On that day in 1517 Martin Luther may or may not have nailed his 95 Theses on indulgences to the door of the Wittenberg church.

He certainly did send them to the Archbishop of Mainz, thus initiating a movement that became the Protestant Reformation.

When I was a schoolboy, I was sure the Reformation was a disaster.

Without it, England would have remained Catholic, the Church would have been undivided, wars would have been avoided, Europe would have been Catholic, and everyone would have been happier. I grew up in a Catholic world then.

Now, after having taught theology for many years with friends and colleagues from Protestant churches, I wonder what the world would really have been like today if the Reformation had not happened?

Would it really have been a better Church and a better world?

And how, indeed, can we evaluate these enormous historical events?

Violent events such as wars of religion, burnings at stakes, the sacking of churches and the dissolution of monasteries all speak of loss and destruction.

Some of these events would certainly not have happened had the Church remained undivided.

But others may have persisted.

The images of destroyed and alienated monasteries, for example, suggest a violent break with the past.

But the alienation of monasteries began well before the Reformation - even in England Henry VIII embarked on it while he still opposed the Reformers.

It was a pragmatic decision.

Suppressing the monasteries provided finance needed for his wars and strengthened the loyalty of Nobles who were given title to monastic properties.

The closing of monasteries in Protestant territories in Europe was supported by Reformed doctrine and popular zeal, but there, too, it provided rulers with revenue.

The growing power and independence of rulers in their relationship to the Catholic Church at the time suggest that raiding church wealth would at some time proved irresistible to rulers of any stripe.

When the pope suppressed the Jesuits two centuries later it was under pressure from the Catholic kingdoms of Spain, France and Portugal, which took over their schools, churches and other property.

The Religious Wars that followed the Reformation caused terrible suffering in Europe and alienated people from churches.

Religion was certainly the flag under which armies marched.

But the continuing wars between Catholic Spain and France and their incursions into other Catholic regions and into the New World suggest that Rulers would have waged war with equal ferocity in a Catholic world and in their new colonies.

All this suggests that a world without the Reformation might not have been much more peaceful or united.

The deeper question, however, is whether and how the Reformation has shaped our imagination for the better or for the worse.

This is a subjective question, begging to be answered through personal experience.

Regret at the divisions and separation

For many young Catholics of my generation, the legacy of the Reformation certainly contributed to our suspicion of Anglicans, whom we lumped together with Protestants, whose Churches were not real Churches, and whose faith was equally erroneous.

This religious prejudice added spice to sporting competitions with other schools and fed a tribal sense of identity.

It may well have existed anyway, however, between children whose parents were of the English establishment and those born to poor Irish immigrants.

The stories of the wrongs of Ireland and the heroism of Australia's Archbishop Mannix in defending the Catholic Community received attention equal to that given to the Elizabethan martyrs and contributed to the ways many young Catholics saw the world.

Once a Catholic church in Geneva.

Reformation positives

It was only later that the Reformation touched my imagination in positive ways.

A Methodist lady encountered on a parish census impressed me with a rare quality I could only describe as holiness.

Reading Luther's writings, I was moved initially by their fire and by his emphasis on faith and salvation as God's wholly undeserved gift.

On returning to them at a time of self-doubt and discouragement associated with a rules-bound faith, I responded to the depth out of which they were written. His account of the relationship between grace and works may have been wrong, I thought, but he understood the question.

At the same time, I came to appreciate the richness of J S Bach's cantatas and the power of hymns in Protestant worship.

A Methodist colleague compared the depth of the presence of Christ in the Methodist Hymn Book to that of Christ in the Eucharist for Catholics.

In the hymns of the Wesley brothers, I found a richness of Biblical theology, a care for language and a wealth of imagery largely lacking in the popular Catholic repertoire.

Teaching theology in an ecumenical college, too, revealed to me the strength and seriousness of theology that came out of the Reformed tradition.

In my forays into Karl Barth's monumental multi-volume Church Dogmatics, I did not warm to his theological starting point but was deeply impressed by his massive reading, exploration of Scripture and care and passion in argument.

He set a standard of seriousness in reflection on faith, as well as a surprising lightness in the use of daring imagery.

In order to describe the depth at which God shared our human misery in Jesus, for example, he divided his treatment of Jesus into two sections: The Journey of the Son of God into a Far Country, and The Homecoming of the Son of Man. To use the career of the Prodigal Son as the matrix for the Incarnation was breathtaking.

Reinhold Niebuhr and his brother H Richard Niebuhr, too, stimulated my interest in the connections between faith, culture and public life, especially as they affected people who were oppressed and disadvantaged.

