9 July—You’ll recall in yesterday’s disquisition on Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano’s excommunication a passing mention of Exsurge Domine, Pope Leo X’s 1520 bull charging Brother Martin Luther with 41 “deviations” from the teaching and practice of the Roman Catholic Church and ordering him to recant within 60 days or suffer excommunication. You should recall, anyway. There’ll be a pop quiz.

Well, in his bull Leo let people who could read Latin know in far too many words (no comment—please) how he offered Martin (as he called Luther—in the bull, anyway) a chance to “abandon the errors” and return to the only true church. Nice guy that he was, Leo had earlier offered Martin “safe conduct and the money necessary for the journey, urging him to come without fear or any misgivings.” It was an offer Martin couldn’t refuse. But he did refuse it.

So Leo reminded his devoted readers that Martin “always refused to listen and, despising the previous citation and each and every one of the above overtures, disdained to come. To the present day he has been contumacious. With a hardened spirit he has continued under censure over a year. What is worse, adding evil to evil, and on learning of the citation, he broke forth in a rash appeal to a future council.” Oy, it’s no good to be contumacious. Well, maybe sometimes.

Leo probably was unaware that Martin suffered from chronic constipation, which likely affected his disposition and possibly his apostasy. Not that Leo would have given a twopenny turd, to be sure. Because, “without any further citation or delay,” the pope proceeded “against Martin to his condemnation and damnation as one whose faith [was] notoriously suspect and in fact a true heretic with the full severity of each and all of the penalties and censures.”

Martin Luther’s followers became Lutherans, even though Martin himself disliked the term, preferring Evangelicals. Some of the Evangelicals who came to America in the 19^th century formed the celebrated Missouri Synod, known to the faithful today as LCMS or The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod. Being German, they called it Die Deutsche Evangelisch-Lutherische Synode von Missouri, Ohio und andern Staaten, which translates to the German Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States. Both Lutheran and Evangelical. Good news indeed.

The official newspaper of the LCMS is a monthly tabloid called the Reporter, out of St. Louis. And a copy of the July issue just happened to be on the very top of the overflowing pile of recyclable paper in the Litchfield post orifice yesterday. Talk about tangential serendipity.

Because right on the front page, albeit under the fold, in bright brown script (that lots of kids can’t read) the faithful are reminded, “‘By the Mercies of God,’ our church shows mercy to others.” But right under that is the start of an article by the LCMS president justifying closed Communion. It goes on to quote St. Paul about the guilt of the unworthy concerning “the body and blood of the Lord”; talk about Christians of other denominations; and tell about a dying Catholic whom he communed anyway.

For those unfamiliar with closed Communion, it’s the fairly common practice of limiting the serving of the Eucharist (a.k.a. Holy Communion) to members—only in good standing, of course—of a particular church, denomination, sect, parish, or even congregation. In other words, if you don’t subscribe to and practice a specific way of worshiping the same—the only—god (or God, if you prefer) in a particular way at a particular location, you’re out of luck if for any reason you can’t make it to your own church and you feel a need to eat and drink Jesus. Or maybe you haven’t paid your tithe or otherwise found yourself on the outs with your own priest.

If people take Communion seriously, then, it’s certainly not merciful for a church to deny them access to it for any reason whatsoever. And any rationale is pure hogwash and just goes to prove that religion isn’t so much about gods or God as control . . .