# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1862_S85
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The United Bavarian General Synod.    85

to preserve, further, and strengthen the unity of the Spirit in this faith through the extending of brotherly love. Let this also be the goal of us all." — The chief subjects of the synodal proceedings were: the question of divorce and the question of the catechism; the former all the more important since a new civil code is just now being prepared in Bavaria, and the synod's resolutions come just in time to be given due consideration in the new legislative work. On this question no fewer than 8 motions had come in, among them that of Consistorial Councillor Dr. Krausshold, which is described as the most thorough. It contains the following 5 points: 1. Adultery and malicious desertion remain the two grounds of all lawfully valid divorces, as being that through which the marriage is disturbed in its essence and the marriage bond broken and factually dissolved. 2. Whatever falls under these two basic types the church recognizes as a valid ground for divorce. But provisions that cannot be subsumed under these the church cannot recognize as valid grounds for divorce — such as, for example, misfortunes, civil death, etc. In such cases it cannot permit the [new] marriage. 3. For the dissolution of a marriage there is always required a judicial finding built, on the above norms, upon material certainty of a lawful ground for divorce. 4. Every such divorce effects the complete dissolution of the marriage bond for both parties; but in such a way that the party found guilty may not, as a penalty, enter into a new marriage until this penalty has been remitted to him by the sovereign for special reasons (?). 5. Since the marriage that follows thereupon is an act of the spiritual office as an organ of the church, then, as soon as the church has come to an agreement with the state in the above manner, the individual clergyman can no longer be permitted, according to his own subjective judgment, or by appeal to his conscience, to withdraw from performing the marriage, and thereby, as a bearer of the churchly office, to set himself in contradiction and resistance to the church itself. Until the completion of this agreement, however, the spiritual office shall be secured against being called upon to marry divorced persons who have not been separated according to the above norms. — On the part of the presiding officer, the position of the supreme consistory on this motion was expressed as follows: it was of great importance for the church government to gain, as a basis, a clear, unambiguous pronouncement of the territorial church through its representatives in the General Synod, from which the salutary reform of state legislation might be pursued; to this end the principles would have to be stated, whose originator is not the General Synod, but for which it may appeal to the recognitions of the whole church, which have led to a definite body of law in the Protestant church; for this no proof is needed, but rather one simply confesses what has always been the law, and thus remains in historical continuity with the fathers; in the short time available the General Synod could not come to an understanding on the individual consequences, but must confine itself to the principles, and unanimity in these would be an immense gain for the