My appreciation of the richness of the Reformed tradition was not simply aesthetic or intellectual.

It was mediated by people who took Christian faith seriously and lived it, especially by my fellow teachers and students.

In them, the doctrine, Church organisation, and liturgy that were initially seen from the outside took flesh in persons and communities wrestling with the same challenges that we faced.

The smallness of congregations, once seen as a sign of weakness, for example, was experienced as a strength in reaching out promptly to people in need

The Reformation now stirs in me the mixed response that a bitter divorce within a family might evoke.

Within it is the pity and shame that we should have allowed a relationship to come to this, and regret at the divisions and separation that followed the divorce.

Within the response, too, is admiration and gratitude for the richness and generosity found in families on both sides of the initial divide and the desire for a full reconciliation.

Reformation by its nature is never completed.

• Andrew Hamilton SJ is a writer at Jesuit Social Services (Australia). He taught theology at the United Faculty of Theology for many years, and has contributed widely to theological and religious journals. He has had a long-standing engagement with refugee communities and issues and is consulting editor of Eureka Street where this article originally appeared.
• Republished with permission of the author.

The biggest religious stories of our times—the stories of retreat and resurgence—are both outworkings of the Reformation.

Retreat

The industrialised, liberal West is living through an epochal, unprecedented wave of secularization.

We've had several centuries of increasingly nominal religious adherence, punctuated by revivals, but our modern phenomenon—of rapidly growing swathes of society claiming that they have no religion—is new.

This isn't because religion has collapsed intellectually: the purely intellectual case against Christianity looked considerably stronger in 1900 than it does now, and in any case, we've surely learned by now that intellectual arguments don't have much purchase on how we actually live our lives.

Instead, it has collapsed morally.

In the wake of World War II, our culture has become deeply committed to humanist ethics, to the point where it neither needs nor especially values religious ones any more.

Once the most potent moral figure in the Western imagination was Jesus. Now it is Hitler, who taught our age what absolute evil is.

But that humanist ethic is built on the moral bedrock of Christian and Jewish ethics, which assume—unlike, say, ancient Rome—that slavery and cruelty are bad, and that compassion and human equality are good.

So we are abandoning our inherited religious culture because it doesn't live up to its own values, and we're doing so using the tools that that culture itself has taught us.

That is, in effect, a re-run of the Reformation.

And like the original Reformation, the outcome hangs in the balance.

Is this a case of a revolution eating itself, a self-destructive pursuit of impossible purity?

Or is it a re-formation, an authentic attempt to lay hold of what was truest about the faith we've always held?

Or both?

Then there is resurgence

For half a century, two very different religious forces have been sweeping across the globe.

Jihadist Islam might look like the Reformation's heir: public, attention-grabbing, focused on political power, male-dominated, ready to use violence and to celebrate martyrdom.

But we cannot map Christianity's conflicts easily onto Islam, with its own distinct deep logic and culture.

But Pentecostal, renewalist Christianity—chiefly but not entirely Protestant—is something else: usually apolitical, shunning a public role, unstructured and informal, often spreading through family networks and women's influence.

While jihadism has been transfixing the world, Pentecostalism has quietly become the religion of half of Africa, a quarter of Latin America, and rapidly growing populations in East Asia before outsiders have really noticed.

It has done it by offering, not revolution tomorrow, but salvation and spiritual transformation for individuals here and now.

So a new religious movement is preaching a radically simplified and democratized gospel of salvation, promising to restore Christianity to its ancient origins and in the process creating something new.

That, too, is a re-run of the Reformation. Continue reading

• Image: MentalFloss

Yet, to my Roman Catholic friends, the Reformation isn't something to celebrate.

In their eyes, our admiration for Martin Luther is as misguided as holding a big party in honour of one's divorce.

They argue the Reformation ushered in a world where each individual's personal taste in interpretation became supreme, leading to the moral chaos and postmodernism that riddles the cultural landscape today.

At best, they see Protestants as limping along without the spiritual blessings God bestows through their church, yet, like anorexics, rejoicing in this near-starvation.

I readily concede that the Reformation brought costs as well as benefits.

Yet as a Lutheran, I am profoundly grateful for the sixteenth-century return to Scripture that reminded us of Sola Scriptura, Sola Fide, Sola Gratia, and Solus Christus.

I deeply appreciate the Lutheran determination, demonstrated in the Book of Concord, to find and cling to biblical truth. That is why I want my Catholic friends to know three things about the event I will be celebrating on October 31.

It's Not about Individualism
Secular historians, like secular journalists writing about Pope Francis, often misunderstand religion.

