The Road From Worms |
by William Hoffman
April 1984
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The day Martin Luther
ceremonially cremated the papal bull Exurge Domine, Magellan was sailing
up the coast of what is now Chile. A few hundred miles east of the German
bonfire Copernicus was leading the defense of his uncle's bishopric against the
Teutonic Knights. Some years later he would turn to one of Luther's printers in
Wittenburg to publish the mathematical basis of his heliocentric theory, about
the same time that Vesalius was publishing his revolutionary work on the human
body in Basel. The world was changing and the Church wasn't keeping up.
Last December
11, 463 years and a day after Luther burned the bull of excommunication, a pope
preached in a Lutheran church. In the interim, the atom was split, the
biochemical secret of life was revealed, and a man walked on the moon, events
that occurred in this century and evidently owed nothing or organized religion.
But modern science was born in Luther's time and nurtured by the Reformation.
One of the books converted to ashes outside Wittenberg's Elster Gate was the
canon law, the backbone of the receding medieval order.
Time seems to
be disintegrating as the third millennium of the Christian era approaches.
Science has enabled us to measure time in nanoseconds, which is how long it
takes to transmit a bit of information or trigger a bomb. Events outrun their
context. Ideological rivals threaten to annihilate 7,000 years of civilization,
which science has made it possible to do in minutes. No wonder that
Christianity's age-old family quarrels pale to insignificance in the eyes of
many of its adherents. "It's never made any sense to me. We all worship
the same Christ," says a Catholic who was forbidden to enter a Lutheran
church during his boyhood in North Dakota.
Christians number more
than a billion people, nearly a fourth of the world's population and by far the
largest body of believers on earth. Of course, no theologian or church leader
wanting to be taken seriously would venture that the diverse and fragmented
Christian churches will be substantially united as they enter the third
millennium, if they enter it at all. The movement toward Christian unity is not
yet a century old and there is nearly a millennium of disunity to overcome. But
some would point out that even dogmatic religion has not escaped the dizzying
pace of change in the 20th century. After all, a pope preached in a Lutheran church.
That would have been unimaginable just a few decades ago.
Pope John
Paul II's visit to Rome's Christuskirche made headlines in the New York
Times and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Rome's communist daily
Unita also covered the event, a reminder that nowhere was the 500th
anniversary of Luther's birth been celebrated with more fanfare than in
officially atheist East Germany. Luther's contribution to German nationalism
and the power of the modern state has not escaped the notice of communist party
boss Erich Honecker.
To skeptics
of ecumenism, the visit was a symbolic gesture signifying nothing, a sop to the
hope cult. To ecumenical scholars and partisans, it was a dramatic
manifestation of what John Paul has called the central concern of his pontificate
-- "die Einheit aller Christen," as he told the Lutheran congregation
of German diplomatic and business people. A year and a half earlier he had been
the first pope to set foot on British soil. He celebrated Mass in Westminister
Cathedral and joined with the Archbishop of Canterbury in an ecumenical
service. Before that he had gone to Istanbul to meet with the patriarch of the
Orthodox Church and called for "the symphony of all holy churches of
God." He has prayed amid Buddhists at Hiroshima and sent messages of peace
to the leaders of Islam, including the Ayatollah Khomeini. He has given new
vitality to the word that means "open to the whole world" in its
earliest Greek form.
The ecumenical movement
began with the World Missionary Conference at Edinburgh in 1910. Missionaries
were finding it difficult, not to say embarrassing, explaining to converts the
various doctrinal differences among Christian denominations. Christian
cooperation was badly needed in the outskirts of civilization. The idea that cooperation
could serve in more civilized regions of Christian endeavor culminated in the
formation of the World Council of Churches in 1948, bringing together more than
250 Protestant, Orthodox, and Old Catholic bodies. Membership does not imply
that each church must regard others as churches "in the true and full
sense of the word," though several mergers have taken place among World
Council churches.
The common
experience of European Christians during World War II gave fresh impetus to the
movement. Nazi executioners didn't discriminate on the basis of Scriptural
interpretation. But the movement remained a minority one until the Roman
Catholic Church joined in 1960. That year, Pope John XXIII established the
Secretariat for the Promotion of Christian Unity and named Cardinal Agostino
Bea president. In fact, Vatican cooperation began the moment Pope Pius XI, who
had denounced the movement in a 1928 encyclical, allowed Bea to attend a
biblical conference at the University of Göttingen in 1935. Bea was rector of
the Biblical Institute in Rome and leading the Catholic revivial in biblical
exegesis and archaeology. From his first contacts with Protestants at Göttingen
Bea understood very well that a "change of heart" was the key to
genuine ecumenism. He set out with his remarkable intellectual gifts and
personal charm to bring about that change within his own church. The Second
Vatican Council's Decree on Ecumenism, issued in 1964, bears his imprint.
Dialogue with the Orthodox and Protestant churches is encouraged based on a
common baptism for the forgiveness of sins. Catholic responsibility in the
"sin" of division is acknowledged and reference to "the one true
Church" that characterized Pius XI's encyclical is prudently avoided.
The many
reforms of the Council indicated that the Vatican was beginning to take the
idea of Christian unity seriously. As a public demonstration, Pope Paul VI met
with Patriarch Athenagoras of the Orthodox Church in Jerusalem in 1964. They
lifted the mutual anathemas that had been in effect since the schism of 1054. A
few years later Paul traveled to Geneva where he joined with the leaders of the
World Council of Churches in the Lord's Prayer.
Though the
people of Worms had asked Paul to rescind the condemnation of Luther, it was
not until John Paul II's visit to West Germany in 1980 that the Vatican showed
signs of wanting improved relations with world Lutheranism. His visit for the
seventh centenary of the death of Albertus Magnus coincided with the 450th
anniversary of the Augsburg Confession, the cornerstone of the Lutheran
tradition. The pope seized upon the conciliatory mood conveyed by the
Confession and used Luther's own words to describe the experience of Christian
faith. It was a giant step. Heretics are not so freely quoted in papal
addresses.
Last
November, as the "year of Luther" commenced, the Vatican released a
letter John Paul had written to Cardinal Johannes Willebrands of the
Netherlands, Bea's successor as spokesman on ecumenism. In the letter, the pope
praised the father of the Reformation and urged Catholics to distance
themselves from the historical events in the pursuit of Christian unity. The
"clarification of history" must go hand-in-hand with the
"dialogue of faith," and he commended a group of Roman Catholic and Lutheran
theologians in the United States who had reached an accord on the doctrine of
justification two months before.
The
19th-century Catholic convert John Henry Newman wrote that no doctrine is
defined until it is violated, and for four centuries the Catholic position on
Luther's belief in justification by faith alone was clear: Insofar as he was
teaching that salvation is achieved by faith alone and not at all by merit, he
was teaching false doctrine. The doctrine was "powerful against Rome"
and "wonderfully adapted, as if prophetically, to the genius of the times
which were to follow," Cardinal Newman wrote. But it was false all the
same. With its accomplice, sola Scriptura, it served to undermine the
role of the magisterium.
In the sharp,
dry light of 20th-century exegesis and hermeneutics, improved critical methods,
and a desire for reconciliation, what was seen as a matter of truth and
falsehood is now rife with complexity. Getting to the heart of it is hampered
by the confusion of tongues and "differences in thought structures."
Though serious differences exist in the way Lutherans and Catholics interpret
the doctrine, these differences "need not be church dividing." After
all, Lutherans can't agree among themselves on a definition of the doctrine by
which, according to Luther, "the church stands or falls."
These were
some of the official and unofficial conclusions of several theologians involved
in the U.S. Lutheran-Catholic Dialogue. Since 1965 some 20 theologians,
appointed by the U.S. Roman Catholic Bishop's Committee for Ecumenical and
Interreligious Affairs and Lutheran World Ministries, have been discussing
issues that have traditionally divided the two churches. (There is also an
ongoing international dialogue under the auspices of the Lutheran World
Federation and the Vatican's Secretariat.) The status of baptism and the Nicene
Creed in general presented no special difficulties. "Convergence" was
reached on the subject of "the Eucharist as sacrifice" and progress
was reported on the stickier issues of the ministry, papal primacy and papal
infallibility. Current discussions are focusing on Mary and the saints.
Meanwhile, ecumenical
and cooperative activities between the churches are becoming commonplace.
Lutheran and Catholic bishops have been meeting once a year to further the
dialogue. Study groups have taken up moral topics of mutual concern such as
marriage and divorce, care for the aging, and in vitro fertilization.
Joint ecumenical church services are a regular affair in the Upper Midwest,
where Lutherans and Catholics make up a majority of the churchgoing population.
