So You’ve Started a Reformation: 7 Things to Know and Share

Sometimes while standing in the confessional line at the local Tradistani parish, I relieve the boredom of the twenty penitent-deep wait by reviewing some notes I’ve jotted down concerning moral theology. One old favorite is the list of the “Seven Deadly Sins and Their Daughters,” and most recently the list of Vainglory’s Daughters caught my eye. As transposed from Thomas of Aquino via P. Gregory I, they are:

• Disobedience
• Boastfulness
• Hypocrisy
• Contention
• Discord
• Obstinacy
• Eccentricity [or Presumption of Novelties]

My own faults are more commonly found among the Daughters of Sloth (which Gregory calls Melancholy), but I find it useful to periodically check the other six branches of viciousness to see which ones I might have unexpectedly fallen into. Reviewing the section on Vainglory led me to reminisce at length about Fr. Luther’s motivations for his reformational movement.

Considering the sins of others might be a poor use of one’s own examination of conscience, but I sometimes think that the examples of the morally ruinous can be as helpful to the penitent waiting his turn in line as the examples of sainted men of old. Anyone who has a basic biographical knowledge of Martin Luther can see his portrait painted in scathing detail with this list. The Daughters of Vainglory might as well have been his Muses.

There is a trace of these Daughters among the denizens of Tradistani communities, as well, no doubt including myself. Those who hate the old Latin Mass, or even just the flaky Johannine revision of the ’60s, are quick to accuse their Tradistani brethren of cavorting with Vainglory’s progeny (although Presumption of Novelties must surely be found among the lovers of the Pauline Novelty Mass, as well). It is easy to accuse others of sin, and supremely difficult to accuse oneself, but the accusations of others are not always wrong.

In a day when high-ranking Catholic bishops go far out of their way to praise a heretic, schismatic, and apostate, laymen begin to wonder if it is because these bishops find in this German ex-monk a companionable soul. Do they see something of themselves in him, and do they gravitate towards him and praise him because they also wish to be praised for their own similar vices? It is nearly impossible to judge with certainty, even if the gross scandal of their celebration morally demands a clear condemnation. Who will judge the judges? Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

It also occurred to me, while meditating upon the sins of Fr. Luther, that his precipitating vice was not in desiring to manifest his own excellence, but in taking scandal upon witnessing the corruption of the Roman clergy. He took this scandal so deeply and personally that he justified his self-imposed role as the Remaker of Christendom. Vainglory was here a later outworking of Faint-Heartedness and Despair, which are themselves progenies of Sloth.

The way to Hell is broad and multitudinous; the way to Heaven is narrow and humble. One branch of the Deadly Sin tree can unexpectedly lead to another. The example of notorious sinners helps us to see how this is so.

“We are conquered if we try too conscientiously not to sin at all. So when the devil says to you: do not drink, answer him: I will drink, and right freely, just because you tell me not to.” —Martin Luther

The Chocolate Luther

(source)

The upcoming flesh-press ecumenical gathering between far-left Lutherans and far-left Catholics in Sweden, while nothing new, is becoming increasingly egregious thanks to its anticipated papal participation. While it’s doubtful that P. Francis will be doing or saying anything worse than the Church has already suffered from P. John Paul or even P. Benedict in regards to ecumenical excesses, this celebration of Fr. Luther’s apostasy raises a new cycle of questions about the place of heretics in the modern Church.

No doubt we will shortly be seeing a slew of online articles from Fr. Zuhl, Catholic Answers, and mommy-bloggers explaining all the reasons why this celebration of German cheek does not technically change any doctrines nor the anathemas of Trent. These will ignore the point that Francis’ pontificate does not operate on the level of truth, logic, or definition, but on the level of agitprop and emotional manipulation. When we are bombarded with photographs of Francis smiling next to a chocolate sculpture of the German monk, the unstated implication is that the this man was sweet; that he was black, but beautiful.

