Saturday, May 21, 2005
GNOSTIC CHURCH BURNS
LAWeekly reports on the fire that destroyed Bishop Stephen Hoeller's Gnostic church on May 7:
In less than one hour, the L.A. outpost of what one Catholic apologist has called “the most dreaded foe the Christian faith has ever confronted” was in ruins. The size and fury of the blaze belied its humble origins, but may have been attributable to what the LAPD suspects was a methamphetamine lab operating in an upstairs apartment. A junkie and her boyfriend had rented the flat for years, and therein lies an irony that would not be lost on Gnostic sensibilities. The fire that gutted Hoeller’s sanctuary was not lit by torch-bearing fundamentalists or commandos employed by Opus Dei, but was the consequence of a modern affliction engendered by the sorrow of being “trapped,” to paraphrase comic icon Howard the Duck, “in a world we never made.”
The article goes on to describe a mass:
We are through the looking glass, and the disorientation can be profound. But to attend a Sunday mass at the old Ecclesia Gnostica, you’d have been forgiven for not noticing right away. Most of the liturgy would be familiar to any Catholic, as would the vestments worn by Bishop Hoeller and his clergy. Only the place, and perhaps the parishioners, would make you feel you had picked the wrong door and wandered into a catacomb art-directed by David Lynch and populated with extras cast by Tim Burton.
There were no flying buttresses or gothic arches at 4516 Hollywood Blvd, only a low-ceilinged, rectangular room barely 24-by-12-feet, appointed with images of the Babylonian prophet Mani and the psychoanalytic pioneer Carl Gustav Jung, a draped flag bearing a Templar cross, and an array of chivalric symbols and Christian icons suggestive of a mode of worship far removed in time. For a resident of daylight Los Angeles, arriving with Starbucks cup in hand, the very act of crossing the threshold could seem both furtive and daring, like entering a graveyard after midnight for a rendezvous or crashing a very private wedding party. But heads never turned to regard the trespasser, either with false welcome or slit-eyed suspicion. One could enter and leave for months, as I did, without getting busted. It was a genuine sanctuary.
There is a Hail Mary, too...with a slight twist:
“Hail, Sophia, filled with light, the Christ is with Thee. Blessed art Thou among the Aeons, and blessed is the liberator of Thy light, Jesus. Holy Sophia, Mother of all gods, pray to the light for us, Thy children, now and in the hour of our death. Amen.”
Maybe the goddess worshiping nuns should be taking lessons.
