The Augsburg Confession and Catholic unity

the long version

In order to foster greater understanding between communions, Pastor Lackmann of the Lutheran Church takes us back to the central document of the Reformation, the Augsburg Confession, and urges us profoundly to consider what is to be found therein. In thus tearing away the centuries of polemic that have obscured the understanding and the intentions of the reformers, he sets it forth that the confessors of Augsburg had no intention of separating themselves from the Catholic Church, that they were in fundamental agreement with many dogmas of the Roman Church that are disputed by their descendents, that many of the new insights which the confessors offered are today accepted in the Roman Church, that on some points that are authentically Catholic the Roman Church has yet to come to grips, and that on some other points the doctrine of the reformers is deficient.