White Robed Monks of St. Benedict

Some Frequently Asked Questions and Answers

1. Letter of Introduction to Some Questions and Answers
2. Why are there different Christian communions?
3. Why are people today separating from their churches of origin?
4. What is a metaphor?
5. In what respect is religion a metaphor?
6. What is religion?
7. What does salvation mean?
8. Was there harmony and diversity in the Apostolic Church?
9. What is the specific harmonizing fact of the Apostolic Church?
10. What is the tragedy of the early Christian community?
11. What are the only two commands of Jesus Christ?
12. What is the implicit consistent teaching about law in catholicism?
13. Given Christ's commandments, what then could be a consistent, modus operandi or guiding principle?
14. What is the difference between Catholicism and catholicism?
15. What then is catholicism?
16. What is Catholicism as an institution?
17. What is the Roman Catholic Church?
18. What is the Old Catholic Church?
19. What does the Old Catholic Church hold dogmatically?
20. What is one example of how the Roman Church separated itself through its councils?
21. What,then, does hell mean?
22. What,then,is salvation?
23. How do we cooperate with God?
24. What do the Old Catholics teach?
25. Who and what are the White Robed Monks of St. Benedict?
26. Footnotes

Letter of Introduction to Some Frequently Questions and Answers

1. Why are there different Christian communions?
   
   Generally, Christian groups have separated from the Church of Rome for three reasons: they did not agree with its catechism; they wanted to exercise their own ways of worship; or they rejected the Roman Church's social and legal structure.
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2. Why are people today separating from their churches of origin?
   
   Many people today are separating from their institutional churches of origin for the third reason. They are following in the footsteps of Jesus Christ. Jesus did not reject the principles of the Mosaic Law. He only perfected them. He rejected the Jewish Synagogues' social and legal regulations. Aggiornamento, adjusting religion to the spiritual needs of humans in given historical epochs, was the concern of Christ and His Apostles.(1)
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3. What is a metaphor?
   
   A metaphor is a figure of speech in which a word or phrase literally denoting one kind of object or idea is used in place of another to suggest a likeness or analogy between them. One definition of an analogy is correspondence between ... the sets of linguistic forms that serves as a basis for the creation of another form. (2) A metaphor is a written or spoken message that describes something else. We use metaphors especially when describing those realities that we cannot adequately describe in words. Two such realities, for example, are the natures of our universe or God. Roger S. Jones wrote a book describing our universe, sub-atomic particles and the like. He entitled his book Physics as Metaphor. Father Andrew M. Greeley (agreel@aol.com), a Roman Catholic Priest and sociologist, describes religion as metaphor in his book The Catholic Myth.
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4. In what respect is religion a metaphor?
   
   Fr. Greeley discusses that religion is imagination before it is anything else. Religion is imagery or poetry. His research found that American Religion is loyalty to one's imaginative (or poetic) heritage. (William Herbery. Protestant, Catholic, Jew.) Religion results from an experience of the holy or the sacred.
   
   Religion originated with experiences that renewed hope. Religious symbols—we encode them in our personalities— become religion. These symbols record traces of a hope-renewal/template providing from which we know religious experience. Thus, religion is a culture system.
   
   Religion is a system of symbols. These symbols act to establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in us. The symbols formulate conceptions of a general order of existence. They clothe these conceptions with such an aura of actuality that the molds and motivations seem uniquely realistic.
   
   Religion in symbol turns to theology; religion in story turns to philosophy; religion in poetry turns to prose.
   
   Therefore, religion is a pre-conscious activity before it is anything else. It begins in that edge of the personality where our consciousness fades off into unconsciousness. Religion has its origin in that borderline of our consciousness where metaphors and stories, images and symbols, daydreams and fantasies occur.(3)
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5. What is religion?
   
