Church and State: Separated yet Co-Dependent

America was the first nation to draft and implement a written constitution. The U.S. Constitution of 1787 was a world novelty. No nation prior to this time had a written constitution in place. Since its adoption in 1789, the U.S. Constitution has been the supreme law of the land. Whatever biases and weaknesses might come along, the Constitution is meant to anchor the structures of liberty. Whatever its failings, if it has not proven itself in practice to be the fountainhead of liberty that it was meant to be, then we can only blame the evil machinations of Man for its subversion.

 

In the late 1700s America led the way, the way back to liberty. The Founding Fathers, fanned by the secular flames of Renaissance thinking, were mostly considered to be what are known as “Deists,” viz., men who believed in the existence and perfection of God but as the individual, via his own reason, might frame that notion of the deity for himself. Still, whatever their exact religious convictions, they founded a nation upon the sacred principle of liberty. 

 

Remember too, that in the late 1700s Freemasonry was coming to be guided by Adam Weishaupt and his diabolical “Illuminati.” These plotters represented a major faction of a Hydra-headed cabal that formed the nemesis of both the fledgling American republic and the true, Holy Apostolic Catholic Church.

 

Also note that by the late 1700s, usury (defined as any interest on the loan of money) had already made significant inroads into our economic system. For over two hundred years it had infiltrated Christianity, undermining its true tenets; for with usury comes sodomy and moral relativism. This, together with a growing occult influence, caused the Christian faith to already begin mutating into sinfulness at the earliest years of America’s formation. One might conclude that by embracing usury America may have doomed itself to a Faustian bargain it could never escape. Perhaps this corruption heralded an inevitable erosion of liberty and the collapse of the republic. After all, a nation conceived in sin seems bound to be a bastard outcast that can do no good.   

 

Still, it should be stressed that liberty is inextricably bound up with our spiritual being. That is, the Declaration of Independence proclaimed liberty to be an unalienable right and one endowed to Man by our Creator. Thus liberty is a spiritual value that is etched into our immortal souls. It is in this sense that Church and State are separate yet are historically and intrinsically co-dependent.

 

If we are without liberty we are enslaved; if we are enslaved, our birthright is torn asunder; we are denied the blessings of our full humanity; we are non-sovereign, crippled, disabled, handicapped from enjoying our full potential—the full glory of our being. We become subordinated to the will of others and to the malign spiritual forces that animate such others.

 

This fellow makes no claims to be an expert on Christianity, its multiple denominations, and the differences in theology and modes of worship. Neither am I knowledgeable about the subtle differences within the Traditionalist schisms within the Roman Catholic Church. Yet as a self-described “non-denominational Catholic” I have some definite thoughts and insights and I will not be silent.

 

America was founded by Christian principles, actually Protestant, with a “Protestant work ethic.” That Christian/Protestant ethos, though battered and bruised, has survived until today. Moreover, our republican form of government and its work ethic became inextricably bound to the engine of capitalism. And by “capitalism” is not meant “corporate/predatory/crony”-style capitalism, which is not capitalism at all. Neither is capitalism usurious money lending/ borrowing. The capitalism to which I refer means individuals who are free to produce goods and services of their choosing who compete in a free and open market in order to make an untaxed, reasonable return from the fruits of their labor for themselves and their families.  

 

The colony of Maryland was the destination for Catholics. As the name “Maryland” implies it was named after “Mary”—viz., Queen Henrietta Maria (1609-1669), the Roman Catholic wife of English King Charles I. And it’s no secret: Catholics have a special regard for Mary, mother of Jesus. And so I do not think it an improbable coincidence that Maryland was also meant to refer to the Blessed Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus. She is not adored and worshipped as is God the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost. Instead her intercession is sought by Catholics, just as Catholics and Christians generally venerate the saints and pray for their help and guidance.

 

Catholics were viewed with suspicion in colonial America. They still are suspect today and for good reason: for an overarching fealty to the pope, or better stated, Catholics seem to have their own internal agenda that is a separate allegiance apart from the state. And they were suspect due to the corrupting influence of Jesuits meddling in government and finance. Therefore, Catholics were scapegoated for much of the corruption of the papacy and its Jesuits. Many well-intentioned Catholics, who can be counted as devoted patriots, were unjustly accused because of the malfeasance conducted and condoned by cardinals, bishops and pope.

