[469] can happen EVEN IN THE PREACHING OF A PROTESTANT CHURCH^a! * [little laughter] Now this is the actual situation with adults. And now a last point, and then I leave this to the department of religious education^b which knows more about it, namely about the autonomy in the personal decision of religious matters the free, autonomous, not-from-outside-authoritarianly-imposed decision, but the free decision, which I call autonomous. And here we come to the difference of the two forms of religious education, the Protestant and the Catholic. Catholic^c, in my case, always means Roman Catholic, because there

the whole thing is quite different--I don’t mean the Protestant Catholic. The educational principle of the Roman Church is subjection of every Christian to the authority of the Church^d, from the first to the last day of his life; and even after his life, if he is in the Purgatory, the word of the Church can alleviate his state. The principle of Protestantism^e is the IMMEDIATE and TOTAL relationship to God^f: the alternative of separation, estrangement, on the one side; reconciliation and reunion on the other side. This happens to the individual in his person-to-person encounter and gives him the autonomy to decide about himself religiously. The official attitude of the Roman Church is: you are never sure of your reconciliation; you are

never sure whether you have a malignant or merciful God--and then Luther^g broke out, because he couldn’t stand the wrath of God against him, and reached (following Paul, in this) that this is not a matter of ecclesiastical management, neither of sacraments nor of works, but this is a matter of the immediate encounter with God in His forgiving message, and that's all. * Spoken deliberately, slowly, rather softly, seriously.--PHJ