The month of October is set aside for Catholics as the month in which the Rosary is given special attention. Disputations is running a series on the Rosary throughout the month. The special focus on the Rosary connects with the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary – commemorating the miraculous victory at Lepanto on October 7, 1571.

For Lutherans, October is the month during which the Reformation is particularly observed – commemorating the 95 Theses posted on October 31, 1517.

Twenty years ago this month, I started to get some knowledge about the Catholic faith that wasn’t polemical caricature. I was a freshman at a Lutheran college and my roommate was early on in his conversion to Catholicism. (He was wise enough to convert in 1983, while it took me many more years.) We discussed the 95 Theses, which are rarely discussed with specificity even in Lutheran theology classes. (You’ll see why.)

I’m going to post intermittently in October on the Catholicity of (at least some of) the 95 Theses.

Thesis #1: “Our Lord and Master Jesus Christ, when He said Poenitentiam agite, willed that the whole life of believers should be repentance.”

Sounds like St. Francis talking there. Doesn’t sound like the more frequently quoted saying of Luther after his break with Rome, “Sin boldly and boldly ask for grace.”

Thesis #2: “This word cannot be understood to mean sacramental penance, i.e., confession and satisfaction, which is administered by the priests.”
Thesis #3. “Yet it means not inward repentance only; nay, there is no inward repentance which does not outwardly work divers mortifications of the flesh.”

Well, the second thesis seems to be missing the word “solely”. Christ could not have expected us to spend all of our time in the confessional. Note that Luther still maintains the validity of sacramental confession in 1517. The abandonment of sacramental confession was one of the biggest factors in the ultimate rift with Rome. Now the abandonment of sacramental confession is widespread among many who claim to be Catholic. Were Luther a Catholic theology professor today, he probably wouldn’t have headed into formal schism!

The third thesis seems to back this up as it mentions the necessity of outward results of repentance – something many Protestants have viewed with suspicion as it tends to go against “Sola Fide” – of course “Sola Fide” hadn’t been invented yet.

The first three theses say that we are called to perpetual repentance that would include sacramental confession, interior sorrow over our sins and mortifications of the flesh. I heartily concur.

I have reason aplenty to maintain perpetual repentance. May God grant me the grace to do so.

May the separated brethren be brought back into the fullness of truth, full fellowship with the Vicar of Christ and the full Communion of Saints!