|
MARY BAKER
EDDY LETTER
Letter Number
Eight, January 25, 1998 See the questionnaire
below.
"The effort of disloyal students to blacken me
and to keep my works from public recognition...has been made too many
times...for me to fear it.... I have neither the time nor inclination to be
continually pursuing a lie....Therefore I ask the help of others in this
matter" (My. 130:7)
IF ONE, JUST ONE, WILL
STAND
These Mary Baker Eddy Letters seek to
answer our revered Leader's call for help. Education is the key and each of our
readers is an important part of that effort. Thank you for your letters of
support. They show your love for Mary Baker Eddy, and allow an ever more
expanded and intensified education of what Mary Baker Eddy
intended for the Christian Science movement.
Today the final count-down to the realization of
our oneness with God, infinite good, has begun. It actually began with the
Second Coming of the Christ when Mary Baker Eddy wrote and published Science
and Health in 1875. She thus fulfilled Jesus' prophecy and promise of the
"Comforter," that would explain how we, like Jesus, can overcome all the
illusions that the five physical senses constantly delude and deluge us with.
Through our Leader's revelation we find heaven right here on earth-and find
evil and error to be unreal, to be merely hypnotic suggestion.
When someone asked Mrs. Eddy how the movement
would go on if she (Mrs. Eddy) were not here, Mrs. Eddy replied, "If only
one [just one] will stand, the movement will be
established. It is only the 'ether' and 'opium of occultism' that makes you
think that you are not that one."
This reminds me of the "out-of-towner" who had a
mishap and his car slid into the ditch in an isolated area.
Luckily, a local farmer came to help with
"Buddy," his big, strong horse. The farmer hitched Buddy to the car and yelled,
"Pull, 'Nellie,' pull!" Buddy didn't move an inch.
Then the farmer hollered, "Pull, 'Buster,'
pull!" Buddy still didn't respond. Once more the farmer commanded, "Pull,
'Coco," pull!" Nothing happened.
Then the farmer nonchalantly said, "Pull, Buddy,
pull," and the horse easily dragged the car out of the ditch.
The motorist was most appreciative, but very
curious, too. He asked the farmer why he had called the horse the wrong name
three times.
"Oh, you see," the farmer explained, "if Buddy
thought he was the only one pulling, he wouldn't even try."
We must constantly remind ourselves of the
tremendous importance Mrs. Eddy places on the truth that there is but one
Mind-your real Mind, "the kingdom of God within you," within your
consciousness-and that it is all; and gives you "sovereign power." Then,
even armed only with a pen, each one of us can help.
THE LEAVEN OF
TRUTH
What has today influenced people to become drug
addicts, lend themselves to crime, and spurn the ethics built up by
Christianity over the centuries? In Science and Health Mrs. Eddy writes, "The
mild forms of animal magnetism are disappearing, and its aggressive features
are coming to the front." A vast chemicalization is going on, because the
LEAVEN of Truth has brought latent evil to the surface of thought
to be destroyed by this Christ Truth.
Jesus made a far-reaching utterance when he
said, "The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven which a woman took, and hid in
three measures of meal, until the whole was leavened." He was telling us that
this woman (Mary Baker Eddy, in the Second Coming of the Christ) must place in
"Science, Theology, Medicine" the "leaven" of the "Comforter" until the whole
of mortal thought is changed "as yeast changes the chemical properties of
meal."
"When placed under a microscope, the working of
leaven looks like a veritable battlefield. There is assault and penetration in
the face of determined resistance until peace descends after the whole has been
conquered" (Abbingdon's Bible Commentary).
The first step in overcoming error
is to recognize it as an illusion, and specifically denounce it. The
second step is to know what the fact is, AND
HOLD TO IT. We must see things as THOUGHTS; then we can
make the exchange and behold the perfect man. The objects of sense must be
exchanged for the ideas of Soul (true identity). A matter body is nothing but
hypnotic thought. We are dealing with hypnotism, with illusion, when we deal
with matter. But all the while that I am seeing matter, the omnipresence of
present perfection (Mind's ideal) is just as real and just as near as 2x2=4.
