn’t do anything more until Jesus comes except go to the occasional prayer meeting.”  If you have a Catholic, i.e. Biblical, understanding of the question, you might answer, “Yes, I am being saved, changed day by day into the image of Christ for the salvation of the world.” 

If you have a forensic understanding of this outpouring of the Holy Spirit you might say “Yes, I have the Baptism in the Holy spirit. I know because I have the gift of tongues as evidence and I have the other gifts of the Holy Spirit.” Remember, as mentioned earlier, the phrase, “Baptism in the Holy Spirit” appears nowhere in the Scriptures, and speaking in tongues, prophecy, healing discernment of spirit, are never called gifts. They are charisms. So what’s the difference? You can have a gift (in Greek: “dorea”). You can only receive a charism (in Greek “charisma”).

If I give you the gift of a large picture of dogs playing poker, it is yours. You may keep it. Please do. The word charism has the sense of a favor, a blessing. It is related to the word for grace, “charis” It is grace operating in you, not a trophy to be displayed on your mantle. A charsim would be if I extended you the honor of representing me at the Frostbite Falls Religious Broadcast of the Week Award Banquet were I to receive the “Loony” (the coveted plastic trophy that depicts a loon holding a microphone). That would be a charism. Were I to say, "Keep the trophy," that would be a gift. 

They are different. A gift is mine. A charism is not mine. It is God’s favor, allowing me to be used for the preaching of His kingdom and the up building of His Church. It proves nothing about me, except that God loves me and is generous to a sinner. Gifts are to own. Charismata are to use. This is at the heart of the Charismatic problem. For many of us, to be Charismatic is to go to a wonderful prayer meeting where I really feel the presence of God and there is a really good music ministry and the speaker is dynamic and there is healing and people falling out in the Spirit, and then we go to Bakers Square afterwards for coffee. Hallelujah. For some people, the Baptism in the Holy Spirit is a kind of hobby.

To be baptized in the Holy Spirit has nothing to do with the Baptism in the Holy Spirit. “Huh?”  I can hear you say. “Now Father! You are just being irritating.” That may be true, but I have a point. Let us look at the text. The verb phrase “to baptize in the Holy Spirit” appears only twice in the new testament, both times referring to the same sermon of St. John the Baptist. (Cf. Matt 3:12 and Luke 3:17)

“The ax is laid to the root of the trees. Therefore every tree which does not produce good fruit is cut down, and cast into the fire. I indeed baptize you with water for the sake of  repentance. but He that comes after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to carry. He shall baptize you with the Holy Spirit, and with fire. His winnowing fan is in His hand, and He will thoroughly purge His floor, and gather His wheat into the barn; but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”

To make bread before this marvelous mechanized age, you started by cutting wheat and throwing it onto a threshing floor, which was usually a large flat stone on top of a hill. You brought up oxen, harnessed to a heavy sledge. The oxen would then tread out the grain, going in circles dragging the sledge behind them. The crushing of hooves and sledge broke open the hulls of the grain and separated the grain from the chaff. Then you would take a large flat wooden shovel and toss the crushed wheat into the air until the wind separated the lighter chaff from the heavier grain. Two piles would form, a large one of chaff, then a small one of wheat kernels. The chaff would be burned and the wheat ground once more to make flour which was once again subjected to fire in order to make bread. 

The temple was built over what had once been the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite. The rough stone of the threshing floor was the very floor of the Holy of Holies where rested the ark of the covenant. The center of Israelite worship was a threshing floor like the one John spoke of. This Baptizing in the Holy Spirit was symbolized in the very heart of the old covenant and there was to be a new temple and new threshing floor to make a new bread for sacrifice when the old covenant was at last fulfilled. Threshing involves crushing and burning and the separation of chaff from wheat by the wind. It is telling to realize that in Greek and in Hebrew “wind” is the same word as “Spirit”. Crushing, burning, separation from what is useless. Does this sound like what most people mean when they talk about the Baptism in the Holy Spirit? No, they mean a seminar after which there is usually coffee and cookies. The immersion in the Divine Presence is not an experience. It is a roaring and mighty wind that separates one from what one holds dear. It is a fire that purifies by steady and repeated  burning away of whatever is useless.

That is certainly what started in my life on January 24, 1968.  I cannot say that I have the Baptism in the Holy Spirit. I have been Baptized in the Holy Spirit and that night so long ago was when the fire was lit, that continues to burn and crush and purify, if I let it. To be washed in the Divine Presence is a fearful thing. It is not some kind of merit badge or graduation ceremony. It is a like the wrestling match between Jacob and the angel of God.  There is joy, but it is hardly an entertainment. It is fire and it is a mighty wind that will take you away from all that you thought was important to you. It is not given to anyone to make life better. It, like love, makes life in this world much more difficult and at the same time infinitely more purposeful. To be Baptized in the Holy Spirit is to offer yourself on the altar of the new temple, and having passed through the fire in the altar of sacrifice, to enter the threshing floor, the true Holy of Holies.

Next week: so what about the gifts of the Holy Spirit that you say aren’t gifts?