Dear Editor, Pope Francis is to take part in an ecumenical service on October 31 this year in Sweden. This is Reformation Day and this year it will begin a year-long commemoration of the 500th anniversary of when Martin Luther posted his 95 theses on the castle church door at Wittenberg.
This was to lead to the Counter-Reformation. This acknowledged some of Luther’s claims and – some say – led to a more rigid Catholic stance on doctrine as it sensed the need to state things clearly. The Jesuits were at the forefront of this clarification and Cardinal Bellarmine, an Italian Jesuit, was to the fore.
One could say the Reformation did not arrive in Ireland until the late 1980s when priests seemed to take their lead from liberation theologians. Mass became a gathering of the community. One wonders why they remained priests within the Catholic Church?
This commemoration is an opportunity for ordinary Catholics and priests in Ireland to declare just what does their Faith mean to them, and to dialogue with the Reformed Churches. The Reformers stood on the belief of justification by grace through faith in Jesus. In the early 1990s a joint declaration was published between the World Lutheran Federation and the Catholic Church on these matters and on which they could agree and regret over misunderstandings.
Admittedly, we Catholics do have a Creed but perhaps overfamiliarity with it results in not taking the Articles to heart. Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has a brilliant commentary on it in his Introduction to Christianity written in 1968.
How nice it would be to have these matters debated and to hear a little more of Bach and Luther in song this year. Looking forward to hearing what Pope Francis has to say.
Yours etc.,
Ciaran Cahill,
Skerries,
Co. Dublin.