Lutheran money helped to establish an ecumenical institute at St. John's
University and Abbey in Minnesota. Lutheran ministers are enrolled in its
Benedictine theology school. Recently, the insurance firm Lutheran Brotherhood,
which is based in Minneapolis, announced plans to launch a 20-year project in
cooperation with the monastic manuscript library at St. John's to microfilm
Reformation and Counter-Reformation materials internationally. And last March,
Archbishop John Roach of the St. Paul and Minneapolis archdiocese, and Bishop
David Preus, head of the American Lutheran Church, joined in a Lenten service
before a packed church in downtown Minneapolis. Preus said he had asked the
pope in a recent meeting about the possibility of creating joint services of
Scripture for parish churches. "We are not ready to go to the table
together, but God is present in words, too," Preus told the congregation.
Luther
retained the sacramental character of the Eucharist, but he rejected the
traditional concept of transubstantiation, in which the substances of bread and
wine are miraculously converted to the body and blood of Christ. Instead, he
taught that Christ is present in the unchanged substances. Luther also did not
recognize the traditional view of the Eucharist as a sacrificial reenactment of
the atonement. When the Lutheran and Catholic theologians completed their study
of the Eucharist in 1968 they proceeded to examine how intercommunion could be
theologically justified, hoping for a breakthrough. The major Lutheran synods,
hearing of the initiative, were quick to quash it. They viewed it as a
submission to Rome. Luther rejected the Catholic claims that bishops, who
confer Holy Orders and thus the power to celebrate the Mass, are the direct
successors of the apostles. In any event, the fact is that intercommunion does
not currently exist among all Lutherans themselves.
The United
States is home for nine million of the some 70 million Lutherans worldwide.
About 95 percent of the U.S. Lutherans belong to three large synods: The
Lutheran Church in America (LCA), the Missouri Synod, and the American Lutheran
Church (ALC). The LCA, ALC and a third, small synod recently agreed to form a
new church to be in operation by 1988. The church would have five and a half
million members in 11,000 congregations, an annual budget of $100 million, and
an outreach program to minority groups. Currently, only about one percent of
LCA-ALC members are minorities.
The Missouri
Synod has been something of a spoiler in the effort to unite American
Lutheranism. Unlike the LCA or ALC, it has stressed a literal interpretation of
Scripture and is appalled that the other bodies have ordained women. The
Missouri Synod is far and away the largest Lutheran body in the world that is
not a member of the World Council of Churches. It has purged its seminaries of
theological progressives and it keeps a tight grip on its elementary school
system, which some fellow Lutherans charge is a system of indoctrination. There
is no intercommunion between the Missouri Synod and the LCA-ALC, but there is
plenty of bad blood. Those familiar with the division admit that relations
between LCA-ALC and the Roman Catholic Church are considerably friendlier.
Lutherans
were not at the forefront of the protest last December opposing Administration
efforts to establish full diplomatic relations with the Vatican, which many
leading Catholics also oppose. This was a state affair, a problem of the
created order that Luther had little confidence in. It was opposition to the
magisterium, the papal teaching authority, that represented the heart of
16th-century protest, and the average Lutheran carries it in his genes.
"Lutherans just don't cotton to the idea of papal infallibility,"
says a Lutheran theologian who has participated in the Lutheran-Catholic
discussions. But then, neither do most Catholics, if surveys are correct. The
credibility of papal authority took a dive with the country's 50 million Roman
Catholics after Paul VI's encyclical Humanae Vitae which renewed the
church's prohibition against "artificial" birth control. According to
a National Opinion Research Center survey, three-fourths believe they should be
allowed to use these banned contraceptive methods. It requires no stretch of
the imagination to think that many Catholic couples in the United States are
already participating in what John Paul II has called the contraceptive
mentality of the West.
The Catholic Church is
enjoying an upsurge in attendance in the United States after a drastic decline
following the reforms of Vatican II and Humanae Vitae, though declines
in the numbers of religious vocations and seminaries pose serious problems.
Catholics are easily the largest religious group in the country (Baptists are
next at around 30 million) and the number is growing. Most of the growth can be
traced to a comparatively higher birth rate and the influx of Hispanics and
other immigrant and refugee groups. No American religious group is more
culturally diverse, taking its cue in this respect from the mother church. And
as the number of Catholics grows, so do the liberal tendencies among them.
Gallup polls show that 58 percent think priests should be allowed to marry and
69 percent think that divorced Catholics should be allowed to remarry in the
church. The ordination of women is becoming more acceptable. As many Catholics
support the U.S. Supreme Court's 1973 abortion decision as oppose it, and
according to Gallup support has been increasing. The majority of Catholics
polled by Gallup in 1983 favor legalized abortion in certain circumstances,
presumably in cases of rape, a threat to the mother's health, or in the
likelihood of a defective child being born.
