Adelphiasophism
Adelphiasophist Correspondence: Your Views, Our Replies 1
Abstract
© 1998 The Adelphiasophists and AskWhy! Publications. Freely distribute as long as it is unaltered and properly attributed
Contents Updated: Friday, 24 December 2004
Kirk Twig
As a minister of the gospel, I read some of your blaspheme and it made me angry. I started to type an angry letter, but there was a conviction there. I just pray that a mercy will fall from heaven into your lives and the lies that you are telling against the word of God. Anyone can take a point or two from the Bible and make it seem false, but what you can’t do is take the entire context of the Bible and then prove that one statement is false. The bible is the most historically proven book on this earth. I pray that the love of Jesus himself will come into your lives. I hate your sin, but I pray for mercy and Gods grace in your soul.
Saviour Shirlie
Cast off your superstition! You will do more good for your grandchildren, if you consider what the state of their bodies might be rather than bothering about souls. When you fine Christian rulers of the world have torn out the Goddess’s placenta in the forests, your descendants will not be able to breathe. But what do you care, you will be living in a balmy place! Selfishness! You save yourself at the expense of your children. Your preference for illusions to truth will see untold suffering in the world, as it has historically in 2000 years of “Christendom.” Doesn’t your judge take selfishness and willful ignorance into account?
I’ll give you a blessing: May you cease to be selfish, that the Goddess will find you.
Kirk Twig
What are you talking about? I have not knowingly said anything against God and our Saviour. This e-mail caught me blind-sided. What have I specifically said to anyone on the net about this subject. I don’t appreciate your anger at me b/c I haven’t a clue to any of this. Please respond. Love in Christ.
Saviour Shirlie
- You e-mailed me.
- I replied, copying your original note as a standard e-mail courtesy.
- You therefore know what I am talking about because you started the correspondence and, if someone is being mischievous with your e-mail address, you know what the original message was whether it was from you or not.
- If you really do not know what it is about, somebody at your end is playing the goat and the correspondence can end right here.
B J Webster
Thank you so much for your web pages. They are the impetus I needed to think deeply about my life.
I came to your pages through a search engine, searching for Enheduanna. She is now acclained as the world’s first known author, by scholars of literature and art history. She wrote beautiful hymns to Inanna around 2300 BCE in Mesopotamia. There is an alabaster disk rescued from the ruins at Ur with her image on the front and her identification on the back. In one of her hymns she said “I am Enheduanna, high priestess of Innana” and I heard her voice, strong and clear, from over 4000 years ago.
If you have time, you might want to take on buddhism. For many in our society it has become a viable alternative to christianity even though women are denigrated (in all three branches: hinayana, mahayana, and vajrayana) and told that they must wait to be reborn as a man before they can achieve enlightenment. Students are told that self and nature are illusions and that enlightment comes when one does not feel attachment to anything.
I was born into a “strong catholic family,” escaped into the “chains” of buddhism and am finally freeing myself, day by day, by listening to my intuition.
Again, I am delighted with your web site. Best wishes.
From Saviour Shirlie
Thank you for your generous words, information about Enheduanna and suggestions about Buddhism. So far as Buddhists esteem Nature, we esteem the Buddhists. I agree that Buddhism has its faults but of all the “global” religions it is perhaps the best choice. Of course, there are many Buddhist webpages on the net, and we can add nothing to what they say already.
Please keep us in your bookmarks and visit us when you can. You might also like “Resurgence” the pages for the magazine of the same name. It tries to be “all things to all men” by seeking to appeal to people of all religions even the patriarchal ones, but is sincerely protective of Nature.
All my regards.
tony@prodigal.co
My sincerest compliments to you and your Website. I happened upon your pages during an Altavista search for Matriarchy. I feel as I have found a home within your pages. I love your pages but they are very very difficult to read due to the white text on a gold background. Could you use a darker background color perhaps?
I have always felt more comfortable in the presence of women and never understood why! Men are rude and crude and I have always felt disappointed in them. I now believe that my comfort with women is/was because that the world is naturally a Matriarchy. Something I read very often but do not understand in the slightest, is that males need to “get in touch with their feminine side”. What in the world does that mean? Could you give me some direction in that regard? We males have what I consider to be a curse. The curse of our sex drive! It is a tremendous burden, and a constant distraction, which is a social handicap. Sometimes I wish it would cease, forever… but that would be a curse too. There must be some method of self control but it eludes me entirely.
Shirlie
Your browser is not reading the correct background which is a picture of dark green leaves. The failure of Bill Gates and Netscape to implement properly standards they have agreed is a nightmare. On our front page we say we optimise for IE4 and we do it not because we love Bill but simply because IE4 at least works fairly consistently whereas we have found Netscape to be very temperamental and badly behaved and we haven’t time or patience to optimise for both. IE4 projects our dark background but evidently your browser does not. Anyway, thanks for telling us. We find that people do not let you know things, so there is no way they can be corrected. We’ll put up a darker plain background now, for those browsers that cannot show the picture.
You alight upon some important points here, Anthony, that many modern men cannot understand, not so much because of the compulsion of their sex drive—that was always thus—but because of the macho emphasis of modern society where “men are men and women are women.” This is absurd. For example, the most sexually aggressive women are women with a high testosterone level. As you will know, testosterone is the MALE sex hormone. Equally a man with a low testosterone level is not necessarily any less a man. The world is much less clear cut than people have been led to believe, unless they have had a good education.
So, when some people say men should get more in touch with their feminine side, they mean that men are not a type of animal entirely different from another type of animal called women. Both men and women are a mixture of qualities which are crudely apportioned as male qualities or female qualities. In fact, they are human qualities, and while it is true that such factors as hormonal balance will make a woman often behave in a certain way and a man to behave in a different way, there is nothing clear cut about it!
There is not the least reason why men should be considered brave and brutal and women scared and soft, or women as caring and loving and men hating and dangerous. These are just fashions that have been adopted as modern mythology, and what is needed is a determination to counter them with truth.
So, women should stop the nonsense of pretending that we are living in the times of the Homeric Greeks or the Vikings and wanting brutal savages of men to save them from other brutal savages of men. Equally men must recognise that the stereotype of the Arnold Schwartzenigger or Silvester Stallone, men who on the movies are not just big and bad but also are immune to flames and bullets, is just kiddies’ fantasy and not to be copied as a model.
As to the male sex drive itself, it cannot be denied—it is there—but it is not so powerful that it cannot be overcome when it is inappropriate, and if that were not true, it would have been impossible to have a civilised society at all. The point is “respect.” If a woman is respected then she is respected for herself not just ogled as a sex object. Incidentally, the same is true in reverse, since the modern idea of feminine equality is that women should behave like men, and ogle men as sex objects too. In more genteel societies of old, hypocritical as they were, both men and women had to behave in courteous ways towards each other, according to the conventions of the time and male savagery only began in private after marriage.
Today women are gradually demanding more protection from brutalised husbands after marriage but seem to be missing the point before, in many ways. The macho emphasis in society teaches simple, naive and unintelligent men that women are “available.” Since no one is “available” except by consent, society—and that means women and men like yourself who are concerned about these things—needs to see to it that stupid stereotypes are replaced by sensible ones that help us to live together rather than set us against each other. Since the macho stereotypes are aggressive ones, we have to chose feminine stereotypes.
There is no magic solution. Women and men, who without embarrassment can find a feminine side, have to lead the way. They will find that they are Adelphiasophists.
Sheila@sk.ca,
I am on a search for the truth. I have read so much for and against Christianity. What I have concluded to date is that there are strong arguments for each case. There is nothing to prove either 100% true or false. I am no crazy! I dont like to believe anything unless it is proved and I analyse everything.
I was very skeptical of Christianity, and I still have many doubts. So much seems like it comes straight out of the dark ages. However, three times I asked God in desperation to prove his existence to me and I even told Him how and all three times he complied. Even my husband, who is atheist, was incredibly amazed, although he admits what happened was unbelievable unless he witnessed it himself, he is still athiest. This leads me to believe that if you harden your heart to Christianity, not even a miracle would lead you to believe.
Why did God allow me three miracles—I do not really know and it often worries me—why does He not give everyone a miracle. Would be so much simpler, do you not think? Maybe it has something to do with Him knowing I cannot trust anyone after an extremely abusive childhood. I cannot really say and I even try analyse this. Seems crazy, I know, wont even go into detail as you dont know me—I could be insane! What it boils down to is this—I think that God knows that even if He had to appear before us there are those that would doubt. I am learning to trust Him, but it has not come easy to me.
I was an athiest for many many years. How can you believe there is a loving God when you are abused so terribly as a child—certainly there was no one protecting me. However, what made the difference was that I truly opened my heart to God without all the sarcasm that I often read in sites against Christianity.
Although I still question the contradictions in the bible, some of them I can now understand when critics still sarcastically pick them apart. It annoyes me to no end when Christians say things that they do not know are true or not. For example when I asked a Christian friend why she believes the bible is true she said because Jesus was the only one who died for our sins and rose again. When Christians do that they cause more people to doubt than anything. Anyway, I know for sure there is something more to life and there is a God because I would be a fool not to—after what I experienced.
Shirlie
1. Almost all we get offered is Christianity, so it is not surprising that people turn to it. But Christianity has an awful history that no one can read, and still believe that the Christian god is good. You were abused as a child but the Christians abused thousands and thousands of people for centuries. One eight year old girl was tried as a witch because her schoolfriends said she could make mice!
2. Christianity caused the Dark Ages!
3. You do not say what the miracles were, Sheila, so it is impossible for me to take a view on them, but most prayers are answered from what is within you already, not what is supposed to come from something outside. If you think that God will answer your prayers, and praying taps your reserves of inner strength and the unity of Nature, you will think it was God who answered. Prayers ARE answered, quite often, and it is easy then to think it was God that did it. I have said elsewhere that if you sincerely believe a rabbit’s foot will bring you luck, then it will. Every bit of luck you have is because of the rabbit’s foot, but what is more important is that it will give you psychological strength. “I haven’t got the courage to go for a job.” Pray to the Goddess, or to God, or to the rabbit’s foot, and there is an excellent chance that you will find the courage—especially if you really believe.
