Bawden's Papacy: Human Faith?

"J. Lawrence Case" wrote (#259):

You simply want to believe that yourself (that is, Mrs. Teresa Benns), David Bawden's Mom & Dad, and another befriended married couple (that is the Hunts), , elected David as the true pope of the Catholic Church about 13 years ago.

It is pathetic.

You are working to defend a human faith.
And again, (#263): All I said about the election is that it is pathetic. I said nothing about guilt, nor did I criticize the will behind it.

But the reasoning and argument the action is founded on itself is pathetic.
Mr. Case,

I have already drawn your attention to my objection to your words, as above. However, you have still not thought it fit to explain yourself, answering my reasonable queries. Therefore, I write to you once again, elaborating my objections and asking once again for an explanation of your words.

You describe Mrs. Benns' relying on her confidence that she, along with some five others had, in September 1990, elected Mr. David Bawden as the Pope of the Catholic Church, as being "a human faith". It is this description that you apply to this confidence, to Mrs. Benns' (and mine, by the way) faith, that it is a "human faith" that confuses me.

I have been labouring under the delusion that it is precisely human beings - not chimpanzees or laboratory mice, that got together and elected the successor to a dead pope, and that it has been so always, from the beginning. But I could never accept that it is correct or precise to describe crediting any of these popes — elected by humans and not by lab-mice, as being "human faith".

In the past, the popes were elected by the clergy and laity of Rome indiscriminately, and latter, the clergy progressively (and in my mind, properly) came to monopolize the election, till finally, popes legislated for a College of Cardinals, as much human as I or you, to elect their successors.

Therefore, is it that in crediting any of these popes, from Linus I, Anacletus I, Clement I, and so on, going through Innocent II, Boniface VIII, etc., down to our own age, through St. Joseph Sarto and his three immediate successors, all of them elected by mere human beings like you and me, and not by lab-mice or the animals of the local circus, that I am crediting "human faith"?

I had already pointed out that Bawden does not preside over some deviant ideological sect or cult, such as the Palmarians or Colinists. Both of these latter "religions" can be precisely described as merely "human faiths", for unlike the faith given us by Christ Jesus, these have been invented by mere men.

Thus Palmarianism teaches that their "Pope" was so constituted in a purported apparition, and that the Papal Seat has been translated to the tiny hamlet of Palmar de Troya: both of which are heresies.

As for Colinism, it is an Ultra-Modernist heresy based on the pseudo-Melanist prophecies, so commonly credited by gullible and indiscriminating souls. The deviations of the two Colinist factions are too legion to be catalogued here.

In sharp contrasts to both, Bawden's group has NOT committed ANY ideological deviation.

However, in case you perceive any, then it is your duty to expose these, in order to protect souls from error. To date, neither you nor anyone else has demonstrated a single real ideological / doctrinal error in Bawden's claim.

On the contrary, people like you, unable to prove that Bawden's claim is contrary and excluded by the laws and legislations of the Church, choose to attack by supplying themselves with the weapons of ridicule and character assasination.

Men like you, too comfortable in their present position, seek to justify themselves by attacking anything that challenges them and their comfortable existence, by recoursing to such base methods.

Therefore, your words, as above, are irresponsible and something you should be ashamed of yourself for uttering. In attacking Bawden and Mrs. Benns in this manner, you do not hurt or injure them principally, as much as you insult and blaspheme God. This is a grievous sin.

You have used words loosely and unwisely. If anything is pathetic, then, it is your irresponsible and sacrilegious behaviour!

Prakash Mascarenhas
Hosted by www.Geocities.ws

1