   The word religion comes from the Latin verb religare meaning to bind back. Religion means to bind back or reunite the soul with its Creator. Religion means union of the individual soul with its source, says the Master Sawan Singh Ji. Religion's ultimate aim is the redemption and salvation of humankind. And this—the salvation of individual human beings — is what Jesus and other religious leaders offer to those who listen to their message.
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6. What does salvation mean?
   
   Precisely what salvation may mean is not always clearly understood.The English word salvation derives from Latin. It does not convey the meaning of the original Greek word the Gospel writers used. This word was much closer to the meaning of the term Jesus used. The Greek word — soteria — means simply 'a safe return.' That is all.(4)
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7. Was there harmony and diversity in the Apostolic Church?
   
   John protested the institutionalization. James, on the other hand, took over the governmental structure of the Temple as the structure of the Jerusalem Church. There was little harmony in the Apostolic Church. James fought Paul. John disagreed with Paul and James.
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8. What is the specific harmonizing fact of the Apostolic Church?
   
   There was harmony. The canon of the New Testament recognizes the validity of diversity. The New Testament canonizes very different expressions of Christianity while bearing consistent testimony to the unifying center ⁙ Jesus-the-man-now-exalted as the canon within the canon.(5)
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9. What is the tragedy of the early Christian community?
   
   The tragedy of early Christianity was its failure to realize, that the biggest heresy of all is its insistence that there is only one ecclesiastical obedience, only one orthodoxy. Such Orthodoxy is usually the worst heresy of all, since its narrow rigidity and intolerant exclusiveness is a standing denial of the love of God in Christ.(6)
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10. What are the only two commands of Jesus Christ?
    
    Love God, Love your neighbor. All other church law and policy are just that: church law and policy, which may even contradict Christ's command. Christ never excluded anyone.
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11. What is the implicit consistent teaching about law in catholicism?
    
    Following from Christ's commandments, the law of one's conscience overrides all human law.
     
12. Given Christ's commandments, what then could be a consistent, modus operandi or guiding principle?
    
    The precept of Peter Meiderline, and possibly St. Augustine, quoted in ecumenical circles) as its implicit principle: In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity.(7)
     
13. What is the difference between Catholicism and catholicism?
    
    Catholicism, with a capital C, is an organized  body of doctrine, belief, and worship, an institutional form of catholicism. In the West, Catholicism usually refers to the Roman Catholic Church. There are many varieties of Catholicism: in the East, all the Orthodox National Churches (Greek, Russian, etc.) are Catholic. In the West, there are several The Free Catholic Church, the Church of Antioch and the Polish National Catholic Church (in the USA). Some jurisdictions are independent (autocephalous) whose bishops function much like the Apostles and bishops of the early Christian church. (Please refer to map (not on-line, available upon request) of Apostolic Succession in brochure entitledWhite Robed Monks of St. Benedict.)
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14. What then is catholicism?
    
    The early church expressed two general traditions, Jewish and Hellenistic Christianity. Early catholicism may be understood precisely as a compromise between the two. It absorbed the most enduring elements of both. This left second and third century Christians a choice between the large middle ground now occupied by early Catholicism or the by then radical alternatives of Ebionism (the general way of the first Jewish Christians who followed the Jewish Law, exalted James and denigrated Paul, held that Jesus was the natural child of Mary and Joseph and later became the Son of God and the Christ at his baptism in the Jordan and because he adhered to Jewish Law) and Christian Gnosticism (salvation comes through Sophia, Wisdom; matter is less than good). Catholic means universal. The term catholic linguistically implied the totality of the then known world: the universality of the Roman Empire. The Johnannine alternative to early Catholicism has survived after a fashion, but (in the West) only as confined to the mystical tradition within Christianity. (8)
    
    In practice, a Catholic through the

    sacramental vision 'sees' God in all things (St. Ignatius Loyola): other people, communities, movements, events, places, objects, the environment, the world at large, the whole cosmos. The visible, tangible, the finite, the historical — all these are actual or potential carriers of divine presence. Indeed, for Catholicism it is only in and through these material realities that we can encounter the invisible God. The great sacrament of our encounter with God, and of God's encounter with us, is Jesus Christ. The Church, in turn, is the fundamental sacrament of our encounter with Christ, and of Christ with us. And the sacraments, in turn, are the signs and instruments by which the ecclesial encounter with Christ is expressed, celebrated, and made effective for the glory of God and the salvation of all. (pp 9-10)

    From Catholicism, by Richard P. McBrien (ISBN 0-06-065404-X1994)
    (Return to Homepage.)
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15. What is Catholicism as an institution?
    
