by Winsip Custer CPW News Service
reprinted from April 24, 2011
This community was caught up in the theological debate over the nature of Jesus Christ and of his humanity and divinity that led to the religious persecution by the Roman Catholic Church as it sought to define orthodox belief and to the split between the Latin and Eastern Orthodox churches. Father Francis had just read Dr. Teotonio R. de Souza's book on the subject, Details of the Inquisition of Goa which was about the later persecution of Hindus by the church in India that in some ways paralleled the earlier period of persecution among Christians. Many of Father Francis' ancestors had died a horrendous death at the hands of the grand inquisitors of the same Christian faith. T.R. de Souza's analysis is eye-opening and chilling.
From 1560 to 1812 the blood of Hindus ran in the streets as had his ancestors' in the lead up to the Council of Chalcedon in 451 AD. The Jesuits would hold mass baptisms but a few days before the event they would go out two by two as the Lord had instructed, but with the added help of African slaves who were compelled to capture the native Hindus and rub their lips with beef steak which immediately made them Untouchables and with nowhere else to go other than into the Christian church as neophytes. Baptism followed this form of not-so-gentle persuasion which had been endorsed by the Portuguese king and the Roman Pope. "To this day the Roman Catholic Church of which we are now a part denies that Madras was the site where Saint Thomas was martyred, but at the same time they maintain the shrine there because of its profitability as a tourist destination. Thomas' relevance was denied in order to enhance the primacy of Peter and Paul, but Thomas is believed to have carried to India several paintings by Luke the Evangelist, the physician companion of the Apostle Paul, whom tradition claims was the first icon painter. Thomas and Luke are the great link in the Christian tradition to the scientific minds that, had they been revered in the church from the beginning and during the Copernican Revolution, may have mediated the church's juvenile response to the age of scientific inquiry that the Protestants instinctively embraced," said Father Francis. "Luke's remains were moved from what is today Kosovo to Padua, Italy sometime after 1492. This means that Luke's remains were the talk of the town in Padua which was the home of the university where both Copernicus and Galileo as well as the great anatomist, Vesalius, studied science and medicine."
'Laminins are a family of proteins that are an integral part of the structural scaffolding of basement membranes in almost every animal tissue' You see.... Laminins are what hold us together... LITERALLY. They are cell adhesion molecules. They are what holds one cell of our bodies to the next cell. Without them, we would literally fall apart. And I knew all this already. But what I didn't know is what they LOOKED LIKE..
But now I do. And I have thought about it a thousand times since (already)....Here is what the structure of laminin looks like... AND THIS IS NOT a 'Christian portrayal' of it.... If you look up laminin in any scientific/medical piece of literature, this is what you will see.... the cross of Christ.
Father Nasrani knew the procedure well as he looked up to see the blood trail on the linoleum following the gurney down the ER hallway. The medical team would go into high gear with x-rays to determine the extent of the man's injuries and at some point he would be asked to phone the family and to intercept them as they rush in to the hospital and as the man makes his way to surgery. Nasrani thought of the man's tissues coming apart under the weight of the shifting payload and applied the image of the Laminin's t-cells to what had just happened....and to the history of his own ancestors whose deviations from the church's teachings had led to their separation and excommunication and persecution before a future Pope extended an olive branch and reincorporated them into the Roman Catholic Church. He thought of how the Apostles Peter and Paul had battled over the place of the Gentiles in the new Jewish-Christian community and their own authority in the church as a by-product in the First Century A.D.... and how the Goa Christians' founding Apostle, Thomas, would have made a good modern scientist or doctor because of his unapologetic passion for hands-on and evidential analysis of reality. Was Thomas influenced by another disciple, Luke the physician whose faith seemed to propel them toward the greater uncertainty of the East rather than down the alreadly established Roman highways toward the West? Nasarani wondered, why else would the center of science and learning in Padua have imported Luke's remains for memorialization to Italy's most progressive region where a reformation movement predated Luther's German advances under Peter Waldo and to a region near Florence and Venice where the world's leading merchant traders marveled at the wonders of their world? Why move Luke's remains there instead of leaving them where they were or to Rome? "Oh yes, that would have diminished the places of Peter and Paul!" he thought. "Politics as usual and we wonder why the pagan's follow our lead!"
In the next few moments, as he waited for the injured man's family to arrive, Father Nasrani pecked out an email message on his cell phone and finished it in his car as he sat in the dark in the hospital parking lot.
Dear Samuel,
reprinted from April 24, 2011
Father Francis Nasrani was standing in the emergency room of the local Southern California trauma hospital waiting for the Life Flight helicopter to deliver a trauma patient. It was Saturday night before Easter and he was the chaplain on duty. He read his email as he waited for the twenty minute flight from the accident scene to the hospital. It had come from a friend in the Mid-West who had been impressed by the discovery that human T-cells were shaped like the cross of Christ.
Nasrani had come to America from India where the immigrant Syrian Christian community that owed its conversion from Judaism to Christianity to their founder Saint Thomas...the doubting disciple who told the Lord that he would not believe unless he was able to stick his hands into the wound in Christ's side and into the nail holes in his hands and feet... had relocated. Migrating from Syria Father Francis' small Christian community had settled in India in the Third Century A.D.. |
| Human t-cell |
From 1560 to 1812 the blood of Hindus ran in the streets as had his ancestors' in the lead up to the Council of Chalcedon in 451 AD. The Jesuits would hold mass baptisms but a few days before the event they would go out two by two as the Lord had instructed, but with the added help of African slaves who were compelled to capture the native Hindus and rub their lips with beef steak which immediately made them Untouchables and with nowhere else to go other than into the Christian church as neophytes. Baptism followed this form of not-so-gentle persuasion which had been endorsed by the Portuguese king and the Roman Pope. "To this day the Roman Catholic Church of which we are now a part denies that Madras was the site where Saint Thomas was martyred, but at the same time they maintain the shrine there because of its profitability as a tourist destination. Thomas' relevance was denied in order to enhance the primacy of Peter and Paul, but Thomas is believed to have carried to India several paintings by Luke the Evangelist, the physician companion of the Apostle Paul, whom tradition claims was the first icon painter. Thomas and Luke are the great link in the Christian tradition to the scientific minds that, had they been revered in the church from the beginning and during the Copernican Revolution, may have mediated the church's juvenile response to the age of scientific inquiry that the Protestants instinctively embraced," said Father Francis. "Luke's remains were moved from what is today Kosovo to Padua, Italy sometime after 1492. This means that Luke's remains were the talk of the town in Padua which was the home of the university where both Copernicus and Galileo as well as the great anatomist, Vesalius, studied science and medicine."
Father Nasrani had also just read Richard Zimler's book Guardian of the Dawn which showed that the average Portuguese citizen knew nothing of the brutality that was being used in the name of Portuguese Christianity in Goa, the center for the Indian spice trade. Father Francis, as a recent Indian immigrant, wondered if the American people ever asked questions about their leaders' tactics in foreign places.Now Father Francis Nasrani stood in the emergency room where in minutes the physicians would be putting their hