Is the Pope Catholic? Now he plans to rehabilitate 'heretic' Martin Luther

Daily Mail

March 8, 2008

The Pope is planning to rehabilitate Martin Luther - whose actions instigated the Protestant Reformation ­ by arguing that he did not intend to split Christianity but only to purge the Church of corrupt practices.

Benedict XVI will issue his findings on the 16th-century German theologian after discussing him at the papal summer residence, Castelgandolfo, during his annual seminar of 40 fellow theologians, the Ratzinger Schülerkreis.

Luther was and condemned for heresy and excommunicated in 1521 by Pope Leo X, who had initially dismissed him as ³a drunken German² and predicted he would ³change his mind when sober².

Vatican insiders say the 80-year-old Pope - himself born in Germany - will argue that his countryman was not a heretic after all.

The move, a month ahead of the third anniversary of Pope Benedict's election, is aimed at mending fences after July's blunt papal statement that the Protestant and Orthodox faiths are ³not proper Churches².

³We have much to learn from Luther, beginning with the importance he attached to the word of God,² said Cardinal Walter Kasper, head of the pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.

The cardinal added that the time had come for a ³more positive² view of Luther, who could now be seen as having ³anticipated aspects of reform which the [Catholic] Church has adopted over time².

This summer's seminar will look at the issue of apostolic succession, through which the apostles passed on the authority they received from Jesus to the first bishops ­ and hence, via St Peter, to the papacy.

Some scholars have suggested recently that Luther did not share the view of some Protestants during the Reformation that the concept of ³succession² referred only to God's Word and not to church hierarchies.

Luther, born in 1483, was appalled on visiting Rome in 1510 to witness the wealth, worldliness and corruption of the papacy.

He insisted that the Bible, not the Vatican, was the sole source of religious authority - and to underline his point he translated it from Latin.

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