 

Non-Roman Catholic Christians had rejected the pope and the Vatican structure since 1517 when Martin Luther formulated his 95 Theses (also known as his Disputation on the Power of Indulgences). Luther split the Church apart by his harsh condemnation of the Roman Catholic Church’s injustices and failings. These were very real abuses he complained of. And we must take note that this same era (the 1500s) also marks the advent of allowing the former mortal sin of usury and of certain occultist dabbling being accepted within the Church.

 

As I understand it, the Church’s reaction to the Protestant Reformation was to deploy its Jesuit army to combat this challenge to its authority. While the Jesuits are intellectual giants known to be superb educators, they are also highly skilled in covert, subversive activities. And one can see how they can use the former skill to feed the latter; by educating the offspring of the elite they establish a strong personal rapport with them and make strategic use of this relationship to further their own globe-trotting agenda. The Jesuit behind-the-scenes tampering in political affairs would become the template for all covert spy activities that have followed, not the least of which would be the Deep State and its CIA-run Shadow Government—go here to get a sense of what I mean: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQouKi7xDpM&t=3132s).

 

And so, all along the non-Catholic Christians have had a very strong aversion to the machinations of the Roman Catholic Church. This was certainly the case at the founding of America in 1776. Is it any wonder, then, that the colonists in America were (and its future citizens would continue to be) overwhelmingly “Protestant”?  

 

I posit that these non-Roman Catholic (“Protestant”) Christian denominations should be congratulated for making their own way forward without the deeply entrenched and highly connected guidance and support of pope and Vatican. After all, the Church of Rome has tremendous wealth and resources. But both pope and Vatican were corrupted long ago. The final indignity was the perfidious changes wrought by Vatican II beginning in 1965. NOTE:  If there is any doubt about this corruption readers should consult Michael Hoffman’s work, viz., Usury in Christendom: The Mortal Sin that Was and Now is Not (2013); and The Occult Renaissance Church of Rome (2017). For a shockingly bitter, current example of how deep the Church of Rome’s corruption is believed to be today, peruse the following online article:  Eyewitnesses Testify: Pope Francis Allegedly Raped, Trafficked and Killed Children, http://humansarefree.com/2014/04/eyewitnesses-testify-pope-francis-raped.html 

 

By resisting and rejecting the corrupt Papacy, these Protestants were mounting a heroic struggle to be true to the gospel of Jesus while standing up like David to the Philistine’s Goliath. That is, they were falling back upon the innate, individual liberty of their immortal souls; they were being true to the familial lineage of Faith that permeates the Bible message.

 

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There is an interesting parallel between patriots standing up to Britain and non-Catholic Christians standing up to Rome. Americans wanted neither lording over them.

 

Despite the profound distrust of Catholicism, it was a Catholic coup that Washington, D.C., the capital city of the American republic, would be created from land donated by Maryland. This fellow is no historian either, but common sense tells you that this ceding of its land to create the seat of the federal government opened up fertile opportunities for Catholics—and for mischief!

 

Even with these difficulties, America—as the first nation to consecrate itself to liberty—is a nation that also consecrated itself to God; to the Divine attributes of goodness and justice. To the extent the United States of America fails in its duty to God it becomes a pariah state that subordinates the People from whom it derives its very existence. A pariah state consists of a Shadow Government with a Deep Statist “will” that rules and enslaves. This runs counter to liberty and therefore counter to the proper current of that which is good and just. Such a nation dishonors its God and thus becomes evil. Instead it serves the Adversary: Satan, Lucifer, Ahriman, and in this way the People become enslaved to Mammon.

 

All of the many individuals and agencies who subvert our republic by usurping our liberty are disregarding their own souls and the souls of others, and in this way they are disregarding God. I’m speaking of those who are liars, murderers, law breakers who live by covert means, by stealth, who steal what is not theirs, who live by lies and who deceive all trusting and good people—those common people who aspire to live upright and moral lives; to live by a rule of law that can be traced to the source of all law: to God, the Divine will, the Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer.