The constant desire to know ourselves as we really are is "praying without
ceasing"-it is silencing the material senses, as "in the quiet sanctuary of
earnest longings we deny sin and plead [infinite good's] allness."
VITAL QUESTIONS
This "Mary Baker Eddy Letter," No. 8, is going
to ask some questions that have concerned Christian Scientists around the
world, namely, the vital question of obedience to Mary Baker Eddy's
Church Manual, as she wrote it, the Manual she said was
dictated by God, and is therefore a holy instrument.
Obedience to Mary Baker Eddy's Manual
requires a knowledge of the difference between Mrs. Eddy's two Boards of
Directors:
(1) the LEGAL four-member Board of
Directors, established in 1892, that had power and authority ONLY
over the church in Boston and its property, and which could continue
indefinitely.
(2), Mrs. Eddy's temporary
five-member Board of Directors, made up of the legal four-member Board,
to which Archibald McClellan was added, and to which she gave vast powers
ONLY WHILE SHE WAS HERE to supervise and control with the Mind of
Christ.
After Mrs. Eddy's passing, there remained only
the FOUR-member legal Board who, as already mentioned, had no
control over the field or over the thousands of Christian Science
churches.
Today groups are rising to defend Mary Baker
Eddy and her Manual By-Laws which include the twenty-eight vitally
important estoppel clauses that require Mrs. Eddy's consent for certain actions
to be carried out. But most of these groups that are now rising fail to
make clear the difference between the Manual-terminated
FIVE-member Board, and the legal FOUR-member Board
Mrs. Eddy set up at the time the original Mother Church was planned for and
built. This legal FOUR-member Board had no power or authority
over any church or individual except the Boston church and its property. It had
no power over the thousands of Christian Science churches or over individual
Christian Scientists.
The illegal five-member Board claims to have
such power, in direct defiance of the Manual estoppels. Mrs. Eddy,
foreseeing what would happen, reassured Laura Sargent and Clara Shannon that
the Manual will be "acknowledged as law by law." This was a factual
statement, and will come to pass. What a day that will be! But meanwhile the
noose that the Manual-terminated 5-member Board of Directors has tied
around our neck has been tightened each year since 1910 when Mary Baker Eddy
left the human scene.
What are we doing about it?
As Edmund Burke wrote in 1795, "The only thing
necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." If we do
nothing Christian Science will keep losing ground as it has done during the
nearly ninety years since Mary Baker Eddy, in person, said farewell. If we
don't act soon, our Christian Science movement, like Samson-chained, blinded,
and shorn of his hair (by the illegal five-member Board)-will no longer have
the power to act.
MARY BAKER EDDY'S "13 DEEDS OF
TRUST"
The changes and annulments the Directors have
made, and exercised, in defiance of the sacred Manual By-Laws, since
Mrs. Eddy left in 1910, have breached the Directors' position of trust and left
them and the successive Directors guilty of FRAUDULENT
MISREPRESENTATION, which under human law is a serious crime. In
changing and annulling the Manual By-Laws, the Directors are defying the
real estate deeds for land with "further trusts," which represent the
foundation on which the church is built, and which unequivocally interlock the
Manual By-Laws with human laws of the land. Mrs. Eddy's real estate deed
restrictions specifically prohibit any changing or annulling of Manual
By-Laws. Mrs. Eddy bought land in Boston for church use and transferred it
to her church on the condition that her students would obey the Manual
By-Laws as she wrote them.
This meant that the temporary five-member Board
to which she had given vast powers while she was here to supervise them with
the Christ Mind, must return to its former FOUR member LEGAL Board
status which had no power except to supervise the church in Boston and
its property.
This Manual-terminated 5-member Board
was, of course, deeply worried about losing the great power they enjoyed under
Mrs. Eddy's supervision. They tried numerous times to get Mrs. Eddy to change
the By-Law that toppled them (Manual, p.26, "Directors"). But knowing
God had dictated that By-Law, Mrs. Eddy would not change it. This caused the
disturbed Directors to consult the shrewdest lawyers in Boston, who told them:
"Patience; wait 'til the old lady dies. She can't rule from the grave."
