Was JFK een Lutheraan?

“Een vorst kan een christen zijn, maar hij moet niet regeren als christen en als regeerder noemt hij zich geen christen maar een vorst. Want als christen leert het Evangelie hem dat hij geen kwaad  moet doen aan iemand, noch dat hij moet straffen of spreken maar dat hij iedereen moet vergeven, dat hij moet verdragen het pijnlijke en onrechtvaardige dat hem overkomt. Dat is, zeg ik, de les van een christen. Maar dit zou geen goed bestuur zijn indien je het ook zou verkondigen aan een vorst. Hij moet daarentegen zeggen: mijn stand (Christenstand) als christen, laat ik tussen God en mezelf. Maar boven of naast deze stand heb ik in de wereld een andere stand of een ander ambt, nl. dat ik een vorst ben” (Luther, WA 32, p. 440).

Deze scheiding van het religieuze leven ten aanzien van het aardse leven door Luther deed mij denken aan een ophefmakende toespraak van aartsbisschop Chaput van Denver in 2010 (lees de gehele toespraak hier) waarin hij zei:

“Fifty years ago this fall, in September 1960, Sen. John F. Kennedy, the Democratic candidate for president, spoke to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association.  He had one purpose.  He needed to convince 300 uneasy Protestant ministers, and the country at large, that a Catholic like himself could serve loyally as our nation’s chief executive.  Kennedy convinced the country, if not the ministers, and went on to be elected.  And his speech left a lasting mark on American politics.  It was sincere, compelling, articulate – and wrong.  Not wrong about the patriotism of Catholics, but wrong about American history and very wrong about the role of religious faith in our nation’s life.  And he wasn’t merely “wrong.”  His Houston remarks profoundly undermined the place not just of Catholics, but of all religious believers, in America’s public life and political conversation.  Today, half a century later, we’re paying for the damage.”

“In Massa’s view [aartsbisschop Chaput citeert uit “A Catholic for President?  John F. Kennedy and the ‘Secular’ Theology of the Houston Speech, 1960,” Journal of Church and State, Spring 1997], the kind of secularity pushed by the Houston speech “represented a near total privatization of religious belief – so much a privatization that religious observers from both sides of the Catholic/Protestant fence commented on its remarkable atheistic implications for public life and discourse.”  And the irony -- again as told by Massa -- is that some of the same people who worried publicly about Kennedy’s Catholic faith got a result very different from the one they expected.  In effect, “the raising of the [Catholic] issue itself went a considerable way toward ‘secularizing’ the American public square by privatizing personal belief.  The very effort to ‘safeguard’ the [essentially Protestant] religious aura of the presidency . . . contributed in significant ways to its secularization.”

Voor de week van de eenheid

"Moge daarom deze wonderbare manifestatie van eenheid, waardoor alleen de katholieke Kerk zich onderscheidt en kenmerkt, mogen de gebeden en smekingen, waardoor zij die eenheid voor allen van God vraagt, indruk op u maken en u op een heilzame wijze beïnvloeden, u die van deze Apostolische Stoel zijt afgescheiden.
Sta toe dat Wij u in een dierbaar verlangen broeders en zonen noemen; gun ons de hoop die Wij met gevoelens van vaderlijke liefde koesteren omtrent uw terugkeer."
(Bron: Johannes XXIII, Encycliek Ad Petri Cathedram, 1959)

De achtergrond van oecumene en interreligieuze dialoog

Paus Pius XII, Ci riesce: Toespraak tot Italiaanse, Katholieke Juristen (6 december 1953)

"Above all, it must be clearly stated that no human authority, no state, no community of states, whatever be their religious character, can give a positive command or positive authorization to teach or to do that which would be contrary to religious truth or moral good. Such a command or such an authorization would have no obligatory power and would remain without effect. No authority may give such a command, because it is contrary to nature to oblige the spirit and the will of man to error and evil, or to consider one or the other as indifferent. Not even God could give such a positive command or positive authorization, because it would be in contradiction to His absolute truth and sanctity.

Another question, essentially different, is this: could the norm be established in a community of states—at least in certain circumstances—that the free exercise of a belief and of a religious or moral practice which possess validity in one of the member states, be not hindered throughout the entire territory of the community of nations by state laws or coercive measures? In other words, the question is raised whether in these circumstances "non impedire" or toleration is permissible, and whether, consequently, positive repression is not always a duty.

We have just adduced the authority of God. Could God, although it would be possible and easy for Him to repress error and moral deviation, in some cases choose the "non impedire" without contradicting His infinite perfection? Could it be that He would not give men any mandate, would not impose any duty, and would not even communicate the right to impede or to repress what is erroneous and false? A look at things as they are gives an affirmative answer. Reality shows that error and sin are in the world in great measure. God reprobates them, but He permits them to exist. Hence the affirmation: religious and moral error must always be impeded, when it is possible, because toleration of them is in itself immoral, is not valid

Moreover, God has not given even to human authority such an absolute and universal command in matters of faith and morality. Such a command is unknown to the common convictions of mankind, to Christian conscience, to the sources of Revelation and to the practice of the Church. ...The duty of repressing moral and religious error cannot therefore be an ultimate norm of action. It must be subordinate to norms, which permit, and even perhaps seem to indicate as the better policy, toleration of error in order to promote a

Thus the two principles are clarified to which recourse must be had in concrete cases for the answer to the serious question concerning the attitude which the jurist, the statesman and the sovereign Catholic state is to adopt in consideration of the community of nations in regard to a formula of religious and moral toleration as described above. First: that which does not correspond to truth or to the norm of morality objectively has no right to exist, to be spread or to be activated. Secondly: failure to impede this with civil laws and coercive measures can nevertheless be justified in the interests of a higher and more general good."

Kerkjurist en Professor Georg May over het oecumenisme

Prof. Georg May
"Und so kamm eben durch den Ökumenismus diese Welle der Protestantisierung in Gang an den wir heute leiden"

"Wenn der Glaube nicht identisch ist, kann auch die Religionsübung nicht gemeinsam gehalten werden."

"Der Ökumenismus ist eine Brücke zum Übergang zum Protestantismus"

Voor de publicatie van de video bij gloria.tv.