In few issues
confronting the modern church are U.S. Catholics more united than in the desire
for better relations with fellow Christians. A Gallup Poll taken in the late
1970s showed that 87 percent expressed favorable sentiments toward their
"separated brethren" and 84 percent responded that the church should
become more ecumenical. The feeling was by and large mutual: 73 percent of
Protestants polled said they held the Catholic Church in high regard. Only
Southern Protestants were noticeably cooler, which isn't terribly surprising.
Jimmy Swaggert's appeal is partly his anti-Catholicism, pandering to old
suspicions and hatreds. The same survey indicated that Catholics feel slightly
more positive about Protestants and Protestants do about one another. There are
more than 250 Protestant church bodies in the United States, the legacy of the
Reformation. Christian pluralism is seen as an adjunct to democratic pluralism
in America. Many of the large churches are active in ecumenical dialogue with
the Catholic Church and with each other. But churches are jealous in protecting
their doctrinal, cultural, and proprietary heritage, despite their willingness
to talk. One of the biggest concerns in the proposed Lutheran merger was who
would hold title to the church property of local congregations.
Of all
Christians in the United States, none is more rock solid in his religious
tradition than the average Lutheran. Ninety-seven percent of Lutherans surveyed
by Gallup give a highly positive response to a question about the strength of
their religious affiliation, compared to 91 percent of Catholics. Lutherans
possess a powerful self-identity rooted in ethnic pride. No major Christian
body in the U.S. is more ethnically homogeneous than Lutheranism, being made up
overwhelmingly by people of Northern European stock. No religious culture is
richer in the musical expression of its liturgy or in congregational song. The
religious training of worshipers, especially of children, has always been
stressed. Today's nascent Lutheran still receives his religious instruction
through the small catechism, which the master wrote in 1529. Lutherans are
politically and socially conservative and uphold traditional family values.
They are known for their generous support of Lutheran schools, colleges, and seminaries.
They are activists in their parish life. With Catholics, they are the most
frequent churchgoers in the country. At a time when polls show that organized
religion has been of declining importance and when most Americans think they
can get to heaven without public worship, Lutherans remain loyal to the
tradition of the reformer.
The papal visit to
Christuskirche could not have occurred without the facelift Luther has
undergone at the hands of Catholic scholars. For more than 400 years Luther was
portrayed by Catholics as the son of iniquity. The Catholic humanist Johannes
Cochlaeus launched the assault shortly after Luther left Worms, but he was
scarcely a match for Luther, the first mass communicator and father of the
modern German language. As recently as 1928 the esteemed Thomist philosopher
Jacques Maritain, who influenced the developing thought of John Paul II,
concluded that concupiscence was the root of Luther's self-doubt.
The turnabout
came 10 years later with the publication of the first volume of a history of
the Reformation by the European historian Joseph Lortz. John Paul's description
of Luther in his letter as "a man of profound religiousness" had its
origin in Lortz. Justification by faith alone was actually an old Catholic doctrine
rediscovered by Luther and expressed "onesidedly." Luther was more
Catholic than anyone had realized. Years later Lortz could even pose the
question "Was Luther a saint?", a notion that must be calculated to
bring forth the reformer from his grave.
Lutheran sensitivity
toward Vatican actions concerns not only Luther and things Lutheran but also,
understandably, things German. The pope's involvement in the removal of Hans
Kung from his position on the Catholic faculty of the University of Tübingen
and from his directorship of the Ecumenical Institute shocked Lutherans. To
them and others it smacked of papal tyranny. Kung had been teaching that papal
infallibility was "a certain indefectibility of the Church," a
construction echoed privately by a Lutheran theologian involved in the U.S.
dialogue as perhaps being acceptable to Lutherans. Since his ouster Kung has
taken to the lecture circuit in Europe and the United States pushing for
ecumenical action and the ordination of women. The "pussyfooting" he
finds in the Catholic and Lutheran leadership has some merit, but not much, at
least not in the U.S. Lutheran and Catholic bishops have a genuine interest in
furthering ecumenical progress. Bishop Preus of the ALC and Bishop James
Crumley Jr., head of the LCA, welcome new initiatives. In an interview, Preus
said that the ALC "responds with gratitude to the convergences that are
taking place," adding that the discussions "have made it clear that
we have more in common than what separates us."
Last fall, in
an address before the synod of bishops in Rome, Archbishop Roach spoke of a
renewed commitment to the ecumenical dialogue calling it "urgent."
Roach was head of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops and had presided
over the drafting of the bishop's pastoral letter on the nuclear freeze.
