WAYWARD SONS, to Fr. Godfrey

[Trenchist 864]

 

 

W A Y W A R D   S O N S

or

A Rebuke of “the Forgotten Calling”,

 

To Fathers Godfrey, Witmar and Bro. Matteo,

who it seems the calling forgot themselves,

& those with faculties of reason;

 

 

---

 

I shall spare the preface, for my fingers grow cold in the chill wind, and your fallacies need answering.

 

“On Dubious Loyalty to Canon Law”

 

You agree in your wording own that the Decree of the High Priest, through his role as vicar of G-d, made ex cathedra is infallible. The High Priest has been vocal in his reformation and dissolvement of the existent copies of Canon Law, and dictated that they no longer hold a binding stance in Canonist legislature or judiciary. To quote the very legal code deemed unequivocally disused to insist upon itself leads your arguement nowhere. There is no other way to go about this, lest one disowns the authority of the Supreme Pontiff, and I drear to think the dissident priesthood would damn itself so far in the defense of an excommunicant prince.

 

Canon Law, in any of its revised versions, has never held sacred or divine inspiration; not in the time of its framing, not in its publication or in its subsequent revisions. It is not binding to or sovereign to the Pontiff. This is why (Anti)pontiff Arnaud Sixty-Six sat the chair as the most sinful and criminal priest in recent memory, by the standards of G-d and Canon Code both, and Cardinal Callahan never rebelled his station. Just as the Canon Law was made applicable law by Ecclesiastical Decree, so too it has been undone. A grave FOLLY is to put one’s Faith, obedience and loyalty to a manly, and for all purposes of divinity, arbitrary paper. It seems you have made in your view the Canon Code into a truth on terra. I remind you the words of Pontiff James II in his attack of the Worship of Reason, that manly laws are not His Word, amuch as some would like them to be, and chiefly too the words of Prophet Owyn, who divined future man’s descent into the worship of idols in painted names of sanctity, and at its core is that very line which you currently tread: ‘There is no innovation in Faith.’ (Epistle to the Jorenites).

 

 The claims of a Legal Code’s sacrosanctity verges very dangerously on blasphemy, too. I heed caution in the elevation of legalism, the devisement of lawyers, to the same pedestal reserved for our truly sacred Scripture, the dictated Word of G-d. His Holiness, in the time of his health, and currently the Curia, refers to Scripture on the arbitration of justice, as the Priesthood is bid and expected (by the very same Scripture), and not to a legal framework declared defunct. If the metric for the governance of the priesthood is, as you claim, the Canon Law, I should like to direct you to the SOLE and UNCHANGING CONSTITUTION of the Faith and its Church , that is, the Holy Scrolls. To deny this is to deny the foundation of Canondom wholly, which is not the Canon Code version of the day, but the Word of G-d and His Prophets. I don’t rightly know why seedlings of hypocrisy now stir in your mind. The same extends to your resignation from the College of the Cardinals. If the Faith is chief in your mind, Father Godfrey, why do you seek to distance yourself from the institutions where you have not once been silenced, and the purpose of which is the governance of the Church you so attack now?

 

It is evident your entire arguement for “disobedience” to Canon Law is wrought by your continued fumble to grasp at anything you have learned to lean on and love in a docile, inactive and advisoral Church. Too, you lend your arguements to very arbitrary and personal differences you hold within the Curia, that should never cascade to the disownment of the Church, and ‘calls for our penance’. You hold not the authority for it. You mighty had actually did, until you resigned. I had expected more of a great legal mind, given you are a priest and scholar of the Faith, to make the simple equation of OBEDIENCE to the Church. I might outline those duties of a priest to you in a very simple formula for you later.