 

Just as Christianity became a bulwark against the evils of the Roman Empire to gradually establish something akin to St. Augustine’s City of God upon the Earth, America represented a similar vision as a Shining City on the Hill (Calvary—not Capitol Hill), conceived in liberty, from whence the rest of the world might model itself. In its infancy America sought independence from the intrigues of secret societies and privileged casts as existed in the land of its colonial master, Great Britain. But just as the Vatican, via the Medici family and its connections, would ascend to rule in the guise of a Holy Roman Empire, America would get lured to lead the transnational Anglo-American-Israeli alliance via the intrigues of the House of Rothschild, its servitors, and other nefarious plotters. A pivotal and insightful essay by James Perloff is on point: Christianity and the Truth Movement: How Much Do They Coincide? https://jamesperloff.com/blog/  

 

Ash Wednesday is a reminder of our frail mortal selves: “From dust thou hast come and to dust thou shalt return,” says the priest as he puts the ash mark on the forehead. Man is weak. Power corrupts. Nothing, not riches, prestige, education, power, high career or honors mean one wit. All that matters is one’s frequent and fervent devotion to the constant, unchanging truth of Spirit. This is the real, the authentic, the true reality; that for which countless saints reproved tyrants and for which martyrs died. 

 

In man’s imperfect odyssey toward enjoying liberty, goodness and justice, his institutions seem to forever falter. These institutions, too, may be nothing more than ashes. But if, before they are hopelessly corrupted, we can learn just enough from such institutions to mold us into soldiers of truth—soldiers of Christ—we can transcend those very same faltering institutions. Their corruption need not corrupt the faith we carry in our hearts—faith that we can create a better geo-political world that comes ever closer to being that ideal republic, that City on the Hill and true City of God.

 

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It is in this Spirit that, as a non-denominational Roman Catholic, I find commonality with our “Protestant” brethren. They, like many traditionalist Catholics, have been struggling for 500 years without an authentic institutional anchor of pope and Vatican. And like today’s traditionalist Catholics what “Protestants” have erected in place of what Jesus Christ Himself founded may range from questionable to heretical. Still, who can question? Who can blame whom? Human beings of unshakable faith in the gospel of Jesus carry on as best they can in the face of implacable evil, even when it infiltrates the very fabric of their own institutions.

 

Similarly, those patriots who have true liberty etched into their souls have carried on, weathering the storm of those who would destroy the constitutional institutions of our republic. It is not an easy task to uproot the evil that has insinuated itself all along throughout America’s history, especially in its more modern guise since 1913 when the Federal Reserve began taking over America’s financial and economic sector. But, ever so methodically, the Washington Swamp is being drained.  

 

Now a second American revolution is upon us. Just as anonymous patriots stood up to Britain in 1776, they now must stand up to America’s domestic enemies who have long been funded and supported by foreign agents; and, just as non-Catholic Christians stood up to Rome beginning in 1517, American Christians must stand up to Rome yet again in order to root out the institutional cancer that has been gnawing at its core for over 500 years. No one shall lord over us! And if the Vatican Swamp can also be drained and reformed we just may see a world that can right itself. 

 

Through enduring struggle, the truth shall set all Christians free to re-unite as one against the common foe of Mankind. Likewise, Americans and free peoples everywhere shall win the struggle of throwing off all elitist controller/ handlers who only seek to destroy liberty and crush the spiritual birthright of human beings. Both true Christians and patriotic Americans need to stand side-by-side against their common enemies, foreign and domestic. It is to the greater glory of God the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, and not the perversions of the Evil One, that Church and State must remain steadfast—separated yet co-dependent on one another.  

Hip Hop Portraiture

 

            Contemporary hip hop portrait painter Kehinde Wiley attended Yale, where he received his degree in fine art. How many young, successful painters get their degrees at Ivy League universities? Obviously, Yale University (alma mater of enemy-of-the-Republic, Skull and Bonesman George W. Bush) thought this young black painter was gifted enough to have bestowed upon him the blessings of the power elite. With this credential and his artwork speaking for itself, it is no surprise that Wiley should be a spokesman for hip hop culture.

In mid-2008 (just after the ascension of our first CIA-weaned-'n'-groomed president, Barack “Barry Sotero” Obama) Wiley exhibited his work in a show at The National Portrait Gallery entitled RECOGNIZE! Hip Hop and Contemporary Portraiture. It was an effort to articulate a message to the public that black, hip hop cultural icons have earned a definite place in post-modern society, i.e., they should be RECOGNIZED, acknowledged…but appreciated? Whether his subjects have earned a place in the Hall of Fame or the Hall of Shame, Wiley is the chronicler of the lionized image of black, hip hop entertainers who have somehow raised the underclass ghetto lifestyle to a surprising degree of musical acceptance worldwide. But, as the saying goes, “There’s no accounting for public taste”—in music as well as in art. However, maybe we need not be so easily dismissive of Wiley’s art.