4. Maybe the miracles were a combination of a change of luck and finding your inner strength. Your question suggests that God is not responsible, because any good God could not be so arbitrary. What sort of fairness was it in the world when Jesus would cure the sight of Bartimaeus but leave millions more people in the world blind.
5. Not as insane as a religion that can make a man a saint when he arranged for a gifted woman to be cut up into bits, her bones scraped clean and the flesh burnt. She was Hypatia of Alexandria and the saint was Cyril. Would a good God allow his bishop to do that?
6. No. This is the real puzzle if God exists. An all powerful God could quite easily appear in some spectacular way that would convince everyone, immediately. He has never done it, more proof, not to have faith, but that he is a fantasy.
7. This feeling was your true instinct, but it is natural to seek comfort somewhere, and God the father is most people’s choice, despite his own terrible record of abuse to millions.
8. Sheila, the world we live in is part of Nature and Nature is the Goddess who whispers to us in the woods and roars at us in the storm. She gives us a beautiful world to live in but she is quite indifferent if we spoil it for ourselves or for others. She gives life but she takes it too, and she can destroy us all, and will if we do not buck up our ideas. Christianity has had 2000 years to make the world better and it has not, because Christians can not care about the world. They care about some other world. We care about this world. If people care for the world, care for the Goddess, they will not abuse and torture others. If people only care about an imaginary thing called a soul, they cannot care about this world. They will do monstrous things and then pray to that same God of Christianity for forgiveness.
9. But they do it all the time. They are either totally ignorant or liars.
10. Everyone finds strength in their own way. Nature has given us lots of ways of doing things, and we are finding more every day. But many of the subtler ones, like praying, are always put down to God. Why? The closest people come to God is your own experience of answered prayers, but how do you know it is God and not Goddess that has answered your prayers. The biggest injustice that has been done in 2000 years of Christianity is the way people accept the good things that are real, that actually happen, in this world, that the Goddess provides for us, and thank God, leaving the Goddess in the cold. Then all the awful things, the witch trials, the Inquisition, the tortures, the religious wars, Serbia, Ireland, Kashmir. Iran and Iraq, the greed and pollution, the destruction of the environment, the social problems and immoral behaviour, very much of it carried out by Christians or encouraged by Christian gunrunners or politicians—oh, God has nothing to do with that.
We prefer the Goddess, Sheila, but you and millions more still prefer to think it is God. Whatever you believe, you will find that there is a good chance of feeling stronger, because you have resources within to be tapped, real, natural resources. Praying calls on them.
You have suffered abuse, Sheila. Abusing children is not natural, so whoever did it to you was a monster, deliberately defying the way of the Goddess. But you have experienced it and know how awful it is. Others do not. They might know it is legally wrong but they probably do not think of how it relates to nature. We are all born into the world for a reason, and the only reason it could be is to improve things for others in the world, other people alive now, other people not yet born, and other animals and plants. You know how terrible things can be when people do cruel things—that even brute beasts would not do—and pay no regard to the Goddess. Your experience might confuse you, depress you, anger you or still torture you mentally. But think of what your purpose is in life and what your experiences let YOU understand that others do not, and determine that there is something in the world that you can help to change, to make the world better for others.
Sorry to have gone on so long, Sheila, but you raised lots of important issues for Adelphiasophists. With your permission, I’ll use your letter on the Adelphiasophist site. May the Goddess find you.
Sheila@sk.ca,
I was really interested to hear your comments on my three experiences. What I will clarify before you read about them is that I was not delusional or making up any part of it. You have no way of knowing me, but if you would comment as if it was all 100% true I would appreciate it because I would love a non-Christian’s view. I do not keep asking for miracles and then waiting for them to happen and then grab at every co-incidence and call it a miracle. I have only done so three times when I have felt desperate and alone.
I come from a very abusive past and all I remember is abuse. My own “Christian” grandfather sexually abused my sisters and I for as long as we can remember. My mother married an alcoholic and we witnessed much violence. My father married a terribly cruel women who took out all her anger and emotional problems on us, and whose four older children and one nephew also sexually abused us (we lived with dad). My mother also has many mental problems and we suffered from that. Anyway, I am not going into all this to gain sympathy, but rather so that you can get some sort of an idea how hard it would be for me to trust anyone, never mind a God who I cannot even see. Anyway, trying to lead a somewhat normal life now.
I was newly married, having been born in South Africa, had just immigrated to the middle of nowhere in Saskatchewan, Canada and was severely depressed and missing my sisters (who have always been my safe people). My husband worked on the oil rigs and was rarely home and I had a baby boy. I spent months without talking to others and I very rarely had any visitors.In great distress one day, I prayed to God that if He was real someone would come to my door in 5min and tell me about Him. Within a minute or so a missionary lady whose mother lived upstairs knocked on my door and after a while told me I needed to know Jesus. It really was so weird that I just ignored it. I was always 100% sure it happened that way, but thought it must be a huge co-incidence.
