THEOLOGICAL STUDIES

Catholicism (Part 2)

INTRODUCTION

In the previous session we discussed some of the major doctrines of the Catholic church. We looked at the major doctrines which each Christian has to deal with, the way we receive grace, spiritual authority, and church government. In today's session we wish to look at some unique features of the Roman Catholic church which Protestant churches have outright rejected. Most of these features still figure prominently in the Catholic church, especially outside the U.S. Many of these features were the primary reason Luther attacked the Roman Catholic Church.

UNIQUE FEATURES OF ROMAN CATHOLICISM

The Sinlessness of Mary

The Immaculate Conception is a Roman Catholic dogma that asserts that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was preserved by God from the stain of original sin at the time of her own conception. Specifically, the dogma says she was not afflicted by the lack of sanctifying grace that afflicts mankind, but was instead filled with grace by God, and furthermore lived a life completely free from sin. It is commonly confused with the doctrine of the incarnation and virgin birth, though the two deal with separate subjects. For example, many think that the Catholic church in Corsicana named "The Church of the Immaculate Conception" refers to the birth of Jesus. It does not. It refers to the special birth of Mary.

According to the dogma, Mary was conceived by normal biological means, but her soul was acted upon by God (kept "immaculate") at the time of her conception. Moreover, she not only was born sinless, she remained sinless throughout her life. Because many Catholic theologians have a problem with sex being OK, many Catholics have stressed that Mary remained a virgin for the rest of her life. Who then was the mother of Jesus' brothers and sisters? According to these Catholic theologians, they were children by Joseph's first wife, Mary being his second. Mary may have been Joseph's second wife; there is just no scriptural basis for this.

The feast of the Immaculate Conception, celebrated on December 8, had been established in 1476 by Pope Sixtus IV. He stopped short of defining the doctrine as a dogma of the faith, thus giving Catholics freedom to believe in this or not without heresy; this freedom had been reiterated by the Council of Trent. The existence of the feast was a strong indication of the Church's belief in the Immaculate Conception, even before its 19th century definition as a dogma.

The Immaculate Conception was solemnly defined as a dogma by Pope Pius IX in his constitution Ineffabilis Deus, on December 8, 1854, and consecrated by Pope Pius XII in 1942. Because this belief has reached the status of dogma, the faithful Catholic is not to question it but only to accept it. You will see this idea of dogma repeated several times throughout the movie Luther

The sad thing is that although the Catholics have tended to overemphasize Mary, we have tended to de-emphasize her. She was definitely a humble devout believer in God whom God chose to be the mother of His Son. You don't get any more higher honor than that.

Purgatory

Like Catholics, conservative evangelicals believe that salvation involves a person becoming more and more like Christ, that is, becoming more and more pure and holy. The problem emerges when you see how people can misuse the mass. If the mass is the place I get grace, then I don't really need to live a holy life, do I?

Good Catholics would shudder at the idea that morals don't matter. Yet in their system some unworthy people are going to make it to heaven. It's not fair though for a lapsed Catholic to get to heaven as quickly as Mother Teresa. Therefore, we have the system of purgatory, the place of purging, of purifying. For those who are pure and holy, they pass right through this experience into heaven; for those not so pure and holy, they need to stay there longer in order to become pure and holy. The worse a person is, the longer he stays in purgatory; the better a person is, the shorter amount of time he stays in purgatory.

Is there any scriptural justification for this? If there is, it is slight. Now Paul teaches that the day of judgment is a day of fire in which all of our works will be tested by fire. In other words God is going to see whether or not our works were done for Jesus or for selfish reasons (1 Cor. 3:12-15). This event will purify all believers. Some will pass through it with flying colors; others will come through it, saved as if only by fire. This view though is a far cry from the Roman Catholic view of purgatory in which a person can stay in the fiery flames for 1000's of years. The day of judgment is spoken of as being only momentary, not of being thousands of years long.

