Catholic writers contend that Luther made a mistake when he became monk.
Protestants share this view, but put the emphasis in the sentence:
Luther became a monk, at a different place. In the Protestant view the
mistake is this, that Luther became a _monk,_ in the Catholic view, it
is this, that _Luther_ became a monk. Protestants regard monasticism
largely as a perversion of the laws of nature and of Christian morals.
In an institution of this kind Luther could not find the relief he
sought. His mistake was that he sought it there. Catholics view monkery
as the highest ideal of the Christian life, and blame Luther for
entering this mode of life when he was altogether unfit for it. They
regard Luther as guilty of sacrilege far seeking admission into the
order of Augustinian friars. When he was permitted to turn monk, that
which is holy was given unto a dog, and pearls were cast before a swine.
Catholics argue that Luther's cheerless boyhood, the poverty of his
parents, the hard work and close economy that was the order in the home
at Mansfeld, the harsh and cruel treatment which Luther received from
parents that were given to "fits of uncontrollable rage" induced in
Luther a morose, sullen spirit. He became brooding and stubborn when yet
a child. He was a most unruly boy at school. His character was not
improved when he was sent abroad for his education and had to sing for
his bread or beg in the streets. His rebellious spirit found nourishment
in these humiliations. Owing to his melancholy temperament and gloomy
fits, he made no friends. He felt himself misunderstood everywhere. Even
the little season of sunshine that came into his young life at the Cotta
home in Eisenach did not cure him of the morbid feeling that nobody
appreciated him. He began to loathe the studies which he was pursuing in
accordance with the wish of his father. To certain occurrences, like the
slaying of a fellow-student, an accident with which he met on a vacation
trip, and a sudden thunderstorm, he gave an ominous interpretation which
deepened his despondency. At last he determined, "inconsiderately and
precipitately," to enter a cloister. His friends "instinctively felt he
was not qualified or fitted for the sublime vocation to which he
aspired, and they accordingly used all their powers to dissuade him from
the course he had chosen. All their efforts were fruitless, and from the
gayety and frolic of the banquet" which he had given his fellow-students
as a farewell party "he went to the monastery." He was so reckless that
he took this step even without the consent of his parents. "He knew
little about the ways of God, and was not well informed of the gravity
and responsibilities of the step he was taking." "He was not called by
God to conventual life; . . . he was driven by despair, rather than the
love of higher perfection, into a religious career." Catholics feel so
sure that they have a case against Luther that in all seriousness they
ask Protestants the question: Did he act honestly when he knelt before
the prior asking to be received into the order?
Luther has later in life given various reasons for entering the
monastery. His case was not simple, but complex. One reason, however,
which he has assigned is the severe bringing up which he had at his
home. Hausrath is satisfied with this one reason, and many Catholic
writers adopt his view. But this remark of Luther is evidently
misapplied if it is made to mean that Luther sought ease, comfort,
leniency in the cloister as a relief from the hard life which he had
been leading. Luther had grasped the fundamental idea in monkery quite
well: flight from the secular life as a means to become exceptionally
holy. He sought quiet for meditation and devotion, but no physical ease
and earthly comforts. He knew of the rigors of cloister-life. He
willingly bowed to "the gentle yoke of Christ"--thus ran the monkish
ritual--which the life of an eremite among eremites was to impose on
him. His hard life in the days of his boyhood and youth had been an
unconscious preparation for this life. He had been strictly trained to
fear God and keep His commandments. The holy life of the saints had been
held up to him as far back as he could remember as the marvel of
Christian perfection. Home and Church had cooperated in deepening the
impressions of the sanctity of the monkish life in him. When he saw the
emaciated Duke of Anhalt in monk's garb with his beggar's wallet on his
back tottering through the streets of Magdeburg, and everybody held his
breath at this magnificent spectacle of advanced Christianity, and then
broke forth in profuse eulogies of the princely pilgrim to the glories
of monkish sainthood, that left an indelible impression on the
fifteen-year-old boy. When he observed the Carthusians at Eisenach,
weary and wan with many a vigil, somber and taciturn, toiling up the
rugged steps to a heaven beyond the common heaven; when he talked with
the young priests at the towns where he studied, and all praised the
life of a monk to this young seeker after perfect righteousness; when in
cloister-ridden Erfurt he observed that the monks were outwardly, at
least, treated with peculiar reverence, can any one wonder that in a
mind longing for peace with God the resolve silently ripened into the
act: I will be a monk?
