The Pope's Exorcist

Gabriele Amorth is perhaps not a name which springs readily to mind when considering the pastoral affairs of the church, but he has a clearly-defined function nevertheless. Father Amorth is exorcist-in-residence to the Vatican, and in this capacity he is reputed to have performed over one hundred and sixty thousand exorcisms in the decades-long practice of his office. The notion of an official exorcist is intriguing in itself, but the mere existence of such an office in the Catholic Church raises questions whose answers are perhaps disturbing.

Whatever their nature, demons belong to the realm of the supernatural. It follows, then, that any claims to know what is actually happening to someone who is possessed, and who is therefore allegedly ‘cured’ by the act of exorcism, falls within the bounds of personal belief. We take these things on trust, and depending on our own beliefs, exorcism is either a first option or a last resort.

As soon as the existence of demons is acknowledged as a literal fact, which it must be in Father Amorth’s case, then we have crossed over a line which separates our everyday reality from the realm of the supernatural. We are in a place which science shuns, for the evidence for such things is not in a form acceptable to science. You cannot put a demon under a microscope. You cannot classify a demon as a species or subspecies. You cannot visit a museum and see a demon with a descriptive label in a glass showcase.

This is not to say that such supernatural entities do not exist; just that rational scientific method is not equipped to deal with them. In short: all such things lie in the realm of belief. As this also includes religious belief, demons would indeed seem to belong in the same province as Father Amorth. Indigenous beliefs would concur with the Vatican: these are worlds in which spirits both good and bad are an accepted part of reality. There are some spirits who wish to help you, there are some who might be uppity and need to be placated with offerings to persuade them to treat you right, and there are others who just want to yank your chain in pursuit of their own dark and inscrutable agendas.

Father Gabriele Amorth, the appointed exorcist to the Vatican. When demons become part of one’s job description it is easy to overlook the fact that, as denizens of the supernatural realm, their actual nature remains an unknown to us. Some cases of attempted exorcism actually seem to exacerbate the situation, leaving the apparently afflicted person worse off than before.

Even this simple comparison is enough to indicate that Father Amorth’s world and the world of (for example) an Amazon Basin tribal community are not as far removed from each other as we might at first assume. The differences are in the trappings of external appearances, but the interactions with such forces, and what those interactions involve, are much the same. Both priest and shaman petition a higher power for aid in such a situation, and communicate directly with these lower forces during the exorcism. During his term in office Pope John Paul II allegedly performed three exorcisms, and his successor Pope Benedict XVI increased the number of Catholic-sponsored exorcists globally. An exorcist is still an exorcist, and an exorcist functions as an intermediary between these realities, whether in the rain forest or in the marble corridors of the Vatican.

 Taita Querubin Queta. As the widely-respected spiritual leader and shaman healer of the Cófan people of Colombia, Taita Querubin Queta not only acts as intermediary on behalf of his people to the world of the spirits, but also to global representatives at the United Nations and other institutions, where he speaks to raise awareness of the pressures which the Cófan face from outside cultures.

Apparently Father Amorth also instructs bishops on how to distinguish cases of genuine possession from those individuals in need of psychiatric help, and refuses to perform an exorcism upon those whom he considers to be faking the symptoms. As far as I have been able to determine, and for all his dealings with these claimed supernatural entities, Father Amorth himself has no credentials whatever that would allow him to make such a professional judgement call. Even a qualified and experienced [1]psychiatrist whom I have seen interviewed admitted that it is at times extremely easy to be persuaded by someone who is afflicted with some form of mental psychopathy that they are in fact entirely reformed. Many such individuals can – and do – go their whole lives functioning in society to a greater or lesser degree. We have to wonder how many of those who have needed an entirely different sort of treatment have slipped through the net to be blessed with holy water rather than with symptom-reducing medication.

The first card used in the series of the Rorschach inkblot psychology test. There are no right or wrong answers to what these randomly created images might be. As with religious belief, individuals will see their own truth, and the evaluation of that subjective truth might indicate some form of emotional dysfunction or psychosis.

