Luther Went Too Far

The following has been quoted extensively from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther

Luther started off OK...

Hans Hillerbrand writes that Luther had no intention of confronting the church, but saw his disputation as a scholarly objection to church practices, and the tone of the writing is accordingly "searching, rather than doctrinaire." Hillerbrand writes that there is nevertheless an undercurrent of challenge in several of the theses, particularly in Thesis 86, which asks: "Why does the pope, whose wealth today is greater than the wealth of the richest Crassus, build the basilica of St. Peter with the money of poor believers rather than with his own money?"

Then he got carried away...

Archbishop Albrecht of Mainz and Magdeburg did not reply to Luther's letter containing the 95 Theses. He had the theses checked for heresy and in December 1517 forwarded them to Rome. He needed the indulgences revenue to pay off a papal dispensation for his tenure of more than one bishopric. As Luther later noted, "the pope had a finger in the pie as well, because one half was to go to the building of St Peter's Church in Rome".

Pope Leo X was used to reformers and heretics, and he responded slowly, "with great care as is proper." Over the next three years, he was to deploy a series of papal theologians and envoys against Luther, which only served to harden the reformer's anti-papal theology. First, the Dominican theologian Sylvester Mazzolini drafted a heresy case against Luther, whom Leo then summoned to Rome. The Elector Frederick persuaded the pope to have Luther examined at Augsburg, where the Imperial Diet was held. There, in October 1518, Luther informed the papal legate Cardinal Cajetan that he did not consider the papacy part of the biblical Church, and the hearings degenerated into a shouting match. More than his writing the 95 Theses, Luther's confrontation of the church cast him as an enemy of the pope. Cajetan's original instructions had been to arrest Luther if he failed to recant, but he lacked the means in Augsburg, where the Elector guaranteed Luther's security. Luther slipped out of the city at night, without leave from Cajetan.

In January 1519, at Altenburg in Saxony, the papal nuncio Karl von Miltitz adopted a more conciliatory approach. Luther made certain concessions to the Saxon, who was a relative of the Elector, and promised to remain silent if his opponents did. The theologian Johann Maier von Eck, however, was determined to expose Luther's doctrine in a public forum. In June and July 1519 he staged a disputation with Luther's colleague Andreas Karlstadt at Leipzig and invited Luther to speak. Luther's boldest assertion in the debate was that Matthew 16:18 does not confer on popes the exclusive right to interpret scripture, and that therefore neither popes nor church councils were infallible. For this, Eck branded Luther a new Jan Hus, referring to the Czech reformer and heretic burned at the stake in 1415. From that moment, he devoted himself to Luther's defeat.

Luther went from raising a discontented hand to all-out rebellion. The former was his right; the latter when the devil dragged him away.

The Fruits of Luther

Matthew 7:16 "By their fruit you will know them".

Isn't life funny. Medjugorje has done more for the Catholic Church than all the other major approved apparitions put together. Unprecedented numbers of healings, conversions, religious vocations, people repenting and turning back to God have come from a tiny village in Bosnia since alleged apparitions began in 1981. Cardinal Shonborn from Vienna once told Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) that if the Vatican were to shut down Medjugorje, it would have to shut down his seminary too, because most of his new seminarians received their call through Medjugorje. While conspiracy theorists and gossip-mongers have tried to highlight some of the bad fruits, such as some Franciscan disobedience and other human error, the good fruits stand out like an Everest. Yet, to this day, Medjugore has still not been officially sanctioned by the Church. I, for one, live in eternal hope that this will change soon.

Shifting our gaze from such a glorious scene to the general Christian landscape, our senses are suddenly assaulted. Not merely our senses, but the depths of our very souls. For what we see are over 33,000 flavours of non-Catholic Christian churches, increasing unchecked, despite Christ's fervent prayer that there be ONE flock and ONE shepherd.

Instead of fighting as one against the enemy, debates and arguments rage endlessly between Christians of different denominations - reminiscent of the "brother against brother" warnings of the Bible.

Anti-semitism raised its ugly head and pervaded the fabric of life right up until its summit of expression in Hitler's exterminations during World War II.

