{"id":6538,"date":"2014-06-25T16:53:07","date_gmt":"2014-06-25T22:53:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6538"},"modified":"2014-06-25T17:03:09","modified_gmt":"2014-06-25T23:03:09","slug":"marion-zimmer-bradley-greenpeace-and-the-donatists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6538","title":{"rendered":"Marion Zimmer Bradley, Greenpeace, and the Donatists"},"content":{"rendered":"

Back in the 4th century CE, Western Christianity had a problem. During the Emperor Diocletian’s persecution of Christians<\/a>, which began in 303 and was severe in some areas, some Christian clergy in the Berber communities of North Africa had surrendered copies of Scripture and otherwise complied with the emperor’s edicts.<\/p>\n

When Diocletian was replaced by the pro-Christian Constantine, the hold-outs who had resisted the persecution denounced the first group as impure. Led by a bishop named Donatus<\/a>, they argued that clergy who had followed imperial orders were sinners who could no longer baptize or celebrate the Eucharist.<\/p>\n

But the bishops in Rome, busy hitching the Christian church to the imperial chariot, said no, it’s all good. Or in Latin, ex opere operato<\/em><\/a>, meaning that even if the priest is a sinner, the sacrament is still valid because it comes from God.<\/p>\n

I heard this argument from an environmentalist friend yesterday in regard to the news stories about the European Greenpeace executive who commutes to work twice a week by airplane, even as Greenpeace itself campaigns against air travel. <\/a><\/p>\n

“This kind of bad-example-setting undercuts the message,” I said.<\/p>\n

“The organization’s work is still more important,” she said. Ex opere operato. <\/em>Or as another Catholic once said, “The church may be a whore, but she is still our mother.”<\/p>\n

I thought about the Donatists when the news broke last March about well-known Pagan musician Kenny Klein’s arrest on child-pornography charges.<\/a>\u00a0 Am I now supposed to smash my Fishbird<\/a> CD and delete those tracks from my iPod? Or can I say, “Ex opere operato<\/em>“?<\/p>\n

Now it’s Marion Zimmer Bradley. That her husband Walter Breen was an aggressive pedophile is old news. But now the finger points at her: it’s all summed up here.<\/a><\/p>\n

So who is throwing away their copies of The Mists of Avalon<\/em>? Or is there an escape clause for artistic works? Is the creative act the equivalent of a religious sacrament? Must we judge the creation according to the morals of the creator or may we invoke the religion of Art: ex opere operato<\/em>?<\/p>\n

Oh yeah, Greenpeace executive Pascal Husting will now take the train, it is said<\/a>. He made a “misjudgment.” But read the\u00a0 comment st the Guardian <\/em>website by “E McBain”: it sounds like one rule for the clergy and one for the rest of us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back in the 4th century CE, Western Christianity had a problem. During the Emperor Diocletian’s persecution of Christians, which began in 303 and was severe in some areas, some Christian clergy in the Berber communities of North Africa had surrendered copies of Scripture and otherwise complied with the emperor’s edicts. When Diocletian was replaced by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[45,24,114,5,56],"class_list":["post-6538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-art","tag-christianity","tag-environmentalism","tag-paganism","tag-rome"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-1Hs","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1046,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1046","url_meta":{"origin":6538,"position":0},"title":"Seeing the World with Greek Eyes","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 28, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"\"I am a Greek born 2,381 years after my ancestors built and dedicated the Parthenon . . . . I am telling Greek history outside the conventional Christian worldview,\" writes Eaggelos G. Vallianatos, author of The Passion of the Greeks: Christianity and the Rape of the HellenesBorn in a Greek\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"books\"","block_context":{"text":"books","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=books"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9849,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=9849","url_meta":{"origin":6538,"position":1},"title":"Review: “The Final Pagan Generation”","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 6, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"A review from the most recent (20.1) issue of The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies. While the publisher does charge for articles, book reviews are free downloads. Edward J. Watts, The Final Pagan Generation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015) 344 pp., 29 B&W photographs, map. $34.95 (hardcover,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Christianity\"","block_context":{"text":"Christianity","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=christianity"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":877,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=877","url_meta":{"origin":6538,"position":2},"title":"Reading Augustine on Polytheism","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 25, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"As a Reed College student in my freshman humanities class, I read St. Augustine's Confessions, often considered to be the first autobiography in the Western world.Augustine did more to shape institutional Christianity in the West (Roman Catholics, Protestants) than anyone except the apostle Paul. The eastern Orthodox churches were not\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Christianity\"","block_context":{"text":"Christianity","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=christianity"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":293,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=293","url_meta":{"origin":6538,"position":3},"title":"Pagan\/Christian clergy Christianity Today's blog\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 28, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Pagan\/Christian clergy Christianity Today's blog continues to be vexed by Pagan ritual in the Episcopal Church. With Matt Drudge-like glee, the blog notes that the two married Episcopal clergy involved are also contemporary Pagan Druids. (Let's capitalize Pagan, please, Mr. Olsen.) Their Druid group is here. I have seen people\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6757,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6757","url_meta":{"origin":6538,"position":4},"title":"Clerical Dress for Respect, Christian and Pagan","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 7, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"It happened this afternoon that I had tabs open to two different articles about clothing and social respect for (Protestant Christian) clergy as well as a Wild Hunt post about some kind of Pagan trying to prank the county commissioners in Escambia County, Florida, into abandoning their custom of religious\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12236,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12236","url_meta":{"origin":6538,"position":5},"title":"“Goodbye Jesus” \u2014 Writers Sought for Anthology","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 22, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"News release from Oberon Zell: Soliciting essays for \"Goodbye Jesus\" book Goodbye Jesus; I've gone Home to Mother! This is the title of an anthology for which I've been gathering essays over the past couple of decades. These are accounts of their journeys from former Christians\u2014especially Clergy\u2014who have left their\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Millennial_Gaia_Earth_Mother_Statue_by_Oberon_Zell-200x267-1.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6538"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6538\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6545,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6538\/revisions\/6545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}