The story goes that Martin Luther became a monk in the first place after he asked St. Ann (Mary’s mother) to pray for him that he might be kept safe during a terrible electrical storm. He promised that, if he made it through okay, he would devote his life to Christ through the priesthood/monastery.

Absolutely, people putting their favorite saint (or Mary) ABOVE Jesus is wrong. That is one of the things Luther was right about. The Catholic Church does not teach that it is right or proper to place anyone or anything in the place of Christ—worship is to be for Him alone. Nor is Jesus meant to be seen as a harsh tyrant so that we “have” to look to Mary for comfort and consolation. If some within the Church taught that in Luther’s day, they were wrong. (Do keep in mind that there WERE very good, God-fearing Catholics who never taught or believed those kinds of things, even back then, and who stayed in the Church rather than protest. St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Avila come to mind—they reformed Catholicism from within.)

Intercession does not “unnecessarily place someone between you and Christ.” Intercession is when we pray for someone else. If I pray for you, am I “between you and Christ?” No, I’m just praying for you, and the hope would be that, by my prayers, you would be drawn closer to Him and have your needs met. The Catholic thinking is simply that those who have gone before us in holiness are now with the Father as the “Church triumphant” and that they can, just as anyone can when on earth as part of the “Church militant,” pray for others. That’s part of what “mystic sweet communion” (the communion of saints) means.

I am sorry that I offended you in saying that Lutherans should not have a problem with asking for intercession of the saints. When I was a Lutheran, I certainly never would have dreamed of doing such a thing myself.

This is really not something worth arguing about, in the end. I sometimes ask Mary or some other saint to pray with and for me. You don’t. It doesn’t matter. The point is whether our HEARTS are in the right place, seeking to know, love, and serve the Lord above all else. Following Christ is hard. It’s nice to look to those who’ve gone before us as examples in how to do it well and to know they are rooting for us as we struggle along.

~ Kim

If it helps, you can bear in mind that Martin Luther himself was very devoted to Mary, even up until his death. He whole-heartedly believed in the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception (that Mary was preserved from sin from the moment of her conception) and wrote about it in many of his early writings. It was later pressure from fellow Protestants that persuaded him to “cave” a bit and allow that maybe the Marian doctrines weren’t essential to Christianity. He was trying to preserve unity among the Protestant movement (an impossible task), so he made this compromise, but still he held to his real beliefs for all his life. My point being that Lutherans, were they “true” Lutherans, should not have any problem with the idea of asking for Mary’s intercession.

This is just plain wrong. If this is what Catholic writers are writing about Luther and Lutheranism, they either misunderstand or are misrepresenting Luther.

First, I want to point out that Lutherans do not treat Luther as infallible. It is not the position of Lutherans to replace the Catholic pope with our own.

That said, what you wrote is not correct as regards to what Luther taught. Keep in mind that Luther struggled with Marian doctrine just as much as he struggled with other Catholic doctrine. His views on Mary changed, but it’s somewhat ridiculous to say that it was merely because he “caved” to pressure from “fellow Protestants”. Luther was hardly one to change his beliefs solely due to external pressure. While he desired unity, he wouldn’t compromise his beliefs for it.

He apparently maintained belief in certain Marian doctrines, such as the perpetual virginity of Mary and the immaculate conception (although his belief in the latter was perhaps not quite as pure as Catholicism; he wrote in one of his sermons: “Mother Mary, like us, was born in sin of sinful parents, but the Holy Spirit covered her, sanctified and purified her so that this child was born of flesh and blood, but not with sinful flesh and blood.”) For the assumption, he noted that there was no contemporary evidence, and he didn’t seem to feel it was important.

However, you’re just wrong about what this implies about his beliefs about intercession. Consider that Luther wrote this (and keep in mind that he knew as well as anyone what Catholic belief was): “Furthermore, how will you endure [the Romanists'] terrible idolatries? It was not enough that they venerated the saints and praised God in them, but they actually made them into gods. They put that noble child, the mother Mary, right into the place of Christ. They fashioned Christ into a judge and thus devised a tyrant for anguished consciences, so that all comfort and confidence was transferred from Christ to Mary, and then everyone turned from Christ to his particular saint. Can anyone deny this? Is it not true?”

Above all else, Luther insisted that Christ should be the center of the Church and people’s lives. Anything else that usurps Christ’s central position is wrong, and Luther considered intercession to do just that. It unnecessarily places someone else between you and Christ. Now, it’s possible that Luther was wrong about this–he wasn’t right about everything–but in this case I don’t think he was wrong. But there isn’t any real doubt about what he actually believed about intercession.