Our Blessed Mother Mary is being insolently deposed to the status of a mere wench-in-waiting while Christ Himself watches on sadly.

Abortions are mainstream - hundreds of thousands of innocents murdered daily.

Divorce has reaked havoc on the fabric of family life.

What are we talking about here - nothing less than the fruits of Luther. Isn't life funny. 33,000 Churches say Luther was onto a good thing. People obviously just don't care what Christ wants. Thanks Martin Luther, you king of idiots!

Absence of Evidence - The Atheist Copout

It still galls me that atheists require perfect evidence to believe in God, but will settle for a half-ass theory to believe in evolution.

From Richard Dawkins to Johnny A. Theist down the road, the catchcry is "There is no evidence for God". When asked exactly what type of evidence they require in order to believe, of course they would not settle for anything less than perfect evidence, the type of peer-reviewed evidence demanded by science. But, there are way too many problems with this, including that peers can only review based on their current level of knowledge and understanding. Given a few more decades, chances are that the same peers would review somewhat differently. So, pardon the irony, but science is not an exact science.

A relevant question would be: What kind of evidence would it take to go from being an atheist to, let's say, an agnostic or simply one who shuts up and reserves judgement until clearer evidence is produced? The Catholic Church abounds with such evidence. It will never be scientifically peer-reviewed because science does not yet have to tools to deal with anything supernatural. And if a scientist believed some of this evidence, chances are they wouldn't want their peers to know about it.

A dog has more sensory perception than man, but we have to accept that the tools of science are wielded by mere men. It may take centuries before science can seriously study supernatural phenomena.

So, what evidence can we gather from the Catholic Church that supports the existence of God. The question is: where to begin? Here are a few starters:

1. Incorrupt bodies of saints (the genuine ones, yes we know there have been hoaxes)


2. Stigmata (again, the genuine ones), e.g. Padre Pio


3. Marian apparitions - e.g. Medjugorje, where seers still see the Blessed Virgin Mary today and which has been studied by three teams of scientists since 1981


4. Eucharistic Miracles - there have been too many to count and YouTube even has videos of them.


5. Sun miracles, e.g. at Fatima and Medjugorje
   
6. Other empirical and completely mind-boggling evidence, such as the image of Our Lady in a rock at Las Lajas, Colombia. Scientists drilled that rock and found the image to be coloured in the rock itself to a depth of several feet!

I've tried to include modern examples such as Medjugorje, which are subject to even greater and knowledgable scrutiny than those of past eras. I could have included the Fatima miracle, during which 70,000 people simultaneously witnessed an awesome solar display, but the older something is, unfortunately the more easy it is to dismiss.
I fear the problem with atheism is that its participants are generally a dishonest bunch, willing to find anything to absolve them from the necessity of studying these evidences. If they studied the scientific reports on the visionaries at Medjugorje as much as they studied their "Popular Science" magazine, there would no longer be any sensible reason to be an atheist. In fact, you'd be a fool to still call yourself an atheist.

Click here for information on the scientific investigations carried out on the Medjugorje visionaries.

What if Non-Catholics are Right?

Catholic apologists spend a lot of time debating apologists from the other 33,000 Christian denominations. Is it really necessary? Yes and no. No, because Catholics really know they are in the right place. Yes, because just as with the crusades, at some point you're going to have to face what's right in your face and won't go away.

But, I think God allows the Catholic Church to face criticism. Occasionally, valid points are raised and errors uncovered which help steer the Catholic Church on a straight course. Certainly, few would argue that the Church has needed to be brought back from error on many occasions. Christ, after all, did intimate that the gates of hell would try to prevail. But he also promised that hell would never actually succeed.

How much of the conspiracy theory is true, I'm not sure, but among other things, we've supposedly been infiltrated by the Freemasons, culminating in Vatican II. We got it wrong with Gallileo (though Robert Sungenis thinks the Vatican had a good case). We went on crazy witch-hunts and murdered a lot of innocent people. We had abominable Popes who fathered illegitimate children and sold indulgences.

