What's interesting about many of those defenders of Rome back in 2003 was their historical analysis of Luther. I don't think many of them actually read much from any treatise actually written by Luther. They read books about Luther written from a Roman Catholic perspective. In 1987, the Roman Catholic publisher TAN had reprinted one of the worst scathing attacks on Luther ever published: Father O'Hare's The Facts About Luther. By 2003, this reprint probably had more impact on Rome's newest converts than it had when it was originally published! I bought the book from on an online bookstore named Amazon. This was back before Amazon sold cat food and every other material possession one desperately needs in two days. They sent me two copies by accident.
Father O'Hare's The Facts About Luther was my major introduction into trying to understand how Roman Catholics understood Luther. O'Hare's book is filled with error, including the abuse of primary and historical contexts, as well as being poorly documented. Similarly, a lot of Rome's defenders back in 2003 were... just like O'Hare's book!
In trying to figure out what was going on with the content being put online by Rome's defenders, I did a simplistic study on Roman Catholic scholarly historical evaluations of Luther. There wasn't really anything significant online at the time addressing this. I spent a lot of time at the Westminster Seminary library trying to figure it out. Two lengthy web-articles (now available via the Internet Archive) were the result:
The Roman Catholic Perspective of Luther (Part One) Destructive Criticism of Luther
The Roman Catholic Perspective of Luther (Part Two) Constructive Criticism of Luther
Looking back on these links I was once so proud of, now I see them as glorified book reports. Back then though, I think I was one of the first people to respond to Rome's zealous converts by explaining to them that Father O'Hare's book belonged to a period of Roman Catholic destructive criticism of Luther. Rome's scholars and historians had moved on, in fact, they were downright critical of the methods utilized by Father O'Hare.,, So much for Rome's converts being deep into history... they were clueless about Reformation history according to the Roman Catholic perspective!
There is a sense in which I miss interacting with Rome's defenders in 2003. It was like shooting fish in a barrel. As I venture across cyber-space, I don't as often come into contact with the same number of Roman Catholic Luther-bashers as I used to. Then again, I'm not much of a Facebook person and I don't do Twitter. Maybe they're still out there on those platforms. I tend to think now so much more information is available, a certain number of people actually look stuff up before they hit "enter" on a keyboard. Back in 2003, there was not Google Books yet and Wikipedia was still not a force to be reckoned with. Also now besides my blog, many people have undertaken the goal of putting Luther's seemingly outrageous statements in context. Determining what Luther actually said and what context he said it in is now relatively easy. All one needs to do is care to go deep into history with a few clicks on a keyboard or asking one of those nice ladies like Siri or Alexa to look something up!
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