Sunday Evangelium - Totus2us

Fr Marcus: "Our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, has been in Germany and one of the important things he did there was to meet with the Lutheran community. Germany is divided almost 50-50 between Catholics and Lutherans. This unfortunate divide in Christianity in Germany stems from the Augustinian friar Martin Luther who, at the beginning of the 16th century, rebelled against the Catholic Church and began a new Protestant religion. Luther is a major figure in the history of the world, in the history of the West in particular. If we are to understand our own history in the Anglo-Saxon world, we need also to understand Luther, because his ideas, his theology, were the background for the Reformation here as well as in Germany. Pope Benedict surprised people on his visit by praising certain aspects of Luther as a theologian but also, at the same time, surprised others by saying ecumenism cannot be true to itself if it simply sweeps under the carpet the real doctrinal differences that remain. There can be no trade-o