Dear Sir,
The beatification day of Nobel Laureate Mother Teresa, is a great event in the history of humankind. She served humanity with honor and dignity. We have heard of the miracles and service of Jesus, but we have seen with our own eyes the greatness of Mother. We are very much blessed to live in the time of Mother.
Her service to humanity is blissful and itself a big wonder and miracle. At present society is selfish and most commercial, but Mother showed that a different path, a different ideology is to love humanity, is to love ourselves. If we hate and ignore people it means neglecting our own lives. Mother had a good heart in selecting India as the place to show the world the value of human lives.
Many people like us are suffering in the streets, under the sky. The people consist of old, poor, diseased and those suffering alot. We should give unfortunates food, shelter and love. Civilization should also mean the non-existence of unfortunates (beggars). Now, I request the people, the governments, and the religious leaders to chalk out a program to eradicate poverty and hunger from society. We must create centers for humanity and help the needy people as a mission. This would be a real tribute to Mother Teresa.
With regards,
S. Ganapathi Rao. India.
Thank you for sharing your perspective from India. We are very moved ourselves by the recent beatification of Mother Teresa and share your wish that poverty and hunger be eradicated.
Yours in Christ,
Tom Allen
Editor, CE
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Dear Mary Rose,
Your article on Catholic Exchange today came at just the right time. I have been struggling with the issue of job burnout for about the last five years. I feel that God has been calling me to do something else with my life and your article was the exclamation point on that feeling. I am anxiously awaiting your book on the subject. Thank you for a timely and much needed wake-up call!
Pax et bonum,
Dennis Wingfield
27-year Ford Motor Company Engineer
Thanks a bunch, good luck on your career quest and I'll let you know when my book is out.
Blessings,
Mary Rose Remington
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Dear Catholic Exchange:
I was intrigued to hear you were going to address the position CE has taken toward Protestants in some of your editorials. My boyfriend is MO Synod Lutheran, and I've shared a few of the editorials with him; he claims CE is setting up straw men and beating the same dead horse.
Unfortunately, I won't be sharing Why Martin Luther was Dead Wrong with him. Can you imagine if you logged into a fundamentalist Christian website that slammed into Pius IX (or for that matter, which one of the Innocents was a Borgia and not much use to the Church), and thereby claimed that Catholicism couldn't possibly be right with such a (fill in the blank) for a leader?
You might be better served by pointing out that not only was Luther wrong, so was Zwingli, and Calvin, and Melancthon, etc., etc., etc., and maybe bring in the thought that “reform” usually brings things together instead of tearing them further apart. (And if the sense of Scripture is so plain, why do we have over 25,000 interpretations of it?)
Cynthia
Dear Cynthia,
I certainly didn't mean to set up a straw man or beat a dead horse, and I would abjectly apologize if I had. After re-reading my response, I am at a loss to see where you found the straw man or the dead horse.
Luther was certainly the first to attack the liturgical year in such an effective manner. He certainly intended to do it — he timed his 95 theses for October 31st precisely for this reason.
Luther taught that faith alone saves. Thus, it is part of Lutheran theology that neither prayer nor good works brings grace. This point is still made on the Missouri Synod website. A similar point remains unmentioned, but is still a logical consequence: if faith alone saves, then good works don't bring grace either. Luther's teaching that an unsaved man who feeds a beggar commits sin is reasonable, if his hypothesis is correct. Similarly, it does not matter what other sins you commit, if your faith is all that is needed for salvation. Thus, his teaching that you can commit adultery one hundred times a day and still be saved is perfectly reasonable, if his hypothesis is correct.
The Lutheran Church teaches that his hypothesis is correct. It simply shrinks back from drawing all the conclusions he drew. Their refusal to take Luther's teaching to its logical conclusion robs them of a good test for its truthfulness — a test we should make if we care about the truth.
Your suggestion that the warts of all the Protestant reformers could also be exposed is a good one, but wouldn't that just open us up to more charges of straw men and dead horses from more denominations? I felt it was better to emphasize what a real reformer looks like than to describe the warts of all the false reformers. A real reformer looks like Christ. That's not a straw man or a dead horse, it's a fact.
Sure, many of our popes were not real reformers: no one will argue the point. Indeed, the lifestyles led by several of our popes make Luther look the very picture of sanctity by comparison. But none of the popes ever defended his sinful lifestyle by teaching that such a lifestyle is actually holy. Luther cannot make the same claim. That is neither a straw man nor a dead horse — it's the crux of the problem. Every man lives error. That's what sin is about. The honest man admits the error to be error, he confesses his sin. Luther not only lived error, he taught error (adultery, polygamy, faith alone, etc.) and called both the living and the teaching holiness. No pope has ever done that.
But the real straw man here is the setting up of a comparison between Luther and Catholic popes, which you did in your letter. No pope founded the Catholic Church as Luther founded the Lutheran Church. Jesus founded the Catholic Church and preserves without error (according to his own promise at John 16: 13-15) her interpretation of the Scriptures. The Church has never taught that the sense of Scripture is plain. Luther taught that and the reason there are so many interpretations is because he led so many people away from the only Divinely authorized interpreter of Scripture — the Catholic Church.
Steve Kellmeyer
Catholic Exchange Columnist
