Commentary by Matthew A. C. Newsome ©2003

            There is a Christian themed movie people are talking about, and no, it’s not The Passion.  It’s Luther, the biographical film about the main man of the Protestant Revolution.  Let’s look at some of the “rave reviews”:

• “It's a perfect movie to show a church group or for teaching in a teen group. I also enjoyed seeing the fact that he married a former nun.” – Holly McClure, film reviewer for Crosswalk.com

• “Never has a movie bashed the Catholic Church like this one.  I loved it.” – Lutheran Pastor Jack Cascione, writing in Christian News

These are Protestant viewpoints, of course.  The USCCB also reviewed the film.    While they duly criticized the film for historical inaccuracies and “oversimplication” of complex theological issues, they ultimately called the film “worth seeing” because it breathes “new vitality into events and ideas which, though fossilized by centuries of academic debate, still affect us as Christians today.”

           With all due respect to our bishops, I would have to disagree with this particular review.  For many, this film will be a lasting influence on how they view the Catholic Church and the events that gave birth to Protestantism.  It may be their only exposure to such things.  And the lessons taught by this film are harmful.

Indulge Me For a Moment . . .

           One of the most blatant examples of how this film misrepresents both history and the teaching of the Church is in its treatment of indulgences.  The sale of indulgences to finance the building of St. Peter’s basilica is shown as the key event that set Martin Luther against the Church.  If all you knew about indulgences was from the Catholic priests and bishops in Luther, this is what you would learn.  Indulgences are able to release damned souls from hell.  Indulgences are the Pope’s permission to sin.  You will be damned unless you buy an indulgence.  Johann Tetzel, who is portrayed in this movie as a sixteenth century televangelist, even says, “I can release the soul of a man who violated the Virgin Mary, if only he’ll buy this piece of paper.”

           No wonder Luther was so upset!  But is this really what the Church teaches?  If we look in the Catholic Encyclopedia under “Indulgences,” we see that they have a whole section dealing with what an indulgence is not.  “It is not a permission to commit sin, nor a pardon of future sin . . . Least of all is an indulgence the purchase of a pardon which secures the buyer’s salvation or releases the soul of another from Purgatory.  The absurdity of such notions must be obvious to any one who forms a correct idea of what the Catholic Church really teaches on this subject.”

           Obvious to any but the Luther scriptwriters, it seems, who could not be bothered to check with the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which reiterates what the Church has always understood indulgences to be.  There we read that an indulgence is “a remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven” (CCC 1471).  An indulgence cannot remit the eternal punishment for sin (damnation), but only the temporal punishment – that is, the purification that we must go through before we enter heaven, either here on earth or in Purgatory.  And an indulgence could only be granted for sins that were already forgiven – it did not impart forgiveness itself.  Nor could an indulgence ever be legally purchased.  Indulgences were gained by doing some pious or charitable act.  The money associated with the “sale of indulgences” was in almsgiving.  If you gave money to the Church to use in some charitable cause, that act of generosity gained you an indulgence.  Of course people were known to abuse this system, and this abuse was wrong (which is why the Church no longer grants indulgences for charitable giving of money).  But that doesn’t make the theology behind indulgences wrong. 

            This distinction is not made in Luther.  All we see is Luther’s negative reaction to the “sale of indulgences” and his immediate denial of all kinds of Catholic doctrines such as Purgatory, the teaching authority of the Church, and four of the seven sacraments!  No justification for this amazing leap of logic is asked for or given in the film.

Sola Scriptura . . . But My Scriptura!

           Another long-standing myth about the Church has to do with the Bible, and you’ll find it dutifully repeated in Luther.  The myth is, of course, that the Catholic Church kept the Bible hidden until Martin Luther made his German translation available for the common man in 1522.

           One of the scenes in Luther shows the rebel monk feverishly translating the Bible “for the people.”  But there is no mention of the fact that eighteen complete German language editions of the Bible were produced prior to Luther’s own.  Nor is it mentioned that the very first book printed by Gutenberg's press in 1450 was a Catholic Bible, or that the first printing of the Bible in German was made only a few years after that.  Or that hand-copied manuscripts of the complete Bible in German can be dated to the thirteenth century, and portions of the Scriptures can be found in German languages as early as the seventh.  No, according to Luther “the people” had no access to the Scriptures until marvelous Martin gave it to them.  Historic facts only get in the way of the movie’s main thesis.

           Luther is so worried about making an accurate translation of the Scriptures that he can barely work, until at one point in the film he has this epiphany.  “The words are not important.  It is what they say about Christ that matters.”  In other words, the actual words of the inspired Scriptures are secondary to Luther’s own theological agenda.  And so Luther overcomes his writer’s block and proceeds to give the Bible to “the people.”  But he makes sure it is his Bible – free of such distracting elements as the Second Book of Maccabees and its references to Purgatory, or the Epistle of James and it’s refutation of his sola fide (faith alone) heresy.  (Granted, he was eventually persuaded to leave James, the “epistle of straw” as he called it, in the canon, but the seven Old Testament dueterocanonical books did not fare so well).  To be fair, Luther did not only remove portions of the Bible.  He also added things to it, such as the word “alone” in his translation of Romans 3:28, to “prove” that we are “justified by faith alone.” 

           The rallying cry of the Protestant Reformation was Sola Scriptura! and Luther certainly endorsed the Scripture alone heresy – as long as it was his version of Scripture.

 Undisguised Bias

            The movie as a whole is obviously slanted in favor of the “reformer” (really a revolutionary), and against the Catholic Church.  Luther, in real life, was a rather unattractive, slovenly man with a foul mouth and a troublesome problem with scrupulosity.  Luther, in the film, is a thin, handsome, pious monk – both lover-boy to his darling Katie (a nun) and Robin Hood to the poor masses being suppressed by the Catholic Church.  A champion of “religious freedom.”

           The Catholic authorities in Luther are almost always portrayed as ugly, unsympathetic caricatures.  Granted, a feature length film cannot do justice to all the intricacies and complexities of a person such as Luther, or a time such as the Reformation.  But they don’t have to be blatantly one-sided, either, as this film most unashamedly is.

           In addition to the gross errors regarding both indulgences and the Scriptures, the film makes attacks on clerical celibacy, the sacraments, sacred art, the papacy, and the Church in general.  This film should rightfully scandalize any good Catholic.  Am I overreacting?  I don’t think so.  Consider this.  Most of the reviews of this film I read were either from Lutheran or Baptist sources, and many mentioned that it was sure to become a standard in their seminaries, and endorsed its use in youth groups and adult education classes.  And so these tired anti-Catholic myths will live on for another generation.

           My recommendation for any who want to see a great Reformation figure presented on the silver screen is to skip Luther entirely.  Go rent A Man For All Seasons instead, and learn about a pious man who gladly gave his life in defense of all that is attacked and ridiculed in Luther.