What If Luther Had Heard This?

Published on by D. G. Hart

Another pope has the chance to address the German bishops:

New structures keep being created, but the faithful are lacking. It is a sort of new Pelagianism, which leads to us putting our trust in administration, in the perfect apparatus. But an excessive centralisation only complicates the life of the Church and her missionary dynamic, instead of helping her (cf. Evangelii gaudium, 32). The Church is not a closed system, constantly revolving around the same questions and puzzles. The Church is alive, she responds to local people, she can make restless and stimulate. She has a face, which is not rigid. She is a Body that moves, grows and has feelings. And this belongs to Jesus Christ.

The current need is for pastoral reorientation, and also “to make [the structures of the Church] more mission-oriented, to make ordinary pastoral activity on every level more inclusive and open, to inspire in pastoral workers a constant desire to go forth and in this way to elicit a positive response from all those whom Jesus summons to friendship with himself” (Evangelii gaudium, 27). Certainly, the conditions are not necessarily favourable in modern society. A measure of worldliness still prevails. Worldliness deforms souls and stifles the awareness of reality.

2 thoughts on “What If Luther Had Heard This?”

  1. Very nice blog that fellow has there.

    As this went on for a while, into the new year of 2006, the seeds of the question I had ask myself were sown: who am I to say that all these people, who are obviously smart and educated, are wrong? Isn’t it terribly egotistical to pretend that I have the answers, somehow gleaned from my own thought and experience, and these people have, at some point, all been deluded and have been able to keep up that delusion, often for years and decades?

    What of, for example, the parish priest, an art historian who has been sharing the Word of God with people, administered the sacrament for 25 years and counting? Has he, with his life of study and ministry, simply been deluding himself? What of the lady from a Protestant background, daughter of a minister, who is at home in the Catholic Church? Can she be said to be delusional, after making the unlikely and undoubtedly difficult choice to become Catholic? To simply say that, yes, these people are delusional is presumptuous, even arrogant.

    https://incaelo.wordpress.com/about-the-author/why-am-i-catholic/

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  2. I’ve thought for some time that in the Post Conciliar Church the Reformation never would have happened, or nothing like it did. Luther likely would have been told to follow his conscience on the issue, and if pressed by a large number an order would have been formed emphasizing justification and faith.

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