The Vatican’s resident exorcist certainly has his opinions about other matters. He has stated that he considers the Harry Potter stories harmful because of their magic elements, giving his reason as making no distinction between white and black magic, because all magic is “…a turn to the Devil”. It strikes me that the line between true magic and exorcism, if it exists at all, is a distinctly blurred one, although the priest seems not to be aware of this particular irony. Harry Potter is perhaps a relatively harmless target, but where things become several shades less politically (and morally) correct are his views on Hindu beliefs and yoga. These beliefs and practices are, says the priest, “Satanic”, because “…all Eastern religions are based on a false belief in [2]reincarnation.” I would suggest to Father Amorth in particular, and to the offices of the Vatican in general, that widespread and endemic pedophilia by the Catholic priesthood is somewhat more likely to be weighed as the heavier evil when the Last Trump sounds than these sincere expressions of another faith.

Meditation as a form of yoga. Studies have indicated that consistent meditation appears to increase emotional empathy and compassion, with the appropriate areas of neural activity in the brain showing increased sensitivity. The practice of yoga is reported to have multiple health benefits, on the heart, on blood pressure, and on regular sleep patterns.

Acknowledging the existence of demons, and therefore of Satan, opens up an ethical question over which philosophers and theologians have furrowed their brows for centuries, namely: does evil exist of itself? Are some people just ‘bad’, or is there darker stuff involved? We must each decide for ourselves what the answer might be, but the problem about accepting these things as real, whether they are so or not, is that our beliefs make them real to us individually. Father Gabriele Amorth claims to have performed in excess of 160,000 exorcisms during the course of his long term of office. Assuming that all those circumstances were and are real, there could well be a small army of seriously disgruntled demons waiting on the other side just jumping for the chance to even the score with the man who gave them all the push. In Father Amorth’s shoes, I for one would not fancy such a prospect.  

Hawkwood 

1st Postscript: In concluding this post I feel the necessity to emphasize that it is often the things we take for granted which are the least understood. We confidently use such terms as 'demon', 'spirit', 'ghost', 'poltergeist', 'elemental', etc. as if we know what these entities are, how they differ from each other, and what their precise nature and purpose is. We do not. Any attempts to define what the supernatural is, and the various forms in which it appears to manifest itself, remain speculative. It is our beliefs which lend these things an aura of familiarity, of belonging to phenomena that we can classify, as if they were different types of lightning or clouds or other phenomena of the natural world. But the paranormal, like death, is an unknown. Who knows what Father Amorth and others like him have been dealing with, and who knows what truly takes place during an exorcism, and what the real consequences are?

2nd Postscript: Twenty months after this post was written, on 16 September, 2016, Father Gabriele Amorth died. He was aged 91. 

Notes:
[1] Dr. Tom Powell in an interview with the BBC in the documentary Psychopath.

[2] The Eastern belief that the reincarnating soul occupies a succession of corporeal bodies, known as saṃsāra, is also found in Ancient Greece in the writings of Plato, where it is known as transmigration, and in many indigenous cultures as well as in some contemporary beliefs such as Theosophy. The orthodox forms of Christianity, Judaism and Islam reject the concept of reincarnation, although individuals within these religions accept it, and the mystic forms of these religions such as the Kabbalah, Gnosticism, Catharism and some branches of Sufism also accept the concept. 

Sources:

David Goldenberg: 10 Secrets of the Vatican Exposed, in The Week, March 13, 2013. Retrieved March 31, 2015.

Nick Pisa: Hitler and Stalin were possessed by the Devil, says Vatican exorcist, in The Mail Online, August 2006. Retrieved March 31, 2015.

Nick Squires: Harry Potter and yoga are evil, says Catholic Church exorcist, in The Telegraph, November 25, 2011. Retrieved March 31, 2015.

Ron Dicker: Gabriele Amorth, Catholic Priest And Exorcist, Says He’s Done More Than 160,000 Exorcisms, in The Huffington Post, May 21, 2013. Retrieved March 31, 2015.

Image of Father Gabriele Amorth adapted from a photo by Stephen Driscoll for CNA. Images of Taita Querubin Queta and yoga meditation adapted from photos from uncredited sources. The Rorschach test card is in the public domain. Demon painted for this post by Hawkwood for the ©David Bergen Studio.

The Mystic Marriage

Is all which I now see around me truly the result of my brief presence on Earth? Has all this truly been done in my name? I came among you with a single intent. Not, as you seem to think, to win redemption for all of you for the sin in Eden (how could you imagine such a thing?). There was no Fall in Eden. The Man and the Woman remained unblemished. So how could there be such a thing as universal redemption when there is no such thing as universal sin? No, the only sin is the personal sin of not being true to one’s own self. That is the greatest betrayal, for if we betray ourselves, then we also betray our true Selves.

