# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_April 1857_S100
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

100 The uproar over the most recent Superior Consistory generalia in Bavaria.

Finally, the last of the generalia in question gives "norms for safeguarding the ministerial office against unseemly demands." This reads, in its first and main part, as follows: "The undersigned supreme church authority is well aware of its obligation, above all, to see to the confessionally faithful administration of the divine means of grace. But it also knows that at the same time the dignity of the church must be preserved, that the ministerial office, to whose administration the means of grace, the blessing, and the honors of the church are entrusted, must be protected and secured against unwarranted and unseemly demands of individuals, and it accordingly ordains, with regard to the petitions submitted by the General Synod of the year 1853, and in accordance with the most gracious resolution issued in this matter on January 7 of this year, as follows:

1) Blasphemers and open despisers of the church (compare point 3) shall not be accepted as godparents at baptism.

2) To fallen betrothed couples, at their wedding, the distinguishing honors of unblemished couples — among which are reckoned especially the public procession to church accompanied by the pastor, the lighting of the candles on the altar, and the wearing of the bridal wreath — shall not be granted.

3) To blasphemers and open despisers of the church, that is, to such persons as, notwithstanding pastoral instruction and repeated admonition, openly display their enmity against the church through mockery and derision of church doctrine and confession, or who, in defiance of every admonition, deliberately and persistently withdraw from participation in the means of grace and die impenitent, the honor of accompaniment of the funeral procession by the clergyman and the church's blessing shall be denied at burial.

"In this connection the pastors are emphatically reminded that the congregations must not merely be instructed in general in right faith and a godly life, but must also first be informed concerning the meaning of the church's rights in connection with the corresponding church duties, before the application of the above measures can take effect; that accordingly every clergyman can, with a good conscience, proceed toward the denial of church services or honors only when he may bear himself witness that he has previously conscientiously discharged his office in doctrine and pastoral care, and, in the case of point 3, has not merely attempted but has fully exhausted all the means at the clergyman's disposal." — There follows thereupon a further exhortation to the clergy to act, where possible, in carrying out these provisions in agreement with the deaneries and with the involvement of the church councils; and, in case of a contrary opinion