    Catholicism, its institutionalism, rests in the New Testament, especially in Luke-Acts and the Pastorals. Catholicism emerged out of primitive Christianity's realization that the parousia (Christ's Second Coming) was not to be immediately forthcoming. In response to the failure of the parousia hope, second generation Christians established an organization that would last. Thus we find in Titus and Timothy the emergence of the monarchical bishops with authority over the community. The title of Bishop is one not of honor but of function, and therefore a bishop (strives) to serve rather than to rule. A Bishop should have a constant concern for all churches and gladly come to the aid and support of churches in need.(9) Priests are joined to the bishops in the priestly office and are called to serve God's people.(10) Deacons will help the bishop and his body of priests as a minister of the word, of the altar, and of charity. (They) will make (themselves) servants of all.(11) (Clerics without a bishop might refer to the White Robed Monks of St. Benedict's Incardination Program.)
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16. What is the Roman Catholic Church?
    
    The Roman Catholic Church is one of many institutionalized bodies of Christians. In 383 CE, Emperor Theodosius made Christianity the State Religion. Thus, Christianity-catholicism became Roman, formally adopting Roman Law as its governing code. Christ's Law of Love became the Law of Rome. The Emperor gave the Bishop of Rome, the Pope, one of his titles: Pontifix Maximus (Great High Priest). The Christian organization became a state institution. It was now a political power with attending political ambitions—within the seeming context of Christian love, forgiveness, and tolerance as interpreted by the ecclesial authorities.
    
    Specifically, the transformation of Christianity from a religion of liberation to one of control in the IV and Vth century based on St. Augustine's theories of original sin, fitted the need of a religion of the empire which Constantine wanted to create. During the first three centuries of our era Christianity was a voluntary, egalitarian process, persecuted precisely because its egalitarianism was considered subversive and revolutionary. With the arrival of Imperial Christianity, the doctrine of original sin provided the message that humans are fundamentally flawed and therefore incapable of self government. Hence the strong turn to hierarchical, coercive and controlling systems from the IVth Century onwards (From "Proposal for research and publication of Meta-Economics," Bernard A. Lietaer, 1994.)
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17. What is the Old Catholic Church?
    
    In the Netherlands from 1723 onward, the Church of Utrecht found the centralization of the Roman Church going against Christian conscience. In 1870, the Roman Church proclaimed the Pope to be first over all other bishops and infallible in matters of faith and morals. Up to this time, the Bishop of Rome, the Pope, Catholic Churches held the Pope, the Bishop of Rome, as first among equals (primus inter pares). The position of the Pope, as occupant of the Chair of Peter, was one of service and honor, but not authority. Thus, in catholic conscience, the Roman Church was visibly breaking established tradition. The Church of Utrecht became known as the Old Catholic Church.(12)
    
    Pius IX "and the bishops supporting him outmaneuvered opponents of infallibility—without ever answering ... historical arguments against it, such as John XXII's Qui quorundum which condemned the Franciscan doctrine of papal infallibility as the work of the devil (cf p. 37 — so effectively that the council degenerated into a ritual, mock discussion and (the same people) subsequently destroyed much of Vatican I documentation." How the Pope Became Infallible: Pius IX and the Politics of Persuasion, August Bernhard Hasler. New York: Doubleday & Co., Inc. 1981. For further information, please refer to Bishop Josip Strossmayer (1815-1905) speech at Vatican I.
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18. What does the Old Catholic Church hold dogmatically?
    
