Just one reason why I can't join the Vicar of Christ in celebration of the heresiarch Luther:
... a shocking part of Luther’s legacy seems to have slipped though the cracks of the collective memory along the way: his vicious Anti-Semitism and its horrific consequences for the Jews and for Germany itself. At first, Luther was convinced that the Jews would accept the truth of Christianity and convert. Since they did not, he later followed in his treatise, On the Jews and Their Lies (1543), that “their synagogues or schools“ should be “set fire to … in honor of our Lord and of Christendom, so that God might see that we are Christian.“ He advised that the houses of Jews be “razed and destroyed,“ their “prayer books and Talmudic writings“ and “all cash and treasure of silver and gold“ be taken from them.
They should receive “no mercy or kindness,“ given “no legal protection,“ and “drafted into forced labor or expelled.“ He also claimed that Christians who “did not slay them were at fault.“ Luther thus laid part of the basic anti-Semitic groundwork for his Nazi descendants to carry out the Shoah. Indeed, Julius Streicher, editor of the anti-Semitic Nazi magazine “Der Stürmer,“ commented during the Nürnberg tribunal that Martin Luther could have been tried in his place.
All the more stunning that Germany should proclaim a special national holiday in the name of the anti-Semitic Martin Luther only 70 years after the Shoah. Although the general public may mostly be unaware of Luther’s views, the responsible clergy certainly is aware and has still chosen to declare a nationwide holiday.
It is no doubt laudable that the Synod of the Lutheran Church in Germany (EKD) distanced itself from Luther’s anti-Semitic statements in November 2011, and several other church representatives have done the same, yet how do they have no compunctions about declaring a major commemorative event to honor Luther, as if his sinister and hateful views and writings on the Jews are insignificant and trivial?
Times of Israel
The thing about the love of power and evil is that it casts out the work of sanctifying grace leavinf us thugish, corrupt and prone to all kinds of evil
10 comments:
In 1960 William L Shirer published his book, “The Rise and Fall of Nazi Germany”. In this book he examined developments in German history which he thought had helped the Nazis to become popular. One of these developments was the anti-Semitism of Martin Luther.
Correction: The book is called, "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich".
In northern Europe the Catholic liturgy is indistinguishable from the Lutheran one, almost invariably with Lutheran hymns to music composed by eg Cruger, Neander and Luther himself. It is as bad in its way as P*** I*****d and B********e F*****l.
Then there was the bizarre "happening" involving the Holy Father and the Lady Archbishop at Lund on 31 October last year.
Physiocrat - can anything really be as bad as the hymns by PI and BF?!
Damian Thompson has an article online entitled 'In the name of all that's holy, this is not music' in which he describes this type of music as 'Hildegard of Bingen meets Joan Baez in the 1970s cocktail lounge'!
However to be fair to PI I had occasion when in Lourdes during the Year of Mercy to see and hear a group of Italian pilgrims led by their Bishop processing into the Domaine singing 'Misericordes Sicut Pater'. It was a haunting melody and moved me greatly. I was to discover later that it had been written by PI and influenced by Taize Chant - so all is not lost.
Contrast Luther's anti-Semitism with the historical protection of and indeed solicitude toward the Jews by the Popes of Rome, as Rabbi David Dallin outlines in his book The Myth of Hitler's Pope,.
@Pelerin,
There are different sorts of awfulness. Singing Lutheran hymns at a Catholic Mass is like singing the Horst Wessel Lied at a Barmitzvah.
Starting the Papal Mass with Introit Gaudeamus.
Not only do we throw away our heritage, but such music destroys the spirit of the liturgy just as thoroughly as the banal new music, possibly more so since it was deliberately composed to be NOT-Catholic.
@Pelerin
That post went wrong. They started with the Vaughan Williams "For all the Saints". It could and should have started with the Gregorian introit Gaudeamus.
It was said of old that High Church Anglicans were more Catholic than the Pope. Can it now be said that we have a Pope more Lutheran than Luther?
Note the advice that "all cash and treasure of silver and gold" be taken from them: that was Looter, alright, as with all the 'reformers'.
The situation is becoming unbelievable. A group praying the Hail Mary in Brussels cathedral during a 'celebration' of the reformation have been removed by police. See Rorate Caeli.
'Je vous salue Marie, pleine de grace. Le Seigneur est avec vous...
Sainte Marie, Mere de Dieu, priez pour nous pauvres pecheurs, maintenant et a l'heure de notre mort.'
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