All Hallows’ Eve 1517 – the day when a young Augustinian friar, Dr Martin Luther, posted a notice in the church door at Wittenberg, questioning the way the Church made use of “The Treasury of Merit”. Such a treasury is the image for the inexhaustible and ever accumulating virtue of Christ, and - by the grace of God – of His Saints. It can be drawn on, so as to compensate for the sins and shortcomings of the rest of us who seek forgiveness and to be close to God in this life and the next. Rather some bank account to debit or lending credit, however, it is an unceasingly abundant well.
That evening in Fra Martin’s community church, First Vespers
of All Saints would have called upon the intercession of the saints in glory. The
following day, Mass would have been offered in their honour, and for our good
in their name. The day after that, Luther would have said his three masses for
the repose of the holy souls and the early completion of their sojourn in the
purifying heat-lightening of purgatory. Luther began his religious and
theological journey without argument against the teaching of the Catholic
faith, but against the way the official Church seemed to be playing upon the misunderstanding
of that faith in the part of the people. Instead of a bottomless treasury of God’s
grace - a loving gift for repentance, forgiveness, reconciliation and renewed
faith and trust in Christ – there was connivance at people’s impression that it
was commercial treasury: you paid in,
you drew out; if you got into debt, you made up for it. The appearance that
indulgences for remitting sin in return for lay people’s payments - to reduce
their own future time and punishment in purgatory or that of the dead – was not
challenged, at least not sufficiently. Nor, so Luther thought, was the true
Catholic explanation taught.
Indulgences, like the recent Holy Year of Mercy, are meant
to be assurances of God’s free bestowal of blessing and mercy, a response in
love to those who, from their hearts, piously and penitently practice their
faith and frequent the sacraments. This
can include an act of pure charity, like helping the work of the Church and its
proclamation of God’s Kingdom. In 1517, the largest practical work of the
Church was the vast capital cost, requiring international support, of the
replacement of the collapsing St Peter’s Basilica in Rome over the resting
place of the Apostle Peter. It seemed fitting that the successor of Peter, to
whom had been entrusted the power of the keys to bind and loose the guilt and
consequence of sin, could assure God’s mercy and freedom to those who were
generous: heart speaking to heart, grace upon grace. However much this was explained,
to the sixteenth century mind however, especially in the prosperous trading
north, this looked like a straight-forward transaction: “Tell me how much you
want, and I will pay it, if it gets me off purgatory - and my loved ones too”. Realistically,
the Church needs assets and resources to fulfil its mission, and the Lord
provides. But people can tend to imagine that “the water without price” in the
Kingdom can also come free of cost in this. Was Luther objecting to nothing
more demanding than the sixteenth century equivalent of the Planned Giving or Stewardship
Campaign? Or was a more fundamental principle at stake?
Dr Rowan Williams, the previous Archbishop of Canterbury, in
an interview with Sarah Montague on the 500th anniversary of the Wittenberg
event, gave a characteristically fascinating account of both the consequences
that we still live with (not just a divided Church, but also a disastrous
theological justification of anti-Semitism) - and the missed opportunities. Why
did both sides see it as a zero-sum game, he asked? How is it that Christians,
of all people, massacred each other in the aftermath? Why were those who tried
for a solution other than the schism unsuccessful? What if Luther had not
placed his beliefs and his resentment of the “Catholic establishment of his
day” above the visible and organic unity of the Church? What if the Pope,
instead of seeing Luther as a dangerous force to be shut down, had
distinguished between some fair comment and the erroneous ideas advanced in an
academic disputation: what if he had said, “This man has a point. There are
real abuses and we need to sort them out.” Sarah Montague asked the great
question: “If that had happened, would there have been a need for your Church
to exist at all – would you be a Catholic?” Dr Williams said that he would be a
Catholic indeed, but that the Catholic Church would also have developed
differently had there been no schism, and today’s Catholic Church would be
different from what it became.
He did not elaborate on this and it rather invited
speculation as to where he thought the 16th century’s abuses have
led it still to be wrong to this day. Archbishop Michael Ramsey, Dr Williams’
predecessor but three, taught that the Anglican Church is not an end in itself;
it is provisional on the way to the re-integration of the unity of the whole
Church. Thus, while we are in the times of disunity, its tradition is
providential, so that it may witness, he believed, to what was essential to the
Universal Church but was not yet manifested in all the other Churches. By the
same token, Ramsey believed, there were aspects of the fullness of the Church
not present in Anglicanism that impelled it to seek unity.