    History credits St. Vincent of Larins as saying, Let us hold to what has been believed everywhere, always and by all, for that is truly and properly catholic. The Old Catholic Church accepts as valid the dogmatic principles of church councils of the first millennia. After 1000 CE, the Roman Church, through its councils, began to separate itself out of the commonly held catholic belief system. (Please refer to the following Schema of Old Catholic/Roman Catholic/Protestant Beliefs.)(13)
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19. What is one example of how the Roman Church separated itself through its councils?
    
    Hell might serve as an example. The Scriptures, specifically the New Testament, serve as a starting point. They contain numerous accounts confirming the optimistic view of our gradual development and final salvation as individual human beings and as a race.
    
    Such expressions as: eternal fire, undying worm, fiery place, depths of hell, place of torment, outer darkness where there shall be wailing and the gnashing of teeth, a lake burning with fire full of brimstone and pitch with similar phrases, are truly expressive illustrations. Their purpose is to depict the greatness of guilt and punishment for sinners. (A sinner is someone separated from God.) These terms DO NOT indicate hell as taught in the RCC sense of the term. The pagan people, the Jewish synagogue nor first century Christians did not know of an eternal hell as the RCC teaches. The Fourth General Lataren Council (1215 CE) decided that the 'wicked receive with the devil eternal punishment; and the good with Christ, eternal glory' (Deuz. in.429 Cap. Firmitr).(14)
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20. What, then, does hell mean?
    
    Christ spoke to Jewish People. He used their language. He used phrases and illustrations —metaphors— familiar to them. He wanted to appeal to their imagination, understanding and feelings. To point out to effects of separating oneself from God He chose a metaphor. He compared punishment — the effect of separation from God— to Gehenna. Gehenna was place on the outskirts of Jerusalem. At Gehenna, people had at one time made sacrifices to the Syrian god Moloch. Jerusalem used Gehenna in the time of Christ for burning city refuse. Over it rose continually black clouds of smoke mingled with fiery red flames and from it issued fetid and suffocating fumes; so that it was a place of horror and oppressiveness.
    
    With the word Gehenna the Evangelists used the Greek  adjective aionios. This word does not mean everlasting. It means long lasting, i.e, lasting through a certain time. When Jesus presented the consequences of transgressions, He did not say that they would be everlasting for ages and ages. He was simply emphasizing the consequences a person who separates him or herself from God might encounter.(15)
    
    Excerpted from "Heal Hath No Fury", Jerry L. Sheler, U.S. News & World Report, January 31,2000:
    • "...editorial in La Civilta Cattolica, an influential Jesuit magazine with close ties to the Vatican, Hell, the magazine declared, 'is not a place but a state, a person's state of being in which a person suffers from the deprivation of God."
    • "...Pope John Paul II told an audience ... that 'rather than a place, hell indicates the state of those who freely and definitively separate themselves from God.' To describe this Godforsaken condition, the pontiff said, the Bible 'uses a symbolic language' that 'figuratively portrays in a pool of fire those who exclude themselves from the book of life, thus meeting with a 'second death.'"
    • "The ancient Hebrew texts of Genesis, 1 Kings, Psalms, and Job... suggest that all the dead — both the righteous and wicked — were dispatched to a gloomy underworld called sheol, a morally neutral place akin to the hades of ancient Greek Mythology. ... By the second century B.C., when the Hebrew scriptures were translated into Greek, hades replaced sheol in the Greek Bible, and the two concepts became firmly melded in popular thinking. Later when belief in a final resurrection of the dead emerged in some parts of Judaism and in Christianity, hades became a temporary abode of the souls of the wicked only — the righteous went to heavenly blessedness to await the bodily resurrection."
    • "In early Christian teaching, after the final judgment, the wicked will be condemned to a hell of fire called gehenna, a Greek word derived from the Hebrew Gehinnon and referring to the desolate Valley of Hinnom, south of Jerusalem, where trash fires burned incessantly and where ancient human sacrifices were offered to Canaanite gods."
    • "...in English bibles, which frequently translate all three terms — sheol, hades, and gehenna — simply as 'hell.'"
    
