Pope to reconsider Martin Luther

From the Daily Mail (U.K.):

The Pope is planning to rehabilitate Martin Luther - whose actions instigated the Protestant Reformation – by arguing that he did not intend to split Christianity but only to purge the Church of corrupt practices.

Benedict XVI will issue his findings on the 16th-century German theologian after discussing him at the papal summer residence, Castelgandolfo, during his annual seminar of 40 fellow theologians, the Ratzinger Schülerkreis.

Luther was and condemned for heresy and excommunicated in 1521 by Pope Leo X, who had initially dismissed him as “a drunken German” and predicted he would “change his mind when sober”.

Vatican insiders say the 80-year-old Pope - himself born in Germany - will argue that his countryman was not a heretic after all.

The move, a month ahead of the third anniversary of Pope Benedict's election, is aimed at mending fences after July's blunt papal statement that the Protestant and Orthodox faiths are “not proper Churches”.

“We have much to learn from Luther, beginning with the importance he attached to the word of God,” said Cardinal Walter Kasper, head of the pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.

The cardinal added that the time had come for a “more positive” view of Luther, who could now be seen as having “anticipated aspects of reform which the [Catholic] Church has adopted over time”.

Read the full story here.

Martin Luther's 'popish' prayer

I’m reading Praying with Beads: Daily Prayers for the Christian Year by Nan Lewis Doerr and Virginia Stem Owens, hot off the presses from Eerdmans.

It’s a great little book with an outstanding introductory essay by Owens, who noted something about Martin Luther that caught my attention:


Though the rosary was widely used by the late Middle Ages, it was not officially sanctioned by the pope until 1520.

During the Reformation, Luther did not abandon the rosary, though he shortened the Ave Maria to this form: “Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou and the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.” In this way he eliminated the plea for Mary to pray for the supplicant. He advised his followers to use the rosary as an aid to meditation.

The more iconoclastic Reformers, including Calvin, forbade the use of prayer beads altogether. They concentrated their attention on scriptural texts and devotional printed matter….Thus prayer beads, along with other sensory aids to devotion like religious statuary, paintings, and stained-glass windows, were condemned as “popish.”

In the Church of England, however, the rosary survived, though its practice faded over the next few centuries. England’s Catholic minority continued to support the practice, and some Anglicans today still pray the rosary instead of or in addition to Anglican prayer beads.

For more information on the book, see http://www.eerdmans.com/shop/product.asp?p_key=9780802827272.

I’ll be reviewing this book soon at http://www.liturgicalcredo.com/ .