| | Luther Setzer wrote: "I also remember we used to sing a hymn in the Lutheran Church that had the same melody as the German National Anthem. Martin Luther certainly did a number on the Jews in Germany."
Nominally, we were Catholic -- but not very. My grandmother was shipped off to America to prevent her from marrying a Protestant. (It was a small village, but it had Catholics and "Reformeds" or Calvinists.) So, she never had much passion for religion after that and a couple of her daughters grew up, got married, and then divorced; one of them was my mother. We never went to church unless it was to be polite for a wedding.
There was this woman on our street, however, who was Luthern. She managed to round my brother and me up with a few of the other heathens and get us into the summer Bible school at the Evangelische Kirche in our neighborhood. I learned the Lord's Prayer there and a few hymns.
Prayer was allowed in school back then, and my fourth grade teacher was Catholic and he led us in the Our Father every morning. They stopped with "... deliver us from evil" and we kept going "... forever and ever, amen." (In the Catholic rite, that last part is said by the priest.) I have committed that minor faux pas a few times in the last couple of years at funerals. Someone even asked me about it.
Funny thing was, this was another of those many small communities in the deep woods, and for all the Catholics, there were just as many Protestants, many of them Luthern, northern Michigan having many Scandanavians and Finns. So, there we were at the funeral of an aunt who died at 99 years of age. The Catholics in the family knew most of the Luthern liturgy, actually, and many of the hymns. But I was the only one who knew "Pure is the sunlight..." I hadn't heard it in 45 years, but I guess I must have learned it well.
Anyway, that German National Anthem was called "Austrian Hymn" in my piano book. Mozart was a Mason, really, so he wrote music for everyone.
You can pin a lot on Martin Luther, but whatever happened to the Jews was done willingly by other people with free will... assuming that you accept the very religious doctine of free will... Myself, I sometimes puzzle over the words of Saint Paul who wrote, "... we are predestined to be saved ..."
|
|