Somewhere in the southeast of Rome sits the Scala Sancta, the steps that Christ himself once ascended in order to be condemned by the Roman prefect of Judea. In the early 1510s a young Fr. Luther, zealous for the purity of the Church and deeply scandalized by the corruption of the Roman clergy, climbed the Holy Stairs and despaired. In his own words,

At Rome, I wished to liberate my grandfather from Purgatory, and went up the staircase of Pilate, praying a Pater Noster on each step; for I was convinced that he who prayed thus could redeem his soul. But when I came to the top step, the thought kept coming to me, “Who knows whether this is true?” (source)

Thus did Fr. Luther, fifteen centuries after the fact, echo the words of the devil who inspired Pontius Pilate: “Quid est veritas?” Like Pilate, Luther washed his hands of all his sins—past, present, and future—a self-absolution that his followers imitate to this day. Pilate’s wife had at least made an attempt to stop her husband from shedding innocent blood; Luther was seduced by the disgruntled nun Katharina von Bora, recently escaped from the convent by hiding in a wagon of fish barrels.

Five centuries after Fr. Martin’s moment of despair, and not very long after my reception into the Church, I completed my own pilgrimage up the Scala Sancta in Rome. My meditations on the way up were partly of Christ’s Passion, partly of gratitude for the grace of conversion, but mostly of an utter repudiation of Luther’s mortal doubt. Still, if I had thought about it at the time, I would have prayed instead for the soul of his poor grandfather who was deprived of his progeny’s sacrifices.

The penitential season of Advent is coming soon. Perhaps P. Francis should consider giving up chocolate.

(source)

The Ultramontanist Debt to Luther

Martin Luther Publicly Burning the Papal Bull

“So one is the Abraham who believes, one is the Abraham who works; one is the Christ who redeems, one is the Christ who works… distinguish between these two things as between heaven and earth.” —Fr. Martin Luther

It’s not a well publicized fact that Martin Luther hated St. Augustine and his theology. Those who study Fr. Luther’s personal copies of Augustine’s works against the Manichees have discovered that the mad Augustinian monk wrote glosses in the margins defending that ancient heretical sect against their defector’s attacks. Luther the dualist believed there were deep divisions within the life of the Trinity itself—especially during the suffering of the Crucifixion—but he also ascribed similar divisions to the human person.

How did these manifest? Mostly in the distinction between Man the Sinner and Man the Justified. Every fallen man was, to use his own word image, a pile of feces. Justification fell from Heaven upon said pile of feces like a thick layer of snow, lying over but never transforming the filth beneath. The “saved” man thus has two identities: Sinner and Justified, and never the two will merge. This is in contrast to the metaphorical Old Man and New Man of St. Paul’s theology, who represent one’s worldly and spiritual natures, and who both wish to make the Christian into the image of himself.

It is an identity crisis not unlike that posited by the ancient Greek myth of Heracles, for the son of Zeus was also the son of the mortal woman Alcmene, and he possessed two natures. When he died, burned alive on his own funeral pyre, his divine part flew upwards to Olympus, while his human part sunk down into Hades. His human soul, or shade, yearned forever for its divine counterpart; his divine self, one assumes, happily could not have cared less about the human.

Odysseus Meeting the Shade of Heracles

In like manner, Luther saw the human person as a sort of vessel for hellish and heavenly parts, neither of which could truly transform the other. Since justification sits upon the sinner like a blanket of snow, is it only the snow that is saved? One wonders what happens to Man the Sinner at the moment of death while Man the Justified is swept up into Heaven. Is the former annihilated? Used as compost? Damned, and forever yearning for the cool snow?

Dualist that he was, Fr. Luther was comfortable accepting this contradiction. Quasi-Lutherans that they are, ultramontanists are comfortable accepting a sharp, irrational dualism in the papacy.