 

“On The Administration’s Unjust War”

 

The single and foolproof fact that dismantles your argument that the Church wages war on Canondom is that it is not the Church which began hostilities, but the Kingdom of Haense by their use of the Vinovan Company. Further flair about the warmongery of the Curia is not needed when it were the Faithful who were first put to death on the steps of the Holy See. The war had already been declared, much as the Prince of Haense would like to distance himself from it, and his refusal of penance has thus set him on the defensive. To invoke the ‘Canon Code’ to rule that the King’s heir-apparent and brother must not bear the weight of penance for himself, as heir, and for his kingdom, just goes further to show that your reverence for legalism and the written Scripture are quite detached from one another. In O’ IDIOCY, Chapter II, Hanseti-Ruska, As Regards Joren I, these are well refuted. In short, Scripture is riddled with both direct passages and overarching narratives about the succession of sin among nations and their rulers. In your defense of Joren and Haense you are at best advocate-subservant of an Excommunicant, or at worst insolent to Scripture. It baffles me that men and princes and now priests stand to fight in defense of this illogic.

 

On the argument that the among the allies of the Church are counted dwarfs and orcs and pagans, I say in likened words to those of Ilia Aeneth in her refutation of the Covenant’s Idiocies; The Mission of the Church is Universal among Horen, Krug, Malin and Urguan alike, as bid by our Covenant of Instruction (something the Canon Code would not tell you),  and the True Faith in its mission must extend to all life on G-d’s Earth. That this ‘administration’ has worked into being three consecutive True Faith orc-kings and the Canonist faith of the elfen ruler of Caurost, by virtue of its ‘involvement’ with non Humans, should not on the lips of any Faithful member of the Priesthood be ‘an affront to G-d’. Your haughtiness is costing you the standing of your soul, Father Godfrey. You forget what the Ministry is about, because you have drowned it so in legalism and constraints that you see no longer The Mission and the Promise.

 

On the barbarity of the heathens, I say, it is lamentable, and being worked upon in earnest. Otherwise, the captives of Human race are judged fairly for their penance. If only the princes of Hyspia, crowned not a fortnight ago, would stand by the Church which devised its desert peace and kinghood. If only the lords of Reinmar, supposed ‘Vanders’ (who drove the term to a deep and solemn grave in the true test of loyalty), would stand by the Church instead of Haeseni interests. If only John of Balian, who regained his kingship by virtue, penance and obedience would had remembered the fruits of piety that bore him his crown back. It is astounding, still, that heathens and pagans would stick out their head in defense of the Church, while so many princes in Humanity stand against it. It is indicative not of a fault with the Church, as  you would have it, but of their own disobedience. Again, this argument that the Princes do not recognize the institution of the Church does not serve itself; it goes only to prove that tyranny and an an extrajudicial reign; nay, a belief in sovereignty over the Church, free in its delirious impunity, unshackled by virtue or due justice, is the only defense of the covenant when the Church comes to check.

 

“On The Corrupting Influence of Secular Affairs”

 

Your arguement here is reflective of your on staunch support of the separation of Church and state, or in other words, the docility and sterilization of the Faith in the world. I refer in part to the writings of Father Witmar, who helped you devise this apparently, but has criticized this divorce between the Faith and the Estates of man, and your Sigismundic notion of subjugation and detachment of VIRTUE from KINGHOOD. Who, do you recommend, could had taken Citizen Charles to prison for kinslaying? Who, do you think, should had tried the King of Balian for conspiracy to kill the Pontiff? Certainly not the Church, since in your perfect world, it is reserved the role of advisement and ‘instruction’. I shall remind you that when a Father instructs his son, to get to any length of progress, he must also reprimand his son, when he faults gravely. 

I disagree fundamentally with your sterilized vision of the Church, and therefore find rebuking your arguments on this matter helpless. It seems to me, Father Godfrey, you have forgotten your namesake. Your vision of bright things has been tempered with by legalese and five hundred years of docility. The yoke of tyrants has left its mark so deeply imprinted that even when the Liberty of Faith stares you in the face you shirk in fear and accuse it of ‘deviating’. I refer you to Ilia Aeneth’s defenses of the historicity of things temporal. Most of your levied criticism begins in the admittance of the truth of the Churchly position, and continues only to critisize in the form of your opinions. That this is ‘in bad taste’, and that is ‘unprecedented’, and there is no great retort to that subjectivism but history and fact. Each time your Priestly mind conjures a defense of the Church to build a criticism to, continue reprimanding yourself, because you yourself disprove all your arguments from the get-go.