FIVE-MEMBER BOARD SECRETLY
CHANGES MANUAL
On December 3rd, 1910, Mrs. Eddy's earthy form
passed on. (The real Mary Baker Eddy, of course, is in her writings and will be
here forever.) We can well imagine that the Manual-terminated
five-member Board held a feast, and figuratively beamed from ear to ear like a
newly-crowned emperor, unable to conceal their pleasure.
The 5-member Manual-terminated Board had
secretly printed the 89th edition Manual, in which they
had made changes that gave them power over the thousands of Christian Science
churches and over Christian Scientists. Their secretly changed 89th
edition Manual could now be put on sale and sent to all
Christian Science Reading Rooms. Mrs. Eddy's last Manual, the 88th
edition, was called in by the Directors, and all copies destroyed.
This was the high point of the five-member
Board's career; the culmination of years of hard work, the realization of their
glorious dream. The five-member Board had never seen Mary Baker Eddy's history
as a holy one-as the one prophesied to bring the Second Coming of the Christ,
the "Comforter" promised by Jesus. They only saw her as someone they would some
day replace.
Therefore the Manual-terminated 5-member
Board quickly, quietly, slickly, slyly, (having persuaded themselves they were
doing the right thing) announced to the world that they were Mrs. Eddy's
successor. And for nearly ninety years it has been high noon for the rule of
this five-member Board. Christian Science history had been made. Nothing would
ever be the same again.
JESUS' PROPHECY CONCERNING
TODAY
Thus began the day of which Jesus prophesied to
St. John, in Revelation, chapters 13-21.
From Jesus' Revelation to St. John on the Isle
of Patmos, we learn that before we experience divine harmony through learning
what we already ARE, AND HAVE ALWAYS BEEN IN REALITY, there will
be "Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and the sea! for the devil is come down
unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth he hath but a short
time."
What is this devil?
This "devil" is disobedience to Mary Baker's
Eddy's Church Manual.
Revelation 13:l, 2, describes this disobedience
to Mary Baker Eddy's Manual as "a beast": "And I stood upon the sand of
the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten
horns, and upon his horns ten crowns [symbolizing the great power and authority
the Manual-terminated Board assumed], and upon his heads the name of
blasphemy....and the dragon [the drag-on of old theology] gave him his power,
and his seat, and GREAT AUTHORITY."
This "beast" is ecclesiastical hierarchical
power, such as the pope exercises in the Roman Catholic church. This is what
Mary Baker Eddy's Manual was written to prevent. Our Leader wanted all
"Christian Scientists [to] be a law to [themselves]..." (S&H 442:30). But,
as Jesus said, "Scripture cannot be broken." Thus, since Mary Baker Eddy left
the human scene, this scripture, this prophecy by Jesus, is being fulfilled-is
being brought upon us by the disobedience of the Manual-terminated five
member Board of Directors in Boston who refused to be governed by the estoppel
clauses in Mrs. Eddy's Manual.
While Mrs. Eddy was with the Board of five
Directors to supervise them with the Mind of Christ, she gave these Directors
far more power than she had given them as a FOUR-member Board
under the perpetual legal 1892 Deed of Trust, which should have again taken
over at her passing. After Mary Baker Eddy left, all the temporary powers given
the five-member Board were immediately blocked by the estoppels, which also
prevented the Board from filling vacancies to perpetuate itself.
THE REMEDY IS
SIMPLE
Once the Manual-terminated five-member
Board steps down from the power it fraudulently, deceitfully assumed as the
head of a world-wide "Mother Church," and takes its rightful place as Mary
Baker Eddy's LEGAL FOUR-MEMBER BOARD with no power other than to
look after the property of The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, we
will be ready to enter the millennial paradise. Once this
Manual-terminated five-member Board CEASES TO CALL ITSELF MARY
BAKER EDDY'S SUCCESSOR, and ceases to think of itself as "the
highest ecclesiastical court in the land," the end of evil and injustice will
be ushered in; harmony will reign-the "golden age" will follow.
