HT to Pastor Fraser Pearce for the link to this interview with Fr Jared Wicks. As I say in the title, it is interesting, but I want to know more. I should follow up on Wick’s writing on Luther to see what he has to say.
David Schütz
Melbourne, Australia
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"The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head." -- Terry Pratchet, Hogfather, page 242 Anima Education Current Cources
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"I really don't think I'm arrogant, but I do get impatient with people who don't share with me the same humility in front of the facts." Richard Dawkins
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The Schütz Model for a Elective Australian Constitutional Monarchy
I propose that
1) We replace the absentee monarch of Australia (who is also the Monarch of Great Britain) with an elected Australian monarchy.
2) The elected monarch exactly replaces the current monarch in the current constition.
3) The elected monarch has exactly the same powers, duties and responsibilities as those of the current absentee monarch. All the monarch's functions are carried out by his/her personal representatives (as is currently the case): federally by the Governor General, and in the states by the State Governors.
4) The Governor General and the Governors continue to be selected as they currently are.
5) The monarch is elected to sovereignty over Australia for life, but his/her sovereignty is strictly non-hereditary.
6) The elective body is not the federal parliament, but a "college of electors" comprised of the state governors and federal governor general.
7) The election of the monarch must be a unanimous decision on the part of the college of electors. -
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Sentire Cum Ecclesia 
Oh my, John Carroll University (with its beautiful campus!) of all places, right on my home turf.
What a fascinating piece, especially this:
That is, I am convinced that we, especially Catholics, need to bring out just what the sacrament memorializes, namely, the Lord’s giving of himself in death, with his body broken and his blood shed “for you”—pro vobis, fuer euch!
Indeed!
From my historical knowledge of the Reformation, I think that the state-based constitutions of the first Lutheran territorial churches left Lutherans with an endemic weakness that has not been overcome. Lutheran bishops are far from being figures of magisterial impact and authority; they could never assemble as a body able to produce what came of the great councils. I recall how Melanchthon foresaw this result at Augsburg in 1530 when the powerful representatives of Nuremburg began exercising control over the issues of doctrinal dialogue with the Catholic side.
Yes, that rings true and was one of the reasons for my pull towards Catholicism. Especially in liberal Lutheran bodies like the ELCA the office of bishop has been reconfigured along the lines of the corporate model.
“Yes, that rings true and was one of the reasons for my pull towards Catholicism. Especially in liberal Lutheran bodies like the ELCA the office of bishop has been reconfigured along the lines of the corporate model.”
And even in the Church of Sweden, the one Lutheran body that claimed to preserve the “apostolic succession” of its bishops at the Reformation (but, as one Swedish bishop wrote a century ago “as though we had it not”) its corporate episcopate has never had any authority per se, and now, in its disestablished framework, the bishops per se have only the standing of “consultors” to the elected Church Assembly, and not even a vote in it (unless individual bishops are elected to it on the same basis as any other delegates).
Some Lutheran churches stemming from the Swedish have lately been striving for a more “magisterial” model of episcopacy (one thinks of Archbishop Janis Vanags of Latvia, for instance, and of the division of the Latvian Lutheran Church in to three dioceses in 2003, or of the heroic Walter Obare Omwaza of Tanzania), but this does not seem to have gained much general traction in “World Lutheranism,” whether “liberal” or “confessional.” And how can it, really, when Luther himself based his quasi-magisterial authority on his being a “Professor of Holy Scripture,” an academically-qualified theologian and exegete; and what prevents others from claiming an analogous authority on the same basis?
Thanks for posting this. As you say, it definitely leaves you hanging however.