Martin Luther...Ex-Heretic?

The internet and the blogosphere is filled with the discussion today of the announcement that it seems, this is still in the future, but it seems like there's going to be another rather groundbreaking change in the

Roman Catholic Church, specifically the rehabilitation, the lifting of the excommunication of one

Martin Luther from, well, a long time ago. And some people saw this coming.

It's really interesting. I'm not exactly sure how you maintain the concept of papal infallibility.

I don't know how you can, without grinning from ear to ear, talk about the consistent teaching of the church over time and do something like this, but that seems to be what's taking place.

But what brings me to post a brief comment on this is, obviously,

I have heard Martin Luther ravaged as a heretic, as the main part of argumentation by Roman Catholic apologists, well, for a long time now.

And I really have to wonder how people like Art Sippo and Dave Armstrong are going to explain their constituencies that the infallible head of the infallible church can rehabilitate someone that they have been identifying as a heretic for years on end.

Were they just wrong? How about all those popes for all those generations that everybody knows, believed, and taught that Luther was a heretic as well?

I guess that's just not really covered under papal infallibility. What must it be like to be an elderly

Catholic today, to remember pre -Vatican II, to remember the clarity and the consistency of Catholic teaching, and to now look at what

Rome looks like today? What must it be like? I don't know how a

Roman Catholic can make the kinds of arguments they make in debates about the consistency of the church and the authority of the church and the magisterium's teaching over time and all the rest of the stuff, when it's just painfully obvious that Rome is changing and that Rome's theology and doctrine is silly putty in her hands.

That you can go around the world today and in Catholic countries you'll still get some of the good old, old -time

Roman Catholicism, but in Western countries you've got this uncertain mishmash of things and you go up to Boston College, who knows what in the world you'll get there.

You get down to Mexico and you get this folk Catholicism. This is the unified church?

And now you've got the pope himself, and I'm sorry, but can any rational person look at the popes of the early 19th century and compare them to the modern papacy and say, yep, that's the consistent magisterium teaching the same thing?

It's not. It's clear. It's a fact. How can anyone say otherwise?

It's very difficult to understand how you can defend this system and this life, and so it'll be very interesting to see what is the extent of this rehabilitation in reference to what?

Rome's got to be very careful how it does this, but the very fact it's willing to go that direction really makes you wonder about the claims that these

Catholic apologists make, and what will Art Sipo say if the condemnation of Martin Luther is lifted?

Will he apologize? I sort of have a hard feeling. I don't think it's going to happen.

I have a hard time seeing that. How about Dave Armstrong? Will he all of a sudden re -edit tons and tons and tons of articles, stay up for 12 days in a row, re -editing thousands of pages of articles?

I sort of doubt it. But once again, here's what happens when you deny sola scriptura and you put your faith in something outside of the unchanging and inspired

Word of God. When you defend that kind of system, well, it's going to let you down eventually.