Martin Luther was an apostate Augustinian friar from Erfurt, who led a revolt against God, Jesus Christ the Son of God, the Blessed Sacrament, the Virgin Mary, and the Papacy.
In his hatred for God and the Catholic Church, he said some unspeakable blasphemies. For example, Luther said:
“Christ committed adultery for the first time with the woman at the well, of whom John speaks. Did they not murmur around him: ‘What then did he do with her?’ Later, he did the same with Magdalen, and shortly thereafter with the adulterous woman, whom he absolved so lightly. Thus, Christ, so pious, also had to fornicate before dying.”4
Having read this, it is not surprising that Luther thinks, as Funck-Brentano points out, that “certainly God is great and powerful, good and merciful...but he is stupid – ‘Deus est stultissimus.’5 He is a tyrant. Moses was moved by his will, acting as his lieutenant, as his hangman, and was neither surpassed by anyone nor even equaled in scaring, terrorizing, and martyring the poor world.”6
This is strictly consistent with another of his blasphemies which makes God the one really responsible for the treason of Judas and the revolt of Adam: “Luther,” comments Funck-Brentano, “goes so far as to declare that Judas, in betraying Christ, acted under the imperious decision of the Almighty. His will (that of Judas), was directed by God; God moved him with His omnipotence. Adam himself, in the earthly paradise, was constrained to act as he did. He was placed by God in such a situation that it was impossible for him not to fall.”7
Consistent still with this abominable sequence, Luther, in a pamphlet titled “Against the Roman Pontificate Founded by the Devil” of March, 1545, called the Pope not “Holiness,” according to the custom, but “Most Infernal” and added that the Papacy had always shown itself to be bloodthirsty.8
It is no wonder that Luther, moved by such ideas, wrote to Melanchton regarding the bloody persecutions of Henry VIII against the Catholics of England:
“It is licit to be wrathful when one knows what kind of traitors, thieves, and murderers the popes, their cardinals, and legates are. Would to God that many kings of England dedicate themselves to putting an end to them.”9
For this very same reason, he also exclaimed: “Enough of words: Fire and sword!” And he adds: “We punish thieves with the sword. Why should we not seize the pope, the cardinals, and the whole gang of the Roman Sodom and wash our hands in their blood?”10
Luther’s hatred accompanied him to the end of his life: Funck-Brentano affirms: “His last public sermon in Wittenberg was on January 17, 1546 – a last cry of malediction against the pope, the Sacrifice of the Mass, devotion to the Virgin.”11
It is no shock that great persecutors of the Church have celebrated his memory.
Thus “Hitler ordered that October 31 be made a national holiday in Germany, commemorating the day in 1517 that the rebellious Augustinian friar fixed his famous 95 theses against pontifical supremacy and doctrines on the doors of the church of the castle of Wittenberg.”12
In spite of all the official atheism of the communist regime, Dr. Erich Honnecker, former president of the Council of State and the Council of Defense, and the top man in the German Democratic Republic, agreed to head the committee that organized a garish commemoration of Luther right in Red Germany.13
Nothing is more natural than for the apostate friar to stir up such sentiments in Nazi and Communist leaders.
(Adapted from the article Luther, Absolutely Not! by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira)
1. Folha de S.Paulo, 4/10/74 [back]
2. L’Osservatore Romano, Nov. 6, 1983 [back]
3. Luther, Paris, Grasset, 1934 [back]
4. Propos de Table, no. 1472, Weimar Ed. 2, 107; Cf. Funck-Brentano, p. 235 [back]
5. Propos de Table, no. 963, Weimar Ed. 1, 487 [back]
6. Funck-Brentano, p. 230 [back]
7. Funck-Brentano, p. 246 [back]
8. Funck-Brentano, pp. 337-338 [back]
9. Funck-Brentano, p. 254 [back]
10. Funck-Brentano, p. 104 [back]
11. p. 340 [back]
12. Funck-Brentano, p. 272 [back]
13. see German Comments, Osnabrück, West Germany, April, 1983 [back]
I have had two Lutherans and one Catholic who alternate between Catholic Mass and Lutheran services tell me that Catholics and Lutherans "believe the same things" and that the Catholic Mass is "exactly the same" as Lutheran Sunday worship. Surely, they are wrong, but it is disturbing that these perceptions persist. The Catholic Church needs to set itself apart if it wants to retain credibility.
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