This was the first experience of three that I had.
The second was about 4yrs later. I was not depressed any more, but was just starting to feel lost again. I prayed and prayed and told God that it was my mind I did not trust and that He grant me a miracle so that I can believe. Some time later I recieved a bookmark from my mother, the poem “May you always feel loved” by Sandra Sturtz. It was such a beautiful poem and, perhaps because I was beginning to get emotional again, I asked God that if my mother was inspired to send it to me by Him if he would pse send it again to confirm it. Actually, when I thought about it later I dont know why I even suspected it be from Him. I had been praying to God for something to help me. The next morning when I put on the computer (I am not a computer junkie, just use it every now and then for info, but mainly to email my family in SA) I had recieved this poem from a friend. I could not believe it and, because I am weak in so many ways from my past I have to investigate everything. I looked for the poem on the net to see if it was a new thing going around. You can find it on the web if you type the author’s name, but no-one I showed it to had ever seen it. This was the second thing that happened.
I was terribly excited and started telling people—which was a mistake because people look at you and think that this happened as a coincidence and I made up the rest to make it seem like a miracle. But I know I was sitting at my computer reading the mail and held the poem up and cried, wanting to know God, hoping He was real and asked Him to send me this poem again to confirm it.
My dear friend, Gladys, who has been praying for me for 5 yrs now, gave me a book by Corrie Ten Boom called “The Hiding Place”. I love reading and her book inspired me so much. Now, years previously Gladys had given me some old books. I was not a Christian and thought it was sweet of her, but I would never read them. I gave some of them away and kept one or two. (now bear with me—you have to read the second part of this third thing before you will get it)
I worked temporarily (about 4 mnths) before having my third boy (I am kept very busy!) I battle to socialise as I am paranoid of others. I would keep to myself and most people dont bother with me too much. Crystal was the exception. A young mother of 2 boys, she would make the effort to come talk to me about Jesus. If she had come to talk to me about little green men running around outside I would probably have been more comfortable. Anyway, she told me that I should ask Jesus into my life because one never knows when your life could end. One day I walked into the office and found a card and some bath salts. The card expressed her desire for me to become a Christian and said she was praying for me. It also quoted “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your paths straight” 18 mnths later I was attending Crystal’s funeral—she died of breast cancer. She left two sons, 3 and 5yrs, and her devoted husband, the principal of the Comp High School in our city. About a week after this (now I get to the first part of this story again), I had just finished reading “The Hiding Place”, and was glancing at my poem. I remember doubts—maybe it was a coincedence—doubting myself again—not God. I knew I had asked for it to be sent to me again—never doubted that. I did not even pray this just thought it—I would have been so much happier if I had recieved something right out of the bible twice in one day. I was drying my hair a little later when I suddenly remembered that Crystal had given me a Christmas card and thought that maybe her husband would like a copy of it (she always wrote beautifully in cards). I went on a quick search, knowing that my sons preschool had asked for all old cards, and I had been clearing out junk and, usually sentimental, I had just decided to give all my old cards. As I searched I found one of the books Gladys had given me—I hesistated for a moment because something rang a bell. The picture on a pink book with an old lady on it called “Clippings from my notebook”. The old lady—Corrie Ten Boom. I was so excited because when I finished reading her “Hiding Place” I felt like I lost her wonderful family and really wanted to know what she did with her future. I put it aside to read that night. As I continued to search I never found the Christmas card, but in the middle drawer under my computer I found the card she had left on my desk—it was the only card I had kept. Maybe I kept it because I found out shortly after she gave it to me that she had cancer. Anyway, as stated before, it had that “Trust in the Lord…”. I went to bed that night and read my book. If you have read it before you will know what an incredible book it is. I could not put it down, but I was exhausted (my baby does not sleep very well!), so limited myself sternly to one more page. Yep—at the top of that page was “Trust in the Lord…”.
I feel that only God knows what my sisters and I endured as children, and He knows how hard it is for me to trust and how much I hate myself (which was taught to me by my step mom). I feel He knows how badly I want Him in my life and only He knows how hard it is for me and gave me these miracles to give me something to cling to when doubts started seeping into my mind. When memories of long ago create storms in my mind and bitterness takes over and I cannot trust.
Would be interested in hearing from you. I really liked the way you wrote—straight forward and very intelligently.
Shirlie
You wrote to explain your three miracles.
Your earlier experiences were quite shocking and you sound to have come through them really very well. Your spirit is strong and you will be able to overcome the scars that remain, I feel.
There is not much I can say about your miracles, except that they are certainly strange, and if coincidences, are strange coincidences! Well, missionaries do come to our doors but to come just as you’d asked in prayer looks like a miracle. The same applies to getting the same poem twice, just as you’d prayed, and getting the same command to “Trust the Lord” twice in a complicated way was also odd.
Somebody was answering your prayers or you interpreted the events that way, and either way it is drawing upon the great strength that you have, though you don’t seem willing to trust it, or will not allow yourself to, through self-loathing. As you know, we put our trust in the Goddess who is responsible for everything that happens in the real world, but people have been praying to her as “God” for a long time and she is still willing to answer, because we all have her within us, being creatures of Nature.
