NICODEMUS - Immortality and Rebirth

The text below is the result of critical considerations about Christianity, in the book, NICODEMUS - Immortality and Rebirth, organized by the Christian Spiritist Circle of Lérida in Spain, in 1897, and which seeks to classify the deviations made over the centuries, in the teachings of Jesus through the Revelation of the Doctrine of the Spirits codified by Allan Kardec. This text reveals the synthesis of what true Christianity is, which is represented through the symbol of Nicodemus (Reincarnation) and the maximum expressions of the teachings of Christ (The Sermon on the Mount). It is authored by D. José Amigò Y Pellícer, also the author of a compilation, together with his group of clergymen, of the book, ROME AND THE GOSPEL. 1

Jesus drove out the merchants from the temple with the whip; however, the temple was invaded again, not now by pigeon sellers and money changers, but by those who, calling themselves heirs of the mission with which He came into the world and whose ideas gave rise to Christianity, made the Gospel the unlimited source of its mastery and conquest. Supporting themselves in a doctrine that is all detachment, humility and simplicity, they are, however, arrogant and powerful: invoking the humility and self-denial of Him who gave his life to guide man in the path of right-acting, they are persecutors and selfish; boasting that they were the authorized Cynics interpreters of purely spiritual religion and its most faithful abiders, they erected a cult rich in exteriorities and ceremonies that seduce the senses without, however, improving the moral conditions of men.

The guilt, however, does not belong to them exclusively, for it is not the representatives of an institution that make it arise and sustain it, but the vices or virtues of the human generations in their respective periods. Humanity always has the institutions it deserves. Rude and ignorant people can only be despotic and fanatically directed or governed. For emancipation, both of the body and the spirit, the culture of will and judgment must necessarily precede. If one wants society to be free in its political and religious manifestations, it is imperative to educate it in virtue and abolish its ignorance.

Therefore, let us not blame anyone for our errors and religious miseries, for the absurdities accepted as definitive truths, for the sophistication and abuses that we have been victims of in the name of the Gospel: let us blame it on the moral and intellectual backwardness of our ancestors, who made mistakes and miseries possible and even easy, as well as those sophistications and abuses; let it not be understood by this that we should declare free from all responsibility those who, transformed into masters and doctors of human society, shrewdly exploit their ignorance for their benefit and, at the same time, employ all means to keep it in perpetual captivity.

The vices and ignorance of men gave life to the dominant institutions, imposing their will and depressing the spirit. With that, the representatives of those institutions fomented ignorance and fed vices to make their dominion over men eternal. Only in this way, through imposition and servitude, could it exist for centuries and centuries as a “Christian”, an institution whose procedures and maxims constitute the total antithesis of the acts and maxims of Jesus.

And this error will remain, even though those who are aware of these procedures and inwardly reproach them, sanction them outwardly with their hypocritical acquiescence - despite cowardice being the rule of conduct for those who judge impartially; of placing convenience and interest before the triumph of truth, since justice has only platonic lovers who confess it in their soul and deny it with their words or with their shameful silence. If all those who know the lie had the dignity, the noble integrity to denounce it, its missionaries would lose the undeserved trust that they enjoy among the ignorant and fanatics, and the emancipation of consciences would be another achievement of progress, fruitful and with transcendental results.

NICODEMUS - Immortality and Rebirth, was written as a form of protest against the religious fraud of some, the merchants of the temple, and the cowardice or dissimulation of others, those who perceive the fraud and do not even utter a word to condemn it publicly, thus becoming its concealers and accomplices. It is dedicated to all men of upright judgment who yearn for the establishment of reason as sovereign over the manifestations of the spirit; to all generous hearts that seek freedom, dignity and the prosperous destinies of peoples. To the honourable consciences who feel the most significant aversion for every unworthy exploitation; to the missionaries of universal brotherhood, to the enemies of darkness, to those thirsting for justice; finally, to all men of goodwill, sacrifice and self-denial for progress.

Our banner is Christian rationalism. We raised this banner with the publication of ROME AND THE GOSPEL, a book that received the most lavish reception from the public and the greatest condemnation of the Catholic clergy. And this condemnation continues to reverberate with the publication of NICODEMUS, written under the same point of view and the same religious criteria as ROME AND THE GOSPEL. We are rationalists because reason is the attribute of human nature by which we are made in the likeness of universal intelligence, and we are Christians because, in the teachings of Jesus, we have drunk the perennial source of the salvation of souls and the perfect agreement between His maxims and those of independent reason.

Christianity is not Peter in the first century of the Church, nor Victor I in the second, nor Marcellin in the third, nor Siricius in the fourth, nor Leo in the fifth, nor John II in the sixth, nor Sabinian in the seventh, nor Stephen IV in the eighth, neither Nicholas I, nor John VIII, nor Formoso, nor Boniface VI, nor Stephen VII, nor Christopher I, nor Sergius, nor John XXII, nor Alexander VI, nor the other popes to this day.

Christianity is The Sermon on the Mount. It is humility, forgiveness, justice, sacrifice for others, the episode of the cross, and Jesus extending his arms to all humanity redeemed by universal truth and brotherhood. Christianity is not a man, but an idea; it is no hierarchy, but spiritual equality, that deposes the proud from their raised thrones and exalts the humble. Christianity is the divine Word revealed, eternal morality, the perfect ideal of charity, redemption through deeds and feelings. It is the law of progress, which all humanity will have to carry out in the conquest of Jerusalem. This is how we understand Christianity.

