CYCLE 124
1. MUSICAL BIASES OF THE TRIADIC BEYOND. The harmonies of sensible Mass, the melodies
of sensible Volume, and the pitch of sensible
Space ... would all be acceptable in, and therefore applicable to, their
respective tiers of 'Kingdom Come'. Only
the rhythms of sensible Time would be unacceptable, and therefore inapplicable,
there, since connoting with the Father, and hence with that which, in strength,
falls morally short of the beauty of the Mother, the knowledge of the Son, and
the truth of the Holy Spirit.
3. NO STRUGGLE OF GOOD AGAINST EVIL. Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as
a struggle, directly and intentionally, of good against evil. That which struggles violently with evil is
not goodness but an alternative kind of evil, say, naturalism against idealism,
or realism against materialism. Goodness
turns its back on evil because it is an attribute of sensibility.
4. COMPETING SENSIBILITIES. Of course, there may be competition between
alternative sensibilities, but that would not be a struggle between good and
evil ... so much as competition between different kinds of goodness, say
objective against subjective, or phenomenal against noumenal.
5. EVIL AGAINST GOOD. However, if goodness does not wage war on
evil, it could certainly be argued that evil wages war on goodness, both
directly and indirectly, by deriding it and flaunting itself. Yet goodness has to 'turn the other cheek' if
its devotee is not to succumb to evil by fighting back, thereby abandoning
good.
6. NO REJECTION OF EVIL BEING. One could argue that the Old Testament stands
to the New Testament as evil being to good being, or religious sensuality to
religious sensibility, and that the God of the one is a refutation of the God
of the other, 'turning the other cheek' and exacting 'an eye for an eye and a
tooth for a tooth' being incommensurate.
Yet Christians, with their phenomenal relativity, have more usually
sought a compromise between sensuality and sensibility than a wholesale
rejection of evil being, and hence the God of the Old Testament, viz. Jehovah.
7. DENOMINATIONAL THEORY OF BIBLICAL
BIASES. Such a compromise is not incompatible
with a bias for the one testament over the other, and if the Puritan bias is
for the New Testament, then the Dissenter has no great difficulty accommodating
the Old Testament, passing from the Father in connection with Christ to Jehovah
in connection with Satan. Anglicans, on
the other hand, might well be more disposed, in their bias towards the Mother,
to striking a balance between Old and New Testaments, rather like a mother
seeking to accommodate the often conflicting biases of her husband and son -
the former identifiable with Dissenterism, the latter
with Puritanism.
8. BASIS OF GENUINE PRAYER. There is no way in which prayer can be
genuine when not associated, in Catholic fashion, with the Christ Child, Who is
naturally close to the Virgin Mary, that young and miraculously impregnated
Mother. Those who pray without due
institutional regard to the necessity of upholding both the Virgin Mary and
Christ Child ... deceive themselves as to the authenticity of their
prayers. Thus most Protestants are
deceived if they be not disillusioned with prayer (rightly so, with regard to
their denominational departures from orthodoxy) and more disposed, in
consequence, to other forms of worship.
Only a Catholic can pray sincerely, and therefore it is not to be
wondered at if Catholics generally take prayer more seriously than their
Protestant counterparts. For prayer is
the most subjective use, as thought, of the intellect, and thus it conforms to
the most subjective mode of Christianity, that which is closer to the truth of
the Holy Spirit in the 'peace that surpasses all understanding', the
lung-biased subjectivity-of-subjectivities.
Yet the truth of the Holy Spirit and the supertruth
of the Holy Spirit of Heaven are, as the reader may already have gathered, two
quite different things, the one germane to true Christianity, or Catholicism,
and the other germane to what I am disposed to regarding as Social
Transcendentalism, which is effectively Superchristian.
9. PLACE FOR ALTERNATIVE VIRTUES. You may, as a disillusioned Protestant,
regard Catholicism as closer to the truth than Protestantism, but that would be
no reason to convert to Catholicism, as though the truth alone was what
mattered. Certainly it is that which
applies to genuine religion, and Catholicism is nothing if not the nearest
thing, within Christianity, to genuine religion. But there are other virtues or goods
(sensibilities) as well, and they have just as much entitlement to exist
(outside 'Kingdom Come') as the truth. I
allude, of course, to beauty, knowledge, and strength, and thus to virtues
which I believe to be more the preserve of Anglicanism, Puritanism, and Dissenterism, respectively, than of Catholicism, and which
duly correlate with the Mother, the Son, and the Father ... as opposed to the
Holy Spirit. Yes, Catholicism is religious
Christianity, but there is still a place in life for 'political Christianity',
'economic Christianity' (the Christianity-of-Christianities), and 'scientific
Christianity', even if, ultimately, the truth is morally superior to each and
every one of the alternative virtues.
Certainly, the Beautiful and the Knowledgeable would have a place
alongside the True in any 'Kingdom Come' to which I sign my name! For it is not necessary to become a Catholic
in order to qualify for millennial salvation.
Only if you would prefer truth to knowledge or beauty,
and thus the 'New Heaven' to the 'New Purgatory' or the 'New Earth'.