Now, we do not believe in going around discouraging others when they are in a healing cycle. Our view is that sincere belief generates inner strength and for you, the strength comes from these miracles convincing you that God has heard and answered your prayers. He (or she, it does not matter as long as the healing proceeds) did answer your prayers and you feel stronger for it. What you will have to do soon is decide what is your purpose in life. You have had these terrible experiences, and feel insecure with society and feel self-hatred, yet you have married and had several children and seem to be dealing gradually with the horrors of your past.
Each one of us has a purpose and it is something to do with helping to heal the world or others creatures in the kinunity of Nature. It might come as a sort of calling, but you will know when you hear it. As I said in my previous mail, you understand things from your experiences that others never could, and it is not unusual to find that blessing comes from something horrid. And, of course, you have your children to protect and bring safe to adulthood. That might be sufficient. We influence the world in two main ways, through our children and through our actions. When you find enough inner strength, self-confidence and self-regard you will know what to do. It will be a healing experience because it is through healing that we are healed ourselves.
You have a lot of courage and deserve to love yourself.
May you learn to do so soon.
Sheila@sk.ca,
Thank you so much, you write beautifully. When my sister came here for a holiday I was very into Christianity and was feeling stronger than ever. She brought up some issues like Christian wars, how she prayed as a child in faith and never received an answer, and bible contradictions. I was so new in my Christian faith that many many doubts entered my head. I started looking on the web for answers and sort of abandoned my faith for a while searching for strength from within—I know for sure that I have very little. I have become anxious again (suffer from extreme anxiety since childhood), very stressed and beginning to get depressed. I love phycology and read many books on it. The only problem I had with it was it keeps talking about how you have the strength within—and I became more irritated with myself when I could not tune into this strength.
No, Shirlie, when I pursued Christianity, as I am going to continue doing again, I am tapping into another source of strength, which I believe is God, that same strength that answered my cries for a miracle. My purpose in life—I think I am going to try write a book on my childhood and my eventual recovery. I have wanted to do this for a long time—in some way help other adults who have been abused. We were abused in so many ways that I think I can cover quite a few cases in one book.
Anyway, enjoyed corresponding with you very much. I will definitely read your site from time to time.
Thanks also for not just disregarding my experiences as me being crazy—very nice of you seen as you dont know me.
Shirlie
Here is something written by Angelus Silesius:
Though Christ a thousand times in Bethlehem be born,
But not within thyself, thy soul will be forlorn;
The cross on Golgotha thou lookest to in vain
Unless within thyself it be set up again.
So, you see, you must find it inside even as a Christian, but you cannot just think, “Oh I feel depressed it is not there”, because it is your depression that is hiding it. You have suffered too so you know it is there. As long as you have determination and always remember that you have a purpose in life, you find the strength wherever it comes from.
Your book sounds a great idea. Everyone should write a book or a booklet even and even if it is not published, it should be left for your children and friends. My mother’s cousin, who was really an uncle to us, was blind (almost) from birth but became a Canon of an Anglican cathedral in Cheshire. He was writing a little booklet about his life when he died. His wife completed it and published it privately, and gave copies to all his friends and relatives.
Thanks for writing and may the Goddess as Fortuna smile upon you.
Sheila@sk.ca,
Thank you so much. I really appreciated the time and thought that went into it. It is very convincing and I tend to go along with your ideas about life. In fact my sister who just visited me suffers from dissociation due to our childhood and has many of the same problems with Christianity that you do. Please feel free to put my letter where you wish as long as you change my name and do not give my email out. There are some weird people on the net!
Chip Philby
I enjoyed reading about Adelphiasophism at the askwhy website. I would like to comment on some parts of the essay on Natural Spirituality.
You seem to criticise only the Serb Orthodox Christian leadership over Kosovo. I am inclined to look at it as a conflict between three excessively patriarchal religious groups, namely Roman Catholic, Orthodox Christian and Muslim, the weakest of the three being Orthodox Christian. The Catholic church seems to have a lot of influence over Nato (Albright is a Catholic, Blair is married to a Catholic and would probably convert if he were not Prime Minister), and I doubt whether Nato would have bombed Kosovo if Catholics had been involved, given the likely outcome resulting in violence and murder. The Catholic church benefits because it is the Orthodox Christians who get portrayed as the bad Christians, while Catholic excesses in Yugoslavia are forgotten. If you think this is too cynical, please look at my email about the beatification of Stepinac. The killing at Glina especially seems the most amazing spiritual crime, and it deserves to be more widely acknowledged.
Given the brutality of the Serbian dictator it is brave for anybody living in Serbia to criticise him, and the Nato leaders themselves have only started to call for his removal after they started to bomb Serbia.
