The Catholic Leader - 12 November - Issue 5477

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The Catholic Leader, November 12, 2017
News
November 13: Truth,
Justice and Healing
Council meeting, Mel-
bourne
November 15:
10am Mass, Cathe-
dral of St Stephen;
Episcopal Council
meeting; The Community
Leader Awards, Clayfield
November 17: 10am Opening and
Blessing of McAuley College, Beaudesert
November 18: 10am Priests Founda-
tion Mass, Cathedral of St Stephen; Youth
Adult Ministry Masquerade Gala, Brisbane
November 19: 6pm, Feast of the Viet-
namese Martyrs Mass, The Vietnamese
Catholic Community Centre, Inala.
Official
engagements
for Brisbane’s
bishops
Archbishop Mark Coleridge
November 14: 5.30pm,
Confirmations, St
Columba’s Church,
Wilston
November 15:
9am, Mass, St
Benedict’s Church,
East Brisbane; Epis-
copal Council meeting;
5.30pm, Confirmations, St
Columba’s Church, Wilston
November 16: 9am, Mass, St Benedict’s
Church, East Brisbane; Meeting with the
Bishops’ Commission for Health and
Community Services; Meeting with the
Council for Ecumenism and Inter-religious
Relations
November 17-19: Parish pastoral visit to
Maryborough.
Bishop ken howell
Reformation journey
continues for us still
Call to communion: President of the Lutheran World Federation Bishop Munib Younan, of the
Evangelical Lutheran Church, Pope Francis and general secretary of the Lutheran World Federa-
tion Reverend Martin Junge attend an ecumenical event in Malmo, Sweden. The event opened a
year marking the 2017 commemoration of the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation.
Photo: CNS
This an address Archbishop
Mark Coleridge gave at St
Peter’s Lutheran College,
Indooroopilly, on November 1,
for an event commemorating
the 500th anniversary of the
Reformation.
RECENTLY I saw an item on a web-
site which bore the headline “No Lu-
ther, No Reformation, No Bach: It’s
pretty simple”. Well, I’m here to say
that nothing about the Reformation
was or is simple – to the point where,
I suspect, only God sees it whole.
And when I say “it” I mean not so much an
event as a process.
For one thing, the Reformation’s pre-history
was exceedingly complex. It’s not as if Luther
burst out of nowhere in 1517.
For centuries there had been more or less urgent
talk in the Western Church of the need for reform,
as the understanding of reform shifted from root-
ing out the weeds in the field of the Church to
reform of the Church as a whole, root and branch.
Successive reforms by popes and councils had
some effect, but they didn’t silence the call for
more radical and thorough-going reform of the
Church through the Middle Ages.
So pressure continued to build to the point
where, by the early 16th century, something like
Martin Luther had to happen.
Ecclesiastically and politically Europe had
become a powder-keg, and the explosion was
bound to come. The only questions were where,
when, how and to what effect.
It came in the figure of the German Augustin-
ian friar, Martin Luther, who is nothing if not
complex. Not even his name is simple. His sur-
name was Luder which, beyond its rather crude
connotations in German, echoed the Latin word
for “game”, “ludus”.
Martin certainly wasn’t playing games.
After 1517 he took to naming himself Marti-
nus Eleutherius, echoing instead the Greek word
for “liberator”, which was much more his style.
And so Martin passed into history as Luther
rather than Luder. Beyond his name, he was a
personality of astonishing contrasts, even con-
tradictions.
A man of deep piety and prayer, vast intel-
lectual creativity and a huge capacity for work,
he was also a formidable communicator, in the
word both spoken and written but also in music.
He was known as a model of domestic virtue,
a true and hospitable friend and a generous guide
to those who sought his help.
Yet he could also be intolerant, obstinate and
inflexible, never admitting the possibility of
mistake or error.
His vehemence could become at times abuse
and slander.
Through all of this Luther stands very much
as the modern man, in stark contrast to, say,
Thomas More with whom he disagreed violently
in what looks to be now a clash between the last
medieval man and the first modern man.
The effects of Luther’s protest were also
extremely complex, in part because the German
princes saw their opportunity and decided to
politicise the protest.
This led to an intricate and enduring interac-
tion between theology and politics, the effects of
which are with us to this day.
It also led to the fateful Wars of Religion,
from which the West has still not recovered.
You can hardly blame political decision-
makers for thinking that, if this is what religion
produces, then better to exclude it from the
ordering of the state and its political life. Yet in
the midst of all that was dark and destructive, the
Reformation undoubtedly produced rich fruit.
The current prior general of the Augustinian
Friars has spoken of these as “the revalorisation of
the individual, reaffirmed confidence in God, the
centrality of Scripture, bringing the liturgy closer
to the people, a healthy secularity and the need for
reform understood as a return to the essentials”.
Others could doubtless be added; and the more
general claim would be that a new theology and
ecclesiastical polity brought to birth a new world,
in which new energies were released, not all of
which would have been foreseen or approved by
Luther and the early reformers but many of which
opened grand new horizons of possibility.