Any attempt to analyze Wiley’s portraits simply as art, i.e., divorced from their supposed socio-political message, is a practical impossibility. The viewer must appreciate the whole context, both of the subjects themselves and their social power, i.e., how they are juxtaposed to similar poses and gestures of well-known works of Old Masters from the 17^th to the 19^th centuries (whose identities and works are discussed below). 

Portrait art has always memorialized the dress and manner and lifestyle of its human subjects. Its object is always to preserve a record of human culture, of people, in contrast to that of the natural world. Hence one might say that there has always been some degree of artifice, something contrived, whenever considering what might be described as the civilizational project of humanity. This is especially evident in portrait paintings from any era; if it is not wealth and affluence the subject wishes to project, it is power, social identity or some specially honed personal quality or ability. The competent portrait painter is the one skilled at imbuing its subject with all of his or her symbolic trappings, to include the supporting role that a body language of poses and gestures plays.

In essence, then, portraiture amounts to a kind of human charade, but one of historical significance. And art plays its part; it must provide the images to support the civilizational project, if for no other reason than people might simply become bored without such self-reflections of their consensus reality, their culture trance. And today’s heroes are not so much the powerful military men or kings of yore, but rather actors and entertainers. Perhaps the world now prefers to follow those who imitate life rather than those who really live it. When so much has been co-opted by powerful, commercially-charged, corrupt political interests, who is the public left with other than weak-of-character, loud-mouthed actors on the stage of life?

Enter the anti-hero: the hip hop rabble with their popularizer potentates have made it cool to be dumbed-down, screen-gazing, thing-loving materialists who lust after the very things that oppress them. This is just as the System wants it to be (with Yale University willing to lend a hand) and Wiley wants to put this bunch on the map. Why not? High fashion now takes its cues from the underclass, adding their push in the direction of bad taste and garish, punk-hoodlum, bling-laden frippery. 

The hip hop motto seems to be:  Be street-wise and flaunt your crude, uneducated, in-yo-face, profane yearnings, or forever hold your peace. As a counterfoil to those vanishing, less publicized “real” heroes, who displayed a more heart-centered sort of intelligence (Jimi Hendrix comes to mind), these hip hop characters are a poor substitute, but this is the world as it is today. And Kehinde Wiley memorializes it; by so doing he supports it, or, as he says in his online artist’s statement, he is “at once critical and complicit”—mockingly critical, perhaps, of those chosen works by the Old Masters for the power treatment, yet complicit in that he borrows these very same types of power trappings for his hip hop anti-heroes. 

In my opinion Wiley is a semi-talented artist and sodomite who glorifies no-talent poseurs passing themselves off as musicians and rebels, viz., shallow anti-heroes from the underclass with crass, materialist values. But because they’ve “made it,” (as in, made lots of money and achieved fame! and a following!) this makes them black men worthy and deserving of Wiley’s attentions.  From this perspective Wiley is a pop artist. The bright colors in the textile-like designs that often surround the figures in his paintings, besides imparting an African flavor, also signal a pop sensibility.

Just as Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres painted Napoleon on His Imperial Throne with his power trappings of royal scepters, crown and robe, Kehinde Wiley presents his own "Napoleon."

Similarly, one of his hip hoppers poses in a lavish suit with white hat amid columns and gilded design. 

Although the effect is not as imposing as Napoleon, the attempt at projecting the power of his subject is evident. 

Looking at the baggy ill-fitting droopy drawers and flowing over-sized shirts of some of Wiley’s other subjects puts me in mind of the Three Graces by Peter Paul Rubens.  How could this possibly be so? I refer to the sumptuous, fleshy proportions of the ladies whose body types were fashionable in the eighteenth century. Today such Rubenesque, cellulite-laden bodies hardly seem graceful.

 

 

In a similar way, perhaps one day people will look back on the so-called hip hop fashion of today with the same kind of head-scratching wonderment.  I’m not sure that Wiley was picking up on this aspect. It is more likely that he was more sensitive to the rococo styling that forms the upper border and helps to frame his own Three Graces.  Wiley borrows this idea, although he embellishes upon it in his own run-away technique using more textile-looking, Arabesque-to-paisley design borders. In fact, what are borders in some paintings become background in others.  

