Modernist elements in Rome are hard at work again faking history in order to portray Luther (a foul mouthed, neurotic, impure, disobedient, heretical monk) as some sort of paragon of a Christian reformer. Nearer home, the arch-druid of Modernism, ex-Bishop Kieran Conry (a man aptly described by the editor of Christian Order as a man forever poised between a cliché and an indiscretion), whose library was seemingly limited to that anthology of Modernist errors, The Pill (aka The Tablet), is reported to have said something along the lines, " ... Luther got it right, it has just taken the Church 400 years to catch up." This is a good time to revisit one of Luther's blasphemous errors, namely: salvation by faith alone. To do this, one cannot do better then quote extensively from a recent article in The Dowry. NB all emphases are mine.

 

"... stripped of divine grace through original sin, men were not left forever morally vulnerable and despicable. On the contrary, they received from God through His Church the means to reach even higher sanctity and honour, gradually "putting on Christ" (Galatians 3:27), that is imitating ever more faithfully the virtues displayed in Jesus Christ, the new Adam and their perfect model. This process called sanctification extends to the entire life of every Christian. In every case however, it aims at configuring the human creature to Christ.

 

"While following in Holy Scripture the theme of man's being clothed with divine grace, we should make sure that we correctly understand it as a genuine sanctification of the sinner, and not as an arbitrary and external imputation of justice which would allow the sin to remain within. On the contrary, grace genuinely deletes sin. For instance, when referring divine grace to sin, the Holy Bible uses words such as 'exhausting', 'blotting out' and 'taking away'. These terms are incompatible with any actual sin remaining within the person of the sinner. God does not merely choose to ignore our sins, as this would be a fiction unworthy of God's truthfulness. It would also present goodness as a convention modified at will, whereas good coincides with being itself, as St Thomas Aquinas teaches: "Good and being are interchangeable" (Disputed Questions on Truth, 21, art. 1, 11). God, who is good, actually treats our sins as a physician treats wounds, so they truly cease to be (philosophically, as a mere privation of a moral good, sin is not endowed with existence). God's grace reaches into the wounds of our souls - our sins - filling them with God's very sanctity and healing us, restoring harmony with Him and within us. Since grace is a participation in the very life of God, and since God is sanctity itself. He could not 'clothe with grace' anyone without sanctifying the very core of that person.

 

"Earthly garments can deceive when put on by men, for instance if an immoral man wears an elegant suit. But when granted by God to a soul - as poetically expressed in the metaphor of clothing - celestial grace truly expresses inner sanctity. Thus the Council of Trent states about catechumens: "Wherefore, when receiving true and Christian justice, they are commanded, immediately on being born again, to preserve it pure and spotless, as the first robe given them through Christ Jesus in place of the which Adam, by his disobedience, lost for himself and for us, so that they may bear it before the tribunal of our Lord Jesus Christ and may have life eternal' (Council of Trent, Session Vl, chapter Vll)”

 

So why then is the Protestant doctrine of salvation by faith alone blasphemous? This is best illustrated by a parable. Imagine an attractive young woman has a large ulcerating wound on her face, she goes to a Catholic surgeon who cleans and sterilises the wound, applies a healing balm, stitches and dresses the wound. She returns regularly to the same surgeon over several months until finally the wound is fully healed, leaving not even a trace of a scar. A second young woman with a similar wound goes to a Protestant surgeon, who tells her that there is nothing that can be done for her, she is stuck with the ulcerating wound for life and all he can do is put a pretty dressing over the wound so that she will merely appear less disfigured.

 

The first doctor is a true healer, the second doctor is a sham, a fake, a quack, a snake-oil salesman. The Protestant doctrine of salvation by faith alone turns God into a sham, a fake, a quack, a snake-oil salesman, and that is very definitely blasphemous.

 

Aside: this is one good reason why genuine Catholics should lament the fact that the Neocatechumenal Way, a Lutheran sect infesting the Church with papal blessing, have been invited into the Shrewsbury diocese by Bishop Mark Davis. Mark Davis is one of our few good shepherds, and one would have reasonably hoped that he of all people would have shown more prudence before exposing the sheep to such manifestly false shepherds.