Anti-Nazi group wants beatification postponed
PARIS, Sept 25 (Reuters)—The anti-Nazi Simon Wiesenthal Centre urged Pope John Paul on Friday to postpone beatification of World War Two Zagreb Archbishop Alojzije Stepinac, one of the most controversial figures in Croatian history. The Pope is scheduled to carry out the ceremony, the first step on the way to sainthood, in the small Croatian town of Marija Bistrica on October 3.
In a letter to the Vatican, the Wiesenthal Centre’s Paris-based European office urged the delay “in view of the bitter memories and current religious sensitivities in the structure of ex-Yugoslavia” and in the light of the Pope’s often-stated desire for reconciliation with the Jews. “We urge him to postpone this beatification until after the completion of an exhaustive study of Stepinac’s wartime record based on full access to Vatican archives,” wrote Shimon Samuels, the centre’s director for international liaison.
There are serious differences between historians on the role Stepinac played under the fascist regime which ruled Croatia during World War Two. The Vatican’s move has been welcomed by Croatian political parties and the general public, the vast majority of whom are Catholic. It follows Stepinac’s being proclaimed a “Servant of God” and later a martyr of the faith, for being persecuted by the 1945-1991 communist Yugoslav government. But for Serbs, Stepinac was a collaborator who colluded in the massacre and forced conversion of thousands of their kin by the pro-Nazi Ustashe regime, whose state encompassed Croatia, parts of Bosnia and Serbia between 1941 and 1945. Communist history and school books spoke of Stepinac as a notorious nationalist who helped the Ustashe exterminate Serbs, Jews and Gypsies. Foreign books of recent history at best describe him as a weak man who failed to prevent Ustashe crimes.
Samuels, in a letter to Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls, wrote: “A decision to await the dispassionate judgement of independent historians would forestall the perception of, at best, a provocation and, at worst, an exercise in historical revision.” REUTERS Reut10:18 09-25-98
*** From ’Croatia’ by Marcus Tanner, Yale University Press (published 1997), *** *** Page 144
The Poglavnik governed through decrees issued from 17 April (1941), which prescribed the death penalty for a huge range of offences against ’the honour and interests of the Croatian nation’. On the 26th the use of Cyrillic was forbidden. On the 30th a decree protecting the ’Aryan blood and honour’ of the Croatian nation forbade marriages between Jews and Croats. In June, a decree forbade Jews to shop or to trade with non- Jews. On 10 October the anti-Semitic legislation was completed by a decree confiscating Jewish goods. Other decrees passed in the summer required Jews to wear yellow stars, compelled the conversion of non- Catholics to the Catholic Church and ordered the erection of detention centres for political and racial undesirables. To speed up the trial and punishment of offenders, special courts were set up at the end of April. These lent an appearance of legality to what was, in fact, a policy of eliminating the new regime’s political and racial opponents through persecution. An important role in establishing the Ustashe regime’s credibility among Croats was played by the Archbishop of Zagreb, Alojzije Stepinac. ***Page 145 The Archbishop lent his reputation to the Ustashe regime without hesitation and quickly gave Pavelic his public blessing. Two days after the NDH was proclaimed, he called on Kvatcmili and on 16 April he was received by the Poglavnik himself- before Yugoslavia had officially surrendered on the 17th. The circular Stepinac distributed to his clergy twelve days after the meeting with Pavelic was euphoric. ‘The times are such that it is no longer the tongue which speaks but the blood, through its mysterious union with the earth, in which we have glimpsed the light of God’, he wrote, We are convinced, and expect, that the Church in the resurrected state of Croatia will be able to proclaim in complete freedom the incontestable principles of eternal truth and justice.
***Page 151 The process of mass ‘conversions’ was equally violent. In a circular to his clergy, Archbishop Stepinac had insisted that conversion had to be voluntary and might only follow religious instruction. But the authorities took no notice of this. Nor did the Serbs. In some villages Serbs demanded baptism from the local Catholic clergy to escape persecution. On occasions, the Ustashe used the prospect of mass conversions to lure Serbs into a trap. The most notorious example took place at Glina, where hundreds of Serbs made their way to the parish church in the autumn of 1941 only for the doors to be locked and the would-be converts burned alive.
***Page 156 In a letter to Pavelic, he brought up the concentration camps: ‘Jasenovac camp itself is a shameful stain on the honour of the NDH’. But he remained naïve about politics and about the nature of the regime. When he asked Mestrovic whether he though Pavelic knew anything about the killings of Serbs, and Mestrovic replied that of course Pavelic knew everything, the Archbishop went pale and burst into tears. ***Page 179 (following the defeat by the Partisans) The Archbishop, for his part, was shocked by the wave of trials and judicial executions that began in earnest in June 1945. Some of the victims had little cause to expect clemency. They included several NDH government ministers who had been apprehended in Croatia, or repatriated to the Yugoslav authorities while attempting to escape through Austria, and notorious war criminals such as Fr. Filipovic, a Franciscan Friar from Herzegovina, who had become a concentration camp attendant at Jasenovac.
I have no doubt that Archbishop Stepinac had Saintly qualities, even if he does seem to have been very naive. The image of him bursting into tears when he realised the nature of the Pavelic regime is really touching.