To accomplish this, all genuine Christian
Scientists today seek an end to the authoritarian bureaucratic control by the
Manual-terminated five-member Board-who want to rule over the Christian
Science movement with an illegally assumed centralized organization. The
irrevocable real estate Deed of Trust of 1892 still maintains and protects the
Boston church. Dissolution of organization does not mean disintegration of true
Church. (See definition of "Church," S&H 583:12).
In Miscellany, p. 342, Mrs. Eddy said:
"The continuity of The Church of Christ, Scientist...is assured....It will
embrace all the churches, one by one, because it alone is the simplicity of the
oneness of God [God is "the kingdom of God within our consciousness; in
Christian Science we learn that God is our real and only Mind]; the oneness of
Christ and the perfecting of man stated scientifically [Christ, we learn in
Christian Science, is the real man, our real divine Mind's reflection]." Our
real Mind and its idea are one. "Principle [our Mind] and its idea is one"
(S&H 465:17; see also Mis. 101:31).
THE MANUAL'S HEALING
POWER
Mrs. Eddy writes of the healing power of the
"spirit of Truth and Love" (S&H 418:22), and she states, "Of this I am
sure, that each rule and By-Law in this Manual will increase the
spirituality of him who obeys it, invigorate his capacity to heal the sick, to
comfort such as mourn, and to awaken the sinner" (My.
230:10).
Few have studied Mary Baker Eddy's Manual
to see how far-reaching, how far-sighted, how complete her provisions for the
Church really are. Few realize how much of the current difficulty of the
Christian Science movement has resulted from disobedience to her wise
provisions.
A recent court case, Weaver and Other v. Wood et
AL, brings the extent of this disobedience into focus.
WEAVER AND OTHER v. WOOD ET
AL.
In 1993 legal action was brought against the
Board of Directors to enforce the provisions in the Church Manual
relating to the guardianship of church funds. The action merely sought a full
accounting of church finance, but it quickly raised much more critical issues.
Now, after the case has slowly worked its way through the Massachusetts courts,
where the Massachusetts Supreme Court chose not to hold the Boston
ecclesiastical hierarchy accountable, the question of whether the case can go
forward has been appealed to the United States Supreme Court.
The case as it developed came to be concerned
with far more than church finances. It brought up the kind of church Mary
Baker Eddy intended, and how she intended it to be governed. The key
issue became "accountability to Mrs. Eddy."
The Board of Directors, having deceitfully set
themselves up as Mary Baker Eddy's successor in total and direct defiance
of the Church Manual, argued forcefully and explicitly that they, the
Board of Directors, are not accountable to members. This
Manual-terminated Board, that should NOT have existed
after Mrs. Eddy left, blatantly declared they are their own judge and jury in
church matters, even when those complaints concern the actions of the Board of
Directors themselves. According to them, church members have no recourse to
appeal, either within or without the church organization. This is ludicrous! It
directly opposes our Leader's inspired Church Manual.
The fraudulent Board of Directors' official
submissions to the court deceitfully presented our Church as an "hierarchical
structure" with the Directors at the apex-and no meaningful accountability to
Mrs. Eddy's Manual By-Laws. The Board's depiction to the Court revealed
a view of the Directors as having the same unlimited decision-making power in
our Church that the pope has in the Roman Catholic church.
This false portrayal of our Church's government
raises concerns far more profound than the financial irresponsibility that
initially prompted the suit. Mrs. Eddy, of course, was totally against
religious hierarchies. She taught, "There was never a religion or philosophy
lost to the centuries except by sinking its divine Principle in personality"
(My. 117:22). She herself "left Boston in the height of
prosperity to retreat from the world, and to seek
the one divine Person [the kingdom of God within her own consciousness, her own
divine Mind] whereby and wherein to show others the footsteps from sense to
Soul [show them their true identity]" (ibid. 117).
Mary Baker Eddy wrote the Manual to
prevent her Church from ever becoming an ecclesiastical hierarchy, as the
Directors have now deceitfully represented it. The twenty-eight estoppel
clauses carefully placed throughout the Manual, would, if obeyed, act as
emergency brakes, stopping all actions which might lead to just such an
unhealthy concentration of power as the Manual-terminated five-member
Board of Directors have given themselves today.
