CHRISTOGENE CHRISTOGENESIS Second Coming
www.WordUn l im i ted . com
2012 LOVE — HOPE — FAITH —
CENTRICITY vs. ACENTRICITY OUR PLACE IN THE ORDER OF NATURE
SYLVESTER L STEFFEN
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ADULT FAITH STUDY II
CHRISTOGENESIS SECOND COMING
CHRISTIC CALLING Mission of Faith‐Hope‐Love
Sylvester L Steffen
Copyright 2012
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Introducing the 2012 Edition of the POETREE Trilogies
[To be published Summer/Fall 2012, www.AuthorHouse.com]
NOVOGENESIS — METAGENESIS — THEOGENESIS
PURPOSE: the POETREE Trilogies mean to show the way of healing from hurt of medieval fixation in dualism, centrism and sexism.
SCOPE: the complicit culpability of church and culture in imposing this dead‐end “trinity” fixation on global populations is exposed.
Dualism, centrism and sexism are deceptions inherited from medieval culture. This “antithetical trinity” traps religion and people in knots of their own making; religious/ cultural dogma alienates faith as belonging to the supernatural realm, and reason to the natural realm; this artifice of alienation puts faith and reason at cross‐purposes, and radicalizes the status‐quo fix in dualism, centrism and sexism.
Top‐down authoritarianism elects a male‐exclusive hierarchy to determine faith function in the realm of the supernatural, leaving alienated reason the lesser place in the realm of the natural. In their exclusive self‐election, males claim divine prerogative and access to grace from above, with authority from God to parcel it to people below. Male exclusivity reaches into divine‐male self‐identity, i.e., PATER, FILIUS et SPIRITUS SANCTUS. Femaleness in male thinking belongs to corruptible nature, while maleness pertains to incorruptible, supernatural faith; this artifice removes femaleness from Godhead consciousness.
The understanding of co‐evolved faith (female) and reason (male) is a Postmodern religious insight that shows cultures the way out of their fix in dualism, centrism and sexism. The POETREE Trilogies illumine the evolving Worldview of essential faith/ reason codependency in accord with Vatican II insight.
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1. CHRISTIC CALLING
“CHRISTOGENESIS” means “Christ Birthing”, what the continuing Presence and work of God in Creation is about; specifically, about the continuing uplift of self‐reflective consciousness in the individual person. In equal terms, everyone possesses the faculties and mission to be agent of divinity in the evolution of ascendant consciousness/ conscience.
The dynamic impulse of wisdom compels every person in the way of individual living, from “Alpha” (birth) to “Omega” (death), to fulfill a new measure of consciousness and to pass on acquired wisdom to new generations in new comings. The inheritance of Faith‐Hope‐Love is the means of being grace to one another. Grace is soul‐consciousness received by birth from parents, nurtured in family/ community and imprinted in nature. We carry the collective spirituality of those who have gone before us and our mission is to bring forward ascendant grace for generations to come. This study is reflection on personal mission in life.
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2. WISDOM’S VOICE
Allegorically, metaphorically and categorically, Wisdom is recognized as the female Voice of God. This is true of Abrahamic culture and throughout Christian culture, even though side‐by‐side with this profession, sexual abuse, discrimination and alienation of women continues. How can this disjunction be countenanced, much less justified? New analysis and synthesis (Vatican II) are in process as to the shifting of consciousness away from Garden‐of‐Eden presumptions to new scientific insights into evolving life and consciousness.
The cultural inheritance of marginalizing and repressing women, because they are female, is a traumatic scar on every soul, is radically wrong and cannot be justified by faith or reason. The public face of Christian church is hurting for credibility because of its failure to face up to its wrongful culture of female alienation from equal leadership roles with men.
Male church hierarchy are in official denial of their cultural sin of violence toward women and nature; the end of violence against both depends on cultures getting sexuality right and relationships with women right. Fixation in Medieval culture/ theology blinds hierarchy to the cultural reality of evolution and from openness to the lessons of evolution. The fatal fixations of medievalism are dualism, centrism and sexism.
In the interest of communal integrity and honesty, modern women cannot and will not countenance hierarchical ignorance, arrogance and denial, nor should the male laity.
