# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1851 01 21_S86
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

86

"Der Wahrheitsfreund."

Si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses.

However richly this organ of the Roman Church, appearing in Cincinnati, may be furnished, yet it seems that precisely over this paper, of all others of its kind, the heaviest fate hangs. Scarcely has a new editor of it begun his work, when the high spiritual authority sees itself obliged to remove him again from his post; and we must confess that it seems to us the next choice is as a rule more unfortunate than the preceding. At least this could be plainly perceived in the succession of the last three editors. The last but two, Mr. Böckling, was evidently a man who still understood quite passably how to whitewash the charnel-vaults of the Roman Church; his successor, Prof. Probst, understood this, however, already less, and in a short time brought it almost to this, that many good Catholics preferred to subscribe, instead of the pallid Wahrheitsfreund, to the Oertelian Katholische Kirchenzeitung; for there they found at least, alongside the many tedious essays, a good portion of jests and drolleries to laugh at. So now Mr. Probst also, after brief editorial joys, has been removed from his post, and a certain gentleman, who modestly calls himself only "Rev. (Reverend) Peter Kröger," has taken his place. Judging by the first number which this Rev. gentleman has sent out as a specimen of his abilities, he seems to have been educated in the school of Prof. Oertel, and, treading in his footsteps, to wish to gather together again the dear scattered former subscribers by the presentation of merry farces. One of his first gifts is, namely, the story that in New York a short time ago, one evening, several Protestant preachers delivered controversial sermons against Archbishop Hughes, all of whom (the preachers) he brings on as species from the realm of poultry, the one as a swallow, the other as a wagtail and wren, the third as a clucking cock [sic!], the fourth as an owl, the fifth as a gander. From this it appears that the Rev. gentleman will perhaps soon have reached, if not surpassed, his ideal, Mr. Oe. †) But if the new editor has in this matter, by means of his New York correspondent, in fact surpassed himself, it is the more to be regretted that the inexperienced man has at the same time ventured a bout in which he is likely again to lose the well-deserved laurels. As the readers will remember, we had pointed out in No. 6 of our paper how in Popery the Antichristian despising of dominions (2 Pet. 2, 10.) has recently been revealed again in the well-known Sardinian affairs. Mr. Oertel, who, wiser by experience, soon noticed that little honor was to be gained here, was thereupon still as a mouse, and acted as if the number of the "Lutheraner" in question had been lost in the mail. Rev. Peter Kröger, on the other hand, as a quite youthful editor, thought: Well then! Thou wilt try it. Venture wins, venture loses. And what does the courageous knight now do? His first crushing attack consists in this, that he puts to us the question whether what the Wahrheitsfreund and the Kath. Kirchenz. have written about the Archbishop of Turin, and what we copied, is true or false? if it should be false, we might yet prove it; but if it must be acknowledged as true, why then did we seek to impute false motives to the true account? After this one should think that the "honorable" gentleman would now seek to excuse the whole matter as an unintentional oversight, and thereby to come quickly out of the whole affair with a whole skin. But far from it! Falling quite out of his role, the gentleman thereupon becomes confidential and asks us upon our conscience: If [the editor of the Lutheraner] owned two houses, and gave the one to his brother or friend, because the latter had rendered him many services, and the deed of gift concerning it had been drawn up and delivered: could he then arbitrarily take back this gift? Would it not be contrary to natural and divine right?" And this — one scarcely trusts one's eyes — Rev. now applies to the case in hand, and draws the conclusion: To break what has been promised by contract is wrong; but now the sovereign government of Sardinia has so acted toward the Archbishop of Turin; ergo it is right that the Archbishop of Turin refused obedience to his sovereign authority, at the same time incited the clergy subject to him thereto, and that His Holiness praised him on that account. Setting aside, first, what an excellent conclusion that is †], everybody sees that Mr. Kr., in great zeal of combat, has hereby publicly conceded, more nakedly than we could ever have proved it, the doctrine as the doctrine of genuine Papists: 1. that, if the sovereign authority acts unjustly toward its subjects, the latter may renounce obedience to it, and 2. that Roman priests are bound to obey not their temporal authority, but only the Pope, as the sole absolute prince. Our wish is that God may grant us nothing but such defenders of Popery, and our fear, that the dear man may perhaps all too soon share the fate of his predecessors!!

†) Another specimen — in order to conceal nothing — which the new Mr. Editor has given of his excellent talent for acting as a Roman Catholic scribbler, immediately in the first number, is this, that in a story of the torn garment of Pope Pius VII (during his lifetime) he writes: "Everyone wished to see the holy garment, as there the Virgin with the little Child."

†) His Rev. seems to have learned his logic from Michael Menotus, who in his book of sermons (of the year 1525), fol. 47, makes the following conclusion: The servant whose ear Peter cut off was named Malchus, that is, a king; therefore the kings are subject to the Roman Pope. Or perhaps from Petrus Bessäus, formerly Doctor at Paris at the beginning of the 17th century, who concludes thus: At Cana in Galilee there were six stone water-pots, whose water the LORD turned into wine; ergo there are 7 Sacraments. (Concept. theol. in test. sacr. Conc. I, p. m, 231.)

(Communicated).
On the Necessity and Salutariness of Announcing for Confession.

It is, alas, a fact as sad as it is well known that not a few pastors of our Synod have no small struggle over the introduction of this so highly important and fruitful churchly order; and although they nowhere seek to introduce it deceitfully as a divine commandment and with a snaring of consciences, as if such a commandment must be obeyed on pain of the loss of salvation, but rather, although they attack the matter with all patience and teaching, and on the way of instruction seek to convince their church-children inwardly of the expediency and salutariness of announcing for confession, yet they for the most part meet with an obstinate resistance in the congregations to establishing this order among them.

If we now ask first of all after the causes of this resistance, we find several of them.

In the first place, then, there is a lamentable ignorance partly about this matter itself, partly about the sound form of the church's congregational life in general; and this ignorance is the same whether the congregations consist of Lutherans only recently immigrated, or already longer settled, or even born here; for, as concerns the immigrants, it is, alas, so in Germany that also in the Lutheran countries, in consequence of Rationalism (faith of reason), not only the good church discipline and custom of former times, but also the knowledge of it, has fallen away; and, as it seems, the present church superiors also and the Lutheran pastors, even where the Lutheran Confession begins again to make itself practically felt, show no particular earnestness and diligence, partly to reintroduce the good old customs, partly to instruct their church-children as to the expediency and salutariness of them, so that these themselves might get desire and love for them.

But as concerns the so-called German-Americans, born here and Lutheran, their ignorance in this matter arises chiefly partly from the loose, unchurchly-democratic misshapenness of the Lutheran synods here, partly from the ignorance of the Lutheran preachers themselves, partly from the great indifference of the people toward the knowledge of churchly things in general.

A second ground of that resistance is the nearer or remoter influence of the sects and enthusiasts, such as: Methodists, Baptists, Albrechtsleute, Unionists, and so forth.

These, namely, as sworn enemies of the Lutheran doctrine and of sound church customs and orders (because those their false doctrine open-