Who are the Pfaffen?
[by C. F. W. Walther; Part 3]
Unfortunately, however, very soon among the papal priests [Priestern], especially since the introduction of celibacy, such a great [page 50-1] corruption set in that the word “Pfaffe” gradually lost its originally good meaning more and more, and that it was finally used to designate a person who, although ordained as a priest, abused his sacred office (for which the papal priesthood was considered) only for the satisfaction of his carnal lusts, his desire for money, and his lust for honor and power.
When already at the end of the fifteenth and at the beginning of the sixteenth century a peasant revolt broke out in southwestern Germany and the peasants joined together in a union, which they called “Bundschuh” after their badge, they had made the question: “What is the nature of that?” and the answer to be given to it: “One cannot recover before monks and Pfaffen”, their distinctive mark of identification. *)
––––––––––
*) See [Johann Georg] Heinsius’ Kirchengeschichte [?], II, 216. Usually the papists blame the peasant wars of the sixteenth century on Luther and his Reformation, but history teaches that long before Luther the insatiable avarice and tyranny of both the Pfaffen and the nobility had incited the hard-pressed people to revolt.
In Luther's time, everything that was then called Pfaffen was in such bad repute that in 1530 it wasn’t just Emperor Charles V who is reported to have said: “If the Pfaffen were pious, they would not need Luther,” but even the Cardinal Archbishop of Salzburg Matthias Lang, after reading the Augsburg Confession, broke out into the words to Melanchthon: “Oh, what do you want to reform us Pfaffen for – we Pfaffen have never been good.” (** See: Luther's warning to his dear Germans of 1531. XVI, 1987. f. [StL 16:1644; AE 47:32]) Already earlier, in 1517, Emperor Maximilian, after reading Luther's 95 Theses against indulgences, said to the Electoral Saxon Councilor Pfeffinger:
.jpg "Emperor Maximilian (Wikipedia)")
“What is your monk [Luther] doing? His Theses are not to be despised. He will start a game with the Pfaffen. The Elector may well take care of the monk, it might happen that one would need him.” († See: Heinsius' Kirchengeschichte, II, 140.)
This emperor was, as can be seen from this, convinced that the ruin of the church had its seat above all in the “Pfaffen”.
Thus it came about that the word Pfaffe was finally used only in an evil meaning. In the Holy Scriptures Luther used it in Isaiah 19:3 to describe the Egyptian idol priests but otherwise not at all; and in the apocryphal book Baruch he attached this name to the deceitful pagan priests of Babel (Baruch 6:9, 48). But where Luther usually speaks of Pfaffen in the evil sense, he means as a rule the papal priests who teach falsely and offer the idolatrous sacrifice of the Mass for money, together with the Pope and the bishops, but sometimes he also gives this title to preachers who want to be “evangelical”. Matthesius, for example, relates that when Luther was told of horrible cases of sin by so-called “evangelical” preachers, he declared that he would have to “ask the Elector for a Pfaffen's tower” so that preachers who desecrate their sacred office through godless living could be thrown into such a prison as just punishment for it.
So it is unfortunately true that there are preachers, there are servants of the church who deserve to be called not preachers of the Gospel, not servants of Christ, not pastors, not venerable lords (or Reverends) and the like, but Pfaffen, and that in the worst sense. [Gottesdienst]
No comments:
Post a Comment
Comments only accepted when directly related to the post.