Los Angeles Auxiliary Bishop Robert Barron writes on aleteia.org, that Alec Ryrie's book “Protestants” caused him to look differently at Martin Luther, “for at the core of Luther’s life and theology was an overwhelming experience of grace". He calls Luther’s “religious movement” a “love affair”. And, “Luther was a mystic of grace, someone who had fallen completely in love.”
In realty Luther was a drunkard, who called the Mass “the greatest and most terrible abomination” of all “papal idolatries” (Schmalkald Articles).
He said things like:
“Christ committed adultery first of all with the women at the well about whom St John tell’s us. Was not everybody about Him saying: ‘Whatever has He been doing with her?’ Secondly, with Mary Magdalen, and thirdly with the women taken in adultery whom He dismissed so lightly. Thus even, Christ who was so righteous, must have been guilty of fornication before He died.” (Tischreden, Weimarer Edition, Vol. 2, p. 107).
Or: “I have greater confidence in my …More