Word: vaticans
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...appreciated the conciliatory tone of your article on Martin Luther [Oct. 31]. As a result of the Second Vatican Council, some of Luther's insights have now found acceptance in the Roman Catholic Church and have caused the church to experience another but more peaceful reformation. I am a former Lutheran seminarian who is now a confirmed Catholic. I could not have converted without Vatican II's reforming influence...
...back-room deal, little different from many others struck at the time, but it triggered an upheaval that altered irrevocably the history of the Western world. Albrecht of Brandenburg, a German nobleman who had previously acquired a dispensation from the Vatican to become a priest while underage and to head two dioceses at the same time, wanted yet another favor from the Pope: the powerful archbishop's chair in Mainz. Pope Leo X, a profligate spender who needed money to build St. Peter's Basilica, granted the appointment-for 24,000 gold pieces, roughly equal to the annual...
Indeed, as the reformer who fractured Christianity, Luther has latterly become a key to reuniting it. With the approval of the Vatican, and with Americans taking the lead, Roman Catholic theologians are working with Lutherans and other Protestants to sift through the 16th century disputes and see whether the Protestant-Catholic split can some day be overcome. In a remarkable turnabout, Catholic scholars today express growing appreciation of Luther as a "father in the faith" and are willing to play down his excesses. According to a growing consensus, the great division need never have happened...
Only a generation ago, Catholics were trained to consider Luther the arch-heretic. Now no less than the Vatican's specialist on Lutheranism, Monsignor Aloys Klein, says that "Martin Luther's action was beneficial to the Catholic Church." Like many other Catholics, Klein thinks that if Luther were living today there would be no split. Klein's colleague in the Vatican's Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity, Father Pierre Duprey, suggests that with the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) Luther "got the council he asked for, but 450 years too late." Vatican II accepted his contention...
Predictably, the songs which spoof timeless issues have survived well. The revue includes some of his best, like "Vatican Rag," "New Math," "Pigeons in the Park," "Masochism Tango," and, of course. "Fight Fiercely, Harvard." But at least a quarter of the two-hour long show included songs which focus on either nuclear destruction, global pollution, or the folk songs popular 15 years ago. And while "Werner Von Braun," "Who's Next," and "The Folk Song Army" elicits chuckles, the overriding feeling is one of nostalgia, not of aroused social awareness...