That leads us to one of the many who had a pretty good case against the Catholic Church - Martin Luther. We all feel for him in a way. His heart seemed to be in the right place when he nailed his protestations to the door. And more than likely, his protestations had the desired effect as we see none of those sorts of shenanigans in the Catholic Church today (I hope).

The sweet Lord knows the Catholic Church has been at the centre of controversy after controversy. Granted, we've had two thousand years to accumulate all those controversies. Give the protestant churches another 1850 years and they'd probably achieve something similar. We've had to apologise on numerous occasions for atrocities and a multiplicity of other misdemeanours. We've had to eat humble pie on many occasions and I think we're still doing that even today. An example of this would be gradual softening of the Church's attitudes to other religions, promoting tolerance and dialogue and acknowledging the "seeds of truth" that exist in all religions, rather than condemning them automatically to hellfire.

Is any of this surprising though? Not if you cast your mind back to the early Church post-resurrection. Peter and Paul, filled so full of the Holy Spirit that they were fearless, could drive out demons and heal the sick. Yet, they could not agree whether to allow the gentiles to be part of the Church, and if so, whether they should be required to follow Jewish traditions.

Yes, Christ is still leading his beloved Church and I dare say we need to swallow our pride (something we've been used to doing recently anyway) and listen to.....yes, even to....shock horror...Protestants!

But, what of those who correct us, shape us, re-align us, not themselves being within the Catholic Church. What about James White or any other apologist from any of the other 33,000 Christian denominations? What becomes of them? They provide a good service to us. They keep us on our toes. Their arguments are food for thought. They might actually be right and we might actually be wrong on some issues. Don't worry! God can use that, even as he has used so many others over the millenia - saints, mystics, Judas Iscariot, even atheists. For God loves all His children and will give each and every one a time to accept His mercy.

But, Christ's primary desire was that there be one flock and one shepherd. While God can use these people to guide the Church, that is not to say that they are automatically acceptable to Him. After all, Judas provided a great service too. A very great service if we pursue that line of thought long enough. The issue is of "authority" and of "where does the Holy Spirit reside?" Even the most hardened atheist can make the occasional good point about spiritual matters. But following up that good point is likely to be a good number of bad points. Some might argue that I've just described the Catholic Church in a nutshell - bad mixed with good. But, this isn't the point. The old testament gives us a hint as to what I'm talking about.

God loved his people - the Jews. He gave them prophets to lead and guide them. One day, the people decided they wanted a king, like all the other peoples. God said "You don't know what you're asking for...but OK, if you insist". He anointed Saul as the first king. He must have know the sort of guy he would end up as. He warned the people. Then David took over. He was a great King, but even he had his weak points. Solomon too began full of promise, but succumbed to idol worship in the end. Then, we had a succession of really awful kings. How God must have cringed for His people. But we learn a lot about God from these times. We learn that God doesn't just abandon His people because of those that lead them. This is something Luther would have done well to remember.

And so it is with the Catholic Church. Yes, we show the weaknesses of the apostles. Our heart is on our sleeve. We're hated and maligned. We're even downright WRONG sometimes. But, we're still the Church that Christ built. We're still where the Holy Spirit resides. We're still the legitimate authority. And the best that the most scholarly and astute non-Catholic can do is provide assistance to us, but never supercede us and never lead us. They just don't have any integral authority we can rely on. They don't have history on their side. There isn't a point at which we can be sure we are touching base with the Lord Jesus Christ who took great pains to set up a physical church. Among the good points are many errors, just like the Catholic Church I suppose. But, the difference is this: God's response to Catholic errors is to send guidance and correction. For God corrects those He loves.

James White Gets Silly With Numbers

James White's article entitled "The 33,000 Denominations Myth" deserves singling out. I'm not sure why he bothered writing this article. I sense it is simply to have "something" written, so that his followers who don't actually read the article can at least believe that, if James White wrote a response, then it's a good bet the Catholic side is up to no good.

Let's have a look at exactly what all the fuss is about. It is simply this: The claim used by Catholic apologists that there are 33,000 protestant denominations is incorrect. It refers to Tim Staples' and others quotation of the World Christian Encyclopedia (Oxford University Press, 2001), pg. 10. White's article simply disputes this figure and asks Catholics to stop using it and to stop blaming sola scriptura for it.

