This is an utter disgrace of epic proportions, a classic example of how far the human element of the Church has fallen, how much the Faith has been lost and the general apostasy and heresy rampant in the Church. To think that Successors of the Apostles would have lost the Faith to such an extent that they would be praising the founder of the greatest revolution the world has ever seen, the protest and rebellion against God and His Church, would be nothing short of unthinkable 100 years ago. Those who would dare to assert that Martin Luther was a "teacher of the Faith" (!) would be reprimanded and laicized, to say the least.
An apostate priest who rejected the teachings and practices of the Catholic Church deserves to be praised, extolled and vindicated? This man began and shaped the Protestant Revolt, whose sole purpose was to rebelliously revolt against the truth of Christ and the Church, in favor of a personal religion based on our own wants and desires, a religion without the cross, without penance for our sins, without all of the Sacraments, without Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist, without the Blessed Virgin (who is held in disdain by Protestant sects), without everything needed for salvation.
Do the German Bishops really wish to teach their faithful that they can sin and sin boldly, since they are assured of their salvation, according to Martin Luther?
Do they wish to teach Sola Scriptura? The Church has always taught that Scripture and Tradition go hand in hand, both containing the truth.
You know, it's funny that these modern Bishops wish to praise an excommunicated heretic, yet if we praise the "excommunicated" Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, (the Bishop solely responsible for saving the Catholic Faith, the Catholic Priesthood and the Mass of All Time), we are condemned for this and Archbishop Lefebvre is condemned as an excommunicated heretic, for not adhering to their new religion. Archbishop Lefebvre was "excommunicated" from their liberal religion (rightfully so!). Martin Luther is a saint of their liberal religion since he embodies heresy, error and Modernism, at its best.
If these Bishops understood the Church and her role truly, they would be doing all in their power to lead every soul in the world to the One True Church of Christ for their salvation. But, Our Lord and His Church has been placed on par with the heresy of Martin Luther's Protestantism, to the detriment of souls and the shame of those consecrated to pass on the Catholic Faith.
I have said it before and I will say it again: The German Bishops follow their master, Luther.
"Protestantism is nothing more than another form of the same true Christian religion, in which form it is given to please God equally as in the Catholic Church." ~Error condemned by Bl. Pope Pius IX in the Syllubus of Errors
"Read Luther's work against 'the Mass and the Ordination of Priests' where he tells of his famous disputation with the 'Father of Lies' who accosted him at 'midnight' and spoke to him with a 'deep, powerful voice', causing 'the sweat to break forth' from his brow and his 'heart to tremble and beat.' In that celebrated conference of which he was an unexceptionable witness and about which he never entertained the slightest doubt, he says plainly and unmistakingly that 'the devil spoke against the Mass, and Mary and the Saints' and that, moreover, Satan gave him the most unqualified approval of his doctrine on 'justification by faith alone.' Who now, we ask in all sincerity, can be found, except those appallingly blind to truth, to accept such a man, approved by the enemy of souls, as a spiritual teacher and entrust to his guidance their eternal welfare?" ~Msgr. Patrick F. O'Hare
"He that heareth you, heareth me; and he that despiseth you, despiseth me; and he that despiseth me, despiseth him that sent me." ~Luke 10:16
"Hence by God's eternal decree the salvation of all men, both severally and collectively, depends upon Jesus Christ. Those who abandon Him become guilty by the very fact, in their blindness and folly, of their own ruin; whilst at the same time they do all that in them lies to bring about a violent reaction of mankind in the direction of that mass of evils and miseries from which the Redeemer in His mercy had freed them. Those who go astray from the road wander far from the goal they aim at. Similarly, if the pure and true light of truth be rejected, men's minds must necessarily be darkened and their souls deceived by deplorably false ideas. What hope of salvation can they have who abandon the very principle and fountain of life? Christ alone is the Way, the Truth and the Life (John xiv., 6). If He be abandoned the three necessary conditions of salvation are removed." ~Pope Leo XIII, "Tametsi Futura Prospicientibus", 1900 A.D.
~Damsel of the Faith
