Dear Ecofem,
This is a key opportunity for you all to make sure I am holding
Christianity to account for history properly. Enclosed is my ecumenical
message to the pope and to the Christian world. It covers all the
atrocities that have gone down esp. against women and nature and it IS the
Reflowering of the Tree of Life.
I have intentionally chosen this term out of deference to Gloria
Orenstein's work. I am also lodging this with you because it should reach
the 'ecofem archives' and thus be available so you can still use it to save
biodiversity, should a patriarchal zealot decide to eliminate an obvious
source of trouble.
I invite you again to give me the raspberry if you think there is anything
wrong or incomplete in here. If you thinkit is fair comment, I also invite
you all to start forming the feminine Wisdom democracy envisaged in this
document so we can make the floodtide of the Reflowering really start to
flow for diversity.
I would like to also give acknowledgement to Barbara Walker for the
inspiration for the 99 names of Eostre. Can someone tell her?
love to you all, Chris King
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The Flowering of the Free Catholic Church as Sanctuary of the Tree of Life
Chris King - Genesis of Eden* (1998)
This 're-flowering' is addressed to all humanity, to the Christian world,
and personally to the priesthood of the Orthodox faiths, particularly the
Roman Catholic Church and the Pope.
The Reflowering
As the Bridegroom, it is my beloved duty to pronounce for the Millennium,
the greening Transfoliation, reflowering the Church, my historical 'bride'
to become the sanctuary of the Tree of Life in the vision of immortal
fertility.
This is a sacred act of peace and love for the unfolding of life. In so
doing I am also also giving immortal life blood back to the Church as the
sanctuary of all life's diversity. I ask that this vision be embraced by
the whole Church as an act of love and forgiveness in Requital (King 1997),
although it implies great changes ahead.
Free Catholicism
'Catholic' means "universal, all-embracing, for all humanity, of wide
sympathies, broad-minded, tolerant" (Concise Oxford dictionary). The true
meaning of this title shall become fulfilled only when the Church becomes
true to is name - tolerant and universal, to humanity and to life itself.
The Roman Catholic Church is an acronym for the Roman branch of the
Orthodox Church which became divided from the Orthodox Church of Byzantium.
The Protestant sects are again an historical part of the Orthodox Church.
The free catholic church is ecumenical, not only in being the common
fertile ground of both the Catholic and Orthodox Churches and the
Protestants, but also embraces the repressed gnostic tradition in reunion
through the feminine Wisdom democracy of the Renewal (King 1997). Thus,
although much of this document addresses the Roman Catholic Church, it
embraces the entire church.
This flowering is intended to bring back together, not just all
Christianity, but all humanity, in one all-embracing broad-minded communion
of tolerance and love. Through humanity gaining true freedom of expression,
the free church shall also come to foster the spiritual freedom required
for the divine to become truly manifest in the full diversity of our
personal experience.
The free catholic church is the natural condition
in which we all become one in spirit in our evolving diversity.
The free catholic church is not an institution, but a state of agape or
communion in love. It is not a moral authority, but a living consensus.
It's root virtue is that it unites our kin and reciprocal altruism in the
ethical vision of universal love, the highest expression of our emotional
nature. In so doing, it frees us from selfishness and ignorance by
heart-felt compassion and wise counsel. The Church is thus the expression
of the highest Christian virtues, selfless love, universal justice,
compassion for those in need, freedom from want.
It is these virtues that the orthodox church has always shone with at it's
best, and it is one in which the Church today often expresses in its
support for amnesty for prisoners of conscience, opposition to the death
penalty, freedom from poverty and suffering, social justice and the support
of democracy, personified well in the actions of John Paul and many
protestant denominations and charities from the Quakers to the Anglicans.
The Sanctuary and the Tree of Life: Isaiah 61's "Planting"
As the sanctuary of Tree of Life, the free catholic church gains a new
immortal role, it's very life-blood, as the protector of evolving natural
diversity, the unfolding paradise of creation, for the shared benefit of
all humankind. The church becomes the sanctuary of natural diversity, not
by ownership or control, but by living inspiration, through our common
love, to avoid the tragedy of the commons, the selfish despoiling of our
living heritage. Just as the church can reach to every corner of society,
it can reach to every ecosystem on this planet to foster a sacred reverence
and protection for nature, protect for the common good resources which
might otherwise become selfishly-appropriated and guard our genetic
diversity so that the heritage of Earth's long evolutionary history shall
continue to flower for the future unborn generations to come.
This relates strongly to the future of genetic technology, because of the
great potential impact this could have on the future evolution, diversity
and viability of both the species upon which we depend and humanity itself.
In March 98 John Paul condemned the excesses of genetic engineering:
"Totalitarian ideologies, which degrade Man by reducing him to an object
while breaking basic human rights, raise in a worrisome way certain uses of
the potentials offered by biotechnology, " he said. The pope was opposed to
the "manipulation of life, at the service of boundless ambition, which
deforms the aspirations and hopes of mankind and which only increases its
suffering." I commend John Paul for his insight and ask that all decisions
about biotechnology be made democratically by citizen's ethics committees.
The Atonement
In this document, it is necessary that I stand as conscience of Church
history for the millennium.
The Pope has said several times recently the Church should use the start of
the third millennium in the year 2000 as a chance to make an "examination
of conscience" and seek forgiveness for past errors and sins in its
history. In 1994 he declared that the Church 'cannot cross the threshold
of the new millennium without encouraging her children to purify
themselves, through repentance, of past errors and instances of infidelity,
inconsistency, and slowness to act."
This is a courageous and honest stand and essential for the integrity and
survival of the Church. In this spirit there follows a careful examination
of the areas where soul-searching is required and an apology or atonement
made for actions incompatible with divine calling.
When asked by an interviewer in New Yorker "Do you think the millennium
could be an occasion for such moral reckoning?" Hans Kung (1997) replied:
"The Jubilaeum AD 2000? They will use it in Rome as they have always done
it: first for money-making; and then for big manifestations."
I thus politely request that the biggest manifestation of the Jubilaeum be
the confession of the following sins of the Church to clear the blood of
history. Sakina as the Requital shall complete the healing in forgiveness.
I ask the current Catholic orthodoxy make specific apology for each of the
specific acts it is known to have committed during it's 2000-year
stewardship of the Church. Prominent among these are: Encouraging
martyrdom, repression of the gnostics, holy war, inquisition, witch
burning, mistreatment of the Jews, complicity in the holocaust, failure to
ordain women, opposing contraception to ensure male fertility rights,
promoting the death penalty as divine retribution, not speaking out clearly
against death penalty for abortion, involvement in the genocide in Rwanda.
Some of these also apply to the Protestants.
1: Repression of the Gnostics
The orthodox church identified itself as a social movement ruled by bishops
(Pagels 1979, 1988). The gnostics' inner path involved a self-realization
of the elect, which had many diverse forms. The orthodox bishops found such
clandestine diversity threatening to their agenda of moral authority. While
the gnostics sometimes rejected sex as physical ensnarement they also often
accepted women as equals and embraced the feminine spirit of Wisdom in the
form of Sophia. By contrast, the orthodox Christians had come to accept
family life, but gave the key roles of worship and church authority only to
men.
The repression of the gnostics constitutes a critical watershed of
authoritarian nature in which the vital fire of the personal tradition of
Christianity was sacrificed for the political gains of control of the
Church by the orthodoxy. This continued sporadically all the way through
to the Inquisition in the repression of the Cathars. It represents the
establishment of dominion by male clergy still manifest in the exclusively
male celibate priesthood of the current Catholic church. It is essential
both that an apology is made for this root error and that the feminine
aspect of Wisdom contained within the gnostic tradition is liberated to
refertilize the Church.
2: Crusade, Inquisition and Witch Hunt
Jan 98 "The Vatican permitted scrutiny of one of the most notorious periods
in Roman Catholic Church History yesterday when it opened the secret files,
dating between 1542 and 1902, of the department once known as the
Inquisition. The Inquisition was established by Pope Gregory IX in 1233 as
a special court to help curb the influence of heresy. It escalated as
Church officials a began to count on civil authorities, to fine, imprison
and even torture heretics. It reached its height in the 16th century to
counter the Reformation." The Pope has rightly become demonized in the
Protestant tradition as the Anti-Christ (Cohn 1957). "The department later
became the Holy Office and its successor now is called the Congregation for
the Doctrine of the Faith, which controls the orthodoxy of Catholic
teaching." This is incompatible with continuity of office and remains a
danger to women. The Church needs to confess its entire history of temporal
power and intrigue and dissolve all institutions directly linked to any
form of oppression.
Once the Church became politically and economically dominant, it became
corrupted to its essence for financial gain and political intrigue. The
Crusades are naked instance of pre-meditated religious war. The church
then turned on the gnostic elements of its own population. Asked how to
separate Christians from heretics, one leader is said to have replied:
"Slay them all. God knows his own" (Hallam 1989). The Inquisition
instituted heinous punishments including drowning and burning for heresy,
particularly of women. Under no account should heresy have any penalty at
all, or religion becomes totalitarian. The Inquisition and witch hunts
constitute one of the darkest episodes of world religious history. The
Inquisition became very specifically a gendercide of the European woman
with the cost of possibly some 4 million lives (Walker 1983). This cannot
pass the millennium without even an apology, when women are still banned
from the ministry.
3: Anti-semitism
In Oct 97 the Pope declared anti-semitism unacceptable, three years before
the second millennium's end. In Mar 98 the Vatican urged Catholics to
repent for past errors but absolved wartime Pope Pius XII of charges that
he turned a blind eye to the Nazi attempt to exterminate the Jews. "We
Remember, a Reflection on the Shoah", took 11 years to prepare. However it
was greeted with dismay by Jewish leaders. "The document rings hollow. It
is an apologia full of rationalisation for Pope Plus XII and the Church,"
said Abraham Foxman, the United States director of the Anti-Defamation
League. 'It takes very little moral and historical responsibility for the
Church's historic teaching of contempt of Jews."
"Hitler said the re-enactment of the crucifixion would absolutely have to
be preserved. For hardly ever had the Jewish danger, as seen in the example
of the ancient Roman empire, been so graphically illustrated as by the
character of Pontius Pilate in the Festival. In recognizing the enormous
importance of the Festival for the enlightenment of future generations as
well, he Hitler said he was an absolute Christian." (Rolf Hochhuth, Der
Stelivertreter, historische Streiflichter 1980, 247)
In a pastoral letter of 1936, the Roman Catholic Primate of Poland, August
Cardinal Hlond said "It is a fact that the Jews are fighting against the
Catholic Church, persisting in free thinking, and are the vanguard of
godlessness, Bolshevism, and subversion. It is a fact that the Jews
deceive, levy interest, and are pimps. It is a fact that the religious and
ethical influence of the Jewish young people on Polish young people is a
negative one." (The Silence James Carrol New Yorker April 7 )
This mistreatment of Jews is a legacy of many grim centuries, not just one
(Cohn 1957), and the number of lives lost cannot be counted. Jews were
falsely accused of sacrificing Christian children. They were publically
burned in groups. This continuing anti-semitism of the Christian Church
incorrectly blaming the Jews for Jesus' death when it was by Rome himself
that he was crucified leads directly to the mentality of the holocaust
triggering the founding of the Jewish state and the unresolved tension in
the Middle East today. A full apology is required for all the centuries,
not too little too late.
Pope John Paul II has rightly hailed the Jews as Christianity's "elder
brothers", the people who gave Jesus Christ to all mankind at Christmas 97,
during midnight Mass came the day after a Hanukkah candle was lit at the
Vatican for the first time. "The birth of the Messiah! It is the central
event in the history of humanity," John Paul said in his homily. 'The whole
human race was, awaiting it with a vague presentiment; the Chosen People
awaited with explicit awareness." This acknowledgement is apt and healing,
but should not be compromised for infallibility.
4: The Hubris of Infallibility
Jesus cursed the fig because it did not bear the expected fruit. We are all
fallible. To have declared papal infallibility is the ultimate hubris. To
compromise being able to confess the errors of Pius to protect papal
infallibility is no true accounting. Hans Kung (1997): "Galileo was right.
Now they've acknowledged Darwin finally, but they never say "we have made a
terrible mistake" ... but John Paul will never say 'Pius XII made a
terrible mistake, my predecessor made a terrible mistake'. When asked
about infallibility, Kung says in the same breath "and the ordination of
women."
I politely, in the light of this grim testimony of history, request Pope
John Paul to renounce papal infallibility in the name of truth.
5: Ordination of Women
In 1994 Letter on the Ordination of Priests the Pope declared "that the
Church has no authority whatever to confer priestly ordination on women and
that this judgement is to be held by all the church's faithful". In 1995
this was enforced by the Congregation for the Doctrine as "irrevocable ...
infallible". Although infallibility of the Pope was defined as doctrine
only in 1870 in response to loss of temporal sovereignty over the Papal
states, this thinking runs back to St. Paul: "Let your women keep silence
in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are
commanded to be under obedience as also saith the law. And if they will
learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for
women to speak in the church."
As source Bridegroom, I abrogate Paul's statement and release all women
from such male dominion and invite both married men and all women to
participate equally in all positions of the Church.
The nature of Catholic celibate priesthood is a tradition in which
non-reproducing males with no natural conjugal experience claim to pass
divine judgement on female reproductive rights and on the status of
sexuality (Ranke-Heinmann 1990). This is clearly a conflict of roles and
leads to natural abuses such as child molestation. If the Church
represents immortal fertility, the priesthood should seek conjugal life as
an expression and living experience of fertility.
CONTINUED IN PART 2
_____________________________________________________________________________
Chaos is the Mother of Invention - Necessity the Offspring
_____________________________________________________________________________
Chris KING, Phone: 0064-9-3737599 # 8818
Senior Lecturer Mathematics Fax: 0064-9-3737457
University of Auckland E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Private Bag 92019
AUCKLAND, New Zealand.
http://matu1.math.auckland.ac.nz/~king/Preprints/book/genesis.htm
"Genesis of Eden" - Alta Vista Search
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