Roman Catholic Propaganda on Luther Invoking the Saints

Here's a clip I found from a Roman Catholic periodical called "The Manchester Illuminator and General Catholic Record" dating from 1849-1850.  I found it while working on this blog entry. There are indeed a handful of quotes from Luther affirming the invocation of the saints. Those quotes typically date pre-1521 or 1522. Typically, after that, Luther did not approve of or teach such a practice. Whoever compiled these quotes (the citations all come from very early editions of Luther's works) does not explain the purpose or intent. I can really only think of one: propaganda.

Only a few years after Luther wrote his exposition of the Magnificat (some of which is cited above), He wrote to a group of Bohemians,

“… I certainly would not call you heretics, as our sophists do, because you do not honor or call upon the mother of God or any of the saints, but cling alone to the only mediator, Jesus Christ, and are satisfied that in heaven as well as on earth each one is obligated to pray for the other. For there is nothing in the Scriptures about the intercession of dead saints, nor about honoring them and praying to them. And no one can deny that hitherto through services for these saints we have gone so far as to make pure idols out of the mother of God and the saints. We have placed more confidence in them, on account of the services and works which we have done for them, than we have placed in Christ himself, with the result that faith in Christ has perished.” [LW 36:299]