Universal conscience is shocked by modern global evil in which it is complicit. Vatican II was a great affair of Church reckoning, of realizing the desperation of past misdirection, and the need of redirection based on experience and knowledge in the present—“a matter as important as can be.” (Constitution IV, Introduction, #5, “Gaudium et spes”, The Second Vatican Council)

 

2000—Summary Prevision challenges the culture of misplaced confidence in medieval faith-hubris (fideism) which glares in the destructive overreach of patriarchal imperialism’s ignorance and arrogance. In the expanding cosmos, all energy, all substance, all “truth” is distributive. Truth like light is everywhere possessed in “everythingness” taking part in transformational interdependency. Authenticity lies in the discernment of truth in common.

 

The author, here, in imitation of the Middle Age Reformer Martin Luther, posts his theses and corresponds directly with powers-that-be, including his bishop and popes. His hope is to wake up the mind of universal conscience inherent in individual consciousness for purposes of stimulating a global shift away from fixation in backward thinking.

 

The author proposes and introduces a redirected Syllabus of Education that puts learner and teacher in equal standing, realizing that every one is and should be a learner and a teacher for his/her lifetime.

 

The book is in three parts that correlate to each other even as communication, consciousness and conscience correlate with each other.

<DIV class=Section1> <P style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify; MARGIN: 0in 0.25in 0pt" class=Default><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: Arial; FONT-SIZE: 11pt">“Arrogance and ignorance violate faith and hope, and when faith and hope are violated, so is love. "Civility" is the natural faith/ hope/ love expression of human relationships—what Christians believe exemplify divine presence in Creation. The cult of incivility is rooted in three deadly social sins which directly defeat the civil virtues of faith, hope and love. These sins devastate personal and communal life; they fly directly in the face of Christian Trinity and must, therefore, be considered as blasphemy by Christians. These sins can be expressed in the manner of the seven deadly social sins of Mohandas K. Gandhi. They are: words <I>without </I>work, procreation <I>without </I>provision, and civitas <I>without </I>civilitas.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p></o:p></SPAN></P> <P style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify; MARGIN: 0in 0.25in 0pt" class=Default><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: Arial; FONT-SIZE: 11pt"><SPAN style="mso-spacerun: y e s & q u o t ; & g t ; & a m p ; n b s p ; </SPAN><o:p></o:p></SPAN></P> <P style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify; MARGIN: 0in 0.25in 0pt" class=Default><B><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: Arial; FONT-SIZE: 11pt">“Words without Work: </SPAN></B><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: Arial; FONT-SIZE: 11pt">The fraud of word-only spirituality is that it justifies itself without accountability for its connection to the working of natural necessity. God's Word is self-bound in natural Work. True Sacrament embodies in work its con-sciousness of word, unlike word-only rite and ritual. True word raises conscious-ness by its efficiency in doing in secular (material) reality what it says. The reliable embodiment of word is the fact-basis of faith; empty words are fruitless for they lack the faith-inspiration of work's embodiment. The pretense of words at odds with work puts God to the test and trashes Natural Order.<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P> <P style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify; MARGIN: 0in 0.25in 0pt" class=Default><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: Arial; FONT-SIZE: 1 1 p t & q u o t ; & g t ; & l t ; o : p & g t ; & a m p ; n bsp;</o:p></SPAN></P></DIV><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: Arial; COLOR: black; FONT-SIZE: 11pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA"></SPAN> <P style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify; MARGIN: 0in 0.25in 0pt" class=Default><B><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: Arial; FONT-SIZE: 11pt">“Procreation without Provision: </SPAN></B><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: Arial; FONT-SIZE: 11pt">Hope is consciously engendered in the experience of Nature's reliable provisioning of life. Hope is defeated when the providence of life is desecrated. Excessive human numbers and appetites are viciously wasting network life. True worship of God holds <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" /><st1:place w:st="on"><st1:City w : s t = & q u o t;on">Providence</st1:City></st1:place> sacred and sustains the largesse of network life for future generations. Where humans settle, history shows a mindless absence of foresight and the mindless waste of life. The conscienceless destruction of natural providence is a hope-destroying act that unmasks the lie of pretentious belief in God's <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:City w : s t = & q u o t ; o n ">Providence</st1:City></st1:place>—a fearsome mockery of God.<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P> <P style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify; MARGIN: 0in 0.25in 0pt" class=Default><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: Arial; FONT-SIZE: 1 1 p t & q u o t ; & gt;<o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></SPAN></P> <P style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify; MARGIN: 0in 0.25in 0pt" class=Default><B><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: Arial; FONT-SIZE: 11pt">“Civitas without Civilitas: </SPAN></B><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: Arial; FONT-SIZE: 11pt">The collective breaches of faith and hope ultimately work their devastation on love. Without love for one another people obsess in egoism and neglect confessional living that acknowledges the debt responsibility of bearing one another’s burdens and sharing life's gifts. Individual life and its giftedness is a gratuity of previous life that belongs also to future generations. The violation of communal love is a violation of conscience. Without civility, without lived faith/ hope/ love, there can be no City of <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:City w : s t="on">God</st1:City></st1:place>, no harmonious community. The defeat of love is the ultimate sin against God who is Love.<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>

What about myself have I learned that matters? That my life has been/ is the “common ground initiative,” as is every life. The common-ground-initiative is the forever-task of reconciling faith and reason—what is divinity consciousness — < S T RONG>DIVINICON.

 

What is truth? Truth is knowledge that corresponds with reality—as reality is transformational, so is truth. Like energy, truth is everywhere distributive in all reality, which means, it is subjective in substance and objective in essence. Objective truth, as object, is not absolute even as objects are not absolute. The energy of objects is attenuated by other objects, and objects attenuate "free energy." The common-ground objective of conscious self-reflection is the ongoing process of faith/ reason reconciliation, of the perpetual enlargement of the knowledge base of truth, of energy attenuation.

 

So what enlightenment have I come to? Truth is no respecter of religion or politics; the process of truth is the process of rationality, of reconciling learning, experience and faith, by way of communication, consciousness and conscience; and self-consciousness is authenticated in truth, the common ground of faith/ reason.

 

TRUTH IS “The Bridge” to common ground—is “The Common Ground.” Truth is the life-quest of consciousness, the Life-Quest Initiative—the common ground of the quantum-electric impulse. Make the quantum leap; seek only truth for the truth will set you free. Know that “truth is beauty, beauty, truth; that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” (G. Keats)

 

Sylvester L. Steffen