3. PERSPECTIVE on DIVINE/ HUMAN HYPOSTASIS
“Hypostasis” is a Greek word meaning understanding. CHRISTOGENESIS is about the evolution (birthing) of divinity‐consciousness at work in the Order of Nature. In human intelligence, self‐reflective awareness, striving for the high perfection of Godlikeness, is where the evolution of divinity consciousness takes place. Every newborn is a “Christ of Second Coming”, born under common origin, privilege and duty. CHRISTOGENESIS is the birthing of Godlikeness in the lives of individuals, and in global intuitional consciousness.
4. The “CONFESSIONAL” CHURCH
Who needs confession? We all need the cleansing of soul that comes with the admission of mistakes. People and institutions need inter‐confessional admission of mistakes, that is, as individuals we need to admit and correct for our mistakes; and institutions need to admit and correct for their mistakes. Confession is a two‐way street; only by confessional communication do we establish mutual trust, person to person, and institution to person.
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Presently, confession is a one‐way street that funnels the faithful to confess to the institution.
Institutional sin is presumed by the institution not to exist; institutional Roman Catholicism
claims infallibility. Under such a system there is no possibility of a trust relationship when the
institution abuses its power and walks all over people with impunity.
Except for truthful communication, there is no trust; except for informed consciousness, there
is no trust; and except for committed conscience, there is no trust. Trimorphic Resonance is the
way of trust, of faith, hope and love; for people and for church, a two‐way street.
The institutional sin isn't just the overt sexual abuse of women and children, though there is
that, but it is the scandalizing of innocents that is rampant, commonplace, unrecognized and
disregarded. I confess that I sin. From childhood, through my seminary years, approximately a
twenty‐year span, I made monthly confessions as prescribed. Every confession involved stress
and duress, stress in trying to come up with “credible” sins, and duress that I was blind to real
sins I should be confessing. Since leaving the Seminary some fifty years ago, I have avoided the
confessional.
The greatest burden I carry is distrust of church that is and has been the ceiling, the walls and
the floor of my conscious existence from birth to the present time. Hurt and anger underlie my
distrust of the church’s imposition of confessional obligation; hurt from having a guilt complex
imposed on me by indoctrination before I was 10 years old, and anger for institutional violation
of innocence that imposes guilt and fear on children before the age of competency as to the
nature of sin and moral responsibility. The wound of the guilt‐and‐fear complex didn’t clear up
for me until after I was 25 years old. I sense the same abuse of childhood innocence continuing
at the present time.
Herod slaughtered the innocents at Jesus' birth. Jesus warned his disciples against this sin...
"better that a millstone be hung around the neck of one who scandalizes the least of these:
Unless you become as one of these there is no place for you in my company."
Confession needs to come not just from institutional church but also from other corporations of
overreach. Where is institutional admission of sin against the people? Where the restitution?
Where the compassion? Where the purpose of amendment? Where, systemic corrections for
failed medievalism? For corporate capitalism’s unconscionable waste of nature?
5. I CONFESS TO YOU MY SISTERS AND BROTHERS
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God already knows my sin. My confession is my distrust of the church institution that imposes
on everyone the obligation to confess his/ her sins to it. The institution requires me to believe
that its judgment is infallible in matters of what I must believe (faith) and do (morals)… but the
same church institution denies any sin on its part as to guilt trauma it imposes on the people,
especially on women and children.
Its sin is fixation in fideism (dualism, centrism and sexism), the status‐quo presumption that
denies the equivalent correlation of faith and reason. Institutional fideism denies that faith and
reason equally correlate to the “supernatural” as well as to the “natural”. It is wrong to
dislocate faith and reason from their mutual correlation and essential codependency in the
personal conduct of every person.
Now I “go to confession” daily, hourly, according to decisions I make, fail to make, and actions I
take and offense I cause to others. When I realize the offense I have caused I acknowledge it to
the person I wronged, and I apologize and make retribution; in this also, I know I still fail.
6. CORPORATE POLITICS, Centric vs. Acentric
But of course, politics confuse everything; center, left‐of‐center, right‐of‐center are more muddled even than centric/ acentric Cosmology, Philosophy and Theology; philosophy and theology do get entangled in politics. The Religious Right identifies with the Political Right, and the Religious Left identifies with the Political Left; and the polarized right and left war with each other to win people from the Center.