Since 1910 the Directors have chosen to subvert
the INTENT of Mary Baker Eddy's estoppels, willfully disobeying
them or reinterpreting them to serve their own purposes. In their statement to
the Court they defend this action, asserting that "it is the exclusive province
of the Board to determine the meaning of any of Mary Baker Eddy's
By-Laws." In other words, the meaning of any given provision of the
Manual is what the Board decides it to be.
In this statement the Board is, in effect,
proclaiming itself to be the holy Spirit incarnate. The practical consequence
of this view is to elevate the Board's authority in church matters above Mrs.
Eddy's.
Do you, dear reader, agree with this?
MRS. EDDY'S INTENT NOT
CONSIDERED
In presenting the Directors' power within the
church as VIRTUALLY ABSOLUTE, church and Publishing officials
conspicuously and shamefully minimized the role of Mrs. Eddy's trusts. Mrs.
Eddy's thirteen Deeds of Trust are carefully crafted legal documents which
state that the property conveyed to the Directors is granted on one condition,
namely, THAT THE MANUAL BE OBEYED.
Instead of supporting the precedent of
considering Mary Baker Eddy's INTENT as the Founder
or grantor of those trusts, the Directors, in their plea to the Court, sought a
decision that would preclude the courts from considering
her intent. In the name of defending "religious freedom," the Directors'
position drastically limited the Court's role in sustaining Mrs. Eddy's trusts.
This put even the most serious departures from the Manual's By-Laws, by
church officers, out of reach of the courts, thus depriving the church members
of the protection the trusts were meant to provide.
Do you, as a Christian Scientist, agree with
this serious departure from Mary Baker Eddy's intent, and her Manual
By-Laws? Or do you agree with Mary Baker Eddy and her Manual?
THE EFFECT OF THE COURT'S
DECISION
This past June, l997, the Supreme Court of
Massachusetts decided in favor of the Board of Directors. There was no evident
consideration of Mrs. Eddy's intent. The Court said it did
not want to intrude into religious affairs, but the unintentional
effect of the Court's decision was far more intrusive than the
Court recognized, for the decision altered the fundamental character of
the government of our Church as Mrs. Eddy established it.
WHAT HAS BECOME TRAGICALLY
CLEAR
As events unfolded in the Court case, it became
tragically clear (although many today do not see it) that the
self-congratulatory court-victory for the five-member Board was, in fact, a
wake. The funeral pyre has been blazing since December, l910, burning through
the joists, beams, and floor-boards of Mary Baker Eddy's sacred Manual.
The deadly flame is reducing to ashes the God-inspired Manual
By-Laws that restore to every individual his freedom to be a law to himself,
since he in reality has the "the kingdom of God within" him-within his
consciousness-and the one divine Mind is his Mind, that reflects itself in what
is called "man," or Christ. He needs only to awaken from the Adam
dream.
The Court's decision confronts Christian
Scientists directly with the question of whether or not our Church will in any
real sense remain Mrs. Eddy's Church, responsible to her
Leadership in more than just name. The issues at stake are summarized in the
plaintiff's petition to the United States Supreme Court:
"The Massachusetts decision effectively
established a church that has a different governing
structure...from that deliberately decreed by the Church's
Founder....It replaces a carefully constructed system of checks and balances
[where all power is given to the individual to be a law to himself], with one
that reposes unaccountable power in the hands of a self-perpetuating Board of
Directors." In reality, as Jesus said, "the kingdom of God is within you,"
meaning within each individual's consciousness. Each therefore, in reality, as
we said, has the Mind of Christ. The Court's decision replaces this hallowed
truth with a lie, a falsity, that reposes unaccountable power in
the hands of a fraudulent and illegal Manual-terminated
self-perpetuating five-member Board of Directors.
The plaintiffs conclude, "The consequences of
this Court decision, if it is permitted to stand, will be grave and pervasive
ones for the Christian Science denomination, for the decision... effectively
abolished the Church created by the Founder of Christian Science, and
establishes in its place a new one."
