Theos-Talk Archives (May 2012 Message tt00101)

Dear friends

My views are:

The role of sexes and gender in the Theosophical Society....

A few articles might be interesting to read...

THE WOMEN OF CEYLON AS COMPARED WITH CHRISTIAN WOMEN
"Woman in Ceylon, like any other Buddhist woman, has always been free and even on a par with man, as above stated, in religious functions. It is then but fair to contrast her position with that of Christian woman during the early centuries and the Middle Ages. The Buddhist woman owes her position to Buddha's noble and just law, and the Christian to her intolerant and despotic Church."
http://www.katinkahesselink.net/blavatsky/articles/v11/y1889_061.htm


The first Working-Women's Club
"Still in London, in the very centre of the most luxurious materialism, we have founded in the East End the first Working-Women?s Club, wholly free from theological creeds and conditions. Hitherto all such efforts have been sectarian, and have imposed special religious beliefs; ours is based on brotherhood alone, and recognizes no difference in creed as a barrier. When the club opens, a few weeks hence, the members will find themselves in a bright and pleasant home, with books, papers and music at hand, and a band of their better-educated sisters will take in rotation, night after night, the duty of helping and guiding?not controlling?the evening recreation. Only those who know the dreary lives of our poor East-End girls, with temptation lurking in every form of amusement within their reach, will understand the brotherly nature of the service thus rendered to them. We (the cultured classes) make outcasts of these less fortunate members of our family, set them in a special part of the town, amid squalid surroundings and coarsening influences; and we then complain that their roughness shocks our refinement, their brutality jars on our delicacy! Here, then, against class division, as in India against caste division, the Theosophical Society proclaims the Brotherhood of Man."
.......
"In one word, our whole aim and desire are to help, in at least some degree, toward arriving at correct scientific views upon the nature of man, which carry with them the means of reconstructing for the present generation the deductive metaphysical or transcendental philosophy which alone is the firm, unshakable foundation of every religious philosophy. Theosophy, the universal solvent, is fulfilling its mission; the opalescent tints of the dawn of MODERN PSYCHOLOGY are blending together, and will all be merged into the perfect daylight of truth, when the sun-orb of Eastern esotericism has mounted to its noon-stage. 
.......
"For many a long year the ?great orphan,? Humanity, has been crying aloud in the darkness for guidance and for light. Amid the increasing splendors of a progress purely material, of a science that nourished the intellect, but left the spirit to starve, Humanity, dimly feeling its origin and presaging its destiny, has stretched out towards the East empty hands that only a spiritual philosophy can fill. Aching from the divisions, the jealousies, the hatreds, that rend its very life, it has cried for some sure foundation on which to build the solidarity it senses, some metaphysical basis from which its loftiest social ideals may rise secure. Only the Masters of the Eastern wisdom can set that foundation, can satisfy at once the intellect and the spirit, can guide Humanity safely through the night to ?the dawn of a larger day.?
Such is the goal which Theosophy has set itself to attain; such is the history of the modern movement; such is the work which Theosophy has already accomplished in this nineteenth century. " 
(caps added, by M. Sufilight)
http://www.katinkahesselink.net/blavatsky/articles/v12/y1890_033.htm


PROGRESS AND CULTURE
"We, of the century claiming itself as the XIXth of our era, are very proud of our Progress and Civilization? Church and Churchmen attributing both to the advent of Christianity??Blot Christianity out of the pages of man?s history,? they say, ?and what would his laws have been?? what his civilization?? Aye; ?not a law which does not owe its truth and gentleness to Christianity, not a custom which cannot be traced in all its holy and healthful parts to the Gospel.?
What an absurd boast, and how easily refuted!
To discredit such statements one has but to remember that our laws are based on those of Moses?life for life and tooth for tooth; to recall the laws of the holy Inquisition i.e., the burning of heretics and witches by the hecatomb, on the slightest provocation; the alleged right of the wealthiest and the strongest to sell their servants and fellow men into slavery, not to carry into effect the curse bestowed on Ham, but simply ?to purchase the luxuries of Asia by supplying the slave market of the Saracens;* and finally the Christian laws upheld to this day in England, and called women?s disabilities, social and political Moreover, as in the blessed days of our forefathers? ignorance, we meet now with such choice bits of unblushing blague as this, ?We speak of our civilization, our arts, our freedom, our laws, and forget entirely how large a share of all is due to Christianity? (Rose).
Just so! ?our laws and our arts,? but neither ?our civilization? nor ?our freedom? No one could contradict the statement that these were won in spite of the most terrible opposition by the Church during long centuries, and in the face of her repeated and loud anathemas against civilization and freedom and the defenders of both And yet, notwithstanding fact and truth, it is being constantly urged that even the elevated position (?!) of the Christian woman as compared with her ?heathen? sister, is entirely the work of Christianity! Were it true, this would at best be but a poor compliment to pay to a religion which claims to supersede all others As it is not true, however?Lecky, among many other serious and trustworthy writers, having shown that ?in the whole feudal legislation (of Christendom) women were placed in a much lower legal position than in the Pagan Empire??the sooner and the oftener this fact is mentioned the better it will be for plain truth Besides this, our ecclesiastical laws are honeycombed as has been said, with the Mosaic element It is Leviticus not the Roman code, which is the creator and inspirer of legislation?in Protestant countries, at any rate."
http://www.theosopher.net/dzyan/lucifer/lucifer_v6_n36_august_1890.pdf
http://www.katinkahesselink.net/blavatsky/articles/v12/y1890_030.htm


Ordinatio Sacerdotalis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordinatio_Sacerdotalis

Catholic Church doctrine on the ordination of women
"The Church teaching on the restriction of its ordination to men is that masculinity was integral to the personhood of both Jesus and the men he called as apostles.[13] The Roman Catholic Church sees maleness and femaleness as two different ways of expressing common humanity.[14] Despite the common academic phrase "gender roles", which implies that the phenomenon of the sexes is a mere surface phenomenon, an accident, the Roman Catholic Church teaches that there is an ontological (essential) difference between humanity expressed as male humanity and humanity expressed as female humanity.[15] While many functions are interchangeable between men and women, some are not, because maleness and femaleness are not interchangeable. Just as water is necessary for a valid baptism, and wheaten bread and grape wine are necessary for a valid Eucharist (not because of their superiority over other materials, but because they are what Jesus used or authorized), only men can be validly ordained, regardless of any issues of equality.[16]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_doctrine_on_the_ordination_of_women

The Ordination of Women and the Meaning of "Liberal" in The Liberal Catholic Church
Robert Ellwood, United States of America
"I now believe more and more strongly that this evolutionary development calls for response and augmentation by the Liberal Catholic Church by means of what would be a supremely significant symbol, the ordination of women to the priesthood. It would create a powerful new sacramental thought-form in harmony with and strengthening the spiritual evolution of the planet. I believe, in light of the clear direction and spiritual dimension of world evolution in this respect, that this is what the World Teacher wants and so has now made possible."
http://www.lcc.cc/tlc/lxvii2/ordinati.htm




I suggest:
Now, let us get go and promote altruism....let the sound of the Himalaya Bell flow through India all the way to the south through Madras and Ceylon, and East and West...as well.




M. Sufilight

Is Denunciation A Duty?
http://www.blavatsky.net/blavatsky/arts/IsDenunciationADuty.htm

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