So we get a sense that it is better “at the Center” than to be captured by the extremes of the Right and the Left, and joining in their wars. The general sense is growing that it is better at the Center than to be pitted in perpetual antagonism.
How do centricity and acentricity correlate, whether with the Right or the Left? Acentricity correlates with the Middle, neither absolutely centric nor acentric, whether at the Right or at the Left. The question is “what does it mean to be at the Right or at the Left? Left and Right mostly refer to power politics; the absolutism of the Right refers to power centered under absolute control, imperial dominion, where money, resources and power favor corporate absolutism (Republican). The absolutism of the Left calls for People Power, where power and resources belong to the People (Democrat), distributed and acentric not authoritarian top‐down and corporate‐owned. The Middle Estate of “both/ and” compromise is probably the best option.
Medievalism is the epitome of centric, top‐down power and control, absolutist, as in political/ papal monarchy. Today, the Roman Catholic Church hangs on as the last bastion of Imperial/
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Religious Centrism. But with Vatican II, the People Church was born, a theology that recognizes authority is vested in The People, not in an absolutist Papal Monarchy, corporately imitated.
Religious overtones of Right and Left war with each other as in American Politics, a democracy (Democrats) as opposed to the corporate aristocracy/ hierarchy (Republican). The “New Spring” of Vatican II, of People Power/ Authority, is washing across the globe and is likely to become even more “acentric” in the pattern of Acentric Cosmology, Philosophy and Theology.
If WISDOM is the preferred option, then we must conclude that Acentric Politics is the long term sustainable pattern of Cosmic Order, in the Naturalis Sacramentum Ordinis, “the wave of the future”.
7. Too Big to See, THE SIN WE ARE IN
The world is cooking and so are we. Like the frog in the pot of cold water over the fire, we are
heating up and don’t know it, and when we do, will it be too late? This is the gist of our
predicament. Richard W. Miller asks “Why Don’t We Take Climate Change Seriously?” [“Global
Suicide Pact”, COMMONWEAL, March 23, 2012, pp. 12‐15]
Miller writes: “when my two sons enter their thirties in the 2040s, the destruction of the
world’s coral reefs from warmer and more acidic oceans will be well under way… an essentially
irreversible loss… triggering a mass extinction of ocean ecosystems… When my boys enter their
forties… the global water crisis will contribute to a global food crisis, with insufficient fresh
water for irrigating crops… many of the world’s mountain glaciers… will be substantially
diminished or gone… California losing 50 to 70 percent of its forests. The Amazon rainforests
will suffer devastating drought‐driven fire. Seas worldwide will have risen one foot, and coastal
cities will enter the first phase of their destruction…
“We have a moral responsibility to join together in our communities… [to] communicate to our
elected leaders that we do not want to be complicit, through silence, in the mass death of
human populations and the mass extinction of species…” [Richard E. Miller, Editor, “God,
Creation, and Climate Change, A Catholic Response to the Environmental Crisis. Orbis Books].
Related to this “failure of reason” is the mass exodus of young people from traditional religions.
Plain and simple, the “faith” of medieval theology, the underpinning of Christian religions to
this day, is not faith, it is fideism, belief fixated in a discredited worldview not acceptable to
Postmodern consciousness. Young people get it.
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What don’t hierarchs get? That faith without reason is mindless. Reason is premised on truth,
on worldview consciousness that squares with informed knowledge. Medievalism is history. We
need to get over it and move on.
8. The Postmodern Conundrum
Common wellbeing and survival are critically at risk in this Postmodern time. There is no escape
from these risks and other related risks except time, and moral awakening. The kind of church
needed is defined by the times. If truth ever needed to be accepted and preached from the
housetops, it is now. To live in the past, disconnected from the times, is to aggravate risks,
complicate reality.
We need to think a New Postmodern church into existence and make ourselves that New
Church. We are a Postmodern people, the people of the times. You, I and everyone are the
problem but also the solution. To understand that we belong to the complexity of the global
conundrum is the beginning of wisdom, a move toward truth, resolution and authentication.