Heart speaks to heart: Vatican II’s Decree on Ecumenism says
that, for as long as the baptised remain separate from one another, the
Catholic Church fails to manifest her full catholicity in all her bearings. So,
even the Catholic Church, which is provides all that is necessary for the
fullness of Catholic life, faith and unity, is lacking in some way. St John
Paul II, picking up a luminous element of the work of Paul Couturier to animate
the Week of Prayer for the Unity of Christians (in which the founders of the
League were involved), developed this by identifying the need for the true spiritual
ecumenism. This does not stop at getting to grips with the hard questions of theological
dialogue, but burrows deep into the hardness of hearts and religious
mentalities. Nor does it rest at respecting and valuing the riches in the
traditions from which we are separate. It also demands that we exchange them among
us. We can make them our own, with integrity and fidelity to our own tradition
and the one binding truth of Christ. Thus they are enrichments, when they
express - as they do for others from whom we are separate for the moment – our
own faith and witness to His work of salvation.
The Price of
Reformation
The irony of observing the genesis of the German Protestant
movement in England is that it was rejected by the Reformers in England. King
Henry VIII famously denounced Lutheran sacramental theology, and English Protestants
shaping the formularies, doctrine and polity of the reformed Established Anglican
Church looked to Strasbourg in France and Zurich in Switzerland more than to
Luther’s approach in Germany and Calvin’s in Geneva. Or at least they were
careful to take from each what was suited to their English conditions from a
range of available examples, rather than allow one theory to dominate. The term
“Elizabethan Settlement” is famous for the relative harmony struck among
English Christians in that long reign, which tolerated many shades of Reformed belief
– from crypto-Catholics to Calvinists, Episcopalians to Zwinglians - on
condition of outward conformity. The price was, of course, the religious and
civil exclusion of Catholics faithful to the Church’s unity with Rome, and
particularly the doctrine of the priestly sacrifice of the mass.
Another uniting factor was the need for reformers to follow
through on their teaching about the religiously legitimate power of the earthly
ruler to govern the Church on his territory (i.e. to the exclusion of the Pope).
So, when Henry VIII needed a different wife to provide a male heir, Thomas
Cranmer obligingly broke up a sacramental marriage with a spouse still living
(Catherine of Aragon), and Philip I of Hesse’s bigamous marriage was accepted
by Luther (who had benefited from his protection), Melanchthon at Wittenburg
and Bucer in Strasbourg. The indissolubility of Christian sacramental marriage
remains to this day a defining belief of Catholics, on which the Church’s
Catholicity stands or falls.
How necessary was the
Reformation – where was the good?
In such lights as these, the observances of the 500th
Anniversary have scrupulously avoided the word “celebration”, out of concern
for Catholic sensitivities and a genuine acceptance that the Reformation led to
half a millennium’s division among western Christians that shows no sign of
healing, despite our ecumenical efforts and a newly discovered mutual,
appreciative friendship between Churches. There has also been extensive
expression of repentance for the suffering and damage caused in the history common
to us all. But there persists an assumption that is false: that the Reformation
was necessary, and that it was a necessary good to correct abuse. It may have
been a consequence of abuses that were not addressed, it may have been the
unstoppable result of persons’ behaviour and theoretical attitudes put into
practice. But necessary?
Archbishop Rowan stressed how indispensable repentance on
all sides is, as we approach our histories and our futures. We have to face the
violence that tore Christians - supposedly the paragons of love - apart, as
well as embrace the determination not to veer for any reason from the
painstaking steps to the unity which Christ commanded, “so that the world may
believe”. He also said that the shock of the Reformation divide directly led to
the Catholic Church’s own comprehensive programme of purification,
self-correction and reform emanating from the Council of Trent beginning from
1545. He saw the Counter-Reformation as a good result of the Protestant
Reformation, even if it failed to achieve the repair of the separation. Except, of course, that England under Mary I
(1553-58), instead of turning the clock back to the Medieval Church, served as
the laboratory for the Catholic reforms of Trent. They won positive acceptance
and also a measure of reconciliation in the Church and the country. This was
because the Counter-Reformation was not the product of a “necessary” Protestant
Reformation, but because both were fruits of the movements of spiritual renewal
that had gathered pace for centuries.