Sounding a apocalyptic note, Roach said that the leaders of the Christian
churches ought to be "brokers for peace" and avoid
"infighting" as the second millennium of the Christian era draws to a
close. He reminded the bishops of the words of Ammianus Marcellinus, the Roman
historian who observed during the Arian quarrel that "no wild beats are
such enemies to human beings as are most Christians to another." In an
interview, Roach stressed that importance of addressing "with a united voice
the imminent problems of achieving peace, of relieving oppression and of
addressing the rapidly evolving questions that modern technology puts to
Christianity." He noted that surveys show most bishops share these
concerns "even more so than many priests."
At first glance, the
times seem auspicious for further ecumenical developments. A Pole sits on the
throne of Peter, the first non-Italian since Luther's time. He is a
philosopher, a polyglot, and a pilgrim, and he is a survivor. He is popular
with Americans. In each of the past six years they have ranked him in the top
two "most admired men." No other pope ever ranked higher than fifth
in the Gallup survey. John Paul II knows the evils of totalitarianism far
better than Western presidents and prime ministers because he has experienced
them directly, first as a member of the underground seminary in Nazi-occupied
Poland, then as a priest, bishop, and cardinal in a communist homeland. As one
scholar puts it, this man from the land of Copernicus seeks to restore hot
heliocentricity but the centrality of human dignity. He believes in spiritual
transcendence of the sort that Luther made the heart of his teaching. They have
much in common.
The pope is
also a fundamentalist and a mystic. He longs for Christian unity but is
unwilling to accommodate the changes many ecumenically minded Christians think
are needed to bring it about. Liberal views on birth control, abortion,
homosexuality, liberation theology, and the ordination of women about at the
World Council of Churches headquarters in Geneva, but they are scarce in the
Vatican. As for the power of his office, John Paul sides with Cardinal Newman:
"If Christianity is intended for all ages, it must have an infallible
expounder."
For their
part, Protestant church leaders express respect and admiration for the Polish
pontiff, but they are exceedingly war of his Marian piety. Devotion to Mary
went into a decline following Vatican II. John Paul has restored it with a
flourish. After all, Mary is the sovereign of Poland. In visiting the shrine of
the Black Madonna of Czestochowa, where a handful of Polish soldiers defended
the monastic relic against an army of Swedish Lutherans in 1655, the pope
called Mary the "mother of unity." He had already dedicated his life
to her and last March dedicated the world to her. Since 1964 when he was named
Archbishop of Cracow he has worn the letter M on his robes. To most
Protestants, this is less a matter of intercession than outright worship. They
reject it, just as they reject the Immaculate Conception declared by Pius IX in
1854 and the bodily assumption of the Blessed Virgin into heaven enunciated by
Pius XII in 1950. These Catholic dogmas have no basis in Scripture, they say,
and it is through adhering to Scripture that we are saved.
Ecumenical
reconciliation is quite understandably a matter requiring divine intervention.
To many observers, it appears that full communion between the Roman Catholic
and Orthodox churches is a distinct possibility before the end of the century.
John Paul understands the Eastern "sister" church much better than
those arising from the Reformation, and he continues to direct ecumenical
overtures eastward. The Orthodox churches are in the line of the apostolic
succession and have a male (though not celibate) priesthood and the canon law.
The chief obstacle may reside in their being captive to communist states and to
Islam.
Intercommunion
between the Catholic Church and some Anglican and Lutheran churches before the
end of the century is also possible, but less likely. Despite the goodwill of
church leaders and the toil of theologians, the schism wrought by Luther will
require more time to repair regardless of whether Armageddon is at hand.
Reconciliation between the Catholic Church and churches in the Calvinist
tradition is even more remote.
Yet the legacy of the
Reformation is also one of religious liberty. When Archbishop Wojtyla stood
before the conciliar fathers in St. Peter's Basilica in 1965 and spoke
passionately in support of the Council's Declaration on Religious Liberty, he
affirmed that such liberty should be based on the inherent right of conscience.
The future pope declared that religion is a matter of a person's relationship
to God, which transcends all things secular. He could have found the same theme
in Luther's treatises on Christian liberty and civil government.
One of the
Catholic theologians involved in the Lutheran-Catholic dialogue remarked that
"a lot of people are going to have to die" before the churches are
fully reconciled. But the average worshiper is in no particular hurry, if the
surveys are right. Most Christians want ecumenical cooperation to continue in
the practical order, which gave the movement birth. They are more patient than
many of their church leaders, perhaps because they understand implicitly that
what was done over centuries cannot be completely undone in a few generations.
As the work goes forward to resolve or clarify differences of faith, they have
in common the other two theological virtues--hope and love--that Paul extolled
1,927 years ago in his first letter to the Christian poor of Corinth.