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Luther’s statement.
The true Church must have a holy founder. Therefore, when it can be proved that the founder of a religion was not a model of perfection, but rather the opposite, it can be said that such a religion lacks the mark of holiness. This proof is easier than one might think for Luther and his church. Anyone who reads Luther’s writings will find in them not only many passages that denote an exalted self-love and a hateful character, but also a man subject to shameful passions. Luther constantly uses coarse expressions such as “mouth, monster, brute, swine, pig, ass, dung, plague, spit, devour, get drunk”, not to repeat those of which the least educated honest man would blush. It is especially the pope that he seeks to dirty with his slime. His excessive pride and self-love appear in phrases such as: “I am known in heaven, on earth and in the underworld. I have so much authority…. I am a great doctor who is worth more than the pope, the bishops and the monks.” Luther, by saying that he cannot recite the “Pater” without swearing, meant that by reciting the “Pater” he became so angry at the Pope and the Catholic Church that he felt compelled to curse them. During the peasants’ revolt, Luther advised the princes “to thrash the villains, strangle them and slaughter them, for a prince could now much better win heaven by shedding blood than by praying.”
A single similar fact in the life of a Saint proposed for canonization, would be enough to prevent beatification. And Luther would be a “man of God” and a reformer! Many writers, among them Dôllinger, are of the opinion that Luther was drunk when he wrote. There are even Protestants who blame Luther for his trivialities and say that his works seem to be the work of a pig keeper rather than of such a famous pastor of souls. (See Dr. Germanus: Reformationsbilder. Herder.) So Wicel rightly wrote in 1531 to a disciple of Luther’s named Balthasar Raid: “Such anger, such thirst for vengeance, such brutality, such a mania for slander, such recklessness, such debauchery…. are not to be found even in the false prophets and heretics. You know this yourself.” And the learned Erasmus writes: “The simplest common sense tells you that a man who has produced such a revolution, who takes pleasure in insults and slanders, without ever being able to satiate himself with them, cannot be an envoy of God. This arrogance, the greatest that ever was, cannot be free from folly, and this unbridled frivolity is not compatible with the apostolic spirit.”
Luther’s character proves that the mark of “holiness” is lacking in the Protestant Church he founded.