So, if by “true” Lutherans you mean people who believe everything that Luther believed insofar as it is knowable (and again I’ll point out that this is not what Lutheranism is), then “true” Lutherans would have serious problems with intercession. And if you would mean what I would mean by “true” Lutheran (namely, someone who wants to know and live the truth about Christ and his Church regardless of which denominations various aspects of that truth are reflected in), then I still think that they would have problems with intercession.

You are absolutely right in your parenthetical above about what honoring Mary should be (“like the kind of affection we show our mothers on Mother’s Day”). Luther would have agreed with you, I think.

Sabrina, who posted above, is a very old and dear friend of mine. After she wrote the above comments, she later e-mailed me to make a few more remarks about the topic of this post. I replied to her in an e-mail, but I want to share with you some portions of that note so that you will be able to know that her concerns were addressed and also be able to see what I did say in response. In my e-mail to her, I was able to expand a bit on some things that may not have been clear here on my blog in the first place.

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Dearest Sabrina,

I just got home from Mass and read your comment to my blog post and your e-mail follow-up. Thank you for sharing your thoughts with me and for taking the time to write more about it in a private note….

I’m wondering if perhaps you had a very negative gut reaction to what you read that clouded your observations and led to a bit of misinterpretation of what I was trying to say. For example, I specifically said that I was trying to encourage the USE of good judgMENT rather than to actually judge (condemn) anyone. Those are not the same thing, and I am aware that it is only God who judges. But did you know that He judges not just individuals, but whole nations and governments? There will be a price to pay for every person in power who does not use his position for the good of those he has authority over (and yes, this includes church leaders). Also, I was not advocating for a specific political party. This is not a left wing/right wing issue. It is a human being issue. Personally, I find both of the major political parties to be terribly flawed. But we do know, from his own words, that the Democratic candidate will not do anything to try to change the laws regarding abortion, and some of the things he has said about partial-birth abortion are truly horrifying. There are a great many issues to consider in an election year, but one cannot simply overlook the fact that millions of babies have been aborted since Roe v. Wade in 1973.* Finally, I did not say that I “pity” women who’ve had abortions. I said that my heart breaks for them, because I feel such compassion for what they have experienced. I know women who’ve had abortions, and they have shared their stories with me. Yes, they have been forgiven and they know their babies are with the Lord and they are free to live their lives with joy. But the abortion happened; it’s still a part of who they are; they cannot forget that they had a baby who was killed. It is terribly sad. You are right that some women may never feel remorse, even when they leave this life and have to face God. I guess maybe I do “pity” those women.

* (There’s a great column by Camille Paglia, an Atheist/Feminist/Lesbian/Democrat, in which she talks about the uncomfortable reality of abortion, that you can read at http://www.salon.com/opinion/paglia/2008/09/10/palin/. The entire article is four pages long, but her thoughts on the Democratic party’s stance on abortion are very much worth the read.)

If only this DIDN’T have to be an issue of law. Why should it even be on anyone’s radar screen in the first place? But it IS. People decided to take their case to the law, and the law has spoken. It is an issue of law whether we think it should be or not. Yes, drug addiction and pornography are hurtful things, but they do not result in the direct destruction of more than 4,000 perfectly innocent lives every single year in this country alone. I agree that our country does need to do more to make it so that abortion is a choice no woman should ever even want to make. But even with all the very best measures we could take, there would still be (as there were even in Jesus’ day) women who would try to eliminate their pregnancies rather than make any kind of sacrifice so that their child could live. This is so because sin is real, Satan is real.

