53 The Ides of Marx (I)
I had to look twice when I saw the TimesOnline headline: “Vatican thumbs up for Karl Marx ….” I was even more surprised to learn that the headline was telling the truth. The Vatican is engaged in historical reappraisal and making changes in its stance with regard to its former positions on a number of issues. According to TimesOnline:
“L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, said yesterday [10/22/09] that Marx’s early critiques of capitalism had highlighted the ‘social alienation’ felt by the ‘large part of humanity’ that remained excluded, even now, from economic and political decision-making.
“Georg Sans, a German-born professor of the history of contemporary philosophy at the pontifical Gregorian University, wrote in an article that Marx’s work remained especially relevant today as mankind was seeking ‘a new harmony’ between its needs and the natural environment. He also said that Marx’s theories may help to explain the enduring issue of income inequality within capitalist societies.” http://tiny.cc/6jOOf
It is significant that the leader of a major institution with populist tendencies, the “Church”, is changing its mind and has tilted the institution it controls—the Catholic Church in this instance—closer to those who are critical of neo-liberal leadership. The latter has clearly presumed itself to be the Captain of the Universe as it leads the charge towards globalization. Going into opposition is a radical step for the Vatican, because Catholic leadership (ever since its beginnings at Avignon) is responsible for the betrayal of the arch-Christian autocephalic democracy in order to serve the interests of secular princes. It is through the help of the Catholic Church that the princes, the forerunners of the capitalist system, were able to infiltrate into the social fabric of society and weaken its resistance to outsider exploitation. Indeed, the Catholic Church’s dependency on secular leadership for support created the “more-equal-than-others” economic order that rules today.
Nevertheless, if the Catholic Church has the will to turn from rhetorical doubt to seeing in it a major spiritual revelation, it must yet take another step into the populist camp. Such a step must help return “religion” to the days when all Christian Churches were autocephalic organizations, and all Churches knew only of “Johns” of whom Jesus was but one. It was the Catholic Church, whose early popes were the brothers or brothers-in-law of secular princes, who remade the remnant of the Constantinopolitan autocephalate at Avignon into a spiritual organization serving the interests of the princes ruling in the West. [This is why the first crusade to follow the one on the Bogomils of Constantinople (sometimes known also as the Fourth Crusade) was against the Cathars, a holdout autocephalate Church in Lacquedoc, southern France.]
Whether the Catholic Church will take such a radical step, we do not know. Most likely, it will not. However, the events and trends now abroad—specifically the obvious lack of charismatic authority by governments and secular institutions—must necessarily take “religion” in an autocephalos direction with or without the old and shopworn orthodoxies of neo-Christendom joining. The Latvian “Children of Johns”—a religious society once arguably part of the proto-autocephalic churches of central Europe—will necessarily play a role in the return of self-sacrifice in politics. Given the state of ineffectiveness the predominant spiritual condition of neo-Christendom, a return to arch-Christianity cannot be stopped. Neo-Christians can no longer hide that they have been cultivating leadership by rhetoric instead of leadership by example. To put it another way, the return of Jesus as John is inevitable—and that should be the happy news that President of Latvia, Zatlers, brings to the next secretive neo-Christian prayer breakfast when it meets in Riga next year. http://tiny.cc/ZQKeq
In Latvia—the last location of the name of Johns as a populist name and celebration—the “Children of Johns” present the world with an empty signifier ready to receive not only equivalences found among neo-Christians at large, but welcomes equivalences that now operate without self-sacrifice from among all religions.
Elsewhere, I have suggested how the Johns’ Eve Festival on Midsummer Eve in Latvia could remind a community in the throes of dying to its ethnicity to transform the loss into trans-ethnicity, and through such a process become the founder of a homogenous society that is as new as it is old. Jahnis or John will then be free to travel to Germany as Johann and/or Hans, to France as Jean and Joan, to Italy as Digiovanni (Dionysius), to Russia as Ivan and Zhena, to the Spanish-speaking countries as Huan, and may end up in Peru dancing a Huanka. In other words, Johns, pronounced Yahnyi in Latvian, is amenable to imitation and has room to spare for further spiritual evolutions. If Latvians were to choose this path, it could result in the long prayed for “return of Jesus”, not as a supernatural event, but a singular happening, a return of John to the college of Johns.
As Schopenhauer said to the unbelievers: “All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.”
On Old Europe, Marija Gimbutas http://tiny.cc/Zz07V ; http://tiny.cc/K6pJj
On “New Chronology” [of History.] Anatoly Fomenko http://tiny.cc/JJnHw
On the theme of “more-equal-than-others” http://tiny.cc/RRviK ; http://tiny.cc/1NFQJ
An eyeball of Latvia (and its forests) http://tiny.cc/7mSpk ; http://tiny.cc/TSghu The two maps match in showing the forested areas, but you should look at both to get a realistic sense of the meaning of “47% forest cover”. The Latvian news media does not provide coverage of the rapid pace of deforestation on a routine basis. At this moment, only the “lousy” weather and water filled swamps keep the chainsaws at bay—somewhat.
These blogs tend to be a continuum of an idea or thought, which is why—if you are interested in what you have read—you are encouraged to consider reading the previous blog and the blog hereafter. This is the 55th blog of a continuum, more or less.
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