Consider the trajectory of the Devotio Moderna from the 14th century onward: the rediscovery of lay people’s desire for the
practice of simplicity and purity in personal life, as well as that of the
Church and clergy, leading to hopes of reform in the Church and to a new sense
of people’s interior spirituality. We know this from The Imitation of Christ (not so much “What would Jesus do? What
would I do if I were in Christ’s place?” as “What would Christ do if He were in
my place?”).We also trace it in the Beguine movement in the Low Countries, the
outlook of Erasmus as well as St Thomas More, and its effect not just on the
instinct of key reforming figures like Luther, Bucer, Melancthon and Zwingli,
but also in the Carmelite reforms associated with St Teresa of Avila and St
John of the Cross, and the remarkable force unleashed in the Catholic Church’s
renewal thanks to St Ignatius Loyola. It is worth bearing in mind here that,
when Henry VIII began the arrests and executions of those who were faithful to
Catholic unity and belief in Christian marriage, it was not those blamed for
abuses that he targeted, but those who were at the forefront of England’s
Catholic spiritual renewal. He went for the Carthusians (and in time their
disciple, St Thomas More) and the Observant Franciscans, because their renewing
influence threatened the system he inherited and needed to control.
In other words, at the time of the first breach in Catholic
unity in England, reform was already a movement bearing fruit, all aided by the
printing press, in the devotional life of the people, the pastoral work of the
priests, the life of the monasteries (which were closed for their spiritual
depth as much as for their assets), and the deepen internalisation of the
Catholic faith in the life of regular individuals. As Sara Montague
perceptively asked, “If reform within the Church had happened, would there have
been a need for your separate Church to exist at all – would you be a
Catholic?” Well it was happening and so the answer of the Catholic League has
always been, “No necessity for separate Churches. Vital necessity of “endeavouring
to keep the unity in the bond of peace” (Ephesians 4.3), and where there is no
unity, to rebuild it.
The first good that we can extract from the history of the
Reformation, then, is our desire for those whom we miss in other Churches and
without whom the Catholic Church in which we believe is no not complete. The
second is the impulse toward the true and truthful ecumenism of which Paul
Couturier, the fathers of Vatican II and St John Paul spoke: the enriching and
purifying exchange of God’s gifts of Himself in the Church for the benefit of
all humanity, so that all are bound to and nothing may separate us from unity
in Christ.
In everything I have written about ecumenical matters as a
Catholic, I trust that what shines through is my deep love and gratitude for
the Church of England and all that its history and patrimony have offered to
wider Christianity, and for the witness to Christ’s truth that, as Michael
Ramsey (who was such a friend to me), said, it has “providentially” stood for.
God has likewise bestowed on the Protestant and Reformed Churches, from above
our human wranglings and our inability to be at one, gifts and insights that He
truly destined for us all. But no new idea, no personal principle, nothing - despite
what the Reformers said - stands above the imperative for the disciples to be
one, to be faithful to the Truth of Christ that binds us, and to be obedient to
the Spirit who leads us not off on our own but into that which Christ calls
“All Truth”. This “All Truth”, which impels toward unity of faith in the
Universal Church of Christ, subsists in fullness in the Catholic Church.
In a sense, even though the event of 1517 has shaped our
history, it is irrelevant to speak of what might have happened if Martin Luther
had been less intransigent towards a Pope who might have been more willing to
address his concerns; it is also irrelevant to ask whether the Reform within
the Catholic Church, rather than splitting it, could have won all hearts, such
that the shape of European Christianity would have been very different. For
what matters now, as we approach the 111th Week of Prayer for
Christian Unity together, is what we do with the situation we have received.
Christ in the Garden prayed we would be one. On his Cross he gave to Mary His
Mother and St John the concrete pattern of how it must always be from that
moment on: One House. Not a collection of varied opinions, but “all the
believers of one heart and mind” (Acts 4.32).