Mainstream history textbooks portray Luther as someone who struck a blow for the individual by rejecting the authority of people who wanted to tell others what to believe.

As long as these historians don't peruse his actual writing, they see Luther as a pretty progressive guy by the standards of 1517.

My Catholic friends read this stuff and, quite naturally, pick up the idea that Luther's teachings led to hyper-individualism.

Yet Luther's actual theological legacy is not conducive to extreme individualism.

He intended to participate in a conversation about reforming errors that were harming the Catholic Church.

That is because he wanted to point out where individuals were going wrong by failing to submit themselves to the authority of scripture. Continue reading

• Anna Mussmann is a stay-at-home mom who writes during nap time.

It was in Wittenberg in 1517 that Martin Luther unveiled the 95 Theses that launched the Reformation.

Centuries of dispute followed about whether eternal salvation comes from faith alone — the position of the new Protestant movement — or if it also requires good works on Earth as Catholics argued.

The Joint Declaration aims to "overcome divisions" from that time. It closes the centuries-old "faith versus works" debate by merging the Lutheran and Catholic views on salvation rather than setting them against each other.

It also promotes unity among the world's Christian Churches, stating "mutual condemnations pronounced by the two sides during the Reformation do not apply to their current teaching on justification".

The document the WRC signed says "We rejoice together that the historical doctrinal differences on the doctrine of justification no longer divide us."

It endorses the 1999 Catholic-Lutheran agreement on how Christians might be worthy of salvation in the eyes of God.

The World Methodist Council formally endorsed the Catholic-Lutheran Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification in 2006. The Anglican Communion is expected to do the same later this year.

Source

• National Catholic Reporter
• The Christian Post
• Image: Ad Verum

The crowd was witnessing New Zealand's formal commitment to healing the divisions of the Reformation: the 500 year-long separation of Lutherans and Catholics.

The atmosphere was joyful, positive and affirming as Lutheran Bishop Mark Whitfield and Cardinal John Dew led the crowd in lifting their "hearts and minds and voices" together, singing and praying shoulder to shoulder.

Priests, pastors, minsters, religious and congregations from many Christian denominations were there, showing their support and praying for Catholic and Lutheran unity.

They included Assyrian Christians from the ancient city of Niniveh, Anglicans, Presbyterians and Elim Pentecostal faithful, along with Wellington's Mayor and representatives from - for example - the German Embassy.

Dew said the ecumenical service was "a significant milestone for New Zealand's Roman Catholic and Lutheran communities," signaling a commitment to ongoing bridge-building between the Churches.

The text of the "common prayer" used in the service was selected by the Liturgical Task Force of the Lutheran-Roman Catholic Commission on Unity.

"This liturgical order ... offers an opportunity to look back in thanksgiving and confession and look ahead, committing ourselves to common witness and continuing our journey together," Dew said.

These "characteristics of common prayer mirror the reality of Christian life: shaped by God's Word, the people are sent out in common witness and service."

Whitfield's comments echoed Dew's.

"I am delighted that we have opportunity in this Reformation Commemoration Year [500th anniversary] to celebrate our common baptism into Christ and to worship together.

"I also look forward to Roman Catholics and Lutherans working together to seek avenues of practical pastoral cooperation and support, and to explore joint worship and ecumenical hospitality for the sake of strengthening a joint witness to the Gospel in Aotearoa-New Zealand."

The movement towards Lutheran and Catholic Church unity is part of a wider movement to unite all Christians.

In New Zealand, Dew says "we have had dialogues with the Anglicans, Presbyterians and Methodists...[and now]... we officially start working, praying and discussing with the Lutherans as we continue to work towards Christian Unity".

Source

• Plain English
• Image: Supplied by Paul Ramsay

Fr Raniero Cantalamessa also told an Anglican synod in London that what is needed in relations between churches is a "qualitative leap forward".

Fr Cantalamessa, who has been Preacher to the Papal Household since 1980, was preaching at a service at the Church of England's Tenth General Synod, held in Westminster Abbey.

Addressing Queen Elizabeth II and the whole synod, he said the focus today must be on the person of Jesus the Lord, crucified and risen, not on this or that doctrine.

Fr Cantalamessa added: "This does not mean ignoring the great theological and spiritual enrichment that came from the Reformation or desiring to go back to the time before it.

"It means instead allowing all of Christianity to benefit from its achievements, once they are freed from certain distortions due to the heated atmosphere of the time and of later controversies."

