Yves Congar, in his « Martin Luther, sa foi, sa réforme », places Luther firmly within a well-established Catholic theological tradition. Yes, Congar obviously does not agree with Luther on such things as Sola Scriptura, but he points out that in Luther's day, both sides were more interested in scoring debating points than in understanding their opponents.

In the early 1970s, I attended a seminar in which then-Father Joseph Ratzinger made much the same points.