ARE MY BELIEFS EXOTERIC, ESOTERIC, CHRITIAN, OR CATHOLIC

responsa to questions from a grieving mother

 A woman notified an Internet listserv of which I am a member that her daughter had died as a consequence of injuries she had suffered in an automobile accident. Someone on the list told her I am a priest and she contacted me with a number of questions because although a Christian she held certain beliefs that are rejected by traditional Christian denominations and also because her daughter had converted to Judaism she was concerned that God would not grant her daughter the fullness of salvation. I am sharing my answer to her because I believe there are many people who have the same or similar questions.

I am a priest in the Catholic Apostolic Church of Antioch - Malabar Rite which is an independent Catholic Church not affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church. You may not be aware of it but the Roman Catholic Church is not the only Catholic Church. There are many more Catholic Rite Churches including about six different Eastern Rite Catholic Churches some of which go back prior to the schism created by the Council of Chalcedon in 451 that declared Jesus was both fully human and fully God. The Eastern bishops of Christianity could not accept that Jesus was both fully human and fully divine and believed he was only divine. This is why these churches are called monophisite churches which is a Greek word that means “of one nature.”

There are also Western Rite Catholic Churches that originated by historical events when Roman Catholic bishops broke away and started their own churches. The best known of these is the Old Catholic Church which grew out of the Jansenist Movement in the 1500s in France. Jansen was a Roman Catholic priest who embraced some of the theology of John Calvin. Today we call the spiritual descendants of Calvin Presbyterians. Jansen was and his followers were persecuted by Rome for their beliefs and many fled to Holland which had a reputation for religious tolerance. The pope demanded the king of Holland kick the Jansenists out of the county, the king refused, so the pope and other popes after him refused to consecrate bishops for Holland. That meant that eventually there were no bishops to perform the sacrament of Confirmation or to ordain new priests.

Eventually Bishop Dominicus Marie Varlet, who landed in Holland to change ships, agreed that he would confirm the waiting children and now adults as well as also ordain priests and consecrate a new bishop so the faith could continue in Holland. For this the pope excommunicated him and the men he had ordained and consecrated which meant they could not exercise their faculties as priests or bishop within the Roman Catholic Church.

However, since the time of Augustine in the 5th century it was a matter of dogma that God ordained priests and consecrated bishops while the Church's role was to act as God's conduit in the performance of these rites. Thus, according to Roman Catholic theology once a man is ordained to the priesthood or consecrated to the episcopate, he never loses the ability to exercise his priestly and Episcopal powers as they are a gift conferred by God and only God can take them away. Consequently, the Roman Catholic Church can only deny a priest or bishop the authority to use them within the jurisdiction of that Church.

The result was a new Catholic Church that called itself the Old Catholic Church to both distinguish itself from the Roman Catholic Church and also because it believed the Roman Catholic Church had lost its way. The Old Catholic Church spread from Holland to several Scandinavian and European Countries, to England and via England to Australia, and from Australia to America. Along the way the English-Australian branch changed its name to the Liberal Catholic Church.

The man who started the Church of Antioch, Archbishop Herman A. Spruit, which is the common name for our Church, had his lines of apostolic succession from both the Old Catholic Church and the Liberal Catholic Church as well as from the Syro-Malabar Catholic Rite Church of India. The people of this branch of the Catholic Church are often called Thomas Christians as legend has it that the apostle Thomas, one of the twelve disciples, evangelized the Malabar region of India and is buried there.

The next major break from the Roman Catholic Church by a bishop happened after WWII in Brazil when Bishop Duarte was excommunicated by the Roman Catholic Church. What did he do that warranted excommunication? He criticized the church because that the papacy had both enabled the Nazis during the war and helped high ranking Nazis escape to South American after the war to avoid arrest and prosecution. The Independent Catholic Church he founded now has over 1,000,000 members worldwide.

As a footnote the one thing that all of the Churches of the Independent Catholic Movement require for validity is that their deacons, priests, and bishops can prove ordination and consecration through a valid line of apostolic succession.

