ROMAN CATHOLICISM'S DISCOMFORT WITH LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION

John C. Rao, ed., Luther and His Progeny: 500 Years of Protestantism and Its Consequences for Church, State, and Society (A Roman Forum Book) (Kettering, OH: Angelico Press, 2017) (From the "Introduction: Half a Millennium of Total Depravity (1517-2017): A Critique of Luther's Impact in the Year of His 'Catholic' Apotheosis": "Our civilization is so sick that even the best efforts to prop up its tottering remains manifest the same illness that is step by step bringing the entire structure crumbling down. The disease in question is a willful, prideful, irrational, and ignorant obsession with 'freedom.' And it is a malady that gained its initial effective entry into Christendom in union with the concept of the natural world as the realm of 'total depravity.'" "It is crucially important that we both diagnose this malady and identify its historical connection with Martin Luther and the Protestant Revolution, popularly but erroneously styled a 'Reformation.' It is crucially important that we do so now because of the efforts being made this year to use the occasion of the five hundredth anniversary of Luther's declaration of war on Christendom in 1517 as an opportunity radically to rewrite and reinterpret that event and misrepresent its true nature." Id. at 1. "Convinced that many of our ecclesiastical leaders would turn 2017 into a year-long celebration of the accomplishments of Luther & Company--and that Catholics need to be aware of what an historical, theological, and socio-political travesty such a celebration would be--the international faculty of the Roman Forum dedicated its twenty-fourth annual Summer Symposium at Gardone Riviera in northern Italy in 2016 to 'Half a Millennium of Total Depravity (1517-2017): A Critique of Luther's Impact on the Eve of His 'Catholic' Apotheosis.' The lectures delivered at that event are collected in the book that the reader has before him." Id. at 2. COLD BURN!).