But you do not need me to redeem you, for I tell you truly that each and every one of you has the spirit to redeem yourself, because each and every one of you is me, and I am each and every one of you. Why have you forgotten this? I will tell you why: you have forgotten this because you have placed me outside of yourselves. In your frenzy to banish bronze idols you have merely replaced them with another idol. And the idol which you have created is a monster, not of bronze, but of ideas, of doctrines and of dogmas which have served only to divide you against yourselves, and therefore from me also. That idol is myself as you have created me. You have so occupied yourselves with building a towering plinth for me to stand on that you have forgotten that if I am standing high above you then we no longer can look each other in the eye.

And this is not the only idol which you have created in my name. You have built another idol to worship: an idol of words. You have transformed something that shone with the light of my being, something bright with radiant change, into something harder than stone. For even stone, which seems unyielding, changes its form over time. You have taken it upon yourselves to decide what is or is not ‘holy’, and yet I say to you now that all which is thought or said or written with a pure heart is holy in my eyes, and whether something is or is not holy to me is not something for you to decide. And yet this is what you have done. I speak with many voices, and yet how many of my voices have lain in the dust of centuries, or which you even have consigned to the flames, because of the choices which you have claimed to make on my behalf, because of your folly in believing that such choices were yours to make?

Look at the footprints I leave behind in the soil. They are the footprints left by a mortal form who wore only simple woven sandals. And yet many of the footprints left by those who deign to place themselves nearer to me have sunk deep into my earth, weighed down by the finery of their wearers. Their footprints are heavier than my own, and I tell you that their weighty apparel, their jewelled rings and resplendent robes, distances them from me more than the pure of heart who must walk barefoot, for such earthly show is a greater barrier to drawing close to me than the simplest garments worn by those who leave footprints as light as my own. The footprints of the meek have trodden where I also have trodden, and their footprints and mine are therefore the same. Lightness is a virtue, and a crown of thorns weighs less than a crown of jewels and gold, both in this world and in the one to come.

But these robes of earthly glory are not all that in my eyes truly weighs down mortal flesh. If the blood of even one individual is shed in my name, I say to you that the death of that single individual is a matter of greater weight to me than my own mortal death, which was no death but a mere revealing of my true nature, as it is for you all. And yet the lives of millions have been offered up in my name. Where is the kingdom of heaven for those who have swung the sword, or caused conversion in my name by fear or by force, or torched the pyre beneath the stake? How can it ever be attained when all which I truly am has become so misshapen?

How could it have come to pass that so many innocent young souls so precious to me have been damaged by those who actually make claim to represent me, but who in truth only represent their own darkness? I, who have entrusted to the Woman the most difficult and the most sacred task of all, and who should only be honoured, now find Her damned by you. Do you seriously imagine that I will return in triumph when so much that has been done in my name has served only to create damage and division, and even a loss of life itself? Only a fool would think that I one day shall return. The pure of heart know that I have never left.

But why did I come to you at all, if not to redeem a sin of your own imaginings? If redemption exists in each and every moment (and it does), then my descent to earth, my entry into this world of coarse matter, must have been for another reason. And it was. Such events move on a stage greater than your imaginings. They arc across all of time and space, and from time to time these events emerge into your world, become momently visible to your histories, and you create messiahs and mythologies: stories and writings which are mere faint echoes of far larger truths.

So why did I come? Why, if not to redeem, did I descend into this flesh? I had been waiting. I had been waiting for my beloved Other Self, waiting for her arrival in the world so that I might join her and so on earth complete the sacred union of soul and spirit. I came, not for all, but only for one. You, my beloved one, who in these greater realities take the form of the clear voice of wisdom, my bride Sophia, were that One. You, who are the Ocean holding all life within your sacred womb. You, who trod the soil in the same place and at the same time as my own brief sojourn. You, who witnessed my mystic death and resurrection. You, who took me as husband at Cana in a marriage that was the earthly echo of our union which already had found place in the luminous Beyond. Mary, I came for you.

Hawkwood

Sources:

The drawings and paintings in this post have been adapted from the late 19th-early 20th-century works of Odilon Redon. From the top: Closed Eyes, Reflection, Christ, The Golden Cell, and Melancholy.

