This is my response to CAT41's TableTalk and its administrator, Rev. Eric Stefanski. Just four days before the "First National Free Conference on C.F.W. Walther" to be held in St. Louis, I have been banished as a "thief and a liar" from the CAT41's TableTalk. This is no coincidence but the reaction of many pastors who fear exposure of their rejection of Voter supremacy to the lay people of the LCMS.

In the age of email fellowship email excommunication was inevitable. Hundreds of LCMS pastors participating in CAT41's TableTalk believe and teach that Voters' Assemblies, as establish by C.F.W. Walther, are not necessary in LCMS congregations. We have debated this issue for many months on their mail list.

In order to fortify their obviously weak argument they enlisted the help of Dr. John Wohlrabe. After responding to Dr. Wohlrabe's incorrect teaching on the subject in a series of five responses I was removed from the CAT41's mail list.

In January 1999, I asked President A. L. Barry, at the Annual Symposium on the Lutheran Confessions at Fort Wayne, Indiana, if the LCMS had an official position on Church and Ministry. He responded that the Synod's official position on Church and Ministry was that taught by C.F.W. Walther and Francis Pieper in his "Christian Dogmatics."

In defending the point that Walther only taught the LCMS should have congregations ruled by Voter supremacy, I quoted Walther, Pieper, Mueller, Mundinger, Fritz, and other official sources. Stefanski claims I cannot deal with the primary texts. Just the opposite is true. Wohlrabe reinvented the history of the LCMS to the point that he has no explanation as to why all LCMS congregations in the first century of the Synod were governed by supreme Voters' Assemblies. He won't even address it.

Unable to deal with the historical record and the facts as published by the LCMS, the hundreds of LCMS pastors on CAT41 refuse to hear the truth or acknowledge its existence. They promote and defend the sacrament of ordination as a spiritual gift to the pastor. They seek to rewrite the history of the LCMS, redefine and alter what Walther taught, and reinstate pre-Waltherian European hierarchy. These hyper-euro-Lutherans want the privilege to attack me but then charge me as a thief and liar if I repeat what they say about Walther or myself.

True to their love for Episcopal hierarch and being called "Father" instead of pastor, they see no need to debate someone who disagrees with them. Stafanski claims that Walther didn't see anything wrong with Episcopal hierarchy, hence a simple God-authorized banishment of Cascione will suffice. When the office of ministry becomes the indelible character of the office-holder the pastor's decision is God's decision. The freedom that many lay people enjoyed in the LCMS is coming to an end.

The existence of hundreds of hyper-euro-Lutheran pastors and the monstrosity of their error has its source in the faculties of both Seminaries and their Boards of Regents. It is no longer necessary to agree with Walther's "Church and Ministry," and to defend Voter supremacy to be a pastor in the LCMS. In fact, the Seminaries are working hard to remove every vestige of the Synod's official position on this subject. Many LCMS pastors today do not understand Voters' Assemblies and/or are opposed to them. I have been labeled a false teacher for claiming that the Voters' are supreme, which is exactly what the constitutions of the four congregations I have served stated.

Stefanski's statement of my removal from CAT41' TableTalk to the largest Lutheran mail list in the world, as he says it is, speaks for itself as follows:

Quotation removed per author's request.