Comm17-IIIa: Church hinders? Papacy, Crusades, Protestant State Churches— Walther uncensored

      This continues from Part 16 (Table of Contents in Part 1), a series presenting a new translation of C.F.W. Walther's Communism and Socialism from 1878. — Walther does not hide the fact that atrocities have been committed in the name of the Church, he even highlights how bad these were!  The Communists cannot accuse Walther of hiding these.  But just when one wonders that Walther has turned into a Socialist, he sends all their accusations against Christianity to the ground.

      One will note the large amount of text in red highlighting, text missing from the 1947 translation. Much of what was omitted concerned the abominations of the Papacy, which made me suspicious that even among "conservatives" in the newly named "Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod", there was the the tendency to give up the Lutheran Confessions regarding the Pope as the very Anti-Christ.  And this was even 15 years before Vatican II, the current excuse by the LC-MS to retract this clear confessional teaching of the Book of Concord and its identification of the Pope as the Antichrist. How sad. The omission of this large section leaves me with a bad taste, with the impression that the 1947 publisher "The Lutheran Research Society" was leaning towards politicizing this topic.  But Walther did no such thing, he always wrote exclusively on spiritual matters.  — Now, for the first time, read Walther's uncensored writing on this in English. 

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Translation of Walther's 1878 Communismus und Socialismus by BackToLuther primarily using DeepL online translation service; highlighting and bolding are my emphases, red text within square brackets [ ] are my comments, underlining is Walther's emphasis. Red highlight indicates omitted in 1947 translation.

C.F.W. Walther's Communism and Socialism, (Part 17, p. 53-55)

Church a hindrance? (Lecture IV.)

“Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life,” [John 6:68] so Thy disciples once replied when Thou asked them, “Will ye also go away?” And so all have had to cry out, who ever became Thy true disciples, and so we too must cry out today. For to whom in all the world should we go to seek the truth that we have found with Thee? To whom in the whole world should we go to seek the grace for our sinfulness that we have found with Thee? To whom in the whole world should we go to seek the blessed peace we have found with Thee? —

O then help us, that we may let no false wisdom, no false comfort, no false joy of this world move us to ever be unfaithful to Thee.

But also open the spiritual eyes of those who do not yet know the salvation that is to be found with Thee, to recognize that they find with Thee everything that the poor heart of man longs for, so that they also come to Thee and remain with Thee until death.

So let us once praise and glorify Thee for this before Thy throne from eternity to eternity. Amen.

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There is another point that we must take into account in our assessment of Socialism and Communism if we want to proceed in a justly, fair, sincere and honest way. This point is the charge that Socialism and Communism brings against the Christian religion and Church.

The first of these accusations is that the Christian religion and Church is an ally of capital or, what wants to say the same thing, of the rich, the noble and therefore the oppressors, the tyrants. What is, say the Communists, the history of the Church other than a story of injustices that shout to heaven, a story of the pillage of the poor, a story of bloody persecution of dissenters? [page 54]

And, my brothers, we cannot deny it: under the company, under the cloak of the Christian religion and Church, however, the most immoral abominations have been committed, the poor [1947-72] people have been enslaved, sucked out and plundered, and streams of innocent blood have been shed. [Communists may be surprised to hear Walther pronounce this! History Channel will tell us all about these!] They called themselves the Christian Church and pretended to use fire and sword where necessary to spread it. [Against Crusades, etc.] They called themselves the Christian Church and pretended to burn heretics in defense of it. [Inquisition, etc.] They called themselves the Christian Church and pretended that they had every right to demand from the laity their bodily and earthly goods for the spiritual and heavenly goods which the Church brought. [Pope’s Church, and those like it.] One called oneself the Christian Church and pretended, for the sake of the salvation of the world, to have to seek the riches of the world, wealth, honour, prestige and power.

That all these abominations were committed by the Roman popes, [omitted in 1947 edition!] who called themselves the visible heads of Christendom, in covenant with the princes, the respected, the mighty, kings and emperors, is well known, nobody can deny it. I only remind you of the cruel and bloody persecutions of the Albigensians, the Waldensians, later the Lutherans and Calvinists. When in the year 1209 the Pope had announced a crusade against the supposedly heretical Albigenses and now his so-called crusade army had finally taken the Albigensian city of Béziers in southern France by storm, and some honest Catholics expressed the concern that there were also good Catholics in this Albigensian city, the papal legate replied: “Kill them, kill them! the LORD knows his own,”, and so all were slaughtered, man and woman, parents and children, old men and young men.  

I also recall the famous Paris Blood Wedding in 1572, [St. Bartholomew's Day massacre] where 30,000 innocent reforming people were slaughtered in the course of a few days so that their blood ran through the streets, and when His Holiness in Rome, Pope Gregory XIII, heard this, he immediately arranged a great feast of joy, had cannons released from his so-called Castle of the Holy Angel, or rather devil, and issued a commemorative coin to commemorate this glorious event.

I also recall the horrible, truly diabolical ordeals of the so-called Roman Inquisition, the horrible Auto da fé, i.e. religious courts [Glaubensgerichte] or rather spectacles of heretic burning, in Spain. I recall the violent exactions of the so-called Peter's Pence [Peterspfennig de], with countless millions from all the countries of Christendom flowing into the unfillable gullet of Rome. I remind you of the shameful trade in indulgences in Luther's time. I recall the terrible Roman teaching that the surest way to ensure one's eternal salvation is to bequeath one's entire fortune, especially if one is rich, to the Church, that is, to the Pope, the Bishops, the priests and the monks. This is written in blood on the pages of history, and no one [page 55] can erase it. [Green highlight included in 1947 ed.] Hence then 200 years ago [now ~300 years ago] in a large assembly of Catholics and Protestants, Catholics themselves declared that Luther had indeed been a great, dreadful heretic, but if he had not come, then Pope, bishops, priests and monks would finally have seized all the power. They would have made slaves of all the laity and forced them to eat straw and hay.

Here, of course, it cannot be denied that even in the so-called Protestant state churches some theologians even joined with the rich, respected, noble people, namely with the princes, to enslave the poor people, to rob them of body and soul, and to render them without rights.

But, my brothers, what does this have to do with the Christian religion and church? The dark history of these abominations is not the history of the Christian Church, but rather the history of the Antichrist, [omitted in 1947] the history of the traitors and enemies of the Church in its own lap.

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      I call on all those websites that have re-published the 1947 English translation to now include the omitted portion seen in red above.  Even now, it is hard for me to believe just how much text was omitted, how presumptuous those publishers were in cutting out a major point that Walther makes.  It was the Roman popes and Romanists who have in part provided a model of violence to the world of agitators.