We, too, would call this an act of despair. We would say with Luther:
Despair makes monks. But the despair which we mean, and which Luther
meant, is genuine spiritual despair. What Catholics call Luther's
despair is really desperation, a reckless, dare-devil plunging of a
criminal into a splendid Catholic sanctuary. That Luther's act decidedly
was not. By Rome's own teaching Luther belonged in the cloister. That
mode of life was originally designed to meet the needs of just such
minds as his. His entering the monastery was the logical sequence of his
previous Catholic tutelage. Rome has this monk on its conscience, and a
good many more besides.
As piety went in those days, Luther had been raised a pious young man.
He was morally clean. He was a consistent, yea, a scrupulous member of
his Church, regular in his daily devotions, reverencing every ordinance
of the Church. Also during his student years he kept himself unspotted
from the moral contaminations of the academic life. He abhorred the
students who were devoted to King Gambrinus and Knight Tannhaeuser. He
loathed the taverns and brothels of Erfurt. The Cotta home was no
_Bierstube_ in his day. The banquet-hall where he met his friends the
evening before he entered the cloister was no banquet-hall in the modern
sense of the term. That he played the lute at this farewell party, and
that there were some "honorable maidens" present, is nowadays related
with a wink of the eye by Catholics. But there was nothing wrong in all
the proceedings of that evening. It was indeed an honorable gathering.
Luther was never a prudish man or fanatic. He loved the decent joys and
pleasures of life. Luther gathered his friends about him to take a
decent leave of them. He did not run away from them secretly, as many
monks have done. He opened up his mind to them at this last meeting. The
conversation that ensued was a test of the strength of the convictions
he had formed. His was an introspective nature. He had wrestled daily
with the sin that ever besets us. He knew that with all his conventional
religiousness he could not pass muster before God. Over his wash-basin
he was overheard moaning: "The more we wash, the more unclean we
become." He felt like Paul when he groaned: "O wretched man that I am,
who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" (Rom. 7, 24.) He was
sorrowing for his poor soul. He was hungering and thirsting for
righteousness. "When will I ever attain to that state of mind that I am
sure God is pleased with me?" he mused distractedly. What he could not
find while engaged in his secular pursuits, that, he was told, the
cloister could give him. To obtain that he entered the monastery. If
ever Rome had an honest applicant for monkery, Luther is that man.
Nor did he act precipitately. As shown, the thought of this act had been
quietly forming in him for years. When he made his rash vow to St. Anna,
he still allowed two weeks to pass before he put his resolution into
action. Try and picture to yourself his state of mind during those
fourteen days! Moving about in his customary surroundings, he was daily
probing the correctness of his contemplated change of life. He fought a
soul-battle in those days, and the remembrance of his father made that
battle none the easier. From the Catholic standpoint Luther deserves an
aureole for that struggle. After entering the cloister, he was still at
liberty for a year and a half to retrace his fatal step. But his first
impressions were favorable; monkery really seemed to bring him heart's
ease and peace, and there was no one to disabuse his mind of the
delusion. After nearly two years in the monastery, while sitting with
his father at the cloister board on the event of his ordination to the
priesthood, he declares to his father that he enjoys the quiet,
contemplative life that he has chosen. Surely, he made a mistake by
becoming monk, but Catholics cannot fault him for that mistake. If the
life of monks and nuns is really what they claim that it is: the highest
and most perfect form of Christianity, they should consistently give any
person credit for making the effort to lead that life. In fact, they
ought all to turn monks and nuns to honor their own principles.