When viewing The Banquet of the Officers of the St. Adrian Militia Company by Frans Hals one gets a slightly similar effect; there is a kind of patterning effect presented by the black, white and red in the garments being worn and the half-unfurled draping of the flag which are all so closely crowded together. You also get the sense of a brotherhood commonality on display, especially in the slightly cocky male poses, which are commonly portrayed in Wiley’s paintings of the hip hop crowd. 

Wiley takes this border/background patterning to extremes, as in the painting of the rapper who is floating in his own green and orange decor. (A study for a future great work perhaps? Wait a minute. Let's count the fingers.) 

In Van Dyck’s Self-Portrait and his Triple Portrait of Charles I the viewer is treated to the in-your-face affluence (tripled in Charles I) of fine clothes and self-possession as seen in gesture and facial expression.   Wiley presents a similar effect in the smug faces and hand gestures of his pool-playing hip hoppers and in the hand-in-the-pocket-of-his-fancy-suit in another of Wiley’s paintings (see above) on display in this same exhibition.

In short, Wiley has taken some common painting techniques of the Old Masters that were used in their day to portray the "white man’s power" and applied these same or similar techniques to young black men anti-heroes of our times.  But there is one difference between the props and background used by the Old Masters and how Wiley portrays his subjects.  In Wiley’s works there is nothing depicted from the natural world. Whereas you can see a lovely naturescape in the background of the Three Graces and a giant sunflower in van Dyck’s Self Portait, Wiley situates all of his subjects indoors among man-made props like balls and pool cues and textile-like designs. There is not one natural object in Wiley’s paintings or any reference to the outdoors.  This, I think, is a faithful recording of our society today, particularly of the hip hop generation, who have all but lost contact with the natural world. In place of nature, the hip hop culture revels in its own solipsistic image-making that is callously urban and “staged.” The colors Wiley uses reflect this. They certainly are not earth tones, but rather are gaudy in their brilliance or muted and synthetic. Hip hop is definitely an indoors culture that ventures out only as far as “the street.”

  The display of Wiley’s paintings at The National Portrait Gallery was, I suppose, worthy of any accomplished contemporary artist. Accordingly, Wiley was given two rooms (another blessing of power by the cultural elite). Each work was mostly on a large canvass that spreads across its own entire wall. Given that the subjects are all black men, and given the similar color tones, one can get an eerie sense of almost being with the folks in the paintings, as if you are in a club or in some indoor space of some kind with them (as indeed you kinda, sorta are).

To summarize, I can appreciate that Kehinde Wiley succeeds in painting these portraits in that he faithfully memorializes hip hop icons and black hip hop culture.  By bringing some of the techniques of the Old Masters forward in time, Wiley demonstrates that portraiture stays true to its civilizational project, even as it declines and devolves. And his “official portrait” of the former occupier of the White House falls easily into Wiley’s established pattern of glorifying depressing entertainers.

Life Denied, Heart & Soul Aborted

 

Society has been morally debauched. In an “anything goes,” sex-for-pleasure world, promiscuity long ago became normal. There is no guilt, no sense that there is anything wrong in seeking pleasure-as-you-please. Chastity and virginity have been marginalized as being medieval and quaint. Our eyes see all manner of prurient images. We touch ourselves. There is little or no sense of purity of mind and soul. Instead, mindless fucking rules; masturbation’s become quite OK. How did we become a people-with-no-consciences? How did we get here?

 

In fact, playboy Hugh Hefner made sex cool beginning in the 1950s. Since the 1960s the mantra of “sexual liberation” has been preached non-stop from all quarters. Everyone wanted to be hip, not square. In the 1970s sexually explicit magazines like Penthouse and Hustler were introduced and normalized, as was abortion beginning with Roe v. Wade in 1973. The 1980s saw the Hollywood and TV glamorization of sex, money, and the pursuit of narcissism. And by the 1990s the Internet took over the porn industry and people were further enslaved as hypnotized screen gazers—passive consumers of anything and everything that made them “feel better.”

 

Since then, pornography, homosexuality, moral relativism, gender confusion, arrogant feminism, sado-masochism and bondage, pedophilia, and Satanism have steadily gained “mainstream acceptance.” Even though the USA has a strong, Puritanical streak, its religions were long ago corrupted and compromised; it is a place in which freedom of speech and expression have been parlayed into a mechanism for allowing all manner of debased ideas and bestial norms to gain momentum. Complain or take a moral stand and you are labeled a “prude” or a “geek.”