One of those energies was a finally effective
commitment to reform in the Roman Catholic
Church. It probably took the trauma of the
sundering of Western Christianity to stir them,
but stir they did in the Council of Trent which
initiated a great arc of Church reform reaching to
the Second Vatican Council and beyond.
The arc continues in the figure of Pope Fran-
cis, himself a member of the Society of Jesus,
the Jesuits, who were one of the great fruits of
the Catholic Reformation, which was itself noth-
ing if not complex.
In some ways, it seems, the Reformation is
over; but in another sense it has a long way to
run if we look to the task of moving from con-
flict to communion that lies before us.
Conflict there has certainly been, and it has
left the Body of Christ wounded, seriously if not
fatally.
With the heat of past polemics now dimin-
ished and the political and cultural contexts we
face quite changed, the time for healing has
surely come, not just for our own sake but for
the sake of the world. That process has already
begun, but we still have much to do.
True healing will involve the larger under-
standings which are already emerging.
Sola Scriptura, sola gratia, sola fide was the
cry of the Protestant Reformation.
The Catholic Reformation spoke rather of the
need for interpretation of the Scripture (what
came to be known as tradition); it spoke of
divine grace, yes, but also the need for human
co-operation; and it spoke of faith, certainly, but
good works as the fruit of grace and faith.
Who was right? Well, both were if both are
rightly understood; and we’re in a better position
now to understand what was and is being said
in fact.
At the heart of all the complexity there lies
the endlessly complex interplay of grace and sin,
which God alone will be able to resolve.
As we look back across 500 years, we tell a
story of both. All have sinned but all have been
embraced by the grace of God.
We may not yet agree precisely on the effects
of that embrace, but surely we agree that it is
grace where we start and where we end.
If we believe in the triumph of grace over
sin – and surely we renew that belief in this
commemoration – then we cannot but commit
more passionately to the journey from conflict to
communion.
That was the title of the statement produced
by the Lutheran-Roman Catholic Commission
for Unity to mark this commemoration.
Its last paragraph offers words with which I
too conclude: “The beginnings of the Reforma-
tion will be rightly remembered when Lutherans
and Catholics hear together the gospel of Jesus
Christ and allow themselves to be called anew
into communion with the Lord. Then they will
be united in a common mission” (From Conflict
to Communion, 245).
That at least is clear, and that at last is simple.
Catholics and Lutherans foster closer ties among parishioners
THE recent commemoration of the 500th
anniversary of the start of the Reformation
was a chance for Catholics and Lutherans
on the northside of Brisbane to continue to
celebrate common ground.
When Banyo Nundah parish priest Fr
Bernie Gallagher heard about a Brisbane
event being held at St Peter’s Lutheran
College, Indooroopilly, on November 1 to
mark the anniversary of Martin Luther’s
split from the Catholic Church in Germany
and the start of the Reformation in 1517,
he saw it as an opportunity for the Catho-
lics and Lutherans of the area to again join
together in faith as they had been doing for
several years.
Banyo Nundah parish secretary Pauline
O’Donnell said Fr Gallagher, “as a ges-
ture of friendship”, invited Pastor Mark
Nitschke and the Lutheran parishioners
of St Paul’s, Nundah, “to be our guests
and travel with us by coach to St Peter’s”
where Archbishop Mark Coleridge and the
Queensland Lutheran Bishop Paul Smith
came together to pray for Christian unity.
Banyo Nundah Catholic pastoral council
member Jack Greathead and St Paul’s coun-
cil member Paul Sowa organised for people
from both parishes to go by bus together to
the Indooroopilly event. About 60 people
from both communities attended.
It was a sign of the strength of the rela-
tionship that had been building since 2000
when former St Paul’s pastor David Larsen
and former Banyo Nundah parish priest Fr
John Sullivan collaborated to bring their
parishioners together for the first time in
St Paul’s Lutheran Church to celebrate the
anniversary of the Catholic and Lutheran
churches’ signing of the Joint Declaration
on Justification.
“The following year, the prayer celebra-
tion was held in Corpus Christi Church
(Nundah) and every year since then (with
the exception of a short period of time)
both communities have come together
around October 31 to pray together and
then share a supper afterwards, alternating
churches each year,” Mrs O’Donnell said.
“Both communities also have a strong
connection through the Zion Lutheran
Nursing Home in Union Street, Nundah,
where Father Bernie celebrates a monthly
Mass for the Catholic residents.
“The parish has a team of parishion-
ers who take Communion to the Catholic
residents each Sunday.”
Fr Gallagher said the anniversary event
at Indooroopilly was an interesting and
enjoyable evening for the Catholics and
Lutherans of the local parishes as they
listened to addresses by Archbishop Col-
eridge and Bishop Smith.
United in faith: Attending a November 1 event commemorating
the 500th anniversary of the start of the Reformation in 1517 are
(from left) Nundah Lutheran Pastor Mark Nitschke; Paul Sowa,
of St Paul’s Lutheran parish; Banyo Nundah parish priest Father
Bernie Gallagher; and Jack Greathead, of the Banyo Nundah
Catholic parish.