The Fall of Saint Peter's

It begins with a single ominous crack which appears high overhead in the arched roof. For a few moments all is still, and it seems as if nothing further will happen, and that this negligible damage will be confined to nothing that a plasterer could not fix. But these few silent moments are the calm before the storm. Another snaking crack appears, and another, as the monolithic building is hastily evacuated. Then with a noise like gunshots most of the roof gives way, sliding in a welter of dust and crumbling masonry to the cold marble floor below…

The Fall of Saint Peter's

Supposing that there was an institution whose influence was as wide as the world. Supposing that, to achieve that influence and to consolidate its dominance on the stage of history, this institution had slaughtered [1]millions. Supposing that to further silence any dissenting voices, it had initiated a [2]body drawn from its own ranks which imprisoned and tortured both men, women and children, and that this body had continued its practices, not for months, nor even for years, but for long centuries. And supposing that those within its hierarchy had been, and continue to be, responsible through sexual abuse for ruining thousands of the young lives of those entrusted to its care, and that these perpetrators enjoy the [3]tacit protection of the very hierarchy to which they themselves belong. Now suppose that this institution presumes to found itself upon the rock of religious moral values, and continues to flourish even today.

“Though the mills of God grind slowly;

Yet they grind exceeding small;

Though with patience he stands waiting,

With exactness grinds he all.” 

…wrote Henry Wordsworth Longfellow in his poem Retribution. My above painting is not so much a fanciful prophesy as what I see as a future inevitability. But the painting is also a metaphor, an image of justice come home, and in that sense is real enough. And if the Sistine Chapel with its iconic writhing frescoes of plodding scriptural literalism is destroyed along with it, then you will see a smile on my face.

Hawkwood 

Notes:

[1] The Record of History: Do not think to protest that this is an exaggeration. This total collectively includes Gnostics, Cathars (Cathar mortality at the hands of Papal forces accounts for one million deaths alone), Waldensians, Manichaeans, Paulicians, Templars and those of any denominational faith or any individuals which the Papal office perceived as a threat to its own power base. There can be no denying what already has happened, what already is a part of recorded history.

[2] The Inquisition: Originally founded in the 12th-century and run by the Dominican brotherhood, the Inquisition (left), which was little more than repressed sexual sadism and pseudo-pious sanctimony masquerading as a watchdog of the faith, persisted in one form or another up until as late as the 18th-century, making any belief which it decided was a heresy punishable by death - and at times even beyond death, with the Inquisition even exhuming the bodies of the accused and putting the corpses on trial: a grim legal ploy which allowed the assets of their surviving family to be seized by the Church authorities. The Inquisition as an institutionalized Church body survives even today under the pretentiously-titled Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office. As Voltaire dryly observed, the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.

[3] Targets for Excommunication: Archbishop Desmond Tutu has stated that tacit inaction in the presence of injustice is to participate actively in that injustice. Were the Papal office to assert its moral authority (assuming that it has any) and vigorously excommunicate the offending pedophile priests, it would send a clear message to others. It does not do so, being content in many such cases merely to shuffle the offenders from diocese to diocese, which only relocates the crime and offers potential new victims to the perpetrators. Rather, it targets for excommunication such individuals as Father Roy Bourgeois (right), who already had devoted over four decades of his life to his church. Father Bourgeois’ unforgivable offence? Proposing the ordination of women as priests.

How Saint Peter's was built: It is worth noting that the building of Saint Peter's was originally paid for by the sale of indulgences: the corrupt buying-off of worldly sins by individuals making payments to priests and others in the Church hierarchy. Source: The Role of Indulgences in the Building of New Saint Peter’s Basilica (2011): Ginny Justice, Master of Liberal Studies thesis, Rollins College.

Stop Press: Today's news carries the announcement that, having been fast-tracked with near-breakneck haste to sainthood, John Paul II (left) is due to be canonized on 27th of this month. This is the man who during his papacy refused to sign a document formally pardoning Giordano Bruno, and who also during the same term of office wrote an apostolic letter denying women the right to hold any positions of rank within the Church hierarchy: a judgement which the letter concludes is to be 'definitively held'. In other words: forever.


Note added April 28, 2014: Now that the event mentioned in my stop press has taken place, I'll add that the Church body named in note [2] above as being the contemporary equivalent of the Inquisition was run during John Paul II's term of office by... yes... Cardinal Ratzinger, who succeeded him as Pope Benedict XVI. 