But unfortunately, James White is guilty of his own accusation - not researching properly. Sure, he did a slightly better job than Tim ... because he HAD to. He had to respond. But, as we shall see later, he tripped over himself in his haste to get his article out.

We could probably gloss over this simple mistake, except that one of James White's main weapons of attack against Catholic apologists is lack of scholarliness. Much loud-mouthed boasting of his debating prowess and scholarliness can be heard from his corner. An example:

There was a time when Catholic Answers tried to put forward a serious face of scholarship. They sought to utilize at least semi-scholarly sources (though even then without much serious effort to use them in context..). But over the past few years it seems the bottom of the barrel has come into clear view, and the pretense of scholarship has become glaring.

Irrespective of the errors, White's article doesn't give us any plausible justification for there being even just MORE THAN ONE Christian church, let alone three, three hundred or thirty-three thousand. Would James White admit that Sola Scriptura is responsible for ten protestant denominations? One Hundred? It matters not the number. If only ten, that is nine more than enough for James White to pull the eject lever from protestantism and return home to the Catholic Church.

And White's article does nothing to exonerate Sola Scriptura from blame for this abhorrent situation. Absolutely, and without possible confusion, the refusal to submit to the authority of Rome, hand in hand with the belief that the Bible is the sole authority, can have no other possible result than the conflagration of Christian churches. I do not see how this can be avoided. Conversely, if one remained in filial communion with Rome, trustfully suppressing one's own ideologies and preferences, one simply would not participate in the building of new churches. It really is a simple as that.

So, here are the numbers.

James tries to defend protestantism by pointing out that the 33,000 figure is not a listing of "denominations" arising from the Protestant Reformation. He points out that the Protestant denominational figure is actually 11,830 and asks us to please remember that the denominational number includes Roman Catholics, Orthodox as well as Protestants! Is 11,830 more than one? Yes, even I can do that math.

He gleefully asks us to note that there are 242 Catholic denominations!

Catholic Answers board carried the following post, which should assist James White with his understanding of these numbers.

"David Barrett, et al, does indeed refer to "over 33,000 distinct denominations in 238 countries..." (Table 1-5, vol 1, page 16). This refers to his unique definition of a "Christian denomination" but does not include small ones (congregations of a couple hundred or less), which would dramatically increase this number beyond all imagination. Barrett also states there are 242 total Roman Catholic denominations (year 2000 numbers). So I looked into what he believed these denominations were.

Barrett breaks down his encyclopedic reference by country. So I looked up how many Roman Catholic denominations are within the U.S. according to Barrett. Much to my surprise, Barrett shows ONLY ONE Roman Catholic denomination for the United States.

So I wondered where the heck are these 242 denominations? I looked in Barrett's reference for Britain, and again he listed ONLY ONE Roman Catholic denomination. I thought surely that of the 238 countries within his encyclopedic reference there must be a country that had more than ONE Roman Catholic denomination. There wasn't. I could not find one country listed by Barrett that had more than ONE Roman Catholic denomination.

So, what does Barrett mean when he states there are 242 Roman Catholic denominations? It seems Barrett is counting each country as it's own denomination. So, for Barrett, the Roman Catholic Church of the USA is a different denomination than the Roman Catholic Church of Canada. I don't know how he got 242 denominations from 238 countries listed, however. Some numbers from Barrett's...

Denominations / Paradenominations:
1970: 26,350
1995: 33,820

Under U.S. Country Table 2, of the 6,222 US denominations, there's only ONE Roman Catholic denomination listed, and there's 60 Orthodox denominations. Barrett labels the rest of the denominations: Protestant, Anglican, Independent, and Marginal. The more commonly accepted classification of Christianity used even by Protestant scholars, such as Leslie Dunstan in his book Protestantism, Christianity consists of: (1) Catholic, (2) Orthodox, and (3) Protestant. So, using this more commonly understood classification....

