Translation of "Kirchenvolk" in English

The answer was clearly every individual church member.

The Catholic Church is "feminized" in a distinctive way - in the church folk.

And in this function they are also, and above all, the teachers of the congregation of the church.

For centuries priests and nuns forbid their church's faithful to read the Bible individually.

Pastors were not employed and paid by the church people, constituted in the congregations, but were chosen and paid by the government and subordinate to the government-appointed members of the consistories.

A critical revision of the deeply embedded images and conceptions concerning the relationship of priestly office and the people of God is necessary.

On the other hand, I have to admit that membership of a church can also be difficult, because it is so demanding ? someone can come up with a biblical text at any moment and ask an unambiguous question like “Who is the least of my brothers”, and that can be an effort!

But even much more dangerous is the attempt of the Catholic Church to separate men from God by replacing the only mediator and Redeemer, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ by a "substitute mediator" in the figure of the "Queen of Heaven", "Queen of grace", and "Mother of God" Mary, gradually and almost unnoticed by the people of the Church.

In order to successively obscure the differences between Jesus Christ and this Catholic idol for the people of the Church, in 1854 the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary who is free from the original sin was raised to a dogma.

There is great uncertainty and indifference on the part of the guards and watchmen of the church that may even exceed that of the guarded church people.

But that is just the path that the Catholic church indicates to its faithful: "Jesus Christ after all is just Mary's little child – so the Mother of God is very much more important.

So we would like here to demonstrate that this brand of incorrect interpretation is an old trick of the Catholic church, with a view to saddling church congregations with the financial costs of missionizing through aid given to "the poor of this world".

Thus the Catholic church has added the crime of falsification of Scripture to that of its betrayal of the people of the church.

In particular, one can see how completely depressing this false doctrine is when one remembers that the same hands that contain the body of Christ and distribute it to the church people have perhaps only hours before - as in the USA (see above) - sexually abused and violated children.

These declarations were the result of lengthy processes of consultation, formulation and reformulation, with participation by a broad cross-section of church membership.

Conciliarity means that voices from all the church people are heard, that the silent testimony of theologians condemned to dumbness also finds a hearing.

But even much more dangerous is the attempt of the Catholic Church to separate men from God by replacing the only mediator and Redeemer, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ by a "substitute mediator" in the figure of the "Queen of Heaven", "Queen of grace", and "Mother of God" Mary, gradually and almost unnoticed by the people of the Church.

We, the people of the churches, must realize that we are living in a constant sin, the sin of our division.

As is shown below, however, it is just this church which has falsified God's commandments, so as to deceive the congregation of the faithful.

On the other hand, I have to admit that membership of a church can also be difficult, because it is so demanding ? someone can come up with a biblical text at any moment and ask an unambiguous question like "Who is the least of my brothers", and that can be an effort!

This has led to a unique process in which church people can grow together to become a genuine People's Church with a clear national character within the larger context of a culture which has developed historically.

We are convinced that the debate of two issues that are as key as church and ministry, has to involve the entire People of God.

Turning the matter about, the question suggests itself whether Catholic moral theology has given the right amount of thought to these issues, or whether - as with priestly celibacy or the denial of communion wine to the people of God at the Lord’s Supper - we do not have here a case of authoritarian and ivory-towered decisions made in the board room, without any real understanding of or reference to reality..

Turning the matter about, the question suggests itself whether Catholic moral theology has given the right amount of thought to these issues, or whether – as with priestly celibacy, the denial of communion wine to the people of God at the Lord’s Supper or the ban on women’s holding consecrated functions in the church – we have here a case of authoritarian and ivory–towered decisions made in the board room, without any real understanding of or reference to reality.

While in Christendom the Catholic church has falsified the judgments of God and adapted them to its own conceptions, e.g. through their keeping church believers ignorant of the second of the Ten Commandments (while they divide the tenth commandment into two, so that the total still remains ten), in Jewry "the lying pen of the scribes" has made the law of God into a lie, as confirmed by God in the above passage (Jer 8,8).