Reflecting on the preparations for the fifth centenary of the Protestant Reformation, Fr Cantalamessa said, "it is vital for the whole Church that this opportunity is not wasted by people remaining prisoners of the past, trying to establish each other's rights and wrongs".

He added: "Rather, let us take a qualitative leap forward, like what happens when the sluice gates of a river or a canal enable ships to continue to navigate at a higher water level."

Fr Cantalamessa said that "we need to start again with the person of Jesus, humbly helping our contemporaries to experience a personal encounter with him."

He added: "Christ is the light of the world, the one who gives meaning and hope to every human life - and the majority of people around us live and die as if he had never existed!

"How can we be unconcerned, and each remain ‘in the comfort of our own panelled houses'?

"We should never allow a moral issue like that of sexuality divide us more than love for Jesus Christ unites us."

Sources

• Catholic Herald
• Full text of Fr Cantalamessa's address
• Image: Anglican News

The Requiem Mass in the traditional form will be at St Catherine's Church in Leyland, Lancashire, on March 26, the day when King Richard's remains will be re-interred at Leicester Cathedral.

It will be a Sung High Latin Mass with singers from the Laeta Cantoribus Choir, "in the style and manner of (Richard III's) day".

"The idea is that it will be closer to what he might have experienced in his own lifetime, as a pre-reformation Catholic," said St Catherine's parish priest Fr Simon Henry.

After the service, refreshments will be served, also in keeping with what King Richard might have expected in his lifetime.

Continue reading

Playmobil's Luther toy sold out, with 34,000 copies being snapped up in 72 hours.

Most were sold in Germany, and 5 per cent went to international buyers.

The German toymaker released the "little Luther" to mark the 500th anniversary of the publication of Protestant reformer's 95 theses in 1617.

A spokesperson for the company called the runaway success of the toy "a big mystery [and] a huge surprise".

The figurine comes dressed in 16th century academic robes, with cap, scroll and quill.

An urgent order has been placed with Palymobil's Maltese factory which makes the toy, but another batch is not expected to be available until April.

Continue reading

The letter is part of about 1500 documents written by women throughout history which are going under the auctioneer's hammer next week.

Catherine's letter is addressed to Cardinal Francisco de Quiñones of Santa Cruz and is worth an estimated NZ$55,000-$65,000.

She insists she has been cast aside "without cause, except, as I sincerely believe, at the instigation of an enemy completely without scruples [Thomas Cromwell] who has abused the king, my lord; the case, if examined without passion, will clearly show, I hope, that truth and justice are on my side. . . ."

She appeals for Pope Clement to investigate and judge her case because: "I am completely innocent".

She also warns: "I can assure you with certainty that here [in England] there is no decision that can be made that will not bring a great evil in the future."

Continue reading

Leeds Trinity University College and Newman University College each started as teacher training colleges in the 1960s. Their new status will prove valuable as each institution looks to develop international links.

Although both institutions have held degree-awarding powers for a number of years, the requirement for universities to have at least 4000 students had previously prevented them using the title.

Continue reading

"Especially in a very secular world, we should always stress what is common in the Christian religion," said Merkel, who is the daughter of a Protestant pastor.

She was speaking during a rare appearance at the annual synod of the Evangelical Church in Germany, where Protestant leaders were working to make the "Luther Jubilee" more ecumenical by involving Catholics as well.

The German Chancellor said she had learned that "even the word 'jubilee' used in connection with the Reformation can give rise to discussions", because Catholics attach a special meaning to "jubilee years" and would prefer the anniversary to be called a commemoration.

In preparation for the celebration, the Evangelical Church — Germany's largest association of Protestant churches — and the Catholic Church have plans to write a book on Christianity together in 2013 and to hold a joint Bible conference in 2015.

The Evangelical Church president, Nikolaus Schneider, told the synod that there may also be a reconciliation service scheduled for 2017 "that recognises before God all the injuries both churches inflicted on each other".

Evangelical Church vice president Thies Gundlach has expressed the hope that, despite their differences, a "wonderful friendship" will develop between Catholics and evangelicals as a result of the anniversary events.

He said the "many ecumenical achievements that render visible the truth and beauty of Christian faith 500 years after the Reformation and 50 years after Vatican II" are grounds for joint celebration. He referred to agreement on the importance of Scripture, baptism and a general acceptance of ecumenism.

Catholic Archbishop Werner Thissen of Hamburg told the synod he hoped for an agreement on how to mark the anniversary.

"Times have changed dramatically since Luther," he said, noting that the Second Vatican Council of 1962-65 had "learned a lot from Martin Luther".