Sabrina, I do feel very bad that that pro-life co-worker of yours said things that implied you “enjoyed” the idea of abortion. We know that most people who consider themselves to be “pro-choice” do not think abortion is a good thing. Most of them think it should only be available for women in the very worst situations. But who, then, is to decide what constitutes a “bad situation?” The way things stand, only the woman herself is allowed to make that call. Not the baby’s father, not the baby’s grandparents, and certainly not the baby whose life is on the line. I hear a lot of people say, “Well, I personally think abortion is a terrible thing, but I would never tell someone else they shouldn’t have one.” To me, that is truly the “judgmental” position, because what it, in effect, says is, “I am such a good person. I care very deeply about my own morality—after all, I don’t want to go to hell. But I don’t want to offend anyone or make anyone feel bad by telling them abortion is wrong—after all, if they end up in hell, that’s THEIR business.” (Mind you, I am not one of those Bible thumper people who thinks everyone is going to hell for every little thing; I actually think people have to TRY VERY HARD to get to hell.) To say that something is a terrible tragedy but then to support the very people who perpetuate it/allow it to happen is a mistake. A choice for evil is not a legitimate choice. True freedom means the ability to choose among the good. That’s what our freedom in Christ means—we are free to know, love, and serve Him and to love our neighbors as ourselves without worrying about the future because we know it’s in His hands. We who have the Truth should not revel in it and keep it all to ourselves. We need to share it with the rest of the world and not worry about whether or not it offends. If others don’t hear this Truth, how can they ever hope to share in our freedom and joy? We’re supposed to share the truth in love, and it sounds like maybe your co-worker didn’t exactly do that. Maybe you think I have failed to do that. All we can do is say a prayer and do our best. Sometimes people fail to recognize that love and truth because it goes against what they want to hear and what they believe to be true. Like when a parent admonishes a child out of love. Sometimes Levi will do something really naughty, like hit Brian or me. And we have to be stern and tell him that’s not acceptable. Boy, does he get MAD! Mad at us, for chastising him, and mad at himself because he knows he’s being naughty. Perhaps one of us—you or I—is the “naughty child” in this scenario. I don’t know. We are obviously not on the same page, and this was what my blog post was about—my sorrow over the lack of Christian unity on something so life-or-death, so gravely important.

I can completely understand your discomfort upon reading the words of the novena to Mary. Such a thing is very, very foreign to Protestants and really does seem like idolatry. (Honoring Mary is, in a way, meant to be like the kind of affection we show our mothers on Mother’s Day, through sappy cards and such. Most people don’t feel comfortable saying those kinds of things out loud to their own moms, let alone to someone they’ve never physically met!) Beyond saying the “Hail Mary” or simply just “talking” to Mary as I would to a friend, I haven’t gotten real smitten with the idea of praying these kinds of prayers like that novena, either. But I have noticed that the folks I know who do pray the Rosary (or other similar types of Catholic prayers) on a regular basis are people who radiate the love of Jesus. They are patient, kind, and very humble. They are the people I want to talk to when I am in distress. They give wonderful, godly advice and are always willing to lift me up in prayer. So anyway, I’d like to get used to praying in that way, because I’ve seen the fruits of such prayer in others’ lives. If it helps, you can bear in mind that Martin Luther himself was very devoted to Mary, even up until his death. He whole-heartedly believed in the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception (that Mary was preserved from sin from the moment of her conception) and wrote about it in many of his early writings. It was later pressure from fellow Protestants that persuaded him to “cave” a bit and allow that maybe the Marian doctrines weren’t essential to Christianity. He was trying to preserve unity among the Protestant movement (an impossible task), so he made this compromise, but still he held to his real beliefs for all his life. My point being that Lutherans, were they “true” Lutherans, should not have any problem with the idea of asking for Mary’s intercession. But anyway, there are plenty of Catholics who never talk to Mary at all, even though they intellectually assent to the various teachings about her. I’m just trying to embrace my faith as wholeheartedly as I can. The more I do, the more joy I experience and the closer I am drawn to the Lord. (Yes, I realize you would be more inclined to believe that everything I say is true if I was *perfect.* But no matter how close I get to Jesus, I cannot and never will be *perfect* this side of heaven!)

I think I’ve said all I have to say on this. For now—perhaps for always—we will just have to agree to disagree. I don’t think you or my other friend, “Miss Blue,” are terrible people because you take the position you take. And I hope you can see that my own position does not stem from a position of harsh judgment but from my love for Jesus and his creation (both the born and unborn)….

* * * *

I hope that clears things up a little, for Sabrina and for anyone else who read and was dismayed by my words.

Pax Christi,
Kimberly

I applaud you for standing up for your beliefs. Your neighbor just confused the words “happy” and “fun.” Unwanted pregnancy isn’t fun, but to say people in such circumstances can’t be happy is DEAD WRONG. We all have read of people who found happiness in concentration camps, so happiness is possible no matter what problems we face. Fun and pleasure, however, are more dependent on us getting our way!

Great post, thank you!

Kim,

You know I love you. But I think it is judgement on your part to assume and proclaim that anyone that has had an abortion will feel remorse someday, even if they don’t feel it currently. Perhaps they will, but it is not ours to say.

I recently had a discussion with a very “right wing politics” person. He said government should ban abortion. I said if government wants to be involved in women’s reproduction it should concentrate on reducing the circumstances and impetus to having abortions. We are far from reducing unwanted pregnancies. Unwanted pregnancies are where the option of abortion comes into play.

