BK writes:

I received this ‘invitation’ within the hour:

‘We hope you’ll be able to join us at a livestream this October 31st, as we watch His Holiness Pope Francis, Lutheran World Federation President Bishop Munib A. Younan, and General Secretary Rev. Martin Junge lead the common prayer service in Lund, Sweden, and the public symposium that follows in Malmö, Sweden.’

I am not anything close to a historian, of either secular or ecclesiastical history, but I know that less than 20 years after Luther’s tracts, this gave Henry VIII additional impetus for the establishment of the ‘Anglican Church’, and the appropriation, dispersal and destruction of hundreds of Catholic churches and monasteries.

The horrors of the ‘French Revolution’ followed ~ 250 years later, with far worse acts of church desecration and murder of priests, nuns and lay Catholics.

Why would any Pope have anything to do with a ‘commemoration’ of such acts of rebellion?
Would the Popes of 100, 75, 50 or even 30 years ago have even considered attending something like this?

I just have no words anymore, have no idea what kind of ‘Church’ we are living in these days.

Laura writes:

“Why would any Pope have anything to do with a ‘commemoration’ of such acts of rebellions?”

Your instincts are right. The very idea of celebrating the “Reformation” should be anathema to a Pope. I mean, we’re not talking about two sports teams or two nations. The Lutheran World Federation and the Catholic Church are not geographical entities. They are theological ones. We’re dealing with some fundamentally different beliefs. Any celebration of the “Reformation” by both of these entities can only mean one of two things:

1. One of the two has surrendered
2. They have both surrendered the very concept of objective truth

We know the first has not happened (and it is never possible for the Catholic Church to surrender). So it must be the second. And where there is no belief in truth, there is insanity. This event, despite all the organized efficiency of it (see program here), is literally insane.

The “ecumenical” merger in Sweden — which will be livestreamed from Lund Cathedral into a sports arena (so much for the spirit of reverence) — should be offensive to Lutherans too.  Since Catholics and Lutherans hold to different beliefs on some points, they cannot both be correct. For supposed Catholics to celebrate the Reformation, and for Lutherans to welcome them, is to deny the principle of non-contradiction. Again, it’s to reject the very idea of objective truth and thus render the beliefs of both Lutherans and Catholics nonsensical and meaningless.

Here is a statement regarding the event by the Lutheran World Federation and the “Pontifical” Council for Promoting Christian Unity:

What happened in the past cannot be changed, but what is remembered of the past and how it is remembered can, with the passage of time, indeed change. Remembrance makes the past present.

– From Conflict to Communion

The problem is that the theological differences are not simply in the past. They are in the present too. The conflict remains. Lutherans have not returned to the Church and the charitable thing for Catholics is not to deny this fact, but to pray for their return. The Lutheran cannot pray for a return of Catholics because they never left. (This does not mean Lutherans and Catholics cannot share common political goals or approach each other with friendship in everyday life.)

From Novus Ordo Watch:

This year, October 31 marks the 499th anniversary of the so-called Protestant Reformation, which officially began on this day in 1517 when a priest named Martin Luther nailed 95 theses to the door of All Saints’ Church in Wittenberg, Germany. The errors of Luther were solemnly condemned by Pope Leo X in the bull Exsurge Domine in 1520, and Luther’s excommunication followed a few months later.  In 1545, the Church convened the all-important Council of Trent, which ushered in the Catholic Counter-Reformation, and also led to the publication of the Roman Catechism, also known as the Catechism of the Council of Trent. Important saints during this troublesome period include Pope St. Pius V, St. Charles Borromeo, St. Thomas More, St. John Fisher, St. Robert Bellarmine, and St. Francis de Sales.

The Protestant Revolution has caused unspeakable damage to souls since its inception and is the philosophical and theological forerunner of such errors as Naturalism, Liberalism, Modernism, and even Communism, as wonderfully explained by Bp. Donald Sanborn in his History of Christendom video series.

The commemoration in Lund will pretend that Catholics and Protestants share a common faith, have some sort of partial “communion”, and have the shared mission of a “common witness” — all of which are flat-out lies and contradict the true Catholic teaching on the necessity of all who seek to be real Christians to become Catholics.

[cont.]

 Also from the Catholic perspective, Father Dennis Fahey, in his Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World, explained the fundamental differences and described how profound they are:

The great cardinal principle of Protestantism is that every man attains salvation by entering into an immediate relation with Christ, with the aid of that interior faith by which he believes that, though his sins persist, they are no longer imputed to him, thanks to the merits of our Lord Jesus Christ. All men are thus priests for themselves and carry out the work of their justification by treating directly and individually with God. The Life of Grace, being nothing else than the external favour of God, remains outside of us and we continue, in fact, in spite of Lutheran faith in Christ, corrupt and sinful. Each human being enters into an isolated relation with our Lord, and there is no transforming life all are called to share.

[…]

Protestantism, therefore, substituted for the corporate organization of society, imbued with the spirit of the Mystical Body and reconciling the claims of personality and individuality in man, a merely isolated relation with our Divine Lord. This revolt of human individual against order on the supernatural level, this uprise of individualism, with its inevitable chaotic self-seeking, had dire consequences both in regard to ecclesiastical organization and in the realms of politics and economics.

[…]

The rejection by Luther of the visible Catholic Church opened the door, not only to the abuses of absolute rulers, supreme in Church and State, but soon led to an indifference to all ecclesiastical organizations. As faith in the supernatural life of grace and the supernatural order grew dim and waned, the way was made smooth for the acceptance of Freemasonry. The widespread loss of faith in the existence of the supernatural life and the growing ignorance of the meaning of the Redemption permitted the apostles of Illuminism and Masonry to propagate the idea that the true religion of Jesus Christ had never been understood or been corrupted by His disciples, especially by the Church of Rome, the fact being that only a few sages in secret societies down the centuries had kept alive the true teaching of Jesus Christ. According to this ‘authentic’ teaching our Saviour had established a new religion, but had simply restored the religion of the state of nature, the religion of the goodness of human nature when left to itself, freed from the bonds and shackles of society. Jesus Christ died a martyr for liberty, put to death by the rulers and priests. Masons and revolutionary secret societies alone are working for the true salvation of the world. By them shall original sin be done away with and the Garden of Eden restored. But the present organization of society must disappear, by the elimination of the tyranny of priests, the despotism of princes and the slavery resulting from national distinctions, from family life and from private property.

This is tough language in the view of modernists. But to live with contradiction is to lose the capacity to think.

Getting back to your original point regarding the Pope, we already know that Francis rejects the Catholic Faith and was not Catholic when he was elected to the Papacy. Hence the position of sedevacantism makes sense: The Papal throne is temporarily vacant — and has been since Vatican II. (See more here, here and here.)

In other words, your instincts are also wrong. A Pope is not doing this.

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