The conundrum is that we are characterized by the past but the past offers no solution; and we
characterize the future by interjecting the past into it, our false tendencies as well as our
authentic compulsions. We are the evolutionary bridge between the past and the future. The
destiny of our children rests on our judgments and actions. It is useful for us to draw up a
notebook of issues; but to what point if we don’t mean to do something about them?
www.evolution101.org
We have yet to learn what evolution means; not ignore it, not dismiss it, but become active
agents of symbiotic purpose. In the least, the “symbiotic purpose” of intentional evolution is
the ground work of Eucharistic Altruism. Evolution is about more than muscle and brawn, and
survival of the fittest; it’s about knowledge, imagination and creativity, the ongoing process of
Second Enlightenment, the quest of wisdom. www.secondenlightenment.org
As a point of beginning, we need to accept Modernity for what it did, the good and the bad. It
gave us a splintered Christian Catholicism, different denominations, each with its ideological
slant; but even with splintering, denominations hold in common belief in essential Christianity,
“to love God with our whole soul and all our strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves”.
Commitment to sustaining nature is about the obligation of love, love of God and neighbor, for
we find God in nature and in our relationships with one another. Modernity was a time of
schism, even as was Medievalism that birthed Modernity.
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The all‐encompassing schism of Medievalism is its sharp distinction of the “natural” from the
“supernatural”. The supernatural for Medievalism is the realm of spirits, God, angels and devils;
and belonging to the realm of the supernatural is faith, in distinction from reason which
belongs to the corrupt realm of reason, the natural. Christian denominations, including Roman
Catholicism, still presume this fundamental schism, namely, that faith is above, outside and
controlling over the realm of reason, thus all the dogma propositions of Medieval belief.
Modern consciousness of evolution posits a very different worldview than Medievalism. Which
is more correct? In the least, experience tells us that the worldview of Medievalism is the
author of the conundrum that bedevils global life today, and is not a sustainable guide for
living; whereas, evolution gives insights into ecological sustainability, the minimum condition
for life on Earth. The worldview of cleaved ideologies is unsustainable; the accommodation of
faith and reason together holds greater promise. Christian belief accepts the divine/ human
“Hypostasis”, namely, that the life and teaching of Jesus, the Christ, represents the
interpenetration of the realms of the natural and the supernatural, and that each is the means
(subject) and end (object) to the other. Thus, faith and reason are mutually codependent, one
informing the other, each as subject (means) and object (end).
9. Sexual Ignorance
In Medieval times there was no scientific understanding of human sexuality. Prevailing
knowledge was based on experience and observation; experience of hormonal passion to self‐
propagate and observation of animals reproducing. On superficial evidence it seemed males
produce life’s “seed” and females provide the place for its growth. Thus, males presumed
priority role in the origin of life; the sperm was thought to be a miniature person, normally
male, but female, by some anomalous function during embryonic formation. (Thomas Aquinas).
This understanding gave justification for male dominion over females and for claim in divine
preference.
Present day science of DNA changes everything. DNA is a female produced life‐mechanism that
preceded the distinction of male DNA and separate sexuality. While primacy of origin is with
femaleness, the equivalency of sexuality is based on contemporaneous evolution of DNA and
differentiation of gene‐mixing and sexual expression. Symbiotic evolution implicated
microorganisms in the mechanisms of photon capture and carbohydrate roles in all life; as
Isaiah says, “all flesh is grass”, i.e., photosynthetic carbohydrates.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chillcuring I know of no issue more critical to authentic faith than
“getting it right with sex”. The analogy seems apt that males are the “swizzlestick in the cocktail
of life”, something I came up with decades ago probably as I stirred a scotch‐on‐the‐rocks
cocktail, swizzlestick in hand. The ovum contributes three‐fourths of the DNA in every boy and
girl baby. DNA is in three different kinds, two are present in cell cytoplasm and one is in the cell
nucleus; cytoplasmic DNA has to do with providing accessible carbohydrate energy (plastids)
and metabolizing energy (mitochondria). The ovum provides cytoplasmic DNA to all cells, and
it provides one‐half the nuclear DNA; the sperm provides the other half of nuclear DNA.
Sexual ignorance plays into the hands of male arrogance and cultic fideism. Violence against
women is enabled by sexual ignorance and manipulation of male pretense and purposes of
control and domination. Woman power is rightly on the ascendancy because of the evolution of
knowledge. When women achieve their rightful and equivalent role with males, all life benefits;
one must believe and hope that the days of cultic alienation of women by institutional religion
are numbered and greater cultural respect for nature is on the rise.
