Southie Progressive Magazine

In 414, an entire community of Jews were violently assaulted by Christians to the point of extinction. This atrocity, like so many other other atrocities, stemmed from ignorance. Catholics based their faith, and excused their egregious behavior towards those of other faiths, with their comprehension of the early Christian Church, and the Nicene Creed. However, the Nicene Creed was created under the auspices of Emperor Constantine–a man who was not even baptized when the Creed was written. Emperor Constantine no longer tolerated other faiths; nor did he tolerate various thoughts (heresies) within the Christian Church. To this demagogue who created the much of Catholicism’s dogma, a “heresy” endangered his unified Roman Empire, and his mind must be expelled.

The early Church was made up of Jews who were followers of Christ. They practiced Jewish rituals, went to Temple, and adhered to Jewish Scripture. Even later on, after Constantine promulgated the Edict of Milan, Jews and Christians began sharing rituals once again, just as the early Jews who followed Jesus did.

Constantine turned Christianity into the religion of state, and adopted the Cross as his military banner, and thus made Christianity a religion of power–a religion of state. This presaged the schism
between Judaism and Christianity. A schism that led to the deaths of millions of Jews.

Constantine had a “celestial vision” in the night’s sky that if he and his army cross the Milvian Bridge and cross the Tiber and into Rome with the Cross of Jesus as their unifying symbol, Constantine would be victorious. The Cross was to be formed by a spear and a traverse bar. It was to become a symbol not only of Christianity, but of state power represented metaphorically by the spear.

It is more likely that the well-educated, politically astute (a man just as politically astute the contemporary political geniuses Karl Rove, David Plouffe, and David Axelrod) Constantine saw that upon crossing the Rubicon and Tiber and entering Rome, that he would need a passionate base to secure his position. Although not in the majority, Christians provided Constantine with the political strength he needed to maintain control of Rome:

They were a minority, but a well organized one. And no claimant had the allegiance of a majority. Fierce Christian devotion to a conqueror whose miraculous conversion proved the truth of their faith would have made Christians powerful political allies. – James Carroll, Constantine’s Sword. New York: Mariner Books, 2002, p 182

Realizing that the sudden conversion to Christianity may jeopardize the good will he had amongst his pagan troops and followers, he met with his sole adversary, Licinius, and they issued the Edict of Milan, which granted religious freedom to pagans, Jews, and Christians.

Referred to as “man’s free choice”, one can already see the sprouting seeds of the Enlightenment, and dare I say, it divined that one day men and women would accept and fight for God’s Natural Laws and the freedom and rights inherent in those laws. e.g., freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of speech.

Many, Romans–Romans with the progressive human characteristics of unity, hope, and love–had that innate desire to relate to other cultures. Our early progressives felt the innate desire to relate to their Jewish kin. Once again Christians found their Jewish roots and began practicing the rituals of their mother religion–the rituals that Jesus practiced.

How could that be sinful? Yet Constantine saw this as a danger to the unification of the empire and issued the Nicene Creed:

The decree signals the success Jews were having in attracting Christians to their culture and calendar. Moreover, the decree was prompted by a widespread Christian wish to maintain a lively connection with the Jewish origin of faith in Jesus. (Ibid. p. 185

But Constantine, now proving himself a demagogue who passes and abolishes laws according to how these laws will benefit him and his quest, not just to unify the Empire, but to unify the Empire under his name, passed a law that restricted Jews from proselytizing (an act that Jews are not well-known for–attraction to the faith is their preferred method of propagation).

Therefore, Constantine and the Cross permanently separated the religions of Judaism and Christianity. These religions might have been inseparable if not for the ignorance of the historical context of Jesus and for The Emperor Constantine. After all, Christ and his followers did not alter their Jewish Rituals and beliefs.

Constantine became the sole ruler of the empire. The dogmatist in political matters became the dogmatist in religious matters. Constantine was not baptized; yet he set the Church’s policy for 1700 years. And that policy was not decided by Catholic Intellectuals, but by a dogmatist who wasn’t baptized, and who merely sought to unify his empire.

It is important to emphasize that this need [for Constantine to answer the questions debated in The Church since Jesus’ Day], which has so dominated Roman Catholicism that even now the Church cannot break free from it, was first defined not by the Lord, a Jew who identified with dissenters; nor by his apostles, who did not hesitate to differ from one another; nor by his successor bishops who defended interests; nor by evangelists who produced not one version of the Jesus story but four … but by an all-conquering emperor for whom one empire had come to equal one religion. (Ibid. p. 189)

We say the Nicene Creed weekly at Mass. The words of the Emperor Constantine. It has taken a Jesuit Pope, Pope Francis, to finally see the sin in uttering a politically motivated doctrine for the Church set by an Empire, who though not baptized, took it upon himself, and himself only to set the dogma of the Church.

Prior to Pope Francis, The Catholic Church finally made an attempt to amend the doctrinal past that caused the Church as an institution to behave so contrary to the words of Christ by promulgating Vatican II. Historically, the Church has often been at odds with the sagacious words and actions of Christ. As the Roman Catholic Church, would the Church perpetuate the Roman Empire or perpetuate the words of Christ?

O’Malley [Reverend and Georgetown University Professor] says a theme of the documents was reconciliation. In keeping, they allowed for Catholics to pray with other Christian denominations, encouraged friendship with other non-Christian faiths, and opened the door for languages besides Latin to be used during Mass. Other new positions concerned education, the media and divine revelation. – Jordan G. Teicher, “Why is Vatican II so Important?” Religion. NPR (10 October 2012) Retrieved from http://www.npr.org/2012/10/10/162573716/why-is-vatican-ii-so-important Accessed on 18 August 2017

Constantine corrupted our faith. Jesus demonstrated that dissent was a universal good. His acts of protest and dissent mark some of the greatest stories in the New Testament, i.e., the turning over of the tables in the Temple used for the marketing of goods. Dissent is the application of the greatest gift that God gave us: the gift of human reasoning. Jesus wanted there to be questions meditated on by rigorous minds like Augustine and other intellectuals. Jesus wished his theology of unity, love, hope, and, yes, of dissent, to be questioned and studied by erudites of various backgrounds. And most importantly he taught that when dissent is suppressed by a tyrannical demagogue, it would lead to the brainwashing (the removal of rationality, the gift of reason, and the love that we feel towards those with whom we disagree) and the mass hysteria of whole nations of people, as a way for those to pervert Christianity and promulgate hate, as we saw in the death camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau

Now we have a Pope who truly understands that human reasoning is God’s greatest gift to man–a Pope who truly wants his bishops to think, and even his flock to think. He is the anti-demagogue. The antipode to Emperor Constantine. He wishes the Church to go back to the days when regional bishops had greater responsibility and participated in the development of Catholic teaching. As one who refers to himself as a Jesuit Catholic Jewish Deist, and as follower of Jesus, not just the Jesus of the Bible, but of the historical Jesus whom we so often over-looked, we cannot base our faith on the words of a power-thirsty, greedy, and very fallible man. Why should Emperor Constantine have the final say in a religion that worships a man who denied Satan’s offer of empire, power, and riches, and instead wondered the dessert for 40 days?

Pope Francis yesterday gave an address to the profoundly divided Synod on the Family in which he confirmed his plans to decentralise the Catholic Church – giving local bishops’ conferences more freedom to work out their own solutions to the problems of divorce and homosexuality … One statement in particular horrified the conservatives. Francis told them that ‘the sense of faith impedes the rigid separation between the Teaching Church and the Learning Church, because the flock possesses its own “sense” to discern the new roads that the Lord reveals to the church… – Damian Thompson, “Pope Francis is now effectively at war with Vatican” The Spectator (18 October 2015) Accessed on 16 August 2017

Pope Francis’ radical belief that a layperson can have astute observations about the Catholic Faith, and that the The Holy Spirit can be revealed in the adept reasoning of a layperson, seem to be radical beliefs only within the institution of the Catholic Church.

Many prophets of Christ have appeared even in recent history, and they were blessed with the Holy Spirit in their rhetorical skills. MLK and Bobby Kennedy come to mind. They too, like the Jesus that they not only worshipped, but tried their outmost to live their lives as he would, suffered execution as Jesus did. But the Holy Spirit within them lives eternally.

Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the promised land. And I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. – MLK Speech to garbage workers on 3 April 1968

Martin Luther King Jr. was slain by a bullet fired in hatred the next day on 4 April 1968. Like many other prophets he presaged his own untimely death. These words came earlier in the same speech and are just as meaningful:

Now, what does all of this mean in this great period of history? It means that we’ve got to stay together. We’ve got to stay together and maintain unity. You know, whenever Pharaoh wanted to prolong the period of slavery in Egypt, he had a favorite, favorite formula for doing it. What was that? He kept the slaves fighting among themselves. (Ibid.)

Jesus died on the Cross and while resurrected blessed us with the gift of the the eternal Holy Spirit, and thus his message of unity, strength, hope, and love is eternal.

The message of Jesus is antonymic to hate or fear. We can not stand idly by as fascists take to the streets with their malfeasant message of hatred and tribalism. We cannot allow any more pogroms under our watch. As long as we have that eternal Holy Spirit within us, or for those who can’t relate to that statement, as long as the power of love keeps us moving as a hopeful people towards the removal of a tyranny based on bigotry and hatred, and instead towards unity and love, we will not stop, we will not falter, we will not quit until the light drives out the darkness.