28 February 2017

Luther, Dix, and the Sovereign Pontiff UPDATED

So now we are settling down into the Year Of Luther, and our Holy Father has done his trip to Lund and said what-ho to the (arch)bishopesses. He may even, for all I know, have kissed them and washed their feet, although I do hope he first checked that he had their Consent, as we chaps have to nowadays before we lay so much as a finger .... And the Pontifical Council for something or other which now eludes me, earlier this year, issued Texts and Materials and Shoe Boxes. I am sure much more enlightenment lies ahead. I can't, er, wait. Neither (I sense it) can you.

Not long before he died, Dom Gregory Dix did a lecture tour in Sweden. That was a time, 1950, before Swedish Lutheranism had descended anything like as far as it has now into the most extreme blasphemies and apostasies of the Zeitgeist. But Dix found already "an appalling stiffness and deadness". He felt that "What they need is daily mass and weekly communion and morning and evening prayer daily in Church to make it all come alive". He did not hesitate to show the way: he insisted on celebrating his own daily (Latin, Tridentine) Mass, and made them fix up an altar for him to do it on in Stockholm Cathedral ... and in Uppsala and Stranghus [See via Google A Tactful God by Simon Bailey page 234].

He wrote to a friend: "If ever I hated Luther I hate that psychological monster three times more now that I have seen his results!"

I wonder if even the most exclusive, anti-ecumenical, and died-in-the-wool traddies might, albeit reluctantly, agree with me that this mere Anglican monk had a sharper nose for psychopathology and monstrosity than some Roman Pontiffs sometimes appear to possess.

But Mary's Immaculate Heart will prevail! Singlehanded, Mary has destroyed all the heresies in all the world! She is more than a match for dead heresiarchs!

 

10 comments:

Benjamin Ekman said...

Stranghus? Perhaps you mean Strängnäs? which has a cathedral.

Where can this Swede read more about Dix's journeys in our fair land?

All the best,

b.

William Tighe said...


"Where can this Swede read more about Dix's journeys in our fair land?"

There is a bit about it in *A Tactful God: Gregory Dix, Priest, Monk and Scholar* by Simon Bailey (Leominster, 1995: Gracewing) - a book which I reviewed in 1997 here:

http://www.newoxfordreview.org/reviews.jsp?did=1297-tighe

The book may be out-of-print, but there are a number of copies for sale at Abebooks.co.uk and Amazon.co.uk.

mark wauck said...

Do traddies actually die in the wool? Hmmmm. I suppose that's even worse than being dyed in the wool.

Fr PJM said...

The Virgin Mary is the anti-Luther, I just read. More in a while when I find it...

Mike Cliffson said...


"But Mary's Immaculate Heart will prevail! Singlehanded, Mary has destroyed all the heresies in all the world! She is more than a match for dead heresiarchs!"
Bravo!

Unknown said...

She will not triumph soon enough for my kids I'm afraid. What about all those who think they are doing well by going off on different paths

The Flying Dutchman said...

There does not seem to be any place called Stranghus in Sweden. I would suggest that Mr. Ekman may be correct and that this may be a misprint.

Kathleen1031 said...

I often wonder what figures of old would think or say if they saw what we are seeing. I love to contemplate what an Archbishop Fulton Sheen would say about all this. Would he sink into silence like the rest of his compadres? Would he have no comment, or offer his own rationalizations for heresy? I can't imagine that to be the case. Or a Padre Pio, what would he say.
In a world gone crazy, even the comfort of the church is being denied us. Surely there must be a reason.
What could Our Lord be doing.

Anonymous said...

"He wrote to a friend: 'If ever I hated Luther I hate that psychological monster three times more now that I have seen his results!'"

Alas, as an ex-Lutheran convert, what I see in the Catholic Church is the deadness of Lutheranism from the Pope on down, with a few exceptions.

One must always ask: "What has changed in Lutheranism {or Islam for that matter} for modern Catholic leadership to praise them some much?"

The answer is...Nothing.

What has changed is the Catholic leadership.

Take a quick peak at the long history of Swedish Lutheran anti-Catholicism and indeed the lights go on and the Pope's affinity for Swedish Lutheranism becomes obvious.....

Mick Jagger Gathers No Mosque said...

ABS hates Luther with the intensity of 10,000 Krakatoa eruptions owing to his description of Jesus as a composition of good and evil.


Luther hated St Augustine and Luther was a puissant gnostic who does not deserve even a modicum of praise, say nothing about the attempts to resurrect his reputation.

He was described as a "wild boar' by the Pope, Leo X, in Exsurge Domine, and the Pope, rightly, excommunicated the demented drunkard (ABS does not mean that in a bad way)