10. A Bill of Differences
So, what issues does Postmodernity have with Medievalism/ Modernity, and the theology of
cleaved faith/ reason? Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, S.J., identifies common challenges of
Postmodernity “… the unjust distribution of goods and resources, poverty and hunger, and the
problems of violence and maintaining peace… understanding the limits of civil law in relation to
moral law. These problems are very real… and they are often the subject to a very lively
dialectic of interpretation”. [Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, S.J., “Teaching the Faith in a Postmodern
World”, AMERICA Magazine, May 12, 2008]
Cardinal Martini observes that the dialectic of interpretation is broadly divided on preferences
and emphasis. People are divided over “historical age”. He says, “Some are still living in the
time of the Council of Trent, others in the First Vatican Council. Certain people have digested
the Second Vatican Council well or poorly; others are well advanced into the third millennium.
We are not all true contemporaries, and this has always been a great burden for the church and
requires plenty of patience and discernment…. I would like to put these problems aside for now
and consider our pedagogical and cultural situation and the problems associated with
education and teaching.”
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In “Gaudium et spes” the Second Vatican Council acknowledged the worldview shift to
evolution and that theological developments presumed on medieval worldview could not stand
unchanged with understandings of evolution. Unlike Vatican I, Vatican II forthwith stated that
new analysis and synthesis of theological understandings (“a matter as important as can be”,
Intro. 5) were called for. The analysis and synthesis called for have not happened; instead a
calculated effort continues to stymie the urgent agendum called for by Vatican II. The people
are largely of a mind with Vatican II, and failure of hierarchy to accommodate this sensus
fidelium is causing great consternation to the people and massive disaffection for the church
entangled in the worldview dogma of medievalism.
11. The Postmodern Mind
The religious/ cultural healing of a disintegrating church (world) isn’t possible except we “…
seek a fruitful dialogue between people and the Gospel, and to renew our pedagogy in the light
of the example of Jesus”.
The Postmodern mind can be defined “in terms of oppositions… an atmosphere and a
movement of thought that stands opposed to the world as we have known it until now. This
mentality willingly distances itself from metaphysics, Aristotelian, the Augustinian tradition and
from Rome, considered the center of the church.” It distances itself “…from a former Platonic
Christian world in which was taken for granted the primacy of truth over feelings, of
intelligence over the will, of the spirit over the flesh, of unity over pluralism, of asceticism over
life, of the eternal over the temporal.” In the Postmodern world “feeling [is] over will…
impressions over intelligence… arbitrary over logic and… pleasure over an ascetic and
prohibitive morality is a world… where a person exercises, or believes he can exercise his
personal empire and creativity.” (ID)
Cardinal Martini makes urgent points which illustrate why lay communication with church
hierarchy is much needed. This awareness is growing amongst the hierarchy. Retired Australian
Bishop Geoff Robinson has made the case why human sexuality needs to be studied by bishops
and updated, indeed, as Vatican II urged the whole spectrum of theology/ ecclesiology and
catholic faith culture. [Bishop urges change in 'church teaching concerning all sexual
relationships' Bishop: Total re-examination of Catholic faith, culture needed] “Speaking
in a brief interview with NCR following the talk, Robinson said if the church wanted to convince
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people it was "finally serious" in its efforts to confront abuse, it might have to call a council
specifically to deal with the crisis.
“Wednesday's talk, hosted by Richard Sipe, Dominican Fr. Tom Doyle, Illinois Supreme Court
Justice Anne Burke and other prominent area Catholics, is part of a speaking tour Robinson is
making across the country this month. About 150 archdiocesan priests, former city aldermen
and other city and state officials gathered for the talk.
“Robinson, who served as auxiliary bishop of Sydney from 1984 until his retirement in 2004, has
been a source of controversy in the church since at least 2002, when he called for Pope John
Paul II to commission a church‐wide study of clerical sexual abuse of minors in the church.
“Robinson began the talk by mentioning his experience from 1994 to 2003 in chairing an
Australian bishops' committee tasked with producing a response to the sexual abuse crisis in his
country. He said his time in that role was a "very profound personal experience."
