Katolikker kan ikke glede seg over reformasjonen

Troskongregasjonens leder, kardinal Gerhard Müller, har nylig sagt dette, at katolikker ikke kan feire at reformasjonen begynte for snart 500 år siden (skriver Catholic Herald):

The German cardinal said in a new book-length interview: “We Catholics have no reason to celebrate October 31, 1517, the date that is considered the beginning of the Reformation that would lead to the rupture of Western Christianity.” …

… Cardinal Müller says in the new book: “If we are convinced that divine revelation is preserved whole and unchanged through Scripture and Tradition, in the doctrine of the Faith, in the sacraments, in the hierarchical constitution of the Church by divine right, founded on the sacrament of holy orders, we cannot accept that there exist sufficient reasons to separate from the Church.”

The remarks will cause a stir, coming a year before the 500th anniversary of Reformation Day. Extensive celebrations and commemorations are planned in Germany and elsewhere. ….

Fr Alexander Lucie-Smith skriver også om dette i Catholic Herald, bl.a.:

The reminder from the ever excellent Cardinal Müller that the Reformation is nothing to celebrate, while a statement of the obvious – after all, how can one celebrate disunity? – still leaves us with a question: just how are we to mark the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther’s revolt against Church doctrine?

Just ignoring it would not be right. The Reformation was a huge event and we are still living with its consequences, no one can deny. Much better that we should mark the anniversary in a way that deepens our understanding of it. Why did it happen? What can we learn from it? And what can we do, five centuries on, to heal the breaches created then? …

Han skriver så litt om hvorfor reformasjonen skjedde; tidligere trodde man det var fordi datidens katolske kirke hadde spilt fallitt og mistet oppslutning (men dette har vist seg å være feil), dernest nevner han politiske grunner (at noen herskere dermed fikk mer makt), og til slutt nevner han en ting som Den katolske kirke delvis var ansvarlig for, nemlig uklarheten om hvordan man blir frelst. Men i vår tid er jo ikke mennesker i moderne land interessert i å bli frelst – og så avslutter han artikkelen sin slik:

I think the best way to mark the Reformation is to emphasise that the Church can only be universal, that is Catholic, in that Christ only brought one revelation, and only founded one Church. The idea of a national church is completely absurd. Coupled with this there needs to be a strong presupposition in favour of internationalism (which, as my Brexiteer MP and I agreed, was quite in keeping with leaving the EU, as that institution is not to be confused with Europe itself).

Finally, I think we need to make the Reformation anniversary into a celebration of the role and nature of the papacy as the focus of unity and guarantor of doctrinal truth, for the splintering of Protestantism (of which Luther would not have approved, I feel) is the best advert for the papacy ever devised. Instead of asking the question “How can I be saved?” we need to turn our attention to the question “What is the Church?”

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