You’d think the first photo is a Catholic Church, by today’s standards. But, no, it is Epiphany Lutheran Church in Westfield, Indiana. But Vatican II, misinterpreted, even in the highest places of the Church, hath wrought this stark, puritanical look to Catholic architecture and the Mass itself.
Of course, those who pay attention to detail, would know that the first picture is a Protestant Church, because they don’t have altar rail phobia or railphobic for short. They have no fear to kneel for their Communion.
The second photo is a pagan temple, by Vatican II, misinterpreted, standards. Just to be clear, my tastes lie between the first and second.
After and before:
7 comments:
LGBTQI+ marches begin across ASIA to Mark the beginning of Pride Month.
Asia - could that include largely Catholic Phillipines?
Could that include even parts of Indonesia? Indonesia being the nation with the largest Muslim population on earth..
Damn! How VERY much things have changed in just one decade!
I wonder what form God's eventual chastisement might take?
Perhaps one will not even be necessary; as the almost guaranteed long term consequences of so many worldwide embracing a disordered mad hedonistic ideology will be chastisement enough?
So some Protestant Christians, who don't believe in transubstantiation, can kneel to receive their Holy Communion?
Paul,
I think Lutherans believe in consubstantiation - so the host is not a mere symbol
"Even a theology along the lines of the concept of apostolic succession, as is in force in the Catholic and the Orthodox Church, should in no way deny the saving presence of the Lord in the Evangelical [i.e., Lutheran] Lord's Supper." - Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger in a letter to the Lutheran Bishop of Bavaria, Johannes Hanselmann in 1993.
TJM,
I think you are right, without rereading old texts of 40 years ago.
Luther and early Lutherans disagreed with both Calvin and Zwingli on the Real Presence.
Luther, i recall reading, could not escape the words of Scripture "This is my Body.." I think he believed Christ was present "in with and under"...but what Luther came to hate was making use of Aristotelian philosophy in trying to explain Our Lord's straight forward words...
Sorry to digress, (and now my mind is waking up thx to 2 strong coffees) but I also recall once listening to Taylor Marshall talk of his short time as an Episcopalian priest and I think he said some American Episcopalians and some High Church Anglicans kneel to receive communion - if so such people, such High church Anglicans etc..can hardly believe in what Calvin or Zwingli taught on the Eucharist/real presence?!
And after a third coffee, and a cigarette or two:
Fr X SJ at Y Canadian seminary circa 40 plus years ago:
"Now young men, pleeeese no one report me again to the archbishop...BUT Martin Luther as an either devout full of scruples Augustinian monk and priest or a confused in some ways early Protestant reformer to be sure to be sure, sure had a fuller, deeper and more scriptural understanding of the Real Presence than....ohhh..let's say that 13th century theologian and philosopher - Thomas Aquinas..."
Here is a 2013 A.D. blog post from David Schütz:
http://scecclesia.com/archives/6986
Mister Schütz, a Catholic convert, was a Lutheran pastor. He had served for 18 years (until 2020 A.D.) on the Ecumenical and Interfaith Commission, Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne.
Excerpts:
-- Why Lutherans can thank God for the Papacy of Benedict XVI
"On February 28, 2013, at 8pm in the evening, Pope Benedict XVI’s papacy comes to an end.
"From my point of view, as a “Lutheran in communion with the Bishop of Rome”, Benedict XVI will always stand out as unique among all the popes of history as the only one who really read, knew, and understood Martin Luther.
"Part of the reason for this is that Benedict XVI is a German. Except for John Paul II (who came from a country even more uniformly Catholic than Italy), all other popes since Adrian VI (d.1523) were Italians.
"Not one of them had any first-hand lived experience of Lutheranism. Joseph Ratzinger on the other hand was raised in an environment where Catholics and Lutherans lived side by side.
"Since Luther forms part of the literary heritage of Germany, his bible and his writings were easily accessible to the young Ratzinger, who once claimed that he had already read all of Luther’s pre-reformation writings by the time he entered University.
"It was this background that gave him such a great advantage when he was negotiating the final deal on the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification in 1999.
"It was Cardinal Ratzinger, as head of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, who saved this Declaration from a dismal death at the draft stage. But Ratzinger travelled to Germany, where, in his brother Georg’s home, he met together with Lutheran leaders to find the right formulas for affirming the joint faith of Catholics and Lutherans in regard to the doctrine of Justification.
"In an address in November, 2008, Pope Benedict addressed the central passage in Paul that caused so much division between Catholics and Lutherans"
Pope Benedict XVI declared:
"Let us now reflect on a topic at the centre of the controversies of the century of the Reformation: the question of justification. How does man become just in God’s eyes?…
"Luther’s expression “sola fide” is true if faith is not opposed to charity, to love."
====================
"Benedict was the first pope ever to preach from a Lutheran pulpit (at the Roman Lutheran Church in March 2010) and the first to visit Luther’s monastery in Erfurt in September 2011.
"On that latter occasion, he met with Germany’s Lutheran Church leaders. In his speech, he correctly identified the two driving issues for Luther: “Wie kriege ich einen gnädigen Gott” (“How do I find a gracious God?”) and “Was Christum treibet?” (“What promotes Christ?”)
In respect to the first question, Pope Benedict said:
============================
"The fact that this question was the driving force of his whole life never ceases to make a deep impression on me. The question: where do I stand before God? – Luther’s burning question must once more, doubtless in a new form, become our question too...
"In my view, this is the first summons we should attend to in our encounter with Martin Luther."
========================
And in reflection on the second, he said:
"Luther’s thinking, his whole spirituality, was thoroughly Christocentric:"
======================
"It is certainly what was at the heart of Ratzinger/Benedict’s own spirituality, and why I believe he was a very “Lutheran” pope.
"As he retires to a life of prayer, precisely to enter more deeply into that encounter with his Lord, Benedict XVI leaves us with a body of decisive papal teaching that will pave the way for future reflections between Lutherans and Catholics.
Pax.
Mark Thomas
Post a Comment