There was a common belief that the Reformation would blow over, writes Rory Rapple   Western Europe may be post-Christian, but the effects of its sectarian divide are everywhere to be seen. Ask almost any Bavarian what makes her different from a Saxon, or any Swede what marks him off from a Spaniard and each…

The foreign nature of Ireland’s Reformation was key to its failure, writes John McCafferty   All over the world 2017 will mark the 500th anniversary of the Lutheran Reformation. What happened here in Ireland? Why did this island remain overwhelmingly Catholic even though its rulers were Protestant? How did religious changes get sucked into the…

Martyrdom was a central – and complex – part of the Irish Reformation experience, writes Alan Ford   It’s hard to escape the tradition of political martyrdom in Ireland. The litany of names, from Wolfe Tone to Patrick Pearse to Bobby Sands, is commemorated annually at Bodenstown and on the gable ends of houses in…

Pope Francis’ praise 
for Luther continues the work of his predecessor, writes Greg Daly   Pope Francis’ praise for Martin Luther ahead of and during his visit to Lund last year – notably when he said that Luther’s intentions and his understanding of justification were not mistaken – may have sounded startling to some ears,…

The Catholic Reformation entailed coercion as well as wide-ranging reform projects, writes Tadhg Ó hAnnracháin   Few terms in historical writing have attracted more dissatisfaction than ‘the Counter-Reformation’. Among the more recent attempts to formulate an alternative are ‘Catholic Reformation’, ‘Catholic Renewal’ or the broad catch-all of ‘Early Modern Catholicism’. Each of these designations depart…

If Luther created our world, he didn’t mean to, Brad Gregory tells Greg Daly   It’s something of a cliché to say that Martin Luther never intended to create the storm he generated, and that matters took their own momentum, but for Brad Gregory, this could hardly be more true. “Luther initially was just objecting…

The idea of indulgences has profoundly biblical roots, Greg Daly writes.   One of the Reformation’s greatest ruptures was its transformation of how Christians saw relations between the living and the dead: for those who embraced the ideas of Luther and the other Reformers, it was no longer possible to ask the saints in Heaven…

Luther’s ideas are still driving the Christian world, says Francis Campbell   The Reformation was more of a phenomenon than we sometimes perceive. It was not simply religious but was societal, political, social and economic too. It is also more apt to speak of Reformations, rather than The Reformation, for in the end Luther also…

As we commemorate the 500th anniversary of the beginning of the Reformation, it is good to ask: where is the Catholic Church today with regard to Martin Luther and the issues he raised? A gesture that speaks volumes in answer to that question is the visit on October 31st last year by Pope Francis to…

Ecumenism is more important than ever now, Cardinal Anders Arborelius tells Greg Daly   “We were of course very honoured and happy that the Holy Father could come here, and I think this has some historical reasons,” Cardinal Anders Arborelius tells The Irish Catholic of Pope Francis’ decision to visit the Swedish city of Lund last…