"Behold This Woman"

As a woman, you should dress plainly and modestly. You should not braid your hair. You should not wear jewellery, and certainly not costly gold and pearls. You should remain silent, and learn submissively. You are not allowed to teach, neither must you question nor rise above the authority of a man. And do not forget: you must keep silent. Why must you do these things? Because it was Adam who was created first, and because it was Eve who was deceived by the serpent and transgressed.

No, the little manifesto of all-brakes-off male chauvinist piggery with which I began this post is certainly not my own. You can read it for yourself in the New Testament’s 1 Timothy, 2:9-14. Its anti-female stance has served the Church well ever since it was written in the 2nd-century, and it has been seen as a licence to keep women in a second-class citizen role with a scriptural seal of approval. This passage on which so much Church policy rests appears in one of the letters of Paul, and among more free-thinking minds it has earned that particular saint the dubious reputation of being a grade-A [1]misogynist. 

There is just one problem. It seems that the letter in which this passage appears is not by Paul at all. The three letters 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy and Titus, bear Paul’s name. But for various reasons, partly to do with discrepancies of language, dating and theme, a majority of scholastic opinion now considers these [2]three letters to be written, as it were, under a falsified signature.

Now consider this: a global corporate business has as strict company policy a blanket ban on women holding any positions of authority within the company. Here in the European Union that company would have its ass hauled into court so fast that its feet wouldn’t even touch the ground. And it would lose the case, because the EU is very specific in its directives about ensuring gender equality in the workplace. Now for ‘global corporate business’ read ‘Catholic Church’, and my point is made. Apparently it is because our society invests religion with respect by default, whether that respect is [3]deserved or not, that the Church can with [4]impunity get away with practicing discrimination against women on a global scale, and in so doing, is placing itself – literally – beyond the law.

“We declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful.” The concluding [5]statement of the Apostolic Letter by John Paul II, May 22, 1994, entitled: “To the bishops of the Catholic Church on reserving priestly ordination to men alone.” The specific justification given in the letter – that Jesus chose only men as disciples – is a scriptural fallacy which it has become expedient for the Church to perpetuate.

Clearly on this example alone the law is a two-tiered structure: one for the Church, and another for the rest of us. Within the Catholic hierarchy the [6]glass ceiling is already reached at the lowly level of the mother superior of a local convent. Higher than that… forget it. Women within the Anglican community fare somewhat better, with Australia having recently appointed its [7]first female bishop. But as recently as November of last year, the Synod of the Church of England voted against the appointment of women as bishops.

This flagrant sexual discrimination which is both sanctioned and practiced by orthodox Christianity is tragic and demeaning for more than the reason of the obvious deep injustice to women. It is a brand of sexual prejudice which goes directly counter to the original egalitarian example of Jesus. Orthodoxy, in winning the 3rd-4th-century battle as the ‘official’ form of Christianity, ciphered away the original status of women’s spiritual equality which they had known in Gnostic communities. Female disciples were consigned to the background of history, and the sympathetically Gnostic Paul was redesigned by orthodoxy as both anti-Gnostic and anti-feminine with the aid of letters written in his name.

On the walls of a grotto in Ephesus, Turkey, is a mural depicting Paul with his companion Thecla. The way in which the two figures are portrayed indicates that, rather than being a mere disciple of Paul, Thecla shared [8]equal status as a wise teacher. It appears that Paul and his female companion wished to be a conscious mirror of the original Jesus-Mary Magdalene model. This does not imply a relationship in the way in which we might now view it, but was intended to reflect the greater cosmic harmonies of Spirit and Soul. Other Gnostics formed couples for the same reason, as did alchemists of later centuries: men and women who worked together at a transformation of the Self. Such partnerships of gender equality were therefore seen, not as ‘earthly’ relationships, but as mystic unions both in their nature and their objective.

Although the lower half of the Ephesus mural has been lost, what remains of the figure of Paul is in reasonable condition. But the figure of [9]Thecla who stands next to him has been vandalized at some time in antiquity: her eyes and her upraised hand have been gouged away. Blinded and mute, this defaced portrayal of a woman still communicates with us from out of her wounded silence.  

Hawkwood     

Notes:  

[1] Misogynist: a man who despises women. 