This expresses itself especially in their attitudes towards the Bishop of Rome. Believing him (quite rightly) to be the Vicar of Christ and head of the visible Church, the Catholic ultramontanist habitually holds a sharp division between, say, John Paul the Pope and John Paul the Man. John Paul the Pope can do no wrong, and every word and action must be piously praised as coming from the Holy Ghost himself. John Paul the Man is either non-existent (having been destroyed by his elevation to the papacy) or a kind of doppelgänger that emerges when John Paul the Pope slumbers. When a papal Mass is adorned with topless natives or the man in white kisses a Koran in full view of a camera, those faults are either maniacally ignored, or they actually insist that these evil actions are praiseworthy, and that we are simply too sinful to see their merits.

Similar breaks with reality occur concerning other members of the clerical class: laymen defending pederastic priests, priests defending heretical bishops, bishops defending mad cardinals, and so forth. Clericalism is a form of dualism in which Fr. Sinner is covered in the snowy mantle of Fr. Justified—and who are you to judge when he falls?

The Sacrament of Holy Orders imprints an indelible spiritual mark on the soul, bestowing the powers to consecrate, offer sacrifice, and forgive sins. This sacrament is not, however, a magical fluffy layer of snow that makes a priest’s feces stop stinking.

Luther himself was a clericalist, returning from Rome scandalized by the excesses of the Roman clergy and full of zeal to denounce them. He was scrupulous about his own sins after he was ordained a priest, since he did not think himself worthy of the priesthood. He was so obsessed by his own unworthiness that he was nearly unable to finish saying his first Mass, much to the embarrassment of his father.

The general attitude of pre-Reformation Catholics can best be described as one of holy resignation to clerical vice. Whether they had to suffer the keeping of concubines, the buying and selling of offices, the thieving of tithes to live in exorbitance, or even outright perversities, the laity’s reaction to wicked priests was to express their disgust and move on with life. They understood and readily admitted that bishops who murdered others for their own gain were on a steep slope to Hell, and this understanding granted them a measure of peace.

Surely it can do the same for us.

Popularizing the Faith, One List at a Time

I recently happened upon a strange online article entitled, "5 Saints Who Had Terrifying Visions of Hell." From the title, I thought it might be a sober reflection on the final end of the damned, perhaps in the form of a sermon. Instead, I discovered it to be a Buzzfeed-style list with excerpts from holy mystics focusing almost entirely on grotesque imagery.

Being already in a morbid state of mind, thanks to the impending holiday, I decided to investigate this website further. Called "ChurchPOP," it is run by a fellow named Brantly Millegan, who (as his personal website informs us) has an MA in Theology and is working on a PhD in Theology from CUA.

I am pleased to see that Mgr. Millegan defends the Catholic's right to criticize the reigning pope, but I suppose that means Michael Voris will not be inviting him onto his Daily Whirligig show. I find myself feeling slightly envious about the extent of his writing portfolio, everything from the seemingly-Feeneyite ("3 Need-to-Know Dogmas You Never Hear About") to the near-occasion-of-Weigel ("Serious Catholics Are Evangelical").

Now, Mr. Grump will never be invited to write for Aleteia or Catholic Sistas, but maybe Mgr. Millegan would see fit to publish a ChurchPOP version of my Josephology series: "7 Reasons Why St. Joseph Was an Old Fuddy-Duddy" (Reason 1: Ecumenism with the East is still a thing!).

One quote from the "5 Saints" article stood out to me, though. This was from Teresa of Avila, describing the hellish pains of certain heretics, and it seems particularly relevant in light of tomorrow's celebration of Reformation Day:

It was that vision that filled me with the very great distress which I feel at the sight of so many lost souls, especially of the Lutherans – for they were once members of the Church by baptism – and also gave me the most vehement desires for the salvation of souls; for certainly I believe that, to save even one from those overwhelming torments, I would most willingly endure many deaths.

St. Teresa of Avila, pray for us!

"By God's grace, I know Satan very well."