At least as poignant though is the description of the burning at Glina. One would expect a Church of whatever denomination to be a sanctuary, a place of refuge, rather than a place of death.
I’m not surprised therefore that the Simon Wiesenthal organisation, let alone the Orthodox Christian communities, may view the accelerated beatification of Archbishop/Cardinal Stepinac as a snub, and an excessive accommodation of Croatian Nationalism. It’s a pity it couldn’t have waited until his bicentenary ISTM.
Shirlie
Thanks for your comments. If you have been reading the Adelphiassophism scripts, you will know that we are opposed to all patriarchal religions, and normally dispute with Christianity in general because it happens to be our main problem in western advanced countries. It does not stop us from highlighting particular instances of religious hypocrisy and cant, and that was really the point of mentioning the Orthodox Church in Serbia. You are dead right that the whole problem in the Balkans is that it is the place where the three mega-religions you mention meet and have clashed since the Ottomons decided to clean up Europe.
Celtic Shaman
I am a Druid, Celtic Shaman. (Not an OBOD, Philip Carr-Gromm is a nutcase who thinks dressing in white robes and fake beards makes a druid.) My view of the ‘way things are’ is this: there is one Source of All Things. This Source IS All things. Gods and Goddesses all are aspects of this One Source, they are a way for humans to elate to the Source. (Though some Gods and Goddesses are insane, IMHO, such s Jehovah and maybe Kali). Anyway, since I feel a great need for a balance instead of this Matriarchy/Patriarchy bull*&(# that has been going on, I follow two dieties from my ancestoral past, Cerridwyn and Cernunnos. Both are not the nicey nicey fronts that most want to show as All Loving God or All Loving Goddess.
Shirlie
Thanks for your message of appreciation. We’ve been aiming to publish some Goddess stuff for a while but unfortunately we are not shifting enough of our other stuff! We need sales to finance new publications—so it’ll have to wait a while longer yet. Maybe if we got more demands like your email, we might print a pamphlet. Since we are a small organisation, each grove just prints off copies as needed for discussion. You are welcome to print copies for your own use until we get the booklet organised.
Regarding ALL THINGS, You are quite right, of course. Nature is ALL THINGS and Nature is the Goddess, so we are just giving the same concept different names. We chose the name Goddess because we think primarily of the creative aspects of Nature (though Nature necessarily has a destructive side too—‘all love’ is ‘Home Alone’ fantasy), and to allow us to relate historically with emergent human beings who, we think the evidence is clear, worshipped Nature as a Mother Goddess.
You might be right also that the matriarchy/patriarchy discussion is bullshit, but we don’t think so. We can perhaps never know what the ancient societies were organised like, but what evidence we have suggests that there was much more respect for womanhood and feminine ways of thinking than there is today. Matriarchy is really then a succinct name for a society which returns to this emphasis. It is not female dictatorship because desire for dictatorial power is a mainly a masculine quality. It is a restoration of the proper balance between masculine and feminine qualities in society.
As Adelphiasophists, we accept no gods, but as NeoPagans we respect your views, while hoping you might see it the way we do. Gods have made a dog’s dinner of the world and we’ll finish up a dog turd on the sidewalk unless we do something about it.
Ken@AOL
I have never heard of Adelphiasophists before, so I thank you for bringing the matter to my attention.
I did search the web and come to the Adelphiasophists site and started reading some of the things that you hold to be true, and you make good points. I wonder why you don’t seem to be critical of the Muslim faith, or the Buddhist faith, or any other of the world religions that we all know of? I can only speak for myself, but I have found great peace in trying to honor and respect all religions of the world, be they supportive of mine necessarily or not. It just seems to be such a waste of energy to try to ‘debase’ the religion/faith of others, which is next to impossible to do anyway in most cases. I agree with you that our God is a God of love and kindness and support, but I also feel that the life of Jesus Christ demonstrated those qualities in most all cases. I don’t feel like portraying Jesus or Buddha as less than enlightened serves any constructive purpose, really. These are just my thoughts, and I don’t wish to say that I’m right or wrong, but I feel that God is inclusionary vs. exclusionary and loves all people and religions equally. It isn’t our Creator that has misinterpreted the Word of God. It’s mankind in our attempt to translate from one language to the other, and from one agenda to the other.
Shirlie
We appreciate your wishes of abundance and love but consider that Christianity has had 2000 years to prove that it does not provide them. We consider that to be no accident. Christianity professes love of fellow men but at its heart is the purely selfish notion of personal salvation.
While there are surely some wonderful maxims within the New Testament, Christianity is not a religion of life but one of death and therefore one which will lead to death. We consider Nature as a Goddess and the world in which we live to be her womb. And we are killing it out of pure greed and selfishness. How can a religion which professes to venerate poverty preside over a world in which wealth is the real god? Christianity is not the solution of problems in the modern world, in large measure it is the problem.
And, no, the Creator of all things will not make things known. The Goddess has provided us with the means of finding things out, so that we can get to understand her. So far we have used the knowledge we have found to destroy her. It cannot go on or we shall find our turn has come in the list of dying species. No imaginary god will stop it. “We” have to stop it!