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21. What, then, is salvation?
    
    Christ's sacrifice and His resurrection free us from all error. We are able to enter into divine alliance. Through the Church (the Sacraments),  the assembly of God's People, we receive absolution and salvation — we make one with God. Being saved, we become one through the Holy Spirit. We are cooperators with God on whose authority we share in His life and divine action. We are made holy, sanctified. We comply with salvation through faith and later compassionate, unconditional loving knowing. We manifest our faith in love, in holiness, whole, being one with God.(16)
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22. How do we cooperate with God?
    
    We cooperate by loving God and our neighbor. Following the Johnannine tradition, we can learn how to cooperate with God by listening to God, by knowing God. One of many ways is to meditate. By meditating, we quiet and still our mind so we can get out of our own way and listen and be present.
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23. What do the Old Catholics teach?
    
    The People of God express their faith in God as a community of believers in God. They can assemble around the Eucharist, living out the Word of God as expressed in the Scriptures: Loving God and Neighbor, listening to God speak through the Word and Heart. Together or dispersed, each person witnesses the love of God. Each person is sensitive to his or her experience of the mystical reality of the Church, the experience of community.
    
    The Old Catholics are open to all those who seek, who want respect for their freedom and suffering. Clergy are free to marry or not. Accepting the authority of the ethics of the Gospel, the Church makes no determination regarding the problems of married life or one's sexuality.
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24. Who and what are the White Robed Monks of St. Benedict?
    
    The White Robed Monks of St. Benedict are a confederation of people. They intend the world to be a compassionate place. Some become clerics, others monks. Others assume no religious and maintain a spiritual affiliation through The Network. The White Robed Benedictines are catholic: they respect and hold the traditions of all religions as true and valid as one quests to realize his or her unity with God.
    
    The White Robed Benedictines have as their motto the first word of the Rule of St. Benedict: Listen (Ausculta). Their aim is to educate those so interested in how to listen. There are two general ways: people may choose to live their life for a time following the (Zen) Rule of St. Benedict for only learning how to meditate, which is also part of the Rule. The mission of the White Robed Benedictines is to carry out the command of the Psalmist: Be still and know that I am God (Ps 45 <46>:10). They instruct in several meditational forms as best suits the individual.
    
    On the Vigil of St. Benedict, March 20, 1992, the White Robed Monks of St. Benedict came into being. In the lines of Apostolic Succession of the Old (Dutch) Catholic tradition and several other Eastern and Western Catholic jurisdictions, their Rule received episcopal approval. The abbatial blessing was bestowed on the first abbot, nominated as such by another Bishop. On March 1, 1993 the United States Of America's Internal Revenue Service gave the White Robed Monks an advance ruling as a 501(c)3, a publicly supported (religious) organization. The Order's outcome is to generally let the world be a more compassionate place.
    
    The Order's primary objectives and purposes, as set forth in its Constitutions, are:
    1. to offer and conduct, without question, religious services for those disenfranchised from their institutional churches of origin in the spirit of brotherly and sisterly Christian love, charity, and compassion within the context of the Old (Dutch) Catholic tradition.
    2. to design and implement educational programs promoting wholeness (holiness) for the general public that train, instruct, or educate participants in the principles of physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual well-being.
    3. to encourage and facilitate the integration of the physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual domain of human beings by promoting meditation practices.
    4. to provide a context for those so inclined to practice the Christian life in the school of the Lord's Service by following the Order's Rule of St. Benedict.
    5. to offer or sponsor seminars, lectures, workshops for ordained clergy desiring to change from one religious jurisdiction to another, providing them an religious context for them to actively  serve  the People of God as priests if they so choose.
    The mission of the White Robed Monks of St. Benedict is to engender an atmosphere for healing the human experience wherein each person may realize his or her wholeness, holiness.
    
