# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1858_S20
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

20                                    The Roman Church.

...and beguile their ears, nor grow weary of the meager form that the blessed truth — the truth that alone rightly comforts the conscience — has taken on in our church. In Italy all the people presently do homage to the Vicar of Christ and hasten to receive his blessing. Meanwhile, however, religious paganism reigns where things stand well, and irreligious opposition to the right and truth of Rome where they stand ill. In Kliefoth's Zeitschrift, 1857, nos. 2 and 3, we have received new evidence and reports on how that fares in Upper and in Lower Italy. For the exhortations to churchly religiosity generally come down to this: the state demands so much and offers so little in return — it demands much in taxes and dues and offers only the security of outward life —; while the church demands so little — the light churchly ordinances of fasting and the like, which moreover are gladly reduced and eased still further wherever there is even some ground for it — and offers in return redemption from purgatory and eternal salvation! Christianity is still a marketplace. Outward church ordinances and their fulfillment have taken the place of repentance and faith and love of the heart. What advantage the veneration of the saints affords is taught by the story of the usurer, gladly told in Naples, whose patron, Saint Joseph, in return for the due veneration shown him during his lifetime in the offering of candles and the like, procured his entry into heaven — by this, that after he had turned in vain to Mary and Jesus, and finally to God the Father himself, he made ready, together with his wife and foster-son and the many saints who joined him, to leave heaven, so that God the Father had to fear seeing heaven robbed of its best inhabitants, and so at last gave way. That is churchliness. Of unchurchliness, on the other hand, the Kingdom of Sardinia furnishes an example. Its oppositional stance toward Rome is well known. For that, the Historisch-politische Blätter cannot paint its condition dark enough (1857, no. 5). It is said that one "turns monasteries into new prisons, made necessary by the fearfully increased number of crimes." "While the number of helpless proletarians is multiplied beyond belief — while want breaks in on every side, the countless poor begging at the monastery gates have also been deprived of their last refuge (namely, through the suppression of the monasteries)," and so forth. Count Solaro della Margarita gives a brief picture of the present conditions: "Religion and justice mistreated — the finances ruined — trade in decline — education disorganized and reduced to chaos. — Crime increasing more than in any other land — taxes unbearable — public safety endangered" (— has not, indeed, the king himself lately been attacked by robbers while out for a drive? —). — Such conditions are not remedied by the episcopate making itself the censor of all literature that appears, as the Bishop of Bergamo has attempted. Here