Regarding the Moslems, we regard all the patriarchal religions in the same light. It is simply that, in our world, Christianity is the mega-religion, so we criticise Christianity primarily. Christianity and Islam have both got roots in the Hebrew religion and particularly in the Essenes. All three are artificial religions propagated for purely political purposes. All three run down Pagan Nature religions because the dishonesty of the phony religions is much more easily understood from the standpoint of a Nature religion. Pagan religions are therefore called the work of the Devil. A moment’s reflexion on the course of religious history in the last 2000 years will show that the Devil has his home in the patriarchal religions.
You personally say you respect all religions but what does your religion do? It destroys all rival religions, even when the rivalry is within Christianity. Unorthodox Christians were called heretics and burnt for centuries.
My guess is that you are not really a Christian at all but you have confused the natural feeling of wonder that we all have at Nature with some phony Christian spirituality. If a man has a reputation of mistreating his domestic animals for twenty years, who will believe his plea before the magistrates that he has changed his ways and now is kind to dumb animals. Christianity is like that.
Christians hate to be criticised and consider it blasphemous to question their beliefs, yet historically Christians consider it a mission to destroy pagan and heretical beliefs. So, in the past Christians have certainly not thought it a waste of energy to debase the religions of others. Christianity grew to where it now is exactly by doing that. Jesus showed the way by criticising the Pharisees.
You are plainly a sincere man and we consider sincerity essential to religion. Many Christian believers are sincere but most are more hypocritical than the Pharisees criticised by Jesus. We think that many sincere Christians are clinging on within this grossly flawed religion because they cannot find a convincing alternative.
Christians are like a man waiting for a bus. It is overdue and he feels he should walk on to the next bus stop where there are additional bus services. But he cannot bring himself to begin because he thinks that half way between the stops the bus will come. The bus will not come. Every momentous journey requires courage to take the first step.
Hope this helps. Please read more of our Wise Women’s Words. Some of it is quite hard but the essence of Adelphiasophism is easier than Christianity.
May the Goddess find you.
Ken@AOL
Thank you for taking the time to respond to my email. I respect your opinions and belilefs and am glad that they have given you happiness… you cannot ask for anything more than that, can you?
I have also found that same happiness within my own faith and within my own form of Christianity. You’re right. I’m not a ‘Christian’ in the traditional sense, but a believer in what is possible through faith in Christ… the Christ that lies within all of us. Love for ourselves and one another is the only real message and it’s been delivered many different times and on many different occasions throughout recorded history for those that are willing to accecpt it. Wouldn’t you agree?
Shirlie
I do but we extend it to all of creation and that is what we think our arrogance, greed and selfishness is threatening. Of course, we cannot literally threaten ALL creation but we are seriously threstening all the most complex life forms besides ourself. 2000 years ago we could afford to worry about our own salvation. Now we have to be less selfish and worry about saving the planet.
And, yes, any belief can be a comfort even if it is belief in a rabbit’s foot. Now, belief and living the devotional life is not enough. At the very least we have to raise a voice in protest.
There is a saying:
If you would have knowledge, do not believe the Goddess is there and you here. You are within the Goddess and she within you. You must know what is without and what is within, and you cannot know what it without without knowing what is within, nor can you know what is within without knowing what is without.
A bit of a tongue twister but it expresses what you are saying, I think.
The Goddess is within you. Perhaps she is sharing you with the Christ. Perhaps, she is the Christ, a god who has shed his male attributes, apart from his sex, and adopted female ones, tenderness, loving and caring. She will enter again into our awareness or we shall die out.
Anyway, I am glad you are at peace and thank you for your blessings.
May you walk in step with wisdom,
Ken@AOL
I was very much taken by the quote that you sent because it says exactly what I was trying to say to you in my last email, but perhaps more succinctly… I feel that we are a lot closer in philosophy than perhaps we thought before. To substitute Christ for Goddess, Goddess for Christ. I don’t think it really matters what name we give to our God, as long as we realize that spirit force within us… and without us.
‘To realize that we are all one… that will mean the end of war and hunger. I am he as you are he, as you are me, and we are all together.’—John Lennon
I really have enjoyed talking with you and hope that we can keep in touch in the future. We are all on the same journey, traveling down different roads. Being able to demonstrate love and kindness to everyone is universal in religious application. Seeing God in nature, in our fellow men and women, in those less fortunate than ourselves… therein lies the simple truth of the Goddess or Christ within us and without us. That spirit is inherent within all of us basically, no matter what we call ourselves… we all share the need to love and be loved… both men and women.
Shirlie
The point about the Goddess is that she is not just a spiritual concept. She really is outside us for all to see. And she is in pain in this tiny part of her anatomy because of the nasty parasite that is biting her. It points to us being able to do something real on her behalf. Singing hymns and saying prayers might help us but they will not relieve her.
Thanks for the Lennon quotation. It is apposite. Funny that it never registered before. I suppose popular music is just musak and doesn’t really enter the brain. And I’m a Lennon fan being a Liverpudlian!
May Wisdom walk with you.
