# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_November 1855_S345
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Excerpts as Contributions to Pastoral Casuistry. 345

and secrecy, to learn of it and afterward go about carrying tales of it, to demand enjoyment and recompense for every effort as though it were a right and a due, to feast and carouse in people's houses, to indulge in foolish bantering and coarse jesting, or, as has long since been complained of in the unmarried priesthood, to be a danger to the honor of people's wives and daughters — it is no wonder, if this is so, that the parishioners have such poor trust in their pastors and, apart from church, and except where they must go to them as it were out of compulsion or for honor's sake, want to have nothing to do with them. There would then also be no need for the concern that has at times been felt, and rightly not tolerated, regarding house- or corner-preachers (nor was it right to tolerate that strange, uncalled persons went sneaking about and instilled in common people, by all manner of means, a disgust for the preaching office, while smuggling into their hands all sorts of little books and pamphlets, purporting to contain true Christianity, that were in fact filled with false doctrine) — for if the regular pastors and deacons were to undertake such household instruction and individual admonition (of which Paul boasts), all such suspicion would fall away. Most of all, what is needed here is the blameless life of the priest, as sufficiently appears from what has been said; for if he is no example to the flock and is himself caught up in the very vices from which he ought to restrain his hearers, then his company would be the more harmful the more frequent and secret it was; and this is indeed the true reason why people have had to let such visits fall away and be content with the public preaching in church alone, so that reckless, offensive priests might at least be kept well away from the parishioners, and why, as the proverb has it, many a one would rather have the bread handed to him on a pole. I could adduce examples enough from ancient times and from authors who, before the Reformation, complained of the offensive conduct of the clergy and of confessors, but that serves no purpose for the present time, nor for the places where care has now been taken, by permitting the clergy to marry, to remove people's suspicion and jealousy regarding their company. Hence it is all the more harmful and irresponsible if such misgivings should still stand in the way, though the loose living carried on in the schools, also by certain students of theology, and the poor oversight kept over them, gives no small occasion for it; even granting that this particular vice (of which, thank God, we do not have so many cases) were to become common, the other faults would nonetheless still have to be corrected as well — sponging and feasting, loose talk, gossiping and stinginess, as well as pride and harsh dealing with the poor and simple man. One does not, however, thereby exclude altogether from such company a moderate cheerfulness and blameless recreation and jest, only that the fear of God and the observance of the holy office should always have their place, and that pleasure be regulated according to them, so that this alone be kept in view as the aim, that nothing offensive or scornful may arise from it, but only the