My Favorite Heresy

My favorite heresy has to be Catharism. A dualistic sect with ties to the ancient Gnostics. Cathars believe in a good God and a god of the material world (Rex Mundi). Rex Mundi is a lesser, flawed god, so is the world and all things secular. He is the god of the corporeal, chaotic and powerful. The good God or (Espiritu Sancti) is the god of peace, order and love.

Cathars referred to themselves as 'Good Men.' They lived a simple wandering life of piety, prayer and good works. Where ever there was the need a good man would appear. They were journeyman priests, wandering saints.

They achieve heretical status by fact of renouncing the physical Catholic church. The Vatican, the institution, the kingly Pope were all creations of Rex Mundi and to be avoided. Cathars did not condemn the worldly but did renounce them. After all a lesser god is not a devil (or is he).

The good men survived though the early middle ages; the 11th, 12th and into the 13th century. Eventually the church took exception and launched a genocide against these misbelievers. Called the Albigensian Crusade, good men were hunted down and eliminated. Eventually the Inquisition ferreted out the last of the heretics and prosecuted any lingering believers.

Other than disrespecting and damning the church the Cathars:
Believed in contraception
Condoned homosexuality
Espoused free love
Were vegetarians
Accepted reincarnation
Condemned war and capital punishment

The Catholic church was quite adept at genocide. When the inquisition finished mopping up the heretical Cathars it immediately went to work on the Jews of Spain. All Christendom is guilty of the same; be it Huguenots in Lutheran Germany, Catholics in Episcopal England or witches in Puritan America, church elders have always been eager to light a fire under malcontents and disbelievers.

Murder in the name of God and for the propagation of faith seems a tad severe but who am I to judge. Minor heretics wore yellow crosses, Jews yellow stars, ratting out your neighbor to the Inquisitor became the fashion as would whispering to the SS, the KGB or the Khmer Rouge. The heretical premise of a faulty world seems to be self actuating. A large compliment of 'good men' might be exactly what is needed.

I believe Barry Obama to be a good man. He struggles with the faulty systems on their own terms and comes up short. He mistakenly built a cabinet out of the warped wood of Washington insiders. He takes advice from the minions of the devil. Everything he builds is ineffectual and flawed. Remember Rex Mundi?

Barry would be better off listening to his better angels. Find a coalition of 'good men'. Bring them in from the Universities, from the charities, from the working force and off the street. If indeed corruption, greed and selfishness is to be ameliorated it needs be confronted by an army of saints. He needs to purge his house of jackals, mercenaries and hypocrites. Enlist the holy spirit (Espiritu Sancti) in the management of everyday matters.

The president may find himself a martyr to the worldly lords and the populace may cheer and throw sticks on the fire but if he is indeed a 'good man' he will walk to the pyre rather than hide behind, equivocation, rhetoric and duplicitous involvement.