Catholic Sentiment Toward Luther
Those misguided Protestants who think that the Roman Catholic Church has changed its attitude toward their “separated brethren,” and that it does not regard Luther and the Reformation in the same light that it did three centuries ago, would see their mistake if they could read a few genuine expressions of Roman Catholic sentiment concerning these things. For example: in a recent issue of the New World (Catholic) we find the following editorial expression of opinion concerning Luther and his doctrine of justification by faith, a corner-stone of Protestantism:— No greater foe of public order and individual morality ever appeared in history than the apostate monk. His chief principle of “justification by faith” destroyed every motive for upright conduct. Good works, noble deeds, being of no value according to Luther, the inevitable inference was to regard restraint of the passions, acts of sacrifice or self-denial, as worthless. Law also came to be held in contempt, and blind faith or confidence that God would ignore our crimes because of Christ’s merits became the pivot on which the Christian life in Protestant lands turned. It is difficult to write calmly about such an utterance as this. It is such a bald misrepresentation of the truth, such a perversion of the doctrine of justification, such a falsification of historical Protestantism, that we can only wonder that a professed teacher of truth could possibly give expression to it. The intolerant hatred of Catholicism for Protestantism is only thinly veneered, and occasionally, as in this case, it breaks through. It is not difficult to understand what would be the fate of Protestants and Protestantism if this writer could enforce his views.
“The same horn made war with the saints.” “And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus.” History may be repeated.