[2] Although not the only letters of Paul to have a suspect authorship, these specific three seem to be from the same hand. But if not Paul’s, then whose hand is it? One possible candidate is Bishop Polycarp, who apparently provided the role model for Bishop Irenaeus, a name not unknown on this blog as the editor of the four gospels which made it into the canon (my post The Gospel According to Somebody). And how suspect is it that 1 Timothy ends with a specific warning against following Gnostics and their beliefs, when that also happened to be Irenaeus’ favourite hobby horse? Add to this the fact that Paul himself expressed pro-Gnostic beliefs – and might even have been a Gnostic – and that these three letters could well have turned up (perhaps a little too conveniently?) around the time that Irenaeus was busy writing his massive anti-Gnostic work Against Heresies, then this would date the three letters to a period decades after Paul wrote those letters now accepted as authentic.

[3] Please see my post Respect. Catholic priests can be, and are, excommunicated even for just supporting the ordaining of women priests. Father Roy Bourgeois (right) was excommunicated after over 40 years of service to his church for speaking out against the injustice of this issue. The official papal stance is that the issue is beyond discussion (Apostolic letter of Pope John Paul II, 22 May, 1994). The phrasing of the letter - that the judgement will be 'definitively held' - ensures that the ruling is intended to be enforced in perpetuity, and that the Catholic Church will not allow the ordination of women as priests, not now, not ever. Oh, if only the Catholic hierarchy would show itself willing to punish its morally corrupt pedophile priests with the same robust vigor.

[4] Although it uses the euro currency, Vatican City State is not a member of the European Union and preserves its independent status; a status that clearly works to its advantage in such issues.

[5] This concluding phrase of the Apostolic Letter deserves close scrutiny. The adamant statement that the Church has "no authority whatsoever" is actually a subtly assumed negative. Think about it: the Church is in this sense not bound by civic law, and can - and does - assume whatever authority it chooses to invest itself with. If it decides that it has the authority to excommunicate someone (see note 3 above) then it does so. If the Vatican wanted to have the authority to invest women then it would grant itself that authority. So for the Church to claim that it has "no authority" to invest women is a pretense. Thus did Pilate wash his hands.

[6] The phrase 'glass ceiling' is taken to mean the invisible barrier which women encounter in organizations that thwart their further promotion upwards through management hierarchy.

[7] Bishop Kay Goldsworthy, appointed bishop of Perth in May, 2008. Anglican communities in New Zealand, Africa, the United States and Canada also have appointed women bishops.

[8] The author John Dominic Crossan points out that figures in a mural of this date (c.5th-6th-century), when depicted of the same height, as here, indicate equal social status, and the raised right hand denotes both teaching and leadership status – as would have been the norm for women in Gnostic communities. One Christian apologist assertion which I have come across attempts to explain this away with the claim that the woman is actually Thecla's mother: a strange claim to make when the name 'THECLA' (left) has been written alongside the figure.

[9] The Church has made Thecla a saint, but how many who already are familiar with Paul are as familiar with Thecla? And even the now-familiar Paul is the official Church version, which is not who Paul actually was in life, as this post indicates. Please see my post Anthony of the Desert: Life as Fiction for another example of the Church reinventing someone’s life to drive its own agenda. The events of Thecla's life are interwoven with legend. Condemned to be burned, she was saved by the timely intervention of a furious storm. On a later occasion, having fought off a nobleman who was attempting to rape her, she was herself charged with assault and condemned to be torn apart by lions. Again miraculous forces appeared to save her when the female beasts protected her from the aggressive males. No such miracles saved Polycarp. He was burned at the stake for refusing to make an offering to the Roman Emperor. This portrayal of Thecla (right) was painted by Sarah Paxton Ball Dodson in 1891. To read Thecla's story, please see my post Thecla: A Woman between Rain and Fire.

Sources:

Elaine Pagels: The Gnostic Paul.

John Dominic Crossan and Jonathan L. Reed: The Search for Paul.

Top image: “Behold This Woman”, published here under the terms of my Creative Commons Licence, original artwork created for this post by the ©David Bergen Studio, all rights reserved. Adapted from Emilio Franceschi's 19th-century bronze sculpture Eulalia Christiana in Rome's National Gallery of Modern Art. For those who would like to know more about Eulalia, the story of her defiant and tragic martyrdom is recounted on my other blog in the post The Sheltering Snow.


