# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_April 1860_S128
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

128 Church and Contemporary Notices.

...suffer at least no real want. Without further proof, however, one may assume that an increase in salary for all starting parishes, and a raising of the stipends from 500 to 600 florins, is a crying and undeniable necessity..... Now, however, let us enumerate the duties which are now made obligatory upon the clergy by the state government, and whose neglect is punished in them as in state officials paid for the purpose. First, the parish offices are required every year to furnish vaccination lists; at the introduction of cowpox vaccination they even had, for some decades, to present themselves for vaccination in person, in order to help promote this unpopular procedure. Every year they must draw up a military conscription list, and moreover must issue, for all those seeking exemption or a standing leave of absence, ex officio — that is, without charge — complete family certificates. Registers of births, marriages, and deaths must be furnished every year not only to the medical boards but also to the royal district courts. These require two population tables, one of which contains 64 and the other no fewer than 216 columns; they must agree exactly, both internally and with each other, and require, for small parishes, full days, and for large ones, even weeks, to fill out correctly. The clergy must now also render reports to the royal district courts concerning morals. Monthly lists, for the guardianship authorities, of children born or died out of wedlock, and of children legitimized by the subsequent marriage of their parents, are prescribed .... Finally, a quantity of family notices and certificates must be issued free of charge to the police, guardianship, administrative, judicial, and finance authorities. Rarely does a week pass without such requisitions. There exists no branch of the state administration for whose service the parish offices are not called upon to cooperate .... Every week the clergyman is to give, besides his oversight of teachers and schools, two hours of religious instruction in every school — and some parishes have 3 to 6, even 10 schools. He must uphold the teacher in discipline, order, doctrine, and income, must write, for every school, several sheets of documentation and the like each year for the visitation, must attend the examination twice, must transfer departing pupils to other schools, must produce and supervise school certifications and countless other things, must recruit and instruct pupil-teachers for the teaching profession. As school inspector the pastor is subordinate to the district courts and the governments, and is thus a civil official — but without any salary whatsoever. — The pastor, as head of the poor-relief, is, in communities with rural administrations, all in all in this respect. Meeting minutes every month, descriptions of the poor, grants of support, the housing of poor children, the suppression of begging, the poor-relief contributions of the communities, attendance at the plenary assemblies at the seat of the district court at his own expense, and the like, are made his duty under personal responsibility and the threat of penalty. How much writing and contending the poor-relief entails, especially in communities rich in the proletariat, every clergyman can attest. — The church administrations, to which the church property is entrusted, stand under secular oversight, and again it is the clergyman who is their head and must see to everything and overlook nothing, if he does not wish to be honored with reprimands, liabilities, and [duty-messengers — reading uncertain, a blot obscures one letter]. Not seldom he has struggles to sustain with the assessors over the interests of the church property. Unspeakable trouble and vexation are caused by building works for worship. To this are added, not infrequently, lawsuits over building obligations with the fiscal authority. — At present many a clergyman must remain fifteen years in one post at 500 florins. The burdens of office hinder him not only from earning something on the side through husbandry, writing, or private tutoring; they also hinder him from preparing his own boys, even up through a higher class, for an academy; he can not only save nothing, he sees himself placed under the distressing necessity of drawing upon whatever means — if he indeed brought any, and not debts, from his student years into his office — or upon the property he acquired by marriage, which ought rather to be preserved for wife and children. Had not Christianity, the Church, and the holy ministry, and He in whom all this is rooted, a great and compelling power over hearts, then, given the predominantly materialistic tendency of our age, far too few young men would long since have devoted themselves to the study of theology. But it is not good prospects of money and honor, but rather pure love for the Kingdom of God, that brings its candidates to the clerical estate. That is the gladdening, bright side of these reflections. May the Lord of the Church never let this side grow pale!