 

Our society has relentlessly been conditioned to be anti-Christian, anti-white, anti-child and anti-gun. Children are to be avoided because they only prevent you from pursuing a self-absorbed career and a hedonistic, "multi-cultural," lifestyle. These anti-value choices have now become more cherished. In fact, children are voided via birth control and abortion. “Planned Parenthood” is really a Satanic killing machine and a baby-parts mill. Elitist sickos line up to get their fetus smoothie fixes, made from the adrenalized meat of raped and terrorized child-sacrifices to Mammon. Really. Societal sickness is at an all-time record high and morals at a rock-bottom low. 

  

 

Hypocritical leftist dingbats have a mania for voiding the 2^nd Amendment and taking away guns because they kill defenseless children in schools across the country. (Forget that these are all orchestrated black ops involving medicated and mind-controlled perps.)  But they have no qualms about already having aborted millions of fetuses to cleanse society of our children. I don’t get it. Who in their right minds do?

There has now been a normalization of evil, perversion, and ignorance thereof. Instead we are supposed to hate and fear, hate and fear. Meaningfully stupid phrases enter our lexicon: “Orange is the new black”; “A thousand shades of gray”—how much crap do we need before we wake up to the fact that we have been morally and spiritually vanquished? Look around for healthy and happy beings. Look around for someone competent and caring. They have mostly been corporatized into the impersonal; they don’t give a hoot about the common man and woman—they are not allowed to do so by their controllers and handlers. It’s now a reptile-blood CIA-society.

 

There are pockets of old believers and morally upright folks left. However, these are being targeted. Beware. That’s what uncontrolled immigration and all mind control is for: destroy the culture, brainwash the masses, make them dependent, put them on opiates and provide all manner of depravity; kill them with chemicals, nutrient-depleted food, and provide nothing for their minds and souls. Lord God Almighty, protect us!

 

The most vile scourge of all is birth prevention and abortion of the unborn. We can apprehend the root cause: secularization has turned pro-creation into recreation. Once the sacred is removed from the life cycle it can allow for such a holocaustic cleansing of generations of human beings. Birth control and abortion are symptomatic of a whole society that has lost touch with its humanity. Our essence as spirit-beings has been replaced by secular-consumerist-drivel-driven schlock. Once the sacred is turned out from the houses of the holy all manner of evil lurks. In new and subtle ways it undermines us as a people, as souls worthy of evolution toward manifesting the Divine plan for our species. It has been wrecking our planet and now has wreaked havoc on our minds and consciousness, of ourselves as soulful creatures. May God have mercy on us!

 

Reflection.—With what floods of tears can we sufficiently bewail so grievous a misfortune, and implore the divine mercy in behalf of so many souls! How ought we to be alarmed at the consideration of so many dreadful examples of God’s inscrutable judgments, and tremble for ourselves! “Let him who stands beware lest he fall.” “Hold fast what thou hast,” says the oracle of the Holy Ghost to every one of us, “lest another bear away thy crown.” Father Butler, Lives of the Saints (Benziger Bros., Inc., 1955) from the February 21 reflection on the life of St. Severianus, Martyr, Bishop., p.82.

 

“Unlearning”—What Is It?

 

To unlearn one must first learn.

 

What we first learn, the formative core of our being, is the earliest imprinting that we undergo as infants and toddlers in order to apprehend the reality into which we are born. Learning is a type of conditioning, a way of coping, a groping of our way toward what we accept as real, i.e., toward whatever helps us to live and to thrive.

 

As babes we are helpless. We are at the sole mercy of our immediate surroundings. (Even while in our mothers’ wombs we begin a primitive, bio-psychic sort of learning.) At the outset, then, it can be said that humans have a “lust for life,” i.e., for self-preservation. We crave our mothers’ milk and the embrace of love, touch, human warmth and affection. This is our first lesson. And, repeatedly being bathed in these life-sustaining infusions reinforces our incarnated desire to preserve ourselves in this state.

 

From here, after this basic reinforcement training in self-preservation, learning is a process of inculcation; what we learn is a function of our immediate environment and, crucially, of those other human beings around us. These others are, themselves, creatures born and bred via generations of previous inculcations. And, if learning is a conditioning and a groping toward what we apprehend and accept as real, as having meaning and value to us, then from here we are conditioned in as many multiple and diverse ways as there are other human beings.

