In case you were wondering if the Reformation was necessary and remains so...

The Pope is handing out indulgences for following him on Twitter.

In reading through Gerhard's arguments against Bellarmine in the former's Loci it is striking just how finely detailed the disagreement is over justification and salvation. At times one can have great sympathy with the "outmoded condemnations" crowd and the folks who put together the JDDJ. There really is a lot of oversimplification and setting up of straw men in the Lutheran-Papal polemic. Most of what Gerhard says - and this in the 17th century to a learned Jesuit - is "that's not what we teach." There really was a lot of talking past each other and misunderstanding that should not hamper us today after nearly 500 years of cooling off.

But then the papacy does something to clarify the issue: handing out indulgences for signing up for Twitter. So long as the Pope goes on pretending there is a purgatory whose door he can open and close with precision, there can be no unity between us; a great chasm is fixed.

+HRC