Sources:

Christian Post

Reuters

Image: MSN

A report from Reuters said German Protestants have invited Catholics to join in the celebrations, but it is still hard for some Catholics to accept the invite.

"It's not impossible in principle, but it depends on the character of the events planned," said Bishop Gerhard Feige, the top Catholic official dealing with Protestants.

In a statement for the Protestant Reformation Day holiday on Wednesday, Feige said Catholics consider the division of the western Church as a tragedy "and - at least until now - do not think they can celebrate this merrily."

The Reformation began in 1517 when German monk Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to a church door to denounce corruption in the Catholic Church, especially the sale of indulgences to help build the lavish new Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome.

Excommunicated by Rome, he won support from German princes who soon battled others who remained Catholic. The ensuing wars of religion killed about a third of Germany's population over the next century and spread to neighboring countries as well.

After Luther's break with Rome, dissent spread and thousands of new denominations eventually emerged, the largest being the Presbyterians, Anglicans, Baptists, Methodists and Lutherans.

Luther is also a major cultural figure in Germany thanks to his pioneering translation of the Bible.

Commemorative church services, concerts and conferences leading up to 2017 are already underway around Germany.

Reuters said the mix of religious, cultural and commercial activities led Feige to ask what the Catholics were being invited to join.

"Many initiatives and plans may well be justified, but it's not always easy to find out what 2017 will be all about," he wrote in what he called his "Ten Catholic Theses".

"It would be good if the Protestants would work out some points more clearly," he said.

Sources

• Reuters
• Christian Post
• Image: Theological Matters

Conlon compared the situation to the Reformation, when "the episcopacy, the regular clergy, even the papacy were discredited."

Bishop Conlon last month told a conference of staffers who oversee child safety programs in American dioceses that he had always assumed that consistently implementing the bishops' policies on child protection, "coupled with some decent publicity, would turn public opinion around."

"I now know this was an illusion," Conlon, chairman of the bishops' Committee for the Protection of Children and Young People, said in an address August 13 to the National Safe Environment and Victim Assistance Coordinators Leadership Conference in Omaha, Nebraska.

His talk was published in the August 30 edition of Origins, an affiliate of Catholic News Service.

Conlon said the conviction of a high-ranking church official in Philadelphia for covering up clergy abuse and the upcoming trial of a bishop in Missouri on charges of failing to report a priest on suspicions of child abuse have contributed to a widespread impression that the bishops "have failed to keep their commitments."

The bishop disputed that view, but said even close friends "turned almost hostile" over dinner recently when he said the hierarchy has adopted "an entirely different spirit of openness and accountability."

Conlon told the conference the bishops still needed to clarify emerging questions about how to deal with issues like child pornography and "boundary violations" in which church personnel might engage in inappropriate interactions with children that don't yet cross the line into physical abuse.

But he said the bottom line is that the bishops "are gravely weakened and in need of assistance" in developing policies and changing public perceptions. He told the child safety workers to think of themselves "as an extension of your bishop."

"Our credibility on the subject of child abuse is shredded," Conlon said. "You may have a better chance. People — in the church, outside the church, and hanging on the edge — need to know that real progress is being made."

Sources

• ucanews.com
• Image: Essential Experiences

Look for the religion section of almost any bookshop in Britain, and you'll find it's been subsumed under "Mind, body and spirit". The reason is simple: what we call religion has changed - dramatically - in just the past 30 years.

I think the change is so significant we can call it a "de-reformation" of religion. In other words, the main features that have characterised religion in Britain since the Reformation of the 16th century have given way. For most people, religion has ceased to be a matter of belonging to a clerically led community, affirming unchanging dogma, participating in prescribed rituals, and holding conservative social attitudes. It's transformed into something else.

Let's start with rituals, both national and personal. From the Hillsborough disaster in 1989 onwards, the church has gradually ceded control. It still has a role to play, but by the time of Diana's death in 1997, that role had become secondary to popular practices and innovations. Similarly, the churches' hold over birth, marriage, and death has weakened dramatically.

Religious belonging has transformed as well. It used to be about local and national belonging. Now it's a matter of association with like-minded people by way of real and virtual networks that transcend local and national boundaries. A British Muslim, for example, may associate face-to-face with a few like-minded friends, spend a lot of time reading and chatting on the web, feel part of a global ummah, and long to go on hajj. And you can say something similar for young Catholics, evangelicals, neo-pagans and others.

The statistics on church attendance confirm it. Between 1950 and 1980 attendance halved, and between 1980 and 2005 halved again - down to 6.3% of the population, according to Christian Research. Continue reading

Sources

• Linda Woodhead in The Guardian
• Image: Triad Life Solutions