Stop Press added July 17, 2014: A year and a half after I wrote this post, this week has brought the news that the General Synod of the Church of England has voted by a majority of 351 to 72 (with a further 10 abstentions) to accept women as bishops, and so finally bringing it into line with other Anglican communities in the U.S., Canada, Africa and Australasia. The news is both welcome and shocking: welcome, because the approval is so many years overdue. But it is shocking and shameful that the question of whether or not women have equal rights before God is even an issue in the 21st-century. In an age which contains female Anglican bishops, female rabbis and female imams, the Catholic church shows every sign of continuing to hold on to its unrivaled position at the top of the religious male chauvinist piggery chart. What would Jesus say?

Sex and Trust

Sex is part of the human condition. Having sex means making oneself vulnerable, and vulnerability needs trust. In such a vulnerable state, we need to be able to trust that our partner will not hurt us in ways that we would not wish for. But what about situations when trust is present, but that trust is betrayed?

Children are in a sense captives in the adult world. They have no option but to trust the adults who rule their world, and on whom they are dependent for their well-being. In the world of a child, an adult is for this reason an authority figure by default. And the wishes of an authority figure have to be accepted. The wishes… and the desires. This is why anything, absolutely anything to do with sex which involves children should come under the jurisdiction of the law, and children have a right to expect of adult society that the society will protect them in any way that is necessary, whether that be through legal means or social services, or just plain neighborly watchfulness.

Tragically, it is generally the case that the very transgressors who betray this most precious child-to-adult trust are themselves in positions of trust. Those within the family circle and priests are the most obvious examples which come to mind. To me, that sort of betrayal of trust amounts to a kind of emotional treason. And tragically as well, I can think of a number of examples in my own circle of acquaintances who have suffered - literally - through their adult lives because of such a betrayal, as I am sure others who read this will be able to. Even when - and if - the perpetrators are brought before the law, their sentence is a statutory one. For the victim, the sentence is always life.

When such laws are broken, and when such trust is betrayed - whether those lawbreakers and betrayers are parents, priests, or whatever their social standing - they should face the law with no exceptions. And if it is found that such felons have been protected by their own hierarchies, then those hierarchies as aiding and abetting accessories should themselves be answerable to the law as well, again with no exceptions. In cruel reality, however, we well know that certain hierarchies are so institutionalized that their leaders are placed beyond culpability by their very power. And it is more than mere tax breaks that sets religious beliefs on a pedestal. It is the mindset of our society which insists on treating religion as a special case when it comes to granting [1]respect, whether that respect is deserved or not.

Anything else sexually which does no actual harm to consenting others should have nothing whatever to do with someone else's imposed moral standards, whether those standards are driven by personally-held morality or by [2]religious beliefs. And that includes the ever-popular indulgence of making assumptions on behalf of this, that, or the other deity as to what we happen to consider that [3]deity would disapprove of.

Nobody should lay their own guilt trip on someone else - and yet everywhere this is done on a daily basis. We seem almost to revel in the hypocritical arrogance of telling others how we think they should behave in their private lives, perhaps because it gives us a smug sense of our own self-righteousness. But the terminus on this particular line leads to the godless moral squalor of the Westboro Baptist Church – and ultimately to the hooded corpses of young gay men hanged from construction cranes in Iran.

Love, true and sincere, is what matters, and whether that love is between gay or straight men and women should have nothing whatever to do with human laws (other than ones protective of human rights) or imposed religious beliefs anywhere. And trust – that most precious of all trusts which a child has no option but to accept from an adult – should never be betrayed.

Love is what matters.

Hawkwood

Notes:

[1] Please see my previous post Respect.

[2] Should anyone reading this feel moved to cite the Bible as their moral compass for such issues, I invite them to read my previous post Frontier Justice in the Promised Land.

[3] Here’s what the Bible specifically states about homosexuality:

Leviticus 20:13 KJV: “If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.” 'Their blood shall be upon them' is a textual euphemism for 'they shall be stoned to death'.

So if you agree with God’s law as specified in Leviticus that homosexuality should be punishable by death, then presumably for the same reason you also agree that slavery is acceptable, that a rape victim should be forced to marry her rapist, and all the other issues of dubious Biblical morality raised in my above link. In which case, it’s probably time that you went back to living in the Bronze Age – or move to Iran, which is a country that demonstrates what happens when the line between faith and state becomes blurred. But if you disagree that gay men and women should be put to death, then your personal morality is superior to that of the God of the Bible –  and Iranian law – as I for one sincerely hope and trust that it is.    