"At the end of it," he said, "I'd come to a profound sense of disillusionment with the whole
response of the church, particularly at its highest levels."
http://ncronline.org/news/bishop‐total‐re‐examination‐catholic‐faith‐culture‐needed
12. Meeting the Postmodern Mind
The Postmodern mind is open and sensitive in the moment to its emotion. Excess rationality is a
restraint over freedom. The classical tradition does not verify authentic civilization or what is
fundamentally true. Dialog is always open in readiness to accept difference and the plural faces
of reality. The flowering of self‐identity is frustrated by excess authority. What is beautiful is
true; truth is not except what is beautiful, even in the pain of necessity, i.e., Eucharistic
necessity, life, death, tragedy, triumph, etc. Technology unveils nature and interprets natural
working. Purpose is open to discern what works and closed to what does not work.
Providence is always open to moving beyond “sin’s” dead ends; “sin”, meaning falling short.
Life’s sacrifice is the necessity of possibility. Moral rules are obligated to the discernment of
wellbeing. The authenticity of purpose is fed not from on‐high, but from centrifugal chaos
(electrons) equal to the centripetal grounding at the center (nucleus). The universal does not
necessarily count for more than what is temporary, in the moment. In fact, the moment
matters because it is the conditioned and unconditional bridge of the future.
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It cannot be said that the Postmodern mind is all wrong, even though it lives more dangerously
because exposure to the chaotic is less settled at the margins than at the grounded center.
Openness to chaos is a prevailing atmosphere that needs to be taken into account even as faith
is accountable to reason, and reason to faith. So, the Postmodern world offers special
challenges to the teaching of faith, not to say that it is closed to truth and stability that grounds
in faith.
In this Postmodern atmosphere, Cardinal Martini makes four points: “do not be surprised by
diversity; take risks; befriend the poor; and nourish yourself in the Gospel”. (ID)
“The bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world” (Jn6: 33)
“Bread” in its broadest meaning is all the grace that nature offers to the wellbeing of all life
informed in the consciousness of other; all selfness is in the context of all other. Jesus made
himself one with the poor, the radical otherness that befriends those in greatest need of
“bread”. Life’s greatest risk is faith, but also life’s greatest satisfaction and promise. We should
not be frightened with the new and the different, for newness is the necessity of change. St
Paul admonishes, “Examine everything with discernment; keep what is good; keep your
distance from every trace of evil.” (1 Thes5: 21‐25). Matthew admonishes “whoever wishes to
save his life will lose it; but the one who loses his life for my sake will save it.” (Mt 16:25)
For faith to be nourished, and flourish one needs be humble, quiet, and exercise self‐mastery
and feed one’s mind with “divine” reading. Faith’s living word continues to be proven and
verified; because something is desirable doesn’t mean it serves wellbeing; discernment is
enabled in quiet reflection; and humility grounds one to be receptive in discerning the truth.
13. On the Passing of Medievalism
The medieval catastrophe is of a piece with presumed papal infallibility and Humanae Vitae —
institutional church’s insistent and persistent rejection of lay authenticity. The artifice of
imagining two distinctly separate realms of reality, the natural (secular) and the supernatural
(religious), puts at odds the understanding (hypostasis) of the human/ divine relationship and
the essential mutuality of the divine/ human in the Naturalis Sacramentum Ordinis; human
understanding puts the supernatural in the same realm with the natural, and makes each
accountable to the other; supernatural reasoning is accountable to natural reasoning as natural
reasoning is accountable to supernatural.
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Eucharistic understanding (conscionable altruism) belongs equally to female/ male persons in
the joined understanding of the supernatural/ natural, not in the cultic alienation of the
supernatural from the natural, nor in presumptions of male superiority.
The artifice of alienation extends in a destructive way to male self‐presumption of greater
Godlikeness (incorruptible, supernatural) than females (corruptible, natural). This presumptive
dualism puts the world of the secular (politics) in the realm of natural corruptibility and religion
in the realm of supernatural incorruptibility. Perhaps the most corruptive arrogance that
Roman Catholicism has suffered is the self‐proclaimed dogma of infallibility (Pius IX, First
Vatican Council). Hierarchical “convenience” (putting religion above and apart from secularity)
has the effect of letting corrupted politics have free reign; thus, the cultured “wall of
separation” between church and state. And so, the Christian mandate of the preferential option
for the poor, the marginalized and the disenfranchised, is easily set aside in the political
preferences of corporate power brokers.
