Pope Francis embraces the president of the Lutheran World Federation Bishop Munib Younan during an ecumenical prayer in Sweden in 2016. (L’Osservatore Romano photo)
Last year, both the Lutheran and Catholic churches celebrated the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther’s pinning of his 95 Theses to the door of his local church in Wittenberg in October 1517.
The Holy Father has enjoined us to view Luther in a positive light, even if it has taken five centuries to do so. Pope Francis has been receiving Lutheran pilgrims from Finland and has himself visited Sweden as part of a reconciliation with the Lutheran Church – all this with the optimism that we can finally heal the wounds of division.
Peter Stanford has just published a brilliant new biography Martin Luther: Catholic Dissident in which he describes the profound physical, mental, and spiritual torment that Luther endured in his wrestling with his own faith and his relationship with God. Rachel Kelly comments on the book in a recent article in the Catholic Herald: “Reading this impressive book it occurred to me, as someone who has suffered two major depressive episodes, that if Luther were alive today he might be diagnosed with depression, or possibly as bipolar.”
Here is a brief history of Luther’s life:
Martin Luther (1483-1546), founder of the German Reformation, was born in Thuringia, in Saxony. He received his first education at Magdeburg and then at Erfurt University. In 1505 he entered the monastery of the Augustinian Hermits and was ordained a priest in 1507. One day, he was thrown to the ground by a lightning bolt. In deep panic, he vowed to St. Anne that he would become a monk. The following year he was sent to be a professor of moral philosophy in the faculty of arts at the University of Wittenberg and retained this position until his death.
In 1510 Luther went to Rome on affairs of his order. Soon after his return to Wittenberg he became a doctor of theology and professor of Bible exegesis. During the years 1512-1519, however, he developed insights concerning man’s incapacity to justify himself which led him initially to modify, and then to reject, this position. He came to believe that man is unable to respond to God without divine grace, that works or religious observance are irrelevant, and man can be justified only through faith (per solam fidem) by the merits of Christ imputed to him. During this period, Luther consolidated his doctrine of man’s justification before God (coram Deo), emphasizing that justification was a work of God within man.
When Pope Leo X granted indulgences for contributions toward the renovation of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, Luther strongly opposed this and denied both the primacy of the Pope and his infallibility in general councils.
By this time, Luther was the object of considerable admiration among theologians. His program of reform was further consolidated by a direct appeal to the German people to take the initiative in reforming the Church, rejecting the distinction between the “spiritual” and “temporal” orders, by insisting on the right to challenge the Pope on the interpretation of Scripture, and the right of the laity to summon a reforming general council.
He also encouraged princes to abolish tributes to Rome, the celibacy of the clergy, Masses for the dead, and many other Catholic practices. He criticized the subjection of the laity identified with the denial to them of Communion in both kinds, and the doctrine of transubstantiation.
Martin Luther was condemned in the bull Exsurge Domine which censured his theses. He replied by burning the bull, and this action led to his excommunication by the bull Decet Romanum Pontificem of Jan. 3, 1521.
In the aftermath of his excommunication, Luther was summoned before the Diet of Worms where he refused to recant. On May 26, 1521, his teachings were formally condemned in the Edict of Worms and put under the ban of the Empire. Fearing his safety, he was under guardian’s protection. In many respects, this was one of the most constructive periods of Luther’s career, witnessing the beginning of his translation of the Bible into German.
Having already abandoned many Catholic practices, inclusive private Masses, and fasts, Luther finally discarded his Augustinian habit in 1524 and married the former Cistercian nun, Katharina von Bora in June 1525.
But some years before, in 1518, Luther had presented the bishop of Brandenburg with a series of Resolutiones on the 95 Theses, requesting that the bishop strike out whatever he found displeasing. He wrote: “I know that Christ does not need me. Nothing is so difficult to state as the true teaching of the Church, especially when one is a serious sinner as I am.”
He ended his letter of explanation by urging reform of the Church and pointing out that, as recent events proved – namely the Lateran Council, reform is the concern not of the Pope alone, nr of the cardinals, but of the entire Christian world.