Among Catholic-Protestant splits on display during Pope
Benedict’s visit to Germany is a disagreement over whether
Martin Luther, the 16th century reformer who launched the
split in western Christianity, has now been rehabilitated.
Pope Leo X cast Luther out of the Roman Catholic Church in
1521 with a vociferous decree branding him “the slave of a
depraved mind” and calling his followers a “pernicious and
heretical sect.” But his present-day successor, Benedict,
spoke so positively of Luther’s deep faith during a visit to
the monk’s old monastery in Erfurt on Friday that Germany’s
top Protestant bishop announced Luther had effectively been
rehabilitated.
“Luther has experienced a de facto rehabilitation today
through this appreciation of his work,” Bishop Nikolaus
Schneider, head of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD),
announced to journalists on Friday after talks with
Benedict. “We heard this very clearly from the mouth of the
pope,” he said. “What follows now formally is another
question … but that’s not so important for me.”
Vatican spokesman Rev Federico Lombardi begged to differ on
Saturday. “To say that would be exaggerated,” he told
journalists in Freiburg, the last stop on the pope’s
four-day tour of his homeland. “What this is about is having
deep faith and I think it emphasises the commonalities we
have in our love of faith.”
What happened 490 years ago is taking on new significance
in Germany because Protestants here are preparing to
celebrate the 500th anniversary of Luther’s 95 Theses of
1517, the manifesto of dissent that eventually led to the
Reformation. The Protestants would like Catholics to say
Luther was not a heretic but a major Christian theologian.
“It would be nice if they could declare him a doctor of the
Church,” Erfurt’s Lutheran Bishop Ilse Junkermann told
Reuters.
A German, Benedict is the first pope who has read Luther,
knows Lutherans well and appreciates what he sees as his
positive aspects — his deep faith, his focus on Jesus, his
emphasis on the Bible and his mastery of the German
language. As Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the pope also played
a key role in a 1999 Catholic-Lutheran accord saying they no
longer disagreed on some complex theological issues Luther
raised and lifting anathemas (denunciations) the two sides
hurled at each other back then.
Schneider said some give and take would be needed on both
sides to come to an agreement by 2017. For example, he said
his church would not present Luther as “an untouchable hero
who never did anything wrong.” It is not clear whether the
Vatican, which does not like to officially undo the work of
a previous pope, can or will go as far as actually
rehabilitating Luther.
Some Lutherans bristle at the very idea of rehabilitation,
saying they don’t need a Vatican stamp of approval.
Vatican officials have suggested in the past that no
official rehabilitation was needed because the ban expired
at Luther’s death. “One cannot do anything for Martin
Luther now because Martin Luther, wherever he is, is not
worried about these condemnations,” Cardinal Edward Cassidy,
then the Vatican’s top ecumenical official, said in 1999.
Schneider said he had not yet invited the pope to join the
2017 commemorations. “I have not reached that point, but I
invited (Benedict) to take a different view of our
celebration as one of the power of the Gospel and the
theology of God,” he said.