How did Mary Baker Eddy intend her church to be
governed?
A careful reading of the Deeds of Trust and the
Church Manual makes several facts clear:
First, the
Manual By-Laws are to be obeyed exactly as written, and no one,
including the Board of Directors, has authority to change or re-interpret
them.
Second,
since 1910 the estoppels in the Manual should have
effectively shut down activities that needed Mrs. Eddy consent to continue.
This made the existence of a "Mother Church," in that sense,
impossible.
Third,
since 1910 the only true Christian Science Board of Directors in Boston is a
LEGAL four-member Board set up solely to oversee The First Church
of Christ Scientist, in Boston, and its property. (Note: "in"
Boston.)
Finally, no
Board of Directors, nor any other entity, has power over the Christian Science
field and its churches such as the Manual-terminated five-member Board
fraudulently, deceitfully claims to have.
The Deeds of Trust that relate to various
parcels of church property-including the dozen not reprinted in the Manual
(pp. 136-138)-include a stipulation that: "NO NEW TENET OR BY-LAW
SHALL BE ADOPTED, NOR ANY TENET OR BY-LAW AMENDED OR ANNULLED BY THE GRANTEES
[DIRECTORS] WITHOUT MARY BAKER EDDY'S CONSENT."
The grantees here are the
FOUR-member Board of Directors. No property was ever given to the
Manual-terminated FIVE-member Board.
The By-laws stipulated here are vital to the
constitutional government which emerged as Mrs. Eddy pondered and prayed about
the future of her Church, and about the protection it would need when she was
no longer humanly present.
Mrs. Eddy had her legal counsel prepare this
stipulation between 1898 and 1904, as a way of protecting these Manual
By-Laws. She knew trusts are LEGAL documents enforceable through
civil courts. Mrs. Eddy's thirteen Deeds of Trust gave legally binding
authority and perpetuity to all the Manual By-Laws. This is why she
could tell her students that the Manual would be "acknowledged as law by
law."
The By-Law on page 26 of the Manual,
Sect. 5, entitled "Directors," made it legally impossible for the
five-member Board of Directors to continue in office after Mrs. Eddy was no
longer here to supervise them. The Board KNEW they only had power
as long as Mrs. Eddy was here to oversee them, and this is why they repeatedly
petitioned her to change or delete this By-Law.
This By-Law was the most important By-Law in the
Manual, and was no doubt Mrs. Eddy's reason for writing the Manual.
It was the only By-Law the five-member Board asked Mrs. Eddy to change. But
each time the Directors asked her to change it, she told them that God had
dictated that By-Law, and it remained for the Directors and the church to obey
it.
That By-Law put all power into the hands of each
Christian Scientist. It called on each Christian Scientist to be "a law to
himself." Why? Because the "kingdom of God is within" the consciousness of each
individual. Each individual's real Mind is God, is Truth, is
Love.
The FOUR-member Board, which Mrs.
Eddy set up legally in 1892 when the original Mother Church was formed, only
had power over that church and its property. They had no power whatsoever over
any other Christian Science church or over individual Christian Scientists. The
temporary five-member Board had power and authority only so long
as Mrs. Eddy was on hand to supervise them, as her above-mentioned By-Law,
"Directors" (Manual p. 26) insures.
I hope I have made clear the difference between
the 4-member Board and the 5-member Board.
In Science and Health, Mrs. Eddy writes: "The
march of mind and of honest investigation [such as these Mary Baker Eddy
Letters are trying to do] will bring the hour when the people will chain,
with fetters of some sort, the growing occultism [secret, concealed from
observation] of this period. The present APATHY as to the
tendency of certain active yet unseen mental agencies will finally be
SHOCKED into another extreme mental mood, into human indignation"
at having been deceived all these years by a fraudulent
Manual-terminated five-member Board of Directors who had to fulfill
Jesus' prophecy in Revelation, Chapter 13, l and 2, (since "Scripture cannot be
broken") which speaks of the "beast" and the "dragon." The "beast" and The
drag-on of Old Theology subjects us to a labored salvation, a salvation in the
future instead of a realization of our present spiritual perfection which the
"Comforter" brings in the Second Coming of the Christ.