We will find ahead, all the dealers of the revealed religion, those who converted the temple into a house of commerce, the Levites, the Pharisees, the hoarders of holy things, those who boast of possessing, as gods, the infallible truth, and being the only depositaries of the Earth. We will still find the official church with all its immense power and fortune still challenging to defeat. We fight their errors and their abuses: their ministers defame the doctrines of our thought, slandering them and persecuting us to the death. Unfortunately, the conditions of the fight are the most favourable for them; however, their defeat is inevitable for their reason consists of strength, but the times of the triumph of justice are already approaching.

As rationalists, we are fighting against the oppressors of human reason and freedom of thought. As Christians, we have come to denounce the vices that official Christianity suffers and its impotence in slaking the spirits' thirst for justice and regenerating societies.

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1)- According to the Portuguese translator, ROME AND THE GOSPEL speaks to reason and heart - and affirms in a heartfelt and vibrant way that only someone obsessed with the church system or by fanaticism can refuse the light and truth that flutter on each of its pages.

In Lérida, some spirits eager to know whether it is serious or ridiculous - whether it is true or false - which under the title of Spiritism spreads throughout the world and takes root within Humanity, agreed to study and examine for themselves the essential principles that constitute the foundations and the banner of the new doctrine, whose appearance was due to extraordinary facts happened simultaneously in diverse points of the planet.

It is said that those who compiled the book were scholarly priests who, as they were unable to reconcile the narrowness of Roman doctrine with the breadth of the deeds drawn by God, felt that something human needed to be removed and that Spiritism should perhaps be the instrument of such debugging.

ROME AND THE GOSPEL is a precious book, for the teachings it provides, the example it presents: of being priests its authors, breaking with the fanaticism that proclaims the absurd “passive faith” - and taking possession, in the name of the supreme law of free-will, of the “reasoned faith”, the only one that can be pleasing to Omniscience, which did not give reason to the spirit to be a useless instrument in the work of its improvement, which is the whole law of its evolution. And these priests, faced with the pressure suffered for not complying with the church’s protocol, ended up being removed from their activities!

And this exclusion also affected Huberto Rohden, who, after being a member of the clergy for 25 years as a Jesuit priest, and due to his duty of conscience to be raising the luminous banner of the Gospel of Jesus and not the nebulous colour of the clergy's gospel banner, he decided to depart from it in 1944. He then moves to the religious, theological and educational scene as a free thinker. During the clergy period and beyond, he wrote nearly 100 published works, many of which were the vector for official clergy to veto them.

Rohden, in one of his books, wrote that if the Roman clergy had the humility and sincerity to comprehend and accept that the real strength of Christianity is not in certain liturgical practices, it has introduced into the church over the centuries, but in the total assimilation in the spirit of Jesus, as it shines in the Gospel, it is inevitable that the ethically impotent Catholicism of our day would return to the mighty Catholicity it was in the first centuries. However, between the weakness of Roman Catholicism and the strength of Christian Catholicity, there is a vast chasm. To build a bridge over this abyss, the Roman hierarchy must abandon its political and diplomatic tendencies and occupy itself with the proper ethical and spiritual interests of its followers. After that, to replace the theology of its priests with the Gospel of Christ, since the regenerating force for the individual and society is in the word of God and not in the speculations of men.

In other writings, he makes reference to the same theme, in the declaration of important personalities about the gospel of the clergy, contrary to the Gospel of Jesus, such as Friedrich W. Nietzsche, considered one of the most important western philosophers of the nineteenth century, who stated that if Christ were to return to the world in our day, the first declaration he would make to the Christian world would be this: “Christian peoples, know that I am not a Christian.”

Albert Schweitzer, the son of an evangelical minister, wrote: “We inject men with the serum of our theology, and whoever is vaccinated with our Christianity is immunized against the spirit of Christ.”

Mahatma Gandhi gave the following answer to all Christian missionaries who wanted to convert him to Christianity: “I accept Christ and his Gospel, but I do not accept your Christianity”.

Abraham Lincoln, famous president of the United States, never joined any of the many Christian churches in that country because he was waiting for the church of Christ.

In the year 33, Jesus was betrayed and condemned to death by the kiss of one of his disciples - but many are unaware that Jesus, in the year 313, was murdered by the kiss of another disciple, the first Christian emperor Constantine the Great. Judas' kiss killed Jesus' body - Constantine's kiss killed Christ's spirit.

The kiss with which Constantine betrayed the spirit of Christ was the Edict of Milan, in the year 313, which recognized Christianity and ended three centuries of persecution - but with this benefit, he preluded centuries of betrayal's evils, inviting the disciples of Jesus to integrate into the organization of the Roman Empire. He made Christianity the official state religion and defended it through arms, politics and money - arms to kill enemies, politics to deceive friends, money to buy and sell consciences.

And this mentality and vices prevail today in all sectors of the different churches called Christians, who are reluctant to comprehend the truths proclaimed by Jesus, which they cowardly think they represent.