# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Januar 1858_S22
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

22                                    The Roman Church.

...does not fail to offer his own person as a prize, at the winner's disposal for three days, whether for preaching or for some other religious service. Who the fortunate lady was has not become known to us. — In the changing fortunes of France over the past decade, the Roman church there has degraded itself into a mistress of ceremonies, while glorifying the emperor and his son with blasphemous speeches and poems. What disordered conditions prevail within the clergy has become evident from the atrocity of Verger, the murderer of the Archbishop of Paris. He is only the crassest expression of a widely spread embitterment of the lower clergy against the episcopate — an embitterment that has found its echo as far as Munich, where a newspaper-writing priest used his deed as a warning against the episcopate, and as far as Naples, where a priest, praising Verger as a hero, attempted a similar outrage against the Archbishop of Matera. That the government itself attached this significance to the deed was shown by the measures debated — I do not know whether they were also carried out — concerning the excommunicated priests gathering in Paris, abandoned to misery; and it was shown, too, by the proceedings against the Bishop of Moulins and by the violent treatment of the lower clergy, in which case even Rome thought it prudent to abandon its zealous bishop. — If the French emperor, out of policy, presents himself as friendly to the Roman church because it must serve him, the attitude of the Emperor of Austria toward it appears, by contrast, to be a matter of the heart and of conviction. To be sure, such things are never decisive in the conduct of a state. But political considerations are added. Austria has passed through crises too severe for it not to long for a firm support for its rule, and it has too diverse a set of elements to unite into one whole — so that they may serve, with united strength, Austria's historic calling on the Danube — for it not to seek a bond of union. Both of these the Roman church is meant to offer it, above all through its zealous champions, the Jesuits. Only at such a price could the previous policy be abandoned, and concessions made in the concordat on a scale that will yet cause the state trouble enough. If the government is not equally friendly disposed toward the evangelical churches, that can be no cause for complaint. For although the state must grant the church as much as is simply necessary for its existence and the fulfillment of its calling, this does not thereby establish, without further ado, complete equality of the confessions; rather, the relationship of the individual states to the churches may well differ according to their history and their calling. But if the concordat gives occasion for manifold harassments of Protestantism, and the state authorities perhaps sometimes lend a hand to this, that is a state of affairs that can only prove wholesome for Protestantism. What advancement, for example, has the Bavarian church gained from the decade of ultramontane