# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_April 1857_S104
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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

matter lies, remain as before given over to the free will of the individual; the latter, however (church discipline), even so far as it should be historically grounded in the individual congregations, is never to be introduced against the will of the same. The Protestant principle is hereby fully preserved."

Equally in vain was it that the generalia themselves (presumably at the instigation of the church authority) appeared printed in their full wording in the Allgemeine Zeitung, so that anyone who wished could obtain complete knowledge of them and recognize their genuinely evangelical character — of course! provided he already knew beforehand, and wanted to know, what "evangelical" meant. Indeed even the Allgemeine Zeitung, whose correspondents in worldly matters as a rule know very well what they read and what they want, brought correspondence on this matter that would truly have been fit to diminish its good reputation as to the intelligence of its contributors. Thus one read in it, under the date of Nov. 1, an article "from Bavaria," in which it says, among other things: "The reintroduction of private confession is to be made dependent on the will and consent of the congregations." — Where in the world did the good man read that? The generale in question knows not a word of it. Private confession is properly the most personal matter of the individual, and it would be a sorry thing indeed were it to depend on the mood and favor of the congregation whether a soul might obtain counsel, comfort, and absolution privately from its confessor! There, that first correspondent of the Allgemeine Zeitung mentioned above, from Munich, had after all learned to read better. This other one, however, continues: "Does that not, before experience, in most cases mean anything other than that it should depend on the clergyman? And what are clergy to do, given the clearly expressed tendency of the supreme church authority in this case, if they wish to be 'faithful servants of the Lord'?" etc.

After the man has then worked himself up mightily over what great harm must arise from this, his head grows so hot that he no longer rightly knows what he wants, nor what he is saying. He wishes to combat private confession, and — himself acknowledges its full legitimacy; for all at once he begins and says: "Every member of the Protestant congregation is free to open his guilt-laden conscience before his pastor" (that is, to confess privately; or does a penitent do anything other than, driven by his conscience, reveal to his pastor the guilt that oppresses him?), "to beg for his counsel, his comfort, to seek from him a strengthening of his sunken moral powers" — thus the opponent of private confession continues further, and thereby describes its blessing quite well, and precisely thereby recommends it in the best possible way! But to this private confession (which indeed our own Superior Consistory recommends, and none other) the man now opposes his own figment of a "private confession introduced by the congregation," further remarking with an air of importance: "A private confession introduced by the congregation, however, if it is not to remain in-