Let us ask a few vital questions:
Mrs. Eddy's Manual By-Law firmly states,
the five-member Board: "...shall fill a vacancy occurring on that board
AFTER THE CANDIDATE IS APPROVED BY THE PASTOR EMERITUS...."
What has the 5-member Board done?
They have willfully continued to fill vacancies
on that Board despite the fact that Mary Baker Eddy told them that By-Law was
dictated by God, and is therefore a holy, God-inspired By-Law.
Do you agree with Mary Baker Eddy, who said God
dictated that By-Law? Or, do you agree with the Manual-terminated Board
of Directors who scorned this By-Law, refused to return to their
FOUR-member status and instead announced to the Christian Science
field that they were Mary Baker Eddy's SUCCESSOR?
Do you agree with the Manual-terminated
Board that there was a "Mother Church" after Mrs. Eddy left? Or, do you agree
that Mary Baker Eddy's Manual means exactly what it states: the
"President shall be elected, subject to the approval of the Pastor
Emeritus...."?
Similar By-laws state that the church clerk and
treasurer could be reelected only if they have the consent
of the Pastor Emeritus, Mary Baker Eddy, given in her own
handwriting. Such estoppels effectively shut down the operation of a
"Mother Church."
This leaves in place only the people who attend
The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, and who, in fact, ARE
The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, as Mrs. Eddy states
in the Manual.
According to the Manual there was
NO MOTHER CHURCH AFTER MARY BAKER EDDY LEFT. Do you agree with
Mary Baker Eddy, or do you agree with the Board of Directors who deceitfully
continue to affirm that there is a Mother Church that you can join, a
super-organization, an ecclesiastical hierarchy with vast authority, a church
which they head as a self-perpetuating Board of Directors, collecting an annual
tax from you each year? (Here read again, Revelation 13:1 & 2).
The Manual (p.35, Sect. 3) states that
(in Mrs. Eddy's time) children 12 years of age could become members of the
Mother Church. But since, according to the Manual, there was no Mother
Church after Mrs. Eddy left, that is, after June of 1911 when no officer to the
Mother Church could be elected without Mrs. Eddy's consent. After that date no
one could become a member of the Mother Church.
Thus, when other By-Laws require membership in
the Mother Church for actions, such as becoming a reader or starting a branch
church, a person would today have to be 95 or so, to be in conformity with Mary
Baker Eddy's sacred Manual. This was Mrs. Eddy's way of gracefully,
phasing out Branch churches, and all material organization.
Page 51 of the Manual, "Authority, Sect.
5," speaks of disciplining a member, but there was no five-member Board of
Directors after Mary Baker Eddy left, and the four-member Board was limited to
caring only for the First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, and its
property, and had no authority to discipline, or to interfere in any way with a
branch church, or an individual Christian Scientist. The
Manual-terminated five-member Board claimed it DID have
such authority, and used it fraudulently to consolidate its own
power.
For example, this Manual-terminated
five-member Board believed itself empowered to reinterpret the meaning of "No
incorrect Literature" (Article VIII, Section 11) to mean no literature that is
not authorized by the Directors. Why did the Board need this meaning? Because
in order to survive, they must control what Christian Scientists read. The
Board of Directors have recently (in the July, 1997, Sentinel, and in
the 1997 November Journal) warned Christian Scientists to read only what
they, the Manual-terminated Directors, authorized.
The Manual, p. 88, ends all formal
teaching. It states that "the teacher shall be elected every third year...and
the candidate shall be subject to the APPROVAL of the Pastor Emeritus
[Mary Baker Eddy].
And finally, on page 105 of the Manual we
have this ALL IMPORTANT BY-LAW: "Amendment of By-Laws. Sect. 3.
No new Tenet or By-Law shall be adopted, nor any Tenet or By-Law amended or
annulled, without the written consent of Mary Baker Eddy, the author of our
textbook, Science and Health."
