# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_November 1861_S351
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Church Contemporary News. 351

schools built, or are at least building them. The government protects
them everywhere against the fanaticism of the clergy and of the mob, and
it makes a gratifying impression to read how the ministry in Turin itself
stands up, even against the governors of the various provinces, for the
poor, powerless Waldensians, and knows how to uphold and protect their
freedom. For the Waldensians have not only not been content to spread
their congregations within Piedmont, where they have recently founded a
station in Aosta, but have now spread, along with the Piedmontese arms,
over the whole of Italy. They have moved their theological school to
Florence, and hold services in Livorno, Milan, Bergamo, and Brescia. They
have recently also founded a mission station in Palermo. New Testaments
and little tracts they had already brought there last year, shortly after
the conquest of Sicily by Garibaldi. Since these found many readers,
despite the machinations of the Palermitan clergy, who by a notice posted
on all the church doors warned against these blasphemous writings and
against the immoral novels of Dumas, Sue, Kock, etc., this success
determined the Waldensian synod to send one of its clergymen to Sicily.
Despite this upswing which the Waldensian church has thus experienced,
one must nevertheless be quite doubtful whether the matter will prove
lasting. Indifference in all religious matters is too great among the
influential classes of the population for one to hope for anything good,
and, besides, it must not be left out of account that Catholicism, in its
present form, is essentially a product of the popular spirit of the
Romance nations, and especially of the Italian people. The church
festivals are, after all, also the only popular festivals here; the
ecclesiastical pomp, the tinsel show, appeals at once to the greater part
of the population; the church satisfies not only religious needs but also
a large part of the aesthetic ones — in short, a far deeper upheaval than
any yet experienced would have to sweep through Italy before a religious
transformation could take place. Where changes have taken place at
present in some respects, it is temporary necessity that has forced them.
The people are by no means pleased that the feast of St. Rosalie in
Palermo has this year been greatly simplified, and that the great feast
of the Madonna in Messina, in the middle of this month, is to be almost
entirely dropped. Here the city magistrate had already set aside 5,000
ducats for it, when political misgivings arose against holding the
festival. The gathering of so many thousands, it was feared, might be
used by the discontented for all kinds of disturbances of the peace, and
since, besides, there had already been very great expenses over the past
years, and there will foreseeably be more still with the new organization
of the civic guard, it was resolved to forgo the festival this year. The
people, however, generally expect that the fathers of the city will not
deprive them of their pleasure in future. (Allgemeine Kirchenzeitung.)

Königsberg. The Concilium generale (the body of full professors) of
the University of Königsberg has rejected a change to the statutes that
would have allowed Catholics and Jews to hold professorial chairs.
Instead, it is proposed that in exceptional cases the appointment of a
Catholic or a Jew be recommended to the minister. For the admission of
Jews, but against that of Catholics, the Hegelian philosopher Rosenkranz
argued in particular, on the ground that the Catholic must subordinate
scholarship to his church's dogma.

Spain. According to the Allgemeine Kirchenzeitung, all who betray any
leaning toward Protestantism are at present harshly persecuted in Spain.
A letter from there, dated March 26, says: "The persecution continues
with renewed force in Seville, and if the present state of affairs should
continue, it would already be enough merely to utter the name 'Bible' to
have oneself thrown into prison. We are set back into the times of
Ferdinand VII."

Baden. At the close of the Baden General Synod, at which, as is well
known, a new church constitution tailored to the spirit of the age had
been fabricated, Privy Church Councilor Rothe delivered a sermon in which
he declared: "With the adoption of the constitution, not only is not
everything done, but indeed the very least has been done. The hardest
part now begins