Martin Mess

The other day I received my CD-ROM from New Advent: The Summa, the Catholic Encyclopedia, the Church Fathers, and other odds and ends of ecclesiastic writings. I browsed over to the article on Luther this morning, which was extensive if not balanced, and took a glance at the one on Calvin as well. The sectarian scholars of a century ago looked askance at Luther (not surprisingly; I suspect even Lutherans did so then and do so now) but were rather respectful towards his rival. No wonder; Luther's a hard man to like and his unlikeableness fairly drips from his biography, and from his bibliography. Possibly the most unlikeable thing about him, though, is that there is absolutely no way we can mistake him for a man of our times, or potentially in sympathy with them. He is exceedingly foreign to us. Of course, the same is true of Saint Francis, or Abelard, or Raphael, or Dante, but we always manage to latch onto a little facet of their personalities which helps us maintain the illusion that they are more like us than different. But what is normative for us is not the measure of all men; maybe it shouldn't be the measure of any of them. Or any of us.