# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1846 01 24_S41
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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Der Lutheraner.

"God's Word and Luther's teaching shall not pass away, now nor forevermore."

Published by C. F. W. Walther.

Volume 2.

St. Louis, Mo., January 24, 1846.

No. 11.

Terms: The Lutheraner appears once every two weeks, for a subscription price of one dollar for out-of-town subscribers, who must pay half of this in advance and bear the postage themselves. — In St. Louis, each individual issue is sold for 5 cents.

The So-Called German Catholic Church.

Under this name, as our readers will know, a sect has recently arisen in our old fatherland. A former Roman priest named Ronge stands at its head. Since this sect has caused a great stir throughout the world,*) some of our readers, as we hear, have already wondered why it has thus far received no mention in the "Lutheraner" (not counting a brief notice in a letter from Germany). The simple reason for our silence on this matter is that it is the tendency of our paper to spread knowledge of the pure Lutheran doctrine and to defend it with all our strength against unbelief, fanaticism, and indifferentism, and to give, at most, such new church news as directly concerns the Lutheran church. But the Lutheran church has no kinship with Ronge and his party; it is the party of rationalistically minded German Catholics and Protestants, who, as newspapers report, are also using it as a fitting opportunity for a constituted union. That this is so, we could give our readers a great quantity of evidence. Let the following serve as one example:

*) According to the most recent calculations, 50,000 persons have thus far converted to German Catholicism.

A correspondent from southern Germany writes, among other things, in the New York "Schnellpost" of November 13 of last year, as follows: "German Catholicism is a movement of a purely political nature: it is the Burschenschaft [student-fraternity movement] made real — that is, what the fraternal student associations wanted, the Rongeans are now carrying out. It is not the dogma (the articles of faith which they set up) that constitutes its significance, but the principle of freedom." The same correspondent then asserts that the most brazen unbelievers, who now call themselves "Friends of Light" in Germany, go hand in hand with the German Catholics, and that both pursue the same goal. Indeed, it goes on to say there: "Ronge — wants not merely Christians, but Christians who fare well; he does not shut his eyes to this present world in order to look exclusively toward the world to come." (Compare Mark 8:35–36; Acts 14:22; Philippians 3:19–20.) Two toasts, one given by Ronge and the other by Dowiat, Ronge's collaborator, at a banquet in Heidelberg, describe the true character of the German Catholic movement very clearly in a few words. They read as follows:

Ronge: "German brothers and citizens! You may well believe that it is not a matter of indifference to me — indeed, that it pains me — not to be permitted to speak with you about the Reformation. But the hour will come when we shall be permitted to. Poets and sages have indeed proclaimed that the German nation is called to bring forth a new age. No other nation can compare with ours in the grasp of Christianity, in science, and in art. The German people is called to hold the scale of justice and love among the peoples of Europe. But above all, this must come to the consciousness of each one; each one is to play a role in the great drama. Germany's first struggle with the dominion of Rome was when Rome overran our land by force of arms. The genius of Germany arose; Varus threw himself upon his sword. The second enemy, which went forth from the banks of the Tiber, was the papacy. It corrupted morals and religion. But the peoples had come of age. Germany entered upon the second round, and Luther took up the gauntlet. But the hierarchy produced a new secret power, Jesuitism, the creeping cunning that has brought us to the brink of ruin. Now the German spirit is making its last round. The nails are already being forged for the coffin of Jesuitism. But you know, gentlemen, that I am not supposed to give a speech; I only wish to make a declaration. What Luther said — that others might carry on his work — did not come to pass; people were unwilling to advance, and there arose the hierarchical Pietism that has entrenched itself on the benches and thrones of ministers. Protestantism lacks a free constitution; it goes hand in hand with the Roman hierarchy. But you will see: true Protestantism will go hand in hand with the new Catholicism. The hour will come when Germany will have a general, national church. It is with this idea that I have begun. The day must and will come when two German brothers, who have been at enmity for 300 years, will join hands, when we shall have a German church. Long live the one German church!"

Dowiat: "With Rome we shall soon be finished, but let us not believe that victory is thereby already ours; another, harder struggle lies before us and has already begun — the struggle with Pietism*), that poisonous monster which, nourished on courtly and swamp air, creeps through the provinces of Germany. To subdue it requires strength and unity. Let us hold together and, in Macedonian phalanx, break into the ranks of the black-robed ones! Scarcely," he continued, "has a cause been so much misjudged and misunderstood as ours. But the foundation on which we wish to build is not the empty frivolity of the eighteen-nineties of the past century; nor is it the complacent rationalism of Bretschneider, nor the all-reconciling love of Zschokke; no — the foundation on which we build is the almighty spirit of modern science. With this ally we must be victorious, and to it I raise my toast!"

*) By Pietism, Mr. Dowiat means the tendency of those who still declare the Bible to be God's Word.

We have nothing to add, except that to Ronge's words above — "What Luther said, that others might carry on his work, did not come to pass" — we set the words of Luther himself, which he placed before his confession of faith:

"Because I see, writes Luther, that factiousness and error increase the longer it goes on, and there is no end to the raging and raving of Satan, so that henceforth, during my lifetime or after my death, someone might in the future make use of me and wrongly cite my writings to strengthen their error — as the sacramentarian and Anabaptist fanatics have begun to do — I intend, with this writing, to confess my faith before God and all the world, point by point, in which faith I mean to remain until death, and therein (so help me God) to depart from this world and come before the judgment seat of our Lord Jesus Christ. And should anyone