Remembering The Reformation

For some reason, the Council for Promoting Christian Unity has decided to do a Joint Declaration on the Reformation with the World Lutheran Federation in order to "analyze the Reformation in the light of 2,000 years of Christianity." This is all per Zenit.

Woo-freaking-Hoo.

The history of this sort of thing is checkered at best. Remember the famous Joint Declaration on Justification that was so afflicted that it required a Catholic "Response" to the Vatican Declaration? Or the Ravenna Statement with the Orthodox which has thus far rejected all of my attempts to interpret it in a Catholic fashion? None of these documents really produce anything except mass confusion. It's not like the WLF even speaks for all the Lutherans. So why are we even bothering?

On top of that, let's consider the stated goal of the document, namely, considering the Reformation in light of Christian history. If we're really going to do that, then the only conclusion is that Martin Luther was a heretic and schismatic. If you look at the work of guys like TF Torrance, for example, Protestants are admitting that Lutheran ideas of justification really don't have a place in Church history. However, in the interest of being all ecumenicool (ecumenical AND cool; I just coined the term and will sue anyone else who uses it), I have the feeling this document will be playing fast and loose with the facts so that we can shoe-horn in some kind of legitimacy for heretical doctrines.

As usual, the Truth is what will suffer. Hopefully, the Pope will squash this or at least render it mostly harmless.