# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_April 1857_S109
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The uproar over the most recent Superior Consistory generalia in Bavaria. 109

of Appendix II to the constitution, "laws of faith with external compulsion"? A careful reading of the generalia must convince anyone that there is nowhere any talk at all of external compulsion; rather, it is impressed again and again that entry for the better order that is being striven for is to be procured through repeated instruction and enlightenment concerning it. Where then lies the violation of freedom of conscience, of which the address complains so grievously? From the constitutional charter and from the "laws of our church" (that is, or should mean: from the confessional writings of our church), nothing of the kind is demonstrably to be shown; but had we looked more closely at the words of the address, and not stopped short at the first one, we would have arrived at the explanation much more quickly, for upon that first word "freedom of conscience" there follows immediately: "freedom of expression of opinion!" that is the closer explanation of "freedom of conscience," and this explanation is also entirely correct; for by freedom of faith and of conscience cannot be meant the freedom to believe and think, in my own heart, whatever I hold to be true and right according to my best knowledge and conscience (for this freedom needs no constitutional charter to guarantee it to me; thoughts have from time immemorial been "duty-free"), but rather the freedom must consist in being permitted also to express my conviction of faith, to confess it, and to act and walk in accordance with it. But where now, in the Superior Consistory generalia, is "freedom of expression of opinion" infringed? We shall not need to search long; our "Protestants" can mean nothing else by it than that the generale concerning the "order of the confessional" determines that "public and impenitent sinners, who — notwithstanding pastoral and confessorial admonition — do not repent of their sins nor wish to amend, are to be warned away from and refused absolution and communion with all Christian gentleness"; likewise that the generale concerning the "safeguarding of the ministerial office against unseemly demands" sets up the norm: "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" (moreover these same persons shall, according to point 1, not be accepted as godparents at baptism). Thus these "Protestants" demand a freedom of mockery and derision and slander against their own church, against which the church may in no way defend itself! They present a defense against such licentiousness, using the purely churchly, pastoral weapons of instruction, admonition, and eventual exclusion from the church, as a violation of the constitution, whereas the press law forbids such