ROME AND THE GOSPEL

Different facts during the long history of Christianity have revealed, for all those who have experienced it to this day, including members of the institution itself, the discrepancy between the Christianity of the first centuries - from the catacombs to its recognition by the Edict of Milan, in the year 313 - which made Christianity official and put an end to three centuries of persecution, inviting Jesus’ disciples to join the organization of the Roman Empire and making Christianity the official state religion; defended by weapons, politics and money: weapons to kill enemies, politics to deceive friends, money to buy and sell consciences.

This officialization decreed the end of three centuries of genuine Christianity and the beginning of many centuries of another form of Christianity: social, political and military, consequently replacing the pristine and transparent Gospel of Jesus with the obscure gospel of the clergy.

This paradox, between The Sermon on the Mount and subsequent persecutions of those who insisted on preserving Jesus’ teachings, generated a series of criticisms and writings, including the original work ROMA Y EL EVANGELIO - Spain, 1874 vehemently denouncing the gospel of clergy with their commands and excesses and the interests of groups having control of this organization.

In March 1899, the translator of the text into Portuguese, in her remarks, refers to a group of scholars within the church’s ranks who managed to recognize the imperfections of Romanism concerning the sublimities contained in Jesus’ Gospel because Rome is not this Gospel of eternal truths. With that, they decided to write the book so as not to fall into disbelief, as they do not find any satisfaction in the Roman Church, thus breaking with the fanaticism that proclaims the absurd “passive faith”, taking possession of the “reasoned faith”, the only one pleasant to Omniscience; Omniscience that gave reason to the spirit to be a helpful instrument in the deeds of its improvement, which represents the law of evolution.

The Book Rome and the Gospel, which was compiled by D. José Amigó y Pellícer and his group, contains the philosophical-religious and theoretical-practical studies carried out by the Christian Spiritist Circle of Lérida, Spain, in 1874 because they could not reconcile the narrowness of the Church of Rome with the breadth of the work drawn by God, feeling that something human needed to be removed and that Spiritism should be the instrument of the Gospel of Jesus’ purification.

In the mid-nineteenth century, the movement known as Modern Spiritualism emerged in America, whose historical landmark is the famous case of the Fox Sisters, in Hydesville, New York: the frequent appearance of a spiritual entity that triggered the curiosity and daring to evoke the “dead” so that one could unveil and evidence the survival of death after death. From then on came the fever of the Round Table sessions. This spiritualist phenomenology crosses the Atlantic and reaches the large urban centres of Europe, gaining increasingly sophisticated contours, culminating with the systematization of the Spiritist Doctrine, codified by Alan Kardec, who, through his literary works - starting with The Spirits’ Book - and his leadership, exports from France to the whole world, Spiritism, that is, the third revelation of God to Humanity, under the mantle of the Spirit of Truth.

The lights of Spiritism reach Spanish lands, awakening the most diverse impressions. While some were easily enchanted and convinced by the novelty, others - more restrained or even refractory to the new wave - posed with some interest in the face of the transforming and challenging precepts of the Spiritist Doctrine. Among the latter, we can highlight the personality who is the author of this compilation: D. José Amigó y Pellícer.

Together with a select group of friends, philosophers, clerics and men of science, they installed a group in the city of Lleida, in Catalonia, Spain, to appreciate - and perhaps unmask - the Spiritist movement that came from Paris. They then decided to investigate, with all rigour, the Spiritist propositions and, given the real contingency that presented itself, to give an honest opinion on those ideas of “mediumship”, “talking with Spirits”, “reincarnation”, “spiritual evolution” and “salvation through self-discovery” - ideas foreign to Western culture and threatening to the religious and civil order.

The meeting of this group of independent investigators resulted in great speculation: finally, those extravagant subversions coming from France would be ridiculed by the rhetoric of that group of notables - so it was thought.

It so happened that the group - following the logic - ended up investigating the veracity of the spiritual manifestations and naturally absorbing the excellent philosophical-moral conclusions of Spiritism, so that, then, in May 1873, it officially became the Christian Spiritist Circle, of the which D. José Amigó y Pellícer figured as leader and spokesperson.

The first positive impact was the proof of mediumship, through the concrete example of the experiments carried out within the Circle; then, examining the philosophical and religious principles, they ended up claiming that the Spiritist revelation came to represent the Gospel of Jesus, thus fulfilling the promise of the Comforter, sent by the Father, to ratify the Christian message, to bring new revelations of spirituality and, finally, to become permanent among men of good will.

The group was aware that that new doctrine implied a break with the primitive traditions and an antagonism with the interests of the Roman Church - and therefore a personal challenge for the group: to face the reactionary wrath of the Catholic clergy, for which they had to pay with personal exposure and pursuits of all orders. They were banned from the religious circle of the Catholic Church, slandered, prosecuted, expelled from their professional occupations, some even imprisoned.

However, D. José Amigó y Pellícer and his group did not give up: they followed their conscience and supported the Spiritist conviction until the end. On behalf of the Spiritist Circle of Lérida, they launched the Spiritist magazine: The Common-Sense, whose first issue was published on May 15, 1875, with the title “Science Magazine, Christianity, Democracy, Organ of the Free-Christian Thought”. This periodical maintained a monthly edition until 1886, then changing to fortnightly until 1889. In the meantime, the magazine suffered several sanctions: in the year of its launch, it was suspended for two months by order of the Civil Governor of the province, at the request from the local Catholic clergy; to make up for the absence from other suspensions, the group made use of other publications, such as The Voice of Common-Sense and Light in the Soul.

Rome and the Gospel, is at the same time a history of the Spiritist Circle of Lérida and a profound message, with an analysis of the Spiritist revelation, dedicated to all those interested in new horizons of knowledge and the longings of a people saturated with archaic appeals from an oppressive church, of an obscure theology and an obsolete liturgy. The book provides a valuable reading, especially considering checking psychographic messages from enlightened entities such as Mary of Nazareth, Félicité de La Mennais, Saint Augustine, John the Evangelist and the coder of Spiritism Allan Kardec.