    The White Robed Monks of St. Benedict accomplish this end through the administration of the Word and Sacraments to all, without question, who wish to participate in them and by offering educational programs through which each person may recover the wealth of one's divinity  in one's humanity and one's humanity in one's divinity.
    
    Thus, it is the mission of the White Robed Benedictines to assist the actualization of Christ's prayer: Father, I pray...that may all  be one, as you, Father, are one in me and I am in you, I pray that  they may be one in us...that their unity may be complete. (John 17:20-23)
    
    Thus, may the People of God realize Christ's peace, which is not of the world. (John 14:27) Hence, as Christ's joy is in them, their joy may be complete, (John 15:11) because they are positioned carry out Christ's command: to love one another (John 15:17) and, consequently, be compassionate as (our) Father is compassionate. (Luke 6:36)
    
    In the catholic sense, the White Robed Benedictines follow the tradition of the Old Catholic Church. As a confederation, the White Robed Benedictines are a church, a group of people assembled in the name of Christ. Membership as a White Robed Benedictine does not preclude one's membership in his or her primary church of origin, if any. One may also be part of the Benedictine Network of people who wish  to interchange business, personal, or social information with one another.
    
    Another component of the White Robed Benedictines is their ministry to Catholics who are unable to receive the sacraments for any reason in an institutional church. For example, divorced Roman Catholics or Roman Catholics wishing to be married in their home or a place of their choice other than a church building may be married in the Church through the White Robed Benedictines. The Church is the assembled People of God. As Christ said, Where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of you. (Matt. 18:20)
    
    Regarding divorce and remarriage, the marriage bond is one of infinite compassion and love, as is the relationship between Christ (The Groom) and the Church (The Bride). (Eph. 5) Once made, it is. If a man and woman at some point are unable to live together as husband and wife, then the marriage bond must not have existed in the first place. If it was present, then the man and woman would have somehow found their way through the difficulty. In this regard, the White Robed Benedictines follow the tradition of the Eastern Church. The Eastern Churches maintain the indissolubility of marriage, but in dealing with people whose marriages have been broken, they follow the principle of compassion (or mercy, which are of divine origin), which take precedence over the principle of dogma.(16) The White Robed Benedictines will officiate in this instance as well in instances of Baptism, Confirmation, Reconciliation, Healing, Vigils and Funerals, and the Eucharist—to anyone so requesting.
    Index Q & A

1. The Origin and Growth of the Polish National Catholic Church by Rev. Stephen Wlodarski, Ph.D. Scranton: The Polish National Catholic Church. 1974, p. 175f.
2. Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary.
3. The Catholic Myth: The Behavior and Beliefs of AmericanCatholics. Andrew M. Greeley. 1990: New York, MacMillan Co.
4. Yoga and the Bible: The Yoga of the Divine Word, Joseph Lemming, 4th Ed. Punjab: Radha Soami Satsang Beas, 1978.
5. Unity and Diversity in the New Testament, James D.G. Dunn; 2nd Ed, Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1990; p. 376.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid., p. 377./LI>
8. Ibid..
9. Consecration of a Bishop: Homily, The Roman Pontifical, International Commission on English in the Liturgy,1978; pp. 243f.
10. Ordination of Priests: Homily, The Roman Pontifical, International Commission on English in the Liturgy, 1978; p. 191.
11. Ordination of a Deacon: Homily, The Roman Pontifical, International Commission on English in the Liturgy, 1978; pp. 177f.
12. Précis d'histoire de l'Eglise by Urs Kry, published by the Catholiques-chrétiennes (Christian Catholics/Old Catholics in Switzerland), 1968.
13. Ibid..
14. The Origin and Growth of the Polish National Catholic Church by Rev. Stephen Wlodarski, Ph.D. Scranton: The Polish National Catholic Church, 1974; pp. 221ff.
15. Ibid., p. 223.
16. Sacramental Theology by Herbert Vorgrimler. Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 1992; p. 293, n. 16; p. 307, n. 36.