Number of U.S. Denominations
Catholic 1
Orthodox 60
Protestant 6,161

Remember, the above numbers are derived using Protestant sources only. Barrett differs from other Protestants such as Dunstan as to what constitutes a Protestant denomination. What Dunstan would call Protestant, Barrett describes as:

Barrett's classification:
Protestant 660
Anglican 1
Independent 5,100
Marginal 400

That's just for the U.S. Yet, there's but ONE Catholic denomination in the U.S., either by Dunstan or Barrett's standard.

Another way of looking at it is not to use Barrett's fuzzy understanding of denominations at all. What does Webster call a denomination? Let's see... Webster calls a 'denomination' a "a religious organization uniting local congregations in a single legal and administrative body." The category called "Protestantism," since it does not actually "unite" any local congregation into a "single legal and administrative body," is more accurately a grouping of denominations rather than a denomination, according to Webster's definition. How does one know if their "denomination" is of the Protestant kind?

You might be a Protestant if....
(1) You believe the Bible consists of only 66 books
(2) You believe authority rests with Scripture Alone (Sola Scriptura)
(3) You believe justification is by Faith Alone (Sola Fide)

How many of the "denominations" listed by Barrett fall into this category? I'm betting over 33,000. Let's look at it this way, of the 33,000 that Barrett classifies, which ones refute the pillars of Protestantism shown above? (a) Catholic Church, (b) Oriental Orthodox (5th century schism), (c) Eastern Orthodox (11th century schism). Any others? Perhaps I've missed a few. Even if you break apart the Orthodox Churches into separate Patriarchates (Bishops), that doesn't reduce the BIG number of 33,820 by very much, does it? Some would say, "well that number is completely inflated" based upon Barrett's fuzzy definition of "denomination." On the contrary, I would say that it is a MUCH LARGER NUMBER of denominations using Webster's definition of "denomination."

Even within the Catholic Church, the most diverse forms of Catholicism, the Latin and Eastern Rite, share the same government, the same "religious organization uniting local congregations in a single legal and administrative body." In other words, Canon Law for the Eastern Rite and Canon Law for the Latin Rite come from the same single government, chaired by the same Vicar.
In the U.S. the next largest so-called "denomination" after the Catholic Church is referred to as "Baptist" according to http://www.adherents.com/

Is this a single denomination by Webster's use of the word? Can the Baptist denomination rightly be called a "religious organization uniting local congregations in a single legal and administrative body?" I don't believe so.

I suspect the label 'Baptist' is yet another grouping of denominations like the word "Protestant," since according to one Baptist scholar, every "local Baptist parish church is a law unto itself. Its relations with other Baptists churches, its compliance with recommendations from national church headquarters, its acceptance of any resolutions formulated at regional , national, or international conventions -- all these are entirely voluntary on the part of the parish church." (Religions of America, Leo Rosten, ed.)

If it is true that every Baptist parish-church is a law unto itself, then isn't every individual Baptist parish-church, according to Webster, its own legal and administrative body, its own denomination? I wonder how many Baptist parish-churches are in the world? I know there are too many to easily count here in Colorado Springs.

Are there any major denominations within Protestantism, for example Lutheranism, which can be correctly called a denomination by Webster's usage? If so, I'm not familiar with them. Missouri-Synod Lutherans want nothing to do with the World-Lutheran-Federation Lutherans, for example.

Therefore, I believe 33,000 is a tragically conservative number of Protestant denominations IN THIS COUNTRY (U.S.) let alone in the world.

Anti-Catholic Evangelical apologist Eric Svendsen is quoting from an earlier edition of the same encyclopedic source. Unfortunately, if you've read Dave Armstrong's article on the subject, you know that Eric Svendsen's polemics fall flat upon its face (as usual). The beauty is, Svendsen still has not faced up to the fact that there is ONE Catholic Church listed for every country Barrett lists. Nor has he addressed the fact that all those "denominations" that use a 66-book Protestant Bible, and uphold the pillars of Protestantism (sola scriptura and sola fide) are PROTESTANT even if they claim otherwise. Calling themselves "non-denominational" may be a clever marketing technique, but the world (including Protestant authors) knows them as Protestants.

See also: The Facts and Stats on "33,000 Denominations"