What should government do? I don’t claim to have answers. I was accused of wanting government to have MORE involvement (create more government-create more spending) in the case of abortion. I pointed out that a government ban of abortion would also be more spending etc. Plus, what happens to the women that break the law? Drugs are illegal-they kill-people still buy, use and profit from drugs, and we have a lot of government spending and involvement trying to take care of that problem. Is a woman that has an abortion going to be a criminal? What did Jesus do for the woman who was going to be stoned for having committed adultery?

I was also accused of wanting, supporting, and enjoying the murder of thousands of innocent babies. (That is a quote.) You know me, Kim. I do not want this. Yet because I didn’t think government should be involved to the point of passing laws to make abortion illegal, I must delight in abortion.

Abortion is the most unfortunate thing that can be done about a pregnancy. It can not be cast in a wholesome light. It hurts and is awful.

Many, many things are like this though. Drugs and alcohol kill and wound families beyond measure. Rape, incest, and pornagraphy are horrible as well. Some of these things are legal, some not. Would our world be better if this very day, with nothing changing but the law, it suddenly became illegal to drink, take drugs, buy or look at pornagraphy?

What if we taught our children how to make appropriate choices about drinking, drugs, pre-marital sex, and pornagraphy instead? What if we asked government to help us create strong networks that supported healthy choices?

I actually don’t believe government is our answer. I think government is good. I’m glad for our democracy. But when I think of Jesus and government, I think of “Give unto Caeser…” Jesus did not come to this earth to be an emporer, a king of a country, the president. He was frustrated with people, even his closest friends when they pushed him in that direction or misunderstood him. Jesus is King of All. He did not expect government to be anything other than government. He expected his followers to be concerned with the human condition and to love one another.

I will never win an argument with anyone who wants to hold onto their oppinions and beliefs. I don’t hope to. Concerning the conversation I had with the co-worker: in the end, all I could say was that I did not want to kill babies, I did not support killing babies even though he kept accusing me of those very things. He put words in my mouth, told me what I thought, told me what I really meant, and told me what a person with my objections assumably believes. He was wrong about my deepest convictions, but I couldn’t tell him otherwise. According to him, he was pro-life and I was pro-murder.

Whether a law gets changed or not, I feel we are obligated by Jesus’s commands to love one another. Starting with the people we know personally. The women that struggle with remorse about a past abortion do not, perhaps, need our pity. They perhaps need our validation, love, and joy. If Jesus has forgiven them, they are clean. They are just as entitled as you and me to live a joyful life in Christ. They are no longer defined by their sin in God’s eyes, why should they be defined that way to Christian society? Our pity really is a judgement because we are still noticing the sin and still thinking of it.

I don’t expect my comment here to be popular or applauded. These are just some thoughts from a person that does not see a government ban on abortion as the solution to abortion.

I think people of all political walks should want to see America become a place where women/girls do not feel abortion is a choice that is worth it. I know there are radical pro-choice people. But a lot of pro-choice people catagorized that way by pro-life people. They are stuck in that camp despite huge disagreements with the radical pro-choice viewpoint. They are ordinary people that still think abortion is terrible, but they are not willing to allow government to dictate such things to them. It makes me feel very uneasy when government tries to get involved in anything that might take away more privacy. And that is not because I plan to use my privacy to do horrible things. I just don’t feel I should have to give it up because someone else might choose to use privacy to do a horrible thing.

I am sure I’ve said enough now. My reason for commmenting was only to suggest that there are so many facets to this one topic. Sometimes it seems as though if one were to disagree with you, then they cannot be a Christian. I know you well enough to know that is not what you mean at all. I know people are dear to you. And I have witnessed you being a true friend through the years to individuals that were involved in things you highly disapproved of. I think the world of you and I know how committed your heart is to God.

Perhaps this is the age in which we will have to be of one mind or we will simply perish. (My mother refers to these as the end times and tells me so whenever I disagree with her). Perhaps I am greatly mislead. But I have never had the conviction that I must campaign for the Republican party version of pro-life. I remember being a young teen-ager and our then pastor preaching continuously on the subject. The self-righteousness of it all scared me, even though I thought abortion was a very bad thing. When I think of unity in Christ, however, I think of loving Him. I think of committing my life to Him, and carrying out the purposes He makes known to me. He expects me to feel great passion for what he wants me to do. But I cannot expect everyone else to have the same purposes that I am given. Some Christians may not even understand the work I am supposed to do. All I can do is continue to pray and stay close to God and rely on Him to lead me. If I have to, I might defend myself and my path by acknowleging that it is a great burden on my conscience. But if it is not someone else’s burden, do I have the right to catagorize them and make assumptions about them?

All my love and peace to you, my dear friend.
Sabrina