OII – Responses to Pope’s Christmas message

Response from Michelle O’Brien:

This Christmas message is about maintaining an oppressive gender system which has enabled him to occupy the supreme position within one of the most powerful male hierarchies on the planet. If he could get LGBT people out of the way, women could be put back into their 'natural' place - the home - to get on with a life fit only for breeding. Why we have to suffer this man's repressed homosexual paranoia and misogyny any more is beyond me. Christmas is about the coming of the Good News, yet this is not the Gospel; it is bad news for LGBT people and for women - so why is the Pope preaching a message of hatred at Christmas that bears no relation to the teachings of Jesus Christ? Why is the Pope seeking to deny a significant group people their humanity, excluding them in the same way he has had them thrown out of convents, monasteries, seminaries and churches? This message of ill-will at Christmas will have negative consequences for gay, lesbian, bisexual, transsexual, transgender and intersex people around the world, both within and beyond the Roman Catholic Church.

Response from Curtis E. Hinkle:

Christianity was a Jewish sect. For quite a while, all early Christians were Jews. Jesus, the original founder of this offshoot of Judaism, was eventually turned into a Deity himself by the Church of Rome. Instead of putting the emphasis on the teachings of Jesus, who was called Rabbi, the Church of Rome deified him and made the church itself the Rabbi or teacher of this early sect. There are some very serious logical errors in the theology of the Pope who seems to have misread the teachings of Jesus concerning marriage and the two sex system. The teachings of Jesus on this topic are still in the official cannon of the Church of Rome and I think there is an intentional omission of these teachings in this Christmas message from the pope.

Matthew {19:10} His disciples say unto him, If the case of the man be so with [his] wife, it is not good to marry. {19:11} But he said unto them, All [men] cannot receive this saying, save [they] to whom it is given. {19:12} For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from [their] mother’s womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake. He that is able to receive [it,] let him receive [it.]

Jesus is referring to eunuchs, intersex people, when he says that some were so born from their mother's womb. So the pope is accurate when he says that Jesus did not change the message of creation. However, that message of creation is not based on a two-sex system, nor is it based on the primacy and superiority of being male or female. Quite the contrary, the message is based on the fact that the Creative Spirit is a composite of all - and the eunuch would therefore be the androgynous human form which other men should try to emulate. So far, the Church of Rome has failed at this miserably and done everything to erase the need for men to become eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake. Instead they sexualize people as reproductive instruments who are needed to perpetuate their own material forms to [overpopulate] the earth. We could save the rainforests if we listened to what Jesus said. The problem is not intersex people or transsexuals and Jesus makes this very clear. The problem is the uncontrollable lust that rules many men's heads and which has led us to the situation where the rainforests are in peril.

I suggest the pope reread the message that the Rabbi Jesus taught. He held eunuchs (intersex people) to be of particular merit because of their nature.

It is also very symbolic that the first non-Jew to become a member of this Jewish sect was the Ethiopian eunuch. (See footnote.)

Jesus was not a big advocate of marriage. He simply concedes to the fact that most men will not live up to their high calling of rising above their carnal desires and lets marriage be a default for fulfilling their sexual needs.

Intersex people are missing from this papal message. Why? Because the church of Rome is not willing to deal with the real world that is not based on a two-sex system but which reflects the Father-Mother God, the All in One. The church of Rome is a phallocratic institution and as such, is perpetuating the very slavery to sexualized commodities (in the form of women who become objects for men's use and abuse) and makes intersex people not only invisible but lower than women in this hierarchy.

Footnote

Acts {8:26} And the angel of the Lord spake unto Philip, saying, Arise, and go toward the south unto the way that goeth down from Jerusalem unto Gaza, which is desert. {8:27} And he arose and went: and, behold, a man of Ethiopia, an eunuch of great authority under Candace queen of the Ethiopians, who had the charge of all her treasure, and had come to Jerusalem for to worship, {8:28} Was returning, and sitting in his chariot read Esaias the prophet. {8:29} Then the Spirit said unto Philip, Go near, and join thyself to this chariot. {8:30} And Philip ran thither to [him,] and heard him read the prophet Esaias, and said, Understandest thou what thou readest? {8:31} And he said, How can I, except some man should guide me? And he desired Philip that he would come up and sit with him. {8:32} The place of the scripture which he read was this, He was led as a sheep to the slaughter; and like a lamb dumb before his shearer, so opened he not his mouth: {8:33} In his humiliation his judgment was taken away: and who shall declare his generation? for his life is taken from the earth. {8:34} And the eunuch answered Philip, and said, I pray thee, of whom speaketh the prophet this? of himself, or of some other man? {8:35} Then Philip opened his mouth, and began at the same scripture, and preached unto him Jesus. {8:36} And as they went on [their] way, they came unto a certain water: and the eunuch said, See, [here is] water; what doth hinder me to be baptized? {8:37} And Philip said, If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. {8:38} And he commanded the chariot to stand still: and they went down both into the water, both Philip and the eunuch; and he baptized him. {8:39} And when they were come up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord caught away Philip, that the eunuch saw him no more: and he went on his way rejoicing.

Responses from Sophia Siedlberg are found here.