The Second Vatican Council, consistent with Thomistic theology, “grace presupposes nature”,
affirmed the non‐dualism of grace, nature, faith and reason in its proposition: “faith supposes
reason as grace supposes nature”. Grace and faith belong to the Naturalis Sacramentum
Ordinis. In other words: religion supposes secularity, and is accountable to secularity as
secularity is accountable to religion — their relationship is mutual, reciprocal. In the same way,
faith holds reason accountable as reason holds faith accountable, and women hold men
accountable as men hold women accountable. Conscionable mutuality puts interpersonal
relationship at the heart of moral accountability in the codependent realms of the supernatural
(religious) and natural (secular).
Religion and politics are equally obligated by public conscience. The joining of politics (natural)
and religion (supernatural) is necessary and unavoidable even as the joining of the natural and
supernatural is unavoidable. Hierarchical church/ state are both accountable at all times to The
People. The imperial/ hierarchical arrogance of Medievalism has lost all credibility and is
unworkable in Postmodern consciousness. It’s for us to carry the Graces of consciousness
forward in fidelity to common humanity, common life.
14. The MISAPPROPRIATION of DIVINITY
God, as Author of all existence, “appropriates” all creation, all life, in the same way, and by way
of symbiotic correlation. The laws of symbiosis are laid down step‐by‐step over time, are tested
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and genetically imprinted in DNA. The RNA imprinting and reprinting of genetic codes occur
repeatedly in every living cell, each according to the phylum to which each belongs. Experience
tests, proves and changes DNA imprint according to necessities of experience. Our task is to
authenticate the received Scripture of DNA and self‐accommodate to life’s urgent changes/
surprises.
Humankind takes liberties with nature’s way at its own peril. Fidelity to life is fidelity to
received wisdom; ours is the task of authenticating personally received Scripture, as individuals,
as family, as community. Received wisdom informs us in the Godly virtues of faith, hope and
love, which we authenticate in personal/ communal living by way of communication,
consciousness and conscience.
As the sage Latinist Lothair says: “Tempora mutantur et nos in illis mutamur.“ (“Times are
changing and we are changing in them”.) Testing and accommodating nature’s word and work
is Wisdom’s Work, what authentic DIVINITY CONSCIOUSNESS does and requires. The wasting of
nature is a human crisis of misappropriation that shouts to high heaven for correction in our
time.
15. Faith Inheritance Knows No Preference, No Discrimination
On balance, the logic of genetics is equivalently discriminatory and non‐discriminatory, partial and impartial.
Streams of benefits fill the valleys of deficits; what one lacks, abounds in another. The generosity of soul spreads
benefits and shares in other’s deficits; in Scriptures’ words, “mountains will be leveled and valleys filled”.
Each of us is called to claim ownership of faith‐inheritance and to share ownership with others. Every child is
begotten by codes of common genetics and grows by natural processes. Genetics treasure faith experience in
Natural Sacrament — sharing treasure is work of conscience. Claim of ownership is a personal/ social/ cultural
process that enlightens consciousness by inter‐faith dialogue. In person and in community, faith‐experience
intends sharing benefits. When we deny sharing we compromise our own faith‐ownership and enable alienation.
Alienation isn’t the way of symbiosis, Eucharist and ecumenism, rather, the ownership of each relies on equal
ownership of the others. Symbiosis is by way of intentional Eucharist and intentional ecumenism. Altruistic
consciousness is nature’s way of advancing symbiosis, Eucharist and ecumenism. In the “Naturalis Sacramentum
Ordinis”, each depends on the other; symbiosis supposes Eucharist and ecumenism; Eucharist supposes symbiosis
and ecumenism; and ecumenism supposes symbiosis and Eucharist.
These are what “Christogenesis” (Second Coming) is about. By shared ownership of faith we become “Christ” to
one another, the way of owning in common, Faith, Hope and Love. Shared faith gives wings to communication,
consciousness and conscience, the way of Trimorphic Resonance and communal Godlikeness.
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