Indulgences

The bottom line though is this: who wants to go through purgatory? No one. So the Roman Catholic theologians have devised a plan in which a person who has NOT lived the best life won't have to spend a long time in purgatory. An indulgence is an act on the part of the Roman Catholic Church in which a church official removes a person's sin and that person by-passes purgatory and goes straight to heaven. The Dominican monk Johann Tetzel (1465-1519) was an important promoter of their effectiveness. He was sent to Germany by Pope Leo X and became known for the catchy slogan "as soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs." (This is still part of official Roman Catholic doctrine.)

By the time of Martin Luther you could not only pay a lot of money to help you escape purgatory, you could also pay a lot of money to keep a lot of your relatives out of purgatory, even to keep them from going to purgatory in the first place.

At first Martin Luther accepted the belief in indulgences. When he went to Rome as a young man, he crawled up the stairs The Scala Sancti (which were supposed to be the stairs Jesus climbed to reach Pontius Pilate; he did so in order to spring some of his relatives out of purgatory. Later though this is one act that Martin Luther vociferiously attacked when he attacked the Roman Church.

Saints

The next major belief which Luther attacked was that of the power of saints to help Christians who are still on earth. According to Roman Catholicism saints are basically Roman Catholics the church has recognized as people who have lived exemplary Christian lives. So far so good. The only problem is that even today many Catholics believe that you can pray to a saint and ask them to pray to God on your behalf. The Catholic believes that although God might not hear your prayer, He will hear the prayer of the saint and grant the request on your behalf. Moreover, in the Middle Ages the church taught that God could take some of the good deeds of the saints and credit them to your account.

Other than being unscriptural, this belief has 2 other major problems with it. First, it makes Christ look ungracious. In fact by the time of Martin Luther the Catholic church had portrayed Christ as being nothing more than an angry avenging judge ready to throw any and every sinner into hell. Second, it makes the saints look more gracious than Jesus who is full of grace (John 1:14-16). Whereas the NT does encourage us to pray in groups of 2 or more (Matt. 18:19), nowhere does it tell us to petition dead Christians to help us with our lives.

Holy Relics

A relic is some object, notably part of the body or clothes, remaining as a memorial of a departed saint. One of the major features of the Middle Ages was the worship of relics (in many parts of Catholicism this practice is still in vogue). Large churches were actually built around such relics, onebeing Santa Maria della Spina in Pisa, Italy which claimed to house a thorn from the crown of thorns Jesus wore on His brow on the cross. During the time of Martin Luther in Europe there were so many splinters and nails from the cross of Christ that you could have built a huge cathedral with it. Luther claimed that there were enough nails in Rome from Jesus' cross to shoe all the horses in Germany, and that he was told that 18 of the 12 apostles were buried in Spain alone.

This practice while downplayed in the U.S. still plays a major role in Latin American countries.

The Question of Authority

Again, it all comes down to the question of authority. For conservative evangelicals Scripture is the ultimate authority. For Catholics scripture and many other voices serve as authority, even voices which contradict scripture. How can the Catholic church make Aristotle as authoritative as scripture? (For an interesting example of this, refer to the book The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco.)

It all has to do with the question of Adam sinning in the Garden of Eden. According to conservative evangelicals when Adam sinned in the Garden of Eden, sin affected his entire being: (1) his body--he will not die physically; (2) emotionally--he will experience emotional pain; (3) spiritually--he is dead to God; and (4) mentally--his mental ability to understand God has been severely affected. Catholics, on the other hand, while believing that the first three things happened to Adam and us, do not believe that Adam's mind was affected by his sin in the Garden of Eden. Moreover, if Adam's mind was not affected by sin, then neither were our minds affected since we are descended from him physically. As a result, Catholics believe that even a non-Christian or even someone not touched by the Hebrew revelation of the OT can come up with revelation about God.

Is there any truth to this belief? We do find thinkers who come up with beliefs which do tap into the truth, however, not the whole truth of scripture. That is a big difference. Moreover, to accept 2 voices as completely authoritative when they contradict each other is illogical. Such a system throws logic to the wind. Whatever else God is, He is a mind, a logical, rational mind. To engage in such an enterprise makes God illogical.

MARTIN LUTHER

The reason we are looking at Martin Luther at this point is that many of the things we have just described are the very things Luther rebelled against as he launched the Reformation. One thing you need to know is that Luther had no intention at first of separating from the Roman Catholic Church. His intent was to purify it of its excesses. To a large extent the RCC divorced itself from Luther and not vice versa.

The Early Days

Before Luther discovered that we are saved by grace, he was terrified of God. Not only was he aware of his own sinfulness, he was also acutely aware of the righteousness of God. The only result of this clash between God's righteousness and his sin had to be damnation. What happens when Luther conducts his first mass that shows you he is under a lot of spiritual stress and guilt?

When Luther goes to Rome, he performs certain acts in order to try to find peace for his soul. What 2 acts does he perform in the movie? (The steps are called the Scala Sancti, the holy steps, so named because Catholics believed these are the steps Jesus ascended to see Pontius Pilate. They are still in Rome.)

Did these acts give Luther spiritual peace?

One of the major authorities for the RCC is the church councils, for example, the 4th Lateran and 5th Lateran Church Councils. What problem did Luther have with the church councils?

After the boy's suicide Luther changes his view about God. He used to think that God was a God of great wrath and anger. Why does he now believe that God is a God of love?

Although Luther admits that we deserve hell, he now says that we are saved. According to Luther what has Christ done to satisfy God's wrath?

The Ninety-Five Theses

As Luther lectures at the University of Wittenburg, he attacks the use of relics. How does he tear down the use of relics?

A new pope comes to the throne of Rome, Pope Leo X. Why does the newly elected Pope send John Tetzel to Germany to raise up funds? That is, what is he wanting to build?

John Tetzel sells indulgences to the people. What does Tetzel claim the indulgences are able to do?

"When a coin in the coffer rings, a soul from Purgatory _________________."

Luther is so repulsed by Tetzel that he nails 95 Theses to the door of the church at Wittenburg. What are some of the arguments Luther presents in the 95 Theses?

Luther's 95 Theses are spread rapidly throughout Europe. What makes the spread of his theses possible?

Luther is hauled before Cardinal Catejan and is told he must recant (revoco) his teachings. When Luther is presented to Catejan, he does not recant his teachings about indulgences. Instead why does Luther say that indulgences are wrong?

Normally, whenever someone like Luther attacked the church, they were burned at the stake. Why wasn't Luther immediately put to death by the pope once the pope wanted Luther dead?

The Diet at Worms: "Here I Stand"

Frederick the Elector of Saxony is subject to the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, who is a devout Catholic. When the pope wants Luther brought to Rome to face the Inquisition, Frederick reminds Charles that his grandfather Maximillian guaranteed that Germans would receive fair trials in Germany herself. Charles honors this agreement and calls for Luther to be tried at Worms (1521). When Luther is put on trial, he utters one of the most famous statements in church history: "Here I stand!" What did he mean by those words?

What does Luther appeal to over and over again?

Captivity

Although the emperor has promised Luther safe conduct, his life is still in danger. What does Frederick do in order to make sure that Luther remains safe and alive?

What does Luther do during these months of captivity? Unfortunately during his months of captivity, Luther's works inflame the peasants. Luther taught that if Scripture did not teach it, then we should not believe it. What do the peasants do while Luther is in captivity?

How does Luther respond in the movie to what happens to the peasants?

(This is the only major flaw in the movie. The truth is that Luther encouraged the government to slaughter the rebellious peasants.)

Final Victory: The Diet at Augsburg

The Holy Roman emperor Charles V has decided to crush Luther and his following once and for all. He calls the 7 electors of Germany (the rulers of the 7 major districts of Germany) together at Augsburg. The electors are threatened with force. Charles will pick off one elector at a time until he has crushed them all. How do the electors respond to this threat?

Because the electors defied Charles V, Luther and the Protestant Reformation triumphed.