Opus Diaboli

My supervisor (who is Opus Dei) at NML sent me over to meet the Opus Dei leader in St. Louis. I learned nothing except how secretive they are. Escriva was quickly named a saint after he died.

Many Lutherans are moaning about how mean, radical, and nasty the Left is. They are right, of course. Most fail to recognize that their own "conservative" leaders are no better. Their leaders protect criminals, hide felonies, and persecute believers. They are like the jurors in Vanity Fair, The Pilgrim's Progress - in case you have not read the book.

It did not happen overnight, but it is clear that the conservative leaders are unbelievers. Many are mere figureheads, finger-puppets of the ones with real power. I would call the actual leaders Opus Diaboli, the Work of the Devil, parallel to Escriva's cult, the Work of God (sic).

It is easiest to see this in WELS. The ELS-WELS-LCMS papal candidates project a theme of reformation and restoration, only to be even more dictatorial and apostate once elected. They try to look majestic and powerful, but they are more like wood chips carried and moved by the tossing sea.

People ask me about angry responses to the blog. I used to print the best ones with spelling corrections so they would not be erased (kilcreased) once sobriety took over. The diatribes stopped. I am quite sure the big guys told them to cease, because all they did was prove my case.

Now is the ultimate stage, silence and shunning. 

How Did the General Synod Go Wrong? And Then Improve for the 1918 ULCA Merger

Samuel S. Schmucker, Princeton student, General Synod Leader, 1799 - 1873

Henry Melchior Muhlenberg came over from Halle after Count Zinzendorf tried to work in America under an assumed name. Muhlenberg belonged to the earlier generation, before the General Synod, and he was quite remarkable in his efforts to provide Lutheran pastors and congregations for America.

His work became organized as the Pennsylvania Ministerium.

1711 - 1787

With the Lutheran population growing, they organized the General Synod in 1820. Their college and seminary were in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, which was the site of the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863. That is the only Seminary Hill where troops fought instead of the faculty.

Schmucker not only helped in founding Gettysburg - he also served there almost 40 years as a professor and chairman of the faculty.

This was a time when many Lutherans saw Calvinism as slightly different from their own confession of faith. That ignorance continues to this day. Schmucker was a Lutheran in name only, very much influenced by his time at Princeton, a Calvinist school. I visited there with plans to go to graduate school. They kept bragging about their Yale-educated faculty, and I went to Yale. The Princeton dean was required reading in church history, but his mentor was at Yale - Roland Bainton.

Two big movements were the union of Calvinism and Lutheranism - with Lutherans conceding everything - and revivalism. In revivalism, the congregation set up a Mourner's Bench. If a sermon was especially effective in getting people to cry, they would come forward and kneel on the bench, pledging to start a new life. The revivalists/unionists cared little for the Lutheran liturgy or Lutheran hymns (see WELS for a modern example). 

About half of the General Synod pulled away to form the General Council, which located their seminary in Philadelphia - Mt. Airy. (I was given an HEW interview there, which meant they already had their guy and needed to prove fairness. Nice trip, though.) The Philadelphia professors were Back to the Reformation Lutherans and gradually influenced the General Synod to abandon its anti-Lutheran ways. The two parts merged in 1918, but mergers always favor the weakest in doctrine, so the United Lutheran Church in America became a triumph for the unionist leaders. That devolved into the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, in communion with all denominations and all religions.

The best books of that old era came from the General Council -

1. Henry Eyster Jacobs
2. Charles Porterfield Krauth
3. Theodore Schmauk

Today, Gettysburg and Mt. Airy have merged into the so-called United Lutheran Seminary, whose first moves were 

• to hire a Presbyterian to serve as president and 
• to fire her.

Theresa Latini, formerly a Dean of Diversity, observed that she paid the price for the Gettysburg/Mt Airy split being united in name only.

About Theresa Latini