Sources:

The top image is a frame from my video Jimmy. The other images for this post have been adapted from Scrape TV and other sources. The gay couple (male) are from Reddit, the gay couple (female) are from a photo by Lena Granefelt for Getty Images.

Respect

In this week’s [1]newspaper the Dutch philosopher and columnist Martin Slagter questions the assumed right of religious beliefs to command automatic respect. Our very laws are slanted in favour of this, both socially and politically. But, Slagter wonders, just how justified is such a stance really? I weighed Slagter’s words against my own experiences. Right here in Holland, in my own neighbourhood, Christian Calvinists have averted their eyes and turned their backs on me when I have walked past them, apparently for no other reason than that my appearance is fairly goth (how ironic, then, that both they and myself favour wearing black!). When considered simply as preferred lifestyles, there is no reason whatever that my Calvinist neighbours should not give me as much social acceptance as I would give to them. And yet in some mysterious way, because their own lifestyle is belief-driven, they apparently assume the moral high ground, and their actions leave me feeling judged by them accordingly.

On various Internet forums I have had much experience debating the case for science (drawn from my own professional experience) with numerous Fundamentalist Christian creationists who clearly considered that Charles Darwin is almost interchangeable with the Prince of Darkness himself, and who regarded the theory of evolution as the ultimate heresy. The sheer toxic invective directed at the theory of evolution in general, and Darwin in particular, actually took me aback the first time I encountered it. And it was not so long ago that a furore broke out here in Holland when it was discovered that the Christian Evangelical channel was broadcasting David Attenborough’s commendable Life of Mammals nature series with the scenes which referred directly to evolution discreetly edited out.

To encounter minds right here in the 21st century which sincerely believe that dinosaurs were on board Noah’s Ark (which they had to be, if one also believes that all animals were created within one extremely busy week), and that the Earth is no more than [2]6,000 years old, was an experience for me almost akin to culture shock. I don’t go toe-to-toe with creationists any more (these days I’d sooner more fruitfully spend my time writing my blogs!), but in the two years which I did so, I encountered some very strange minds indeed in the anti-evolution camp. ‘Strange’ in the sense of apparently being willfully misshapen by the very religious beliefs which they sought to uphold.

Borders inside ourselves can be slipped over without our even noticing, and these include borders of human decency: of a sense of moral worth in what we believe as religious faith, and the acts which we perform in the name of such faith. Inevitably, this now includes those acts of social violence and terror which are committed in the name of Islam. To physically attack another – even to take a life - in the name of ‘upholding’ one’s faith is to diminish both oneself and, inevitably, one’s faith as well. And how bitterly ironic is it that you exultantly proclaim that ‘God is great!’ at the very moment that you take the lives of those (as someone doing so surely must believe) who are the creations of that same God?

I personally see no reason why religious belief as such should be granted respect as part of any privileged package deal simply because it is religious belief, and not some other form of moral code or ethical principle. Sure, we should respect the worldviews of others, but that respect should have more to do with a deeply-driven sense of human decency, of ‘doing the right thing’. And in religion, alas, that is not always present. Should I respect a religion whose ultimate authority on this Earth throws a mantle of tacit inaction - even protection - over the systematic and long-term pedophiliac activities of those answerable to it, instead of firmly establishing its own moral authority by conducting a rigorous and sweeping root-and-branch excision from their holy offices of the offending priests who have been responsible for ruining so many young lives?

Steven Weinberg said: “With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things… that takes religion.” Everything in me wishes that it were not so. Desperate experience shows that it is.

Hawkwood

Notes:

[1] Martin Slagter: Geloofsovertuiging is ook maar een mening (‘Religious conviction is also just an opinion’), in De Volkskrant, 3 October, 2012.

[2] For those unfamiliar with the arcane logic of creationists, they rely for this particular bit of reasoning on the calculations of Archbishop James Ussher, who in the 17th century totted up all those Biblical ‘begattings’ to conclude that the creation of the Earth took place on the evening before 24 October, 4004 BC. I try to be tolerant of others, I really do. But truth to tell, inside a creationist’s head is not a place that a sane, well-balanced person would wish to be.

Sources:

Top image: Alberta Human Services. 2nd image: AnimalPhotos! 3rd image: Associated Press.