It’s not exactly a standard church. At least I don’t think it is, but I’m just learning. (That’s my life’s motto—I’m just learning.) A convoluted path brought me to the Gnostic Catholic Union’s website. I’m quite curious about this group. I’m kind of busy, however, and I’ll hope to come back to it later. You see, Gnosticism and Catholicism don’t sit easily together in my mind. There’s a standard myth, accepted by many, that Christianity grew in linear fashion from Jesus through today’s weaponized Evangelical. Or today’s Roman Catholic. Or today’s—you fill in the blank—denomination. Those of us who study the history or religions know the story is much more complicated than that. It’s more like cladistics than theology.
It wasn’t so simple as a baby born in a manger. Christianities were a variety of thought pools (not quite think tanks) in the first century. There was a mix of Jewish ideas and messianic fervor. One of those pools developed into a type of Christianity known as Gnosticism. Gnosticism also had branches but one of the main ideas was that only initiates know a hidden knowledge necessary to make it work. We still see this at play in both religious and secular organizations. You need to know the secret handshake to be on the winning team. Meanwhile different Christianities grew different ideas. We rather simplistically think that Constantine unified them at the Council of Nicaea but you can bet that the guys leaving the council room did so with different ideas on the way home.
Roman Catholicism today is a very diverse religion. You see, religious identity is something you tend to be born into. Many people never question it because they’ve got other things to do with their lives. Still, if you look you can see just how different “Catholics” can be. It’s perhaps ironic because “catholic” means “universal.” What’s really universal, however, is that people think differently about religion. It’s the human condition. There’s no reason a person can’t be both Gnostic and Catholic, just like there’s no reason you can’t be, say, a Unitarian-Universalist and a Hindu. Religion is perhaps the most misunderstood of human enterprises. Since most of us are too busy with other things we hire experts to tell us what to believe. When enough of these experts are close enough in thought a denomination is born. And it has many, many siblings. I ran across the Gnostic Catholic Union quite by accident, but even those of us who are religionists by profession have limited time for everything. I’m just learning.