Yes, I am also the pastor, the only pastor, of a world-wide ministry called St. James Catholic Community. Thus, my screen name “pastorsjcc” stands for "pastor st james catholic community." St. James Catholic Community is an Internet ministry that includes a weekly service on my website www.catholicmassonline.com. The website also has pages devoted to social justice, the Rosary, prayer and worship, and a bulletin board. I provide spiritual counseling as well as counseling for personal concerns and problems with people who contact me by email. We have about 1,000 people per month visit the website. I just started a listserv called Social Justice Speaks and am building a website by the same name that I hope to have it online by January 1, 2008.

You are right that I also wear other hats including musician, composer, and author. When I was a Roman Catholic, I spent many years beginning in the early 1970s as a guitarist and singer for "Folk Masses" more correctly called "Contemporary Liturgies." One hat I would love to wear is that of a performer on the stage of the Grand Old Oprey as I love all kinds of country music especially blue grass. But for now I just pick and grin and beat my drums to amuse myself.

I am the author of The Historical Jesus: Man, Myth or God which was Part III of my doctoral dissertation and have a book of religious and political commentary due out around the first of next year called, Rights, Liberties, and Social Justice: How the Fight Over Abortion, Homosexuality, Intelligent Design, and Poverty Created American Fascism and Destroyed the Separation Between Church and State. I also have several other books I am working on.

I am not surprised that your daughter’s Congregation has responded as they have. In Jewish theology when one converts to Judaism by immersing themselves in a mikvah which is a ritual bath they literally die to their old self and become a new person – they become a part of the Jewish Community dating back to Abraham.

If this sounds strange it shouldn't. That is exactly what Christian baptism is all about. In St. Paul's words when we are baptized we put off the old and put on the new and in doing so become one with Christ: we in him and he in us. In short, by our baptism we are baptized not into a particular denomination but rather into the Body of Christ e.g., all those who were baptized before us.

Your comments on reincarnation fit comfortably within the Church of Antioch as we do not see them as being antithical to Christianity or what it means to be Catholic. In fact, reincarnation is not foreign to historic Judaism nor is it foreign to Christianity. There was no one set of beliefs that were "Christian" until the early 5th century when the "orthodox" Christians, using the power of the Roman army after the conversion of Constantine who declared Christianity the state religion of the Roman Empire, stamped out those who did not believe as did they.

Orthodox Christians called these "sects" Gnostics because Gnostics believed they had secret knowledge of salvation given by Jesus before his death to a few selected people. One of the core beliefs of the Gnostics was that Jesus' death was not for the atonement of human sin but rather to free his essence, his true self, his spirit, from his fleshly body so that it could ascend to the higher realms of spirit. As such they saw Jesus as the personification in the flesh of God's perfection of humanity and believed that one human lifetime was not sufficient for us to achieve that perfection. Thus, souls kept being reborn in new bodies as the soul ascended to higher levels of perfection until it had attained perfection and had no further need to be reborn.

As to the soul choosing its life paths before birth that is also a commonly held belief in schools of esoteric theology. Christian esoteric theology also has a foot in Theosophy and another in certain aspects of Buddhism. There are many people in the Church of Antioch who are much more esoteric in their beliefs than exoteric; that is, holding to orthodox Christian/Catholic beliefs informed by dogmatic statements.

Ah, the concept of death is the most difficult concept all humanity faces. In Existential Philosophy death is known as the great leveler or what I call the “universal constant.” We each experience death in our own way and it is the most unique experience of all humanity. Each of us dies in our own way and no one else can be a part of that experience. That does not mean that our loved ones and friends cannot support us through the experience. It simply means we alone experience its essence and that transitory point where we cease to exist as a live human being.

Humanity has gone to extraordinary lengths to try to understand and explain death and it is self-evident from medical text books to pop fiction that we are at the same time pre-occupied with death but also do not understand it and cannot explain it. So, we create scenarios and variables which we both purport to choose and control but which in fact we cannot choose or control.