 

Humans have a natural tendency to band themselves together into communities according to commonalities  with which they then identify. They agree on certain values and meanings outside of their immediate family unit. This “enlargement of self-identification” is known as culture. Culture has practices, beliefs, rituals, and lifeways that expand upon the inculcation that individuals receive as simple family members. And so, once we are part of a society, we’re off to the races, learning (i.e., being conditioned to) all manner of things.

 

To unlearn, then, we must first have learned something. And to unlearn that something it must have proven, over time, that it was not of value—not real—in fact, either less meaningful than we initially thought it to be or just meaningless and useless altogether. Still, we do not usually reject something outright; instead there is a period, perhaps a long period, during which we question and hold certain things we had learned in abeyance. But what sort of something might have been learned that later led us to wanting to unlearn? When does learning end and unlearning begin?

 

We might take as a good example the questioning of moral and religious lessons inculcated in us early in life. Suppose we begin to get suspicious, wondering if these core values and beliefs are real (perhaps only metaphors?) and we lump morality and religion in with all of our normative, socio-cultural conditioning—as being an indistinguishable part of the consensual reality and culture trance that we have previously “bought into.” Suppose further that we are then assaulted by various false doctrines, scientific/secular/mental-rational materialism; modernist-corporate-consumerist-celebrity Tavistock/CIA/Mossad sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll propaganda; esoteric occultism; or possibly atheistic narcissism and/or the pure evil of Luciferian waywardness.  

 

Does unlearning mean to accept, even conditionally, whatever it was that came along to fill in the emptiness of what was initially learned and then unlearned (in the sense of being held in abeyance)? Perhaps.

 

And if so, does “unlearning” also mean to “question/condition, then recall, reclaim and re-learn” in a continuous loop pattern of “conditioning/ deconditioning/ reconditioning” oneself? In this particular example of morals and religion, that is how this author sees “unlearning”; as falling into sin, recognizing the error of one’s ways, and then resolving to rectify things: to have contrition, to make restitution, to purify oneself, to polish the mirror of the soul, and to relentlessly carry on, doing (as best we can figure it) what is right and just.

 

“Unlearning” then, is really a process of staying in a state of continual learning (or, more accurately: learning/ unlearning/ relearning); learning from error, from making mistakes; learning the hard way; testing our beliefs—experiencing life, communing with nature, paying attention to our feelings, listening to the intuitive murmurings of the heart and listening to others; seeing and using all of our other senses, thinking, reading, studying; often failing but occasionally succeeding.

In short, does unlearning mean to never give up searching for the real, for the truth? And, might one add as corollaries aspiring toward goodness and appreciating beauty along the way in this search for truth?

Because, as some people maintain, we can never fully know the Truth, does such a supposition necessarily render useless or nullify our search for the truth? It does not dampen this author’s desire to search for the truth, to seek out what is real. Such a search is driven not so much by the logic of the mind as it is by the soul, by an unquenchable thirst of the heart for communion with the Divine: the "I am" within myself and the "I am" as cosmic interconnection.

 

The True, the Good and the Beautiful are the classic Platonic forms. But is the search merely Platonic? Or is there an ever-present spiritual component inhering in our human nature that transcends even Platonic forms? What of love, grace, the inspiration of poetic moments—faith, hope, and charity—God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost—the empathy of the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have done unto you? What of purity, sanctity, humor? Chastity, poverty, and obedience?

 

Why is suffering seen as so onerous? Can we not go beyond suffering by ignoring our suffering as a slight, irritating inconvenience that is none-the-less bearable? Can we not offer it up? Are we so frail we cannot humbly bear the load of our humanity?

 

Unlearning is remembering that we are more than bodies in need of self-preservation, in need of prepping against the End Times; that we are more than members of a culture, a community; that we are as fiercely independent and liberty-loving as our immortal souls—indeed, that we are souls, connected to God, intent upon Thy Will being done, on Earth as it is in Heaven.

Soul Enticed: Essays in Unlearning



Published on January 22, 2018

Lulu Publishing Services

Genre: Christian/Religion/ Spirituality

110 Pages

Order: http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/WyWi23

 

With the publishing of Soul Enticed I have attempted to reconcile the darker side, Wyman Wicket, with the lighter side, Jack Suss. (Mr. Wicket—“Why man wicked?”—wrote the Foreword to this book by Suss.) I'm not sure how people will react to the pen-name-me essentially "in dialogue with" the-"real"-me. I don't even know if what I am attempting here is novel or not. But I like what I've done in this respect: it is as if I've balanced or merged my id and my ego. (It might be compared to trying to resolve a kind of Wilbur/Mr. Ed displacement conundrum.)