 

 

---

 

In conclusion,

 

To Father Witmar, I know not why your mind changed so quickly, for you know yourself the answers to half these arguments. Do not let political interests cloud your theology and good Faith. I know not how much hand you had in this document, and hope for the sake of your service to Truth that it be as least as possible.

 

To Father Godfrey, your impudence perils your soul, and I say this in no authority or will to defrock you, but as a friend who sees you wound yourself. You have taken our kindness and good faith in you, in your invitation to the Curia, spat on it and by your own doing antagonised the Church and all who you counted peers. Do not let the interests of damned Princes guide your conscience. You defile the mantle of the Priesthood in doing so. This is not how disagreements are reconciled, not in severance of yourself from Churchly instruments, and not in hypocrisy, and especially not in your feeble attempt of reprimand, in calling us to penance. You know it to be so. I can only hope for you that there are some among us in the College or the Curia who will accept your penance after Haense is taken to virtue by the Holy Host. I know it will take much more convincing to earn back the good grace of myself personally.

 

I recommend heavily you read Ilia Aeneth’s O’ IDIOCY, too, because you have fallen prey to the same frail arguments they recite.

 

Send a letter to me with your standing arguments repeated and formalised, in organized manner, so I may dissolve them more succinctly, please.

 

Repent.

 

ALL THANKS BE TO G-D,

Cardinal Elim 

 

[Navigator 4260]

Owyn Hector remains confused on why they cut out the 'O' from 'GOD'. He places the missive on his fireplace, carefully, after reading the same old excuses that the Church is used to giving.

[Trenchist 864]

Just now, Navigator said:

Owyn Hector remains confused on why they cut out the 'O' from 'GOD'. He places the missive on his fireplace, carefully, after reading the same old excuses that the Church is used to giving.

Spoiler

Sorry but it's an OOC thing I observe because of my Jewish faith. Can explain more if u contact me

[Yeetboy0206 1574]

Estevot grows furious and burns the missive in the fire. "No more reasoning. Deaf ears are only solved with the sound of steel. They will never repent, never back down unless we MAKE them. May GOD have mercy on you all, for we are done extending it to those who refuse to show it to us in kind. Hypocrites, all of you."

[DancingZebra267 1626]

Vincenzo smirked, nodding as he read along. Once done he'd look to his brothers. "This war was not the Church’s doing. Haense bled first, harbored heretics, and refused penance. Now they reap what they sow." 

[marikandaperc 1818]

Sigrid read the thesis of Father Elim with much attention, enjoying the read throughout the entire essay. She nodded with satisfaction for the writing was so magnificent that nearly did it bring tears to her eyes. Since it was so well written, she did not throw the paper in a fire.

 

"REally good work from Father Elim. I hope this Father Godfrey has got a response to his arguments, this is a surprisingly interesting debate between the two!"

[Wavey 2568]

Ivan is very disappointed at Father Elim’s crashout in the latter paragraphs of this essay.

[Legoboy7984 3155]

Sigmund Ludovar lofts a brow as he read the missive. "Bishop Casica spoke the truth about what is transpiring in this situation. It is a shame that Father Elim does niet see the same. May GODANI heal his mind and watch over all of Canondom as it faces our Holy Church’s warmongering with its Unholy League, which seeks to kill GODANI's followers. A league with only the Holy States and Numendil, who fight alongside non-canonists and those who commit banditry."

[rep2k 3192]

Father Witmar clicks his tongue as he reads the letter aloud, shaking his head before lowering the parchment onto the table. His cousin, Bishop Godfrey, leans in, peering over his shoulder with an amused smirk.

 

"‘Do not let political interests cloud your theology,’ he says, "

Witmar mutters, rubbing his temple.

"And yet it is they who drape the cloth of faith over the bones of ambition."

 

"If he knew me as well as he claims, he'd know I wouldn't lend my name to anything but the truth. They attacked our home. They are diminishing the vital body of our Church. Elim should know that the spirit of a Barclay is a tough one, as is his love for his homeland. But let him believe what he will. The facts remain unchanged, no matter how much incense he burns to smother them."

@Ramon