Campfire Stories

Four hundred and ninety years ago today, on December 10th 1520, the German priest Martin Luther burned his copy of Pope Leo X’s Papal Bull entitled “Exsurge Domine” just outside the “Elster Gate” of Wittenberg. The Exsurge Domine is not lacking in flowery metaphors, here’s one:

“The wild boar from the forest seeks to destroy it and every wild beast feeds upon it.”

But it was not literary excess that drove Martin Luther to so famously burn it before a crowd of his followers.

Some years before, on Halloween 1517, Matin Luthor had nailed his 95 theses to the door of Wittenberg’s All Saints Church. The Exsurge Domine detailed 41 of these “errors” with which the Holy See was not amused. My favorite of which was number 24 on the Exsurge Domine list:

“Christians must be taught to cherish excommunications rather than to fear them.”

Which sounds cool to me.

Martin Luther went on to be famously tried and excommunicated (which I’m sure he cherished) and generally treated badly. The trials had marvelous names like “The Diet of Worms” (25 May 1521). You just don’t get great trial names like that these days.

Martin Luther, as a good priest, was practiced at the art of sublimation. Sublimation is the process of transforming libido into "socially useful" achievements (Freud). In Martin Luther’s case those achievements were spreading rabid anti-Semitic hatred. Up until the Exsurge Domine Martin was almost a defender of German Jews:

“that in our behavior towards them we less resemble Christians than beasts?" -- Martin Luther 1519

Oh what a difference a mean-spirited letter from an Italian in a dress and a meal of worms can make! By 1536 Martin was violently anti-semitic. He was apparently storming around the German countryside proclaiming that: “whoever would help the Jews was doomed to perdition”.

His most famous treatise was published just three years before his death. In a book he titled “Von den Jüden und iren Lügen“ (English: On the Jews and Their Lies) he detailed his arguments for a solution to the Jew problem Germany was having.

"base, whoring people, that is, no people of God, and their boast of lineage, circumcision, and law must be accounted as filth. They are full of the devil's feces ... which they wallow in like swine. The synagogue was a defiled bride, yes, an incorrigible whore and an evil slut ..” -- Martin Luther 1543

He goes on to argue that the Jewish homes be raised, that synagogues and schools be burned, that property be seized, and other bad stuff. The Jews themselves were not only to be rounded up and put into forced labor, but Martin goes on to say “"[w]e are at fault in not slaying them”.

If Martin had just lived another 400 years he would have seen his “solution” put into action. Martin Luther's anti-semitic writings may have been one of the reasons why the church that bore his name as part of the Landeskirchen beat out the evangelical church in the 1930s in their bid to become the official church of the National Socialists.

Revolutionary French

One hundred and five years ago today, on December 9th 1905, the Chamber of Deputies of France (the legislative assembly of the French Parliament) passed Loi du 9 décembre 1905 concernant la séparation des Églises et de l'État (Law on the Separation of the Churches and State). This law codifies a secularization that had been developing in France since its revolution.

    Article premier. - La République assure la liberté de conscience. Elle garantit le libre exercice des cultes sous les seules restrictions édictées ci-après dans l'intérêt de l'ordre public.


    Art. 2.- La République ne reconnaît, ne salarie ni ne subventionne aucun culte. En conséquence, à partir du 1er janvier qui suivra la promulgation de la présente loi, seront supprimées des budgets de l'État, des départements et des communes, toutes dépenses relatives à l'exercice des cultes. Pourront toutefois être inscrites auxdits budgets les dépenses relatives à des services d'aumônerie et destinées à assurer le libre exercice des cultes dans les établissements publics tels que lycées, collèges, écoles, hospices, asiles et prisons. Les établissements publics du culte sont supprimés, sous réserve des dispositions énoncées à l'article 3.

The first sentence of article 2 can be translated into English as: “The Republic does not recognize, pay or subsidize any religion. “. The law itself goes on for several pages to outline the method of establishing a new separation for a country that had not had one before. France had built many churches at public expense, and had many church individuals on public salaries. The separation was a process in France, not a simple establishing of principal like it was in the USA. Some of the articles (like article 11 shown below) are obviously unimportant today, but were probably of great importance when the law was passed.

French: "Les ministres des cultes qui, lors de la promulgation de la présente loi, seront âgés de plus de soixante ans révolus et qui auront, pendant trente ans au moins, rempli des fonctions ecclésiastiques rémunérées par l'État, recevront une pension annuelle et viagère égale aux trois quarts de leur traitement."

English: "The ministers of religion who, during the enactment of this Act, be aged over sixty years of age and who have for thirty years at least, full of ecclesiastical duties paid by the State, will receive an annual pension and annuity equal to three-quarters of their treatment."

If anyone was covered by article 11 they would be over 165 years old today.

There were opponents to the law, and some demonstrations. The Roman Catholic church was quite unhappy with the law, but have seen it as worthwhile, even defendable, in recent years. The Roman Catholic church was so upset by the law that Pope Pius X issued an encyclical titled “Vehementer Nos” where they stated in overflowing prose the Holy See’s displeasure with the law. Here are a couple excerpts from an English translation of the Vehementer Nos:

“Our soul is full of sorrowful solicitude and Our heart overflows with grief, when Our thoughts dwell upon you. How, indeed, could it be otherwise, immediately after the promulgation of that law which, by sundering violently the old ties that linked your nation with the Apostolic See, creates for the Catholic Church in France a situation unworthy of her and ever to be lamented? That is, beyond question, an event of the gravest import, and one that must be deplored by all the right-minded, for it is as disastrous to society as it is to religion.”


“That the State must be separated from the Church is a thesis absolutely false, a most pernicious error. Based, as it is, on the principle that the State must not recognize any religious cult, it is in the first place guilty of a great injustice to God; for the Creator of man is also the Founder of human societies, and preserves their existence as He preserves our own. We owe Him, therefore, not only a private cult, but a public and social worship to honor Him. Besides, this thesis is an obvious negation of the supernatural order.”

Imagine

Thirty years ago today, at 10:50 PM outside of the Dakota apartments in NYC, John Lennon was shot four times in the back.