The above are only a few of what are called
"estoppels," that stop an action. There are 28 such estoppels in the Manual.
Mrs. Eddy saw these estoppel clauses were needed to keep her great
revelation and discovery from meeting the same fate that befell Jesus' teaching
about a hundred years after he left.
The Manual-terminated five-member Board
of Directors' statement to the court in the case of Weaver and Other v. Wood at
Al., attempting to justify their continuing disobedience to the Manual
estoppels, shows the Board's total disregard for Mary Baker Eddy, who brought
the Second Coming of the Christ and so fulfilled Jesus' prophecy and promise of
the "Comforter."
This disregard for Mrs. Eddy was also shown in
several incidents mentioned in "Mary Baker Eddy Letter" No. 7. For example, the
Board tore down her beloved home at Pleasant View; they dynamited to bits the
grand granite pyramid marker that marked her birth place at Bow, N.H.; and they
lied to the United States Congress in order to secure a permanent copyright on
all editions of Science and Health, which Mrs. Eddy had left in the Public
Domain and many other cruel depredations, such as watonly taking over the
Publishing Society. (See full story in my book, If Mary Baker Eddy's Manual
Were Obeyed.)
Jesus' Revelation to St. John, chapter 13:1
& 2, is being fulfilled today as the Board of Directors disobediently
continue to name themselves Mary Baker Eddy's "successor."
QUESTIONNAIRE
Please answer the
following questions with "Yes," or "No" and then click the submit button at the
bottom of the page. Thank you!
(1) Do you feel it was right for the
Manual-terminated five-member Board of Directors to destroy Mary Baker
Eddy's beloved Pleasant View home where she had spent sixteen years pouring out
Truth and Love to the entire world?
Yes
No
(2) Do you feel it was right for this
Manual-terminated Board to dynamite to bits the grand granite pyramid
marker, that marked Mrs. Eddy's birthplace at Bow, because the Directors felt
too many people were visiting it?
Yes
No
(3) Do you feel the Manual-terminated
five-member Board of Directors had the right to petition Congress and secure
from them a continual copyright on all 432 editions of Science and Health after
Mrs. Eddy had left Science and Health uncopyrighted and in the public domain?
Yes No
(4) The Manual-terminated Board argued in
Court that they, as Directors, and not the Church Manual, were their own
judge and jury in church matters? Is this right?
Yes No
(5) Do you agree with the
Manual-terminated Board that any provision of the Manual is what
they, the Board, decides it to be, in other words, elevating the Board's
authority in church matters above Mary Baker Eddy's authority?
Yes No
(6) Do you agree with the Directors' decision
that puts even the most serious departures from the Manual's By-Laws, by
church officers, out of the reach of the courts?
Yes No
(7) On page 26 of the Manual, Sect. 4,
Directors. Mrs. Eddy's By-Law reads: "They [the Directors] shall fill a vacancy
occurring on that Board [the five-member Board] AFTER the candidate is
APPROVED BY THE PASTOR EMERITUS." Do you agree with the Board of
Directors who scorned this By-Law and set themselves up as Mary Baker Eddy's
successor?
Yes No
(8) Mrs. Eddy's Manual By-Laws terminated
the Mother Church at her leaving as no officer could be elected without her
consent. Do you feel the Manual-terminated Board had the right to
overturn Mary Baker Eddy's By-Law and collect dues from the field for a
"Mother" church?
Yes No
(9) The Manual, page 105, has the
ALL-IMPORTANT BY-LAW: "Amendment of By-Laws. Sect. 3. No new
tenet or By-Law shall be adopted, nor any Tenet or By-Law amended or annulled,
without the written consent of Mary Baker Eddy, the author of our textbook,
Science and Health." Do you agree with this By-Law?
Yes No
We will report to you the
results of this survey in a future Letter. Thank you for participating in this
survey.
The Children's Section will be
continued in Mary Baker Eddy Letter No. 9.
To be put on our email mail list
please email us at:
healing@MBEInstitute.org
Put in the body of your email the
word "SUBSCRIBE."
|