Luther’s excommunication ended with his death — Pope

Press, 8 June 1989, Page 10

Luther’s excommunication ended with his death — Pope

NZPA-Reuter Roskilde, Denmark Pope John Paul yesterday said Protestants should not demand the lifting of the Vatican’s excommunication of the reformer, Martin Luther, in the sixteenth century because the sentence expired with Luther’s death. The Pope made the comment at a meeting with Danish Lutheran bishops minutes after a controversial Protestant prayer service in Roskilde’s twelth century cathedral, where it was agreed earlier that he would not speak. The Pontiff, who is on a 10-day tour of the overwhelmingly Lutheran Scandinavian ' countries, said one of the obstacles in Catholic-Lutheran dialogue remained the personality of Martin Luther and the Vatican condemnation of his teachings. Luther, the father of the Protestant Reformation, published 95 theses

on Catholic belief and practice in Wittenberg, Germany, in 1517. Pope Leo X condemned 42 statements from Luther’s writings in 1520 and the Augustinian monk was excommunicated the next year when he refused to recant. The Pope said, “The results of his excommunication produced wounds which even after more than 450 years are not yet healed and still today cannot be healed through a juridical act. “The excommunication of a man ends with his death. It is a measure which applies only during a person’s lifetime,” he said. The Pope appeared to be sending a message to Lutherans that they should not make such an issue of Luther’s excommunication because it technically ended when he died in 1546. Lutherans have for years been asking the Cathglic Church for a public apology for the

way Luther was treated, but Vatican officials said the Pope would not make one. Asked by reporters to explain the Pope’s remarks, Cardinal Johannes Willebrands, the Vatican’s top specialist in ecumenical affairs, said, “Excommunication of a person touches him only during his life ... I don’t think they (Lutherans) understand exactly the Catholic doctrine about this.” The Pope praised Luther’s “profound religiousness” driven by “a burning anxiety over the problem of eternal salvation” Quoting a speech he made in the Lutheran heartland of Germany in 1980, the Pope said Catholics and Protestants should each recognise their guilt for the split in Western Christianity. Some of Luther’s positions on reform were common in Catholicism today. The exchange addresses took place Tii the

bishop’s residence after the cathedral prayer service because of controversy among Danish Lutherans over whether the Pope should be allowed to speak in one of their churches. At the gathering the Pope heard a forceful speech by a Lutheran bishop. Bishop Ole Bertelsen told him, “The (Roman Catholic) condemnation of evangelical doctrine has not been annulled”. The Catholic Church does not recognise the validity of Lutheran religious orders. Catholics are not allowed to take communion with Lutherans and there are major differences on the role of the papacy and woman priests. The Pope, who arrived from Helsinki on the fourth leg of his Scandinavian tour, celebrated Mass in the afternoon in the grounds of a Benedictine convent north of Copenhagen. It was attended by 13,000 people.