THE PEOPLE'S CATHOLIC CHURCH founded by Pope Maurice THE REST OF THE STORY http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/003161.

.html Duncan writes According to Christian mythology, Jesus was actually handed over to Pilate by the will of his father in heaven, who had planned before the creation of the world that his son would be crucified to atone for the sins of the world, then rise on the third day. I believe it was in Huston Smith's Beyond the Post-Modern Mind [great title, eh?] that I read his characterization of the Zen attitude toward vicarious atonement: No one else can go to the bathroom for you. I'm also reminded of Giblets' review of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, which I've enjoyed several times - the review, that is; I've never seen the movie. http://fafblog.blogspot.com/2004_02_01_archive.html Posted by: mistah charley, ph.d. at November 25, 2009 10:35 PM ================ While we're talking about Jesus, I'd like to incorporate by reference Bernard Chazelle's post from December 2007, and the comments. http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/001952.html Posted by: mistah charley, ph.d. at November 26, 2009 09:08 AM ================ Go, and sin no more - Repentance as part of the Sacrament of Reconciliation They were talking about torture at an English blog in April of this year, and I wrote then: My countryman Kurt Vonnegut [who SHOULD have received the Nobel Prize in Literature] had personal experience of weapons of mass destruction - as a prisoner of war during World War II, he survived the mass murder of the inhabitants of Cologne (Koln) by terrorist bombs - bombs dropped from airplanes, as terrorists backed by prosperous states customarily do, as compared with ground-delivered bombs, the terrorist weapons of the less prosperous.

At the end of his life, Vonnegut despaired that the U.S. would ever become the humane and reasonable nation that people of his generation imagined they were fighting for - too much power, too much corruption, too much addiction to oil and money and destruction. If the Christians are right, it might be possible to achieve rehumanization - but it would require repentance - and this would require a recognition of having done wrong, and a decision to reform - "go, then, and sin no more." There is no trace of any such inclination in the propaganda emanating from those now in charge. We need to change our leaders - either provide transformative experiences to the people now in power, or put different people in power. Are the English-speaking "little people" big enough to do this? I wonder. I hope so, but I fear they themselves are too ignorant, too lazy, and too corrupt. In other words, we may already have the government we deserve.

Posted by: mistah charley, ph.d. at November 26, 2009 09:26 AM ================ Tales of Wonder from Huston Smith, with a tiny example Huston Smith has, just this year, published his autobiography, Tales of Wonder: Adventures chasing the divine. I haven't seen it. I don't have Beyond the Post-Modern Mind to hand right now, nor have I read it recently, but I recall the epigraph of it as consisting of the following passage (which I just used my Google to find) with an addendum by Smith himself: Years ago, when the philosophy building was being erected at Harvard, the president of the University asked the Dean of the Philosophy Department what should be engraved on the faade. The Dean wanted to inscribe the humanistic phrase, "Man is the measure of all things." However, the president of the University had other ideas. Wrapping a tarp around the building as it was being erected, the president reverently decided to inscribe, "What is man that Thou art mindful of him?" instead. -- Lou Engle Smith stated that when he visited Emerson Hall, ivy had grown so profusely that only three words remained visible of this quotation from the Eighth Psalm: "that Thou art", a phrase used again and again in a familiar translation from the Sanskrit scripture to assert that in some sense there is a commonality between the individual soul and the Oversoul.

Posted by: mistah charley, ph.d. at November 27, 2009 12:14 PM

The Moral Face of Our Religion

Duncan, you state vicarious atonement is at or near the core of Christianity. You are right, and I hope it is NEAR the core, rather than AT it. I have been a church-going person the majority of my years, and these days [2009] I attend a church named after St. Martin of Tours, because missus charley, m.d. is a lifelong Catholic. As for me, I had the honor of receiving a perfect attendance lapel pin for the first grade of Sunday School at First Parish Church (Unitarian), in Framingham, MA, with a perfect-attendance wreath for second grade from the Protestant Sunday School at the U.S. Navy base in Sasebo, Japan. I go to St. Martin's with my spouse and do as the Roman Catholics do, up to and including participating in the ritual cannibalism, even though I do it with a Unitarian attitude. As I have told missus charley, I know that the Pope doesn't want me to take communion (because I am not a baptized Catholic), but I don't think Jesus would mind. Several years ago at St. Martin's they had to take down the idol of Jesus that was suspended over the congregation. The reason: It violated the regulations because it wasn't gory enough. It showed the risen Jesus, wearing clothes. That statue is still there, now over at the side of the sanctuary, but its central and elevated place is now taken by one illustrating the Passion of the Christ, nailed to the Cross, bleeding from his side, wearing only a loincloth and a crown of thorns, twisted in agony, etc. etc. Duncan, you were a major participant in the Bernard Chazelle Dec. 2007 "Good Christian Soldiering" discussion at ATR, cited supra, so you may recognize that I'm repeating myself somewhat. Anyway, Kurt Vonnegut is one of my favorite theologians, and in one of his essays he made what I considered an excellent argument in favor of the heresy of adoptionism. As KV put it, if God decided to make Jesus His son AFTER the crucifixion, that leads to the obvious conclusion "Don't crucify people." Whereas, if Jesus was ALWAYS really special, then the conclusion is, "They picked the wrong guy to crucify THAT time," which implies "Be careful WHICH guy you crucify." This is one of the major problems, as I see it, with vicarious atonement. Thomas Jefferson, in writing to one of his Jewish acquaintances, said he was more interested in the religion taught BY Jesus than