You asked what I think. Honestly, I am of two minds, somewhat schizophrenic, and am still trying to reconcile what I think. On the one hand I am by nature a pragmatist rooted in logic and reason. I am most comfortable when using traditional religious and philosophical language and models to express my feelings and beliefs. I am deeply rooted in the philosophers of the Enlightenment and German philosophers of the 18th to 20th century; that is, from the rationalism of Decartes "I think, therefore I am", to Kierkegaard's and Satre's existentialism, to Hegle's dialectics. Each to me reveals another layer much like the peeling of an onion, of which what it means to be human.

Theologically I am most comfortable using the theological model of medieval metaphysics for salvation with one foot firmly plated in the esoteric and Gnostic Myth of the Heavenly Anthropos.  Medieval metaphysics is indebted to the method of Thomas Aquinas most fully developed in his Summa Theologica. Thomas' way of "doing" theology is still the backbone of how theology is taught in Roman Catholic seminaries and I am very comfortable with doing my personal theology that way. Thomas makes the distinction between God and humanity as identifying God as "Being" and humanity as "being." Being represents all that is possible, all that is, and all that will be. Being is both creator and enabler and creates and enables “being.”

The Myth of the Heavenly Anthropos, at least the part of it that relates to salvation, presumes that a heavenly spark of the divine nature is implanted within each human being. We call that spark our soul. At our death that spark is released from its prison of flesh and returns to again become one in unity with the divine nature e.g., Being in Thomistic theology.

I am less comfortable when considering esoteric theology partly because there are as many "versions" as people who create them. However, in general esoteric theology is “experiential” rather than “rational” and presupposes there is a complex system of higher planes of existence represented in Kabbalistic Judaism by the Ten Tiered Tree of Life where each tier is the realm of a different Chakra of higher spiritual awareness. It also includes a belief that there is a "Book of Life" that has recorded all that has been, is, and will be called the Akashic Record as well as angelic beings Thoth being one that certain human beings can channel who reveal parts of the Akashic Record to them. The Theosophical School which was central to the Old Catholic Church in Australia believed heavily in clairvoyance and according to Bishop Ledbetter religious services were attended by countless spiritual beings that could be discerned by their auras or even in full by people who were either clairvoyant or level of spirituality was sufficiently developed to allow them to “see” these beings.

Esotericism goes completely against both who I am by temperament and who I am as a consequence of being educated at St. Mary's Roman Catholic Seminary which is a Pontifical Seminary. In short, that means esoteric theology was not a part of the curriculum as the curriculum was based on "orthodox" or exoteric theology from Augustine, through the Church Fathers, the great Councils of the Church, to Thomas Aquinas and then Vatican Councils I and II.

That said, there is much that cannot be understood or explained that is a part of the human experience and human spirituality solely on the basis of exoteric theology. There are many questions without answers and I see no problem in exploring both esoteric Christianity and other religions as well in search of answers. Yes, there is an exoteric Christian truth as well as an esoteric Christian truth. However, Christianity is not the only expression of religious truth. Every religion from the World's "great" religions to individual tribal religions has their own truths.

Where this leaves me is that I do not discount the possibility of what is not understood or explainable via exoteric or esoteric Christianity. It is why I embrace the non-canonical gospels, letters, and apocalypses. It is why I also embrace the truths found in Judaism and Islam, Hinduism and Native Spirituality. Who am I to presume to limit the way the divine, in whatever way one describes or understands that entity chooses to express itself?

So, I have reached the conclusion that we all must follow our own spiritual path and choose what is meaningful to us. We must be open to receiving the Holy Spirit in whatever tradition or form it is revealed. Does this make me something less than a Christian, a Catholic? No! In the 200s St. Polycarp defined Christianity as being Catholic by three conditions: 1) The term “Catholic” means universal when applied to Christianity, 2) Christian means accepting the Apostles Creed, and 3) Christian means accepting the authority of bishops via apostolic succession.