 

In Soul Enticed I have tried to express the conundrum Catholics face during this time of absolute corruption of the Church’s upper hierarchy and society; the devastation of the Mass, etc., cinched by the perfidies of Vatican II; and the difficulties in finding a priest ordained prior to 1965 who (notwithstanding the Church of Rome’s 500 years of usury) has more of the real “spiritual juice” and from whom one might receive something closer to the full vigor of the sacraments. In reality, today’s Catholics are adrift and on their own, i.e., separated from rock-solid institutional guidance and support, and from the grace regularly available via receiving the sacraments. Fortunately, as a perennial outsider, I have had lots of experience toughing things out.

 

I am writing here as a "non-denominational Catholic." A non-denominational Catholic just means a real Catholic without the corruption from the top and who does not identify and practice among any established group of "traditional Catholics." (Although quite "wordy," the following site does a good job of explaining what I might adopt as my own stance: http://ourladysresistance.org/about-us.html Also, do a search for, and learn about, "the third secret of Fatima.”) Go here if you wish to survey the numerous traditional Catholic groups: http://www.trusaint.com/traditional-catholic-issues-and-groups/  Among them are the SSPX (Society of St. Pius X), SSPV (Society of St. Pius V), CMRI (Congregation of Mary Immaculate Queen), and the FSSP (Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter).

 

Regardless, as one who never fit in anyway, it is not very surprising that I would form my own “group of one” that seeks to suss out authentic Roman Catholicism. And the ultimate objective of Soul Enticed may just be to “drain the Vatican and bishopric swamp” of all apostates who subscribe to the corrupted Church of St. Peter—viz., the usury, Talmudic/Kabbalist/Pharisaic occultism, modernism, and mindless ecumenism and indifferentism.

 

Michael Hoffman's criticism of "traditional Catholic" groups is that they are pre-Vatican II believers who are oblivious to the scandalous 500-year usury issue; the very popes they look to as standard bearers of traditional Catholicism were in fact illegitimate in the sense that they never renounced and seriously sought to rid the Church of the practice of usury, accepted since Pope Leo X. And, according to Hoffman, along with the mortal sin of usury comes sodomy and moral relativism. Oh wonder of wonders!

 

Of course it can be argued that if usury had already long corrupted the Roman Catholic Church, then you (if you were reared Catholic) and I never really got the real thing in the first place. In a sense this is true. For example, compare our “post-modernist” fat-cat-folk-mass Faith to the pure Faith of, say, a Pope St. Gregory the Great (540-604), often considered to be the first medieval pope (as mentioned in the Foreword). 

 

However, in its purity the Catholic Faith can be apprehended, as it should be, from studying the Bible, esp. the gospel of Jesus, and a rigorous review of the theology, dogma, catechism, and all time-tested ecclesiastical teachings and traditions of the Church. Upon that rationale I go forth to find my own way, though I must confess that it has only been about three months since I have reclaimed the full vigor of my Catholic faith convictions. At present I am separated from the conventions, viz., the Mass and the sacraments while I search for a priest through whom I can repose my Faith (preferably, though not necessarily, a priest who was ordained before 1965, i.e., before the heresies of Vatican II fatally infiltrated Roman Catholicism).

 

Today there are a host of “traditional Catholic” groups. Again, for me, a "non-denominational Catholic" means a real Catholic, without the corruption from the top, who does not identify and practice within any of these traditionalist groups. These groupings are nothing short of a new Reformation, though instead of a Protestant revolution, it is a Traditionalist revolution. Thus, by calling myself a “non-denominational Catholic,” I mean to remain staunchly Roman Catholic, albeit according to my less-formal-but-studied discernment of truth according to the Faith.

 

In times such as these the Faith remains in the People, similar to the situation in which today’s real patriots find themselves when faced with the vagaries of the Cryptocracy. Maybe I come off as too vain, too big for my layman's britches, and not cognizant enough of humility. But doggone it, I can't sit still and “take it” anymore. So I will speak my mind. And although I have in the past referred to myself as “Rev. Gumpus” I remain just a lowly lay Brother who has intuited his own “Weird Task ministry” and who aims to stay true to the gospel of Jesus.