the religion taught ABOUT Jesus. I regard vicarious atonement to be part of the religion taught ABOUT Jesus. Kurt Vonnegut, in his 1999 commencement address to Agnest Scott College in Georgia, quoted Jesus while blaming many of the world's problems on revenge: What antidote can there be for an idea that popular and poisonous? Revenge provides revenge, which is sure to provide revenge, forming an endless chain of human misery. Here's the antidote: Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. Amen. Some of you may know that I am a Humanist, not a Christian. But I say of Jesus, as all Humanists do, ''If what he said was good and so much of it is absolutely beautiful, what can it matter if he was God or not?'' As for me, when Father Guido Sarducci broke from Rome and founded the People's Catholic Church as Pope Maurice, I joined at once, because I recognized immediately the inspired nature of its central doctrine of the Popehood of All Believers, a radically egalitarian privileging of the individual conscience - tutti uomini sono Pietri, as Maurice put it, "all men are Peters". I chose Devananda as my Papal name, and began d/b/a the Sentient Beings Unitarian Universalist Association. All theological statements in this posting are guaranteed to be correct, or your money cheerfully refunded. Some conditions may apply. Posted by: mistah "Devananda" charley, Ph.D. at November 27, 2009 01:18 PM ================

The People's Catholic Church - the rest of the story

[Disambiguation: The following refers to the PCC founded by Pope Maurice on Saturday Night Live; it is NOT about the People's Catholic Church of China.] Since you have asked about Pope Maurice's current PCC activities, N E, I believe I should share the following information with you. What I have stated so far in this thread about the PCC is correct but not complete. In a discussion about the PCC in the comments of Fafblog, back in 2005, I went on as follows: And who can forget the duet that Pope Maurice sang with Pope Lois (a.k.a. Teri Garr) a few weeks later - "I got you, babe"? Lois looked really great in her white silk papal outfit I never got my certificate suitable for framing with my papal name (Devananda) but Pope Maurice explained that start-up expenses had been heavy, and so it was necessary to sell all the postage on the stamped self-

addressed envelopes that were sent in - "forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us" Later on Maurice backslid and went back to the Church of Rome - but there are still those of us who carry on with the People's Catholic Church In a few upscale suburban neighborhoods, or more avant garde urban areas, the Sentient Beings Unitarian Universalist Association brand is a better fit with market demographics May the Creative Forces of the Universe be with us all with fraternal best wishes, His Humanness Devananda

When Maurice came on SNL to announce that he had reconciled with the Vatican, and was resuming his identity as Father Sarducci, as well as getting his old job back at L'Osservatore Romano - although formally he would be reporting to his former assistant, it had always been more of a collaborative relationship anyway - three possibilities that would explain this betrayal came to mind 1)He was sincere - he had recognized that the schism was a mistake 2)He was coerced 3)It was not really him, but an imposter Obviously, only credulous children would believe (1), but as the bishops say among themselves, the ordinary churchgoer is like the child in the family. The coercion scenario has some initial plausibility, and those with a low opinion of Maurice's strength of character might suggest that staring into the abyss of homelessness, of freezing and starving to death, might have been enough to induce him to beg for his old job back and do what was necessary to get it. Other possible kinds of pressure include blackmail, threats to harm others dear to him, or brainwashing. However, I do not think that Maurice could possibly have collapsed under any of these circumstances - he was made of sterner and more orthogonal kinds of stuff. Frame-by-frame analysis of the videotapes, with attention to microexpressions as discussed in the work of Paul Ekman, makes it clear that this was not even the same man, but rather a skilled imposter, who had received plastic surgery to duplicate Maurice's appearance.

This same man, the pseudo-Sarducci, has continued in his masquerade up to the present date. One wonders what happened to the real Maurice - might he still be in captivity? Has he been murdered? Was he raptured up to Heaven, from which he will return in glory in a thousand years, or perhaps at a time that is still hidden from us, such that no one knows the day or the hour? In any case, there are no further homilies from Pope Maurice available at this time. I am sorry to be the one bearing this news, but as the ancient Taoist phrase puts it Who knows if it is good or bad? Posted by: mistah charley, ph.d. at November 29, 2009 09:17 AM