Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

as Sarah, that both she and her husband may see their children and children's children to the third and fourth generation, and reach a venerable old. age, the object of their desire, through Jesus Christ our Lord." Such a marriage ceremony reminds us indeed of that first marriage in the beautiful Garden of Paradise, when God Himself appeared and blessed the bride, all spotless and fair, and gave her as a queen to Adam, the King of Creation.

Now it remains our duty to turn over and review the dark pages of the works of Martin Luther, no longer the Catholic priest, but the so-called reformer, and organizer of a religious sect, and see what he said about and did for matrimony after he broke his vow of celibacy and married a person consecrated to God by a holy religious profession. The darkness of the picture may help us to understand the character of the man still misrepresented by many, and may induce us to appreciate more fully and cause us to cling more closely to the Catholic Church, the Mother of Sanctity and Civilization.

*

Martin Luther, the heretic, contradicted almost the entire Christian Doctrine, which Martin Luther, the religious priest, had taught concerning matrimony.

The state of chastity which he had chosen for his own, with the perfect understanding of an educated man, at the age of twenty-five, and which he had praised and encouraged as a university professor, declaring it holier than the state of matrimony, he denounced as wicked and pernicious when the lily of purity had faded in his own heart.

When in 1516 Luther heard that some preachers forbade young women to enter the convent he was indignant and said: "Who is so foolish and perverse to deny that every free-born child can place its liberty into the hands of another and make itself captive?" And yet, only a

few years later, the same Martin Luther was so foolish and perverse as to deny it. He not only tried to prevent others from entering the convent, but wrote his "best book," in order to make those who were in the convent believe that it was their duty to leave it. The closing words of his "best book" are: "It is evident that your vows are void, unlawful, godless, contradicting the Gospels, therefore renounce them, have faith in the Gospels, and return to Christian liberty."

The sublime doctrine which he had taught according to St. Paul and the whole Catholic Church, that matrimony is a sacrament, that the union is sacred, that this union between the spouses may be compared to the union which exists between Jesus Christ and the Church which He established, for which He shed His blood, and with which He remains forever, all this he denied as early as 1520, and moreover maintained that such teachings of the Church had been invented by men.

Having robbed this holy state of its sacramental character, he lowered it to a mere human contract. That mutual faith and confidence, that noble spiritual union of heart and soul which Luther had preached to the married people from the Catholic pulpit was reduced to a selfish, material, sensual union, whenLuther protested against the Church. Most of his words are too vulgar to quote. The following may give someidea of the degraded state of his mind: "It is not a matter of counsel, it is material and necessary that every man have a wife, and every woman a husband. This is more necessary than eating and drinking, watching and sleeping." Other sentences indicate clearly that in this respect he saw no difference between man, rational and free, and the brute beast.

Having thus degraded matrimony, Luther saw in woman, whom he had made the companion of man, with equal

rights and privileges, whom Christ had honored and exalted in His Immaculate Mother, the most "blessed among women," only a slave of the vile passions of man. This is perhaps the saddest chapter in the destructive work of the so-called Reformation. Here again their vulgarity forbids us to quote the plainest passages of Luther.

On one occasion he compared woman to a beast of burden, saying: "If the burden they carry will exhaust and kill them, what is the difference? Let it kill them, for that they were created."

The scandalous abuse of the poor nuns proves clearly how Martin Luther and his followers respected women. "If you have a daughter or friend in the religious state you must, if you are honest and pious, help her out of it, even if it should cost you your fortune, your health and your life."

When a certain Mr. Koppe reported to him that on the eve of Easter he had stolen nuns from a convent, Luther compared him, in his blasphemy, to Christ freeing mankind at this holy season from the captivity of sin. He calls him a "blessed robber."

Having forced the nuns from what these "blessed robbers" called the captivity of the convent, they compelled them, without consulting either their feelings or their liberty, to marry. "Nine of them," writes a follower of Luther to a friend, "have come to me. They are all beautiful and of noble birth, not one of them is fifty years old. The oldest one I have selected, to be your wife. However, if you desire a younger one, you may have your choice."

Behold, then, these men, who stand before the world as the advocates of liberty, men who accepted and gave away noble women as vile slaves. How different the language of Blessed Henry Suso, a representative Catholic of Germany, in the fourteenth century! Meeting a poor woman one day on a narrow

path, he stepped aside into the mud to let her pass. The good woman asked him why he, a priest, had done this. "It is my custom, good woman," he answered, "to honor and respect every woman, because of the tender Mother of God, the Queen of Heaven."

The strong and blind passions of corrupt human nature, having been freed by the principles of Luther, since they cannot and need not be controlled, demanded still greater liberties and privileges. To protect and safeguard the marriage bond, the Catholic Church has passed wise laws, as, for instance, those prohibiting marriage between kindred up to the fourth degree. Luther declared all impediments null and void, even between those related to each other in the first degree. Father Denifle well remarks that Luther cannot have been in his sober senses when he did such an unnatural thing.

Finally Luther attacked and tore asunder the marriage bond itself, abolishing the sacred doctrine of its unity and indissolubility, and permitting divorce and bigamy.

In the year 1520 Luther still feared and hesitated to take this fatal step. He writes that he hates divorce and prefers bigamy, but does not dare to declare bigamy lawful.

In 1522 Martin Luther had quite overcome this just hatred and scruple of conscience. Although clearly foreseeing the evils of divorce, he fearlessly advised it, and blamed a higher authority for it. "This counsel," he says, "may give an give an excuse to bad husbands and wives to elope and marry again, but how can I help it, it is the fault of the authorities. Were they to strangle all those living in adultery, I would not have to give such advice. Of two evils we must choose the smaller. It is better to let the adulterers go to another country and remarry than to let them live in impurity."

In 1540 Luther found nothing in Holy Scripture forbidding bigamy, and finding nothing, he allowed it.

Thus the sanctity, dignity, unity and indissolubility of matrimony were totally destroyed by Martin Luther. He lowered Christian marriage, which had so powerfully helped to reform the world, to the pagan ideas and ideals. His "indulgence" favoring and flattering the human passions was great, almost unlimited, and yet he is called a reformer.

Luther's pagan doctrine on matrimony had its immediate disastrous effect on the people, and is felt by society up to the present day. Professor Stophylus, for some time a follower of Luther, writes in the year 1562: "Since the people have begun to read in the books of Luther that the state of matrimony is only a human invention, married life among the Turks is more orderly and honorable than among our Evangelists of Germany."

Luther, himself, complains frequently that his followers were seven times worse than they had been under the Pope; that one devil having been cast out by him, seven others, and much worse, had taken possession of their souls. He calls his own Wittenberg a "Sodoma." The mayor of the city sent complaints to Luther stating that in Wittenberg divorces were granted too easily. Nicholas Hemming, the most illustrious among the theologians of Denmark, writes in 1562: "There was a time when modesty was the great treasure of our young women, but now their dress and manners indicate their want of shame."

The learned professor blames Luther directly for the corruption of youth. "They have become so impertinent," he says, "that quoting the laws of Luther, they maintain that it is impossible to be pure and chaste."

Compare now, step by step, point by point, the doctrine of Luther preached, and the advice given by him to the

young and married people, as a Catholic priest, and then as the organizer and founder of the "Protesting" Church, and ask yourself the question which resembles more the doctrine of the Church and the Holy Scriptures, which do you like better and consider better for society? Compare carefully, according to his own doctrine, Luther the religious and Luther the ex-religious, and then answer the question: Was he a reformer? Did he help to build up and purify the Church of God as a St. Charles Borromeo, a St. Francis or a St. Dominic? Or did he tear down, as far as lay in his power, that grand edifice, which he had found somewhat soiled and filled with dust?

There are many who hold and teach false religious doctrines in good faith. They are honest, but ignorant. But for Luther, we cannot find this excuse. The many contradictions in his statement prove not only the falsehood of his teachings, but also the insincerity of his mind.

Does it not always seem incredible to hear Luther, who, as a young priest, had explained matrimony so beautifully, write in 1540: "Behold, I know it well from my own experience, when I was still under the papacy, as a religious, or as a young man, before I entered the order, that then according to the papist doctrine, the state of matrimony was sinful and condemned."

In the year 1522 Luther had said repeatedly that the Church forbids matrimony, but does not condemn it as wicked and sinful.

In 1539 and 1540 he writes, that the Pope, the devil and his Church are enemies of the state of matrimony. They forbid it as condemned by God, as a mortal sin. "I, myself, as a monk," he writes, "was under the impression that the state of matrimony was a condemned state of life."

Thus Luther tells us that the Church did not condemn matrimony, and with the same emphasis he tells us that the

[merged small][merged small][graphic][merged small]

Bowed in an agony of intensest woe,
Whose awful depths no mortal mind can know;
While countless stars, like myriad angel eyes,
Pierce the dim glory of the darkening skies.

To watch in wondering awe our suffering Lord,
Prostrate in anguish on the hallowed sward;
O Eastern Winds, be yours the blessed part,
To breathe sweet comfort to that sorrowing Heart.

Tell of unnumbered souls as yet unborn,
Who for His love all other loves shall scorn;
Who earthly ties and joys shall all forsake,
Choosing the blessed cross for His dear sake.

Hark! there rushes through the gathering gloom,
A savage horde, blaspheming as they come;
O Tortured Heart, who can the traitor be?
Dear sorrowing angels whisper, "Is it he?"

Turn, turn, dear Saviour, from the painful sight
That meets Thy gaze this sad and awful night;
For, oh, it is he, one of Thy chosen few,
Who of all others best Thy goodness knew,

Who sat enraptured at Thy sacred feet,
And listened to Thy words divinely sweet,
Or gazed entranced on Thy glorious brow.
O Judas, where are all those memories now?

How couldst thou, with treacherous lip betray?
Did no remorse thy pitiless footsteps stay?
No recollection of the glorious past,

Steal o'er thee, of that great and hallowed past

When thou, a chosen soul whose mission high,
Angels might envy, mortal glorify?

Or was thy sordid soul so bent on gain
That thou wert deaf alike to love and pain?

O false one, how our hearts in anguish bleed,

As we reflect upon thy vile, thine awful deed;

And wonder if eternity can e'er efface,
The foulest blot that stains our sinful race,

Or is there aught that can withdraw the bitter dart.

Which pierced that night our Loved One's Sacred Heart. Forgive, forgive, dear Lord, the traitor's fall,

Before which all redeemed sin doth pall.

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »