# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1916_S37
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America. 1916. 37

the sense-intoxicating splendor of their services, the outward pomp which their clergy display at all sorts of church festivals and functions, their princes of the Church, who place themselves on a level of dignity with the President of our country, who let themselves be addressed with "Your Grace" and "Your Eminence," etc., their wealth, the magnificence that it displays, and that it puts everything, to all appearance, into the service of God and its neighbor. It is true, the world also in our time still admires the papacy and its whole clergy and the Church that adheres to it, and despises the true Church of Christ, which alone serves its King in righteousness and holiness, to which he has acquired and won it as his dearly bought possession.

It is of course true that not all who belong to the world stand thus toward the Pope. There are many in our country, also such as are not true Christians, who by no means admire the papacy but warn against it with all earnestness, who combat it, and indeed, as far as their knowledge goes, combat it earnestly. We know these people too. I point only to such papers as the *Menace*, *American Citizen*, *Protestant Magazine* and many others, and to such societies and associations as the "Guardians of Liberty" and the "Knights of Luther," which have joined together precisely for the purpose of combating the papacy and warning their fellow men of its dangers and opening their eyes. But what is it that these people find fault with in the papacy? It is the harms and dangers of the papacy which can be recognized also from reason and experience, from history. Above all they recognize the tendencies of the Pope that endanger the state, the encroachments of the Roman hierarchy into the domain of the state, the dangers that threaten the religious and civil liberty of our country from this side, the grave moral evils and manifold abominations that must result from the celibacy of the priests, monks and nuns, the many scandals which the whole monastic life brings with it, etc. People point to what an exceedingly dangerous power, what far-reaching pernicious influence is given to the priest over the life of his confessant, also over his family life, by auricular confession. People point also to the dangers which the accumulation of enormous wealth, especially in land, in the hands of a few princes of the Church brings with it, who can do with it as they please, and that this wealth is withdrawn from the purposes of taxation. People recognize the foolishness of many Roman doctrines and institutions, the foolishness of its indulgence system, this greatest fraud with which the world has ever been deceived, of its worship of Mary and the saints, and the like. But however valuable this insight is in some respects, we must nevertheless say that the real, the spiritual abomination of the papacy these people do not recognize. It concerns them little that the Pope