Archbishop Mueller: Lutherans might get ordinariate

[Dawn Marie]

Archbishop Mueller: Lutherans might get ordinariate

1-16-2013

The prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has said that the Vatican might consider an ordinariate for Lutherans wishing to return to full communion with the Catholic Church, similar to the structure established by Pope Benedict XVI for Anglicans.[1]

Archbishop Mueller giving a joint blessing with a Lutheran 'bishop'

Archbishop Gerhard Ludwig Mueller conceded that “the Lutheran world is a bit different from the Anglican one, because among Anglicans there has always been a sector closer to Catholicism.” However, he said that some Lutherans hope for a restoration of full communion with Rome and that the Church should be ready to receive them. He suggested that, as with Anglicans, the Catholic Church might allow Lutherans to preserve “the legitimate traditions they have developed” while becoming members of the Catholic Church.

In the eyes of some Lutherans, the archbishop observed, Martin Luther intended merely to reform the Church, not to cause division among Christians. Archbishop Mueller added that some Lutherans believe the necessary reforms were completed by Vatican II. He added that in his own native land, Germany, “Protestants are not just opposed to Catholicism, because they have retained many Catholic traditions.”[2]

These statements of the Archbishop raise some observations on our part.

Whether some Lutherans are mystified and misguided about what Luther’s intentions and deeds were is irrelevant to the question whether Lutherans can be received back into communion with the Catholic Church. Rather, that question requires an inquiry into what Luther really produced, given the chaos he created with his breakaway. Whether a pyromaniac considers the purpose of his acts or not, he is still guilty of the crime of setting the stage to destroy property and life.

Now, Luther's principle of complete liberty of conscience - private judgment - can logically give rise to nothing but chaos, anarchy and universal rebellion against every dogma or belief, in general and against Luther's tenets in particular. In 1525, he proclaimed before the whole world that the authorities had no right to hinder anyone from teaching or professing his belief. Five years later, after the schism of the Anabaptists, he ordered the authorities to hand them over to the executioner. He denied the pope his spiritual authority and, turning around, offered it to the princes. These tyrants whom the will of Luther had made popes soon came to him demanding outrageous concessions and before long Luther was obliged to surrender even those points of dogma and moral teaching which he himself had not yet rejected, such as the outlaw of divorce and of polygamy.

Two illustrious Protestant scholars saw the inherent contradiction of Lutheranism. Harnack wrote:

If you have no confession of faith, who are you? What society do you make up? Why do you exist? And if you do promulgate a confession of faith; if you wish to impose it on me by your authority and in spite of the resistance of my conscience, how are you still Protestant? What do you do any differently from the Catholic, and against what do you claim Luther and Calvin did well to revolt?[3]

Likewise, Hausser, speaking of Calvin, states that he “did not see, or did not wish to see, the frightful antinomy at the very root of his own effort: to recreate an authority, a dogma, a Church, on the basis of private judgment.”[4]

One may be inclined to doubt whether Archbishop Mueller is himself directly advocating the idea of a Lutheran ordinariate, like the Anglican ordinariates newly set up in England and the United States. However, consider that in September 2011 he went to a Lutheran church for ecumenical vespers and at the end of the service Archbishop Muller and the Lutheran ‘bishop’ gave a joint blessing. Consider also that he wrote his doctoral dissertation under Cardinal Karl Lehman, who taught that the anathemas of the Council of Trent only applied to the Lutherans of those days: it doesn’t apply now. Whoever wishes to study the mind of the archbishop should examine the views of his intellectual mentor.[5]

Finally consider that it seems Archbishop Mueller believes there is no need for Protestants to convert.[6]

There has already been much written about the modernist views of the archbishop on matters of faith and some of them are even a bone of contention with Lutherans. Here are some of these landmarks:[7]

This natural essence of bread and wine is transfigured by God in the sense that the essence of bread and wine is made to consist exclusively in showing and realizing the salvific communion with God.

Strictly speaking, there are not several Churches one beside the other - these are rather divisions and separations within the one people and house of God.

We no longer define the relations among us on the basis of existing differences in doctrine, life or in the constitution of the Church.

Perhaps we may conclude with Archbishop Carli,[8] the conservative bishop most dreaded by the liberals at Vatican II, when he said something to the effect that… in order to please the Protestants, we cannot speak of the Blessed Virgin; to please the Orthodox, we cannot defend the Papacy and the Church; to please the Jews, we cannot speak of Jesus Christ, etc. At the end of the ecumenical obstacle course, can we even open our mouth to proclaim the Faith!

Archbishop Luigi Carli

source

[Cathleen]

God forbid that they set up some sort of "ordinate."

  What happened in the "bad old days?"  You want to be Catholic, you confess and believe what Catholics do and you give up and renounce your old way of believing.  Not easy, to be sure, but how many saints (known and unknown) did so?  But if you really find yourself in error, wouldn't you want to get out of that error, if you really cared about your soul?

I like the quote from +Archbishop Carli, may God rest his soul.

[Michael]

"What happened in the "bad old days?"  You want to be Catholic, you confess and believe what Catholics do and you give up and renounce your old way of believing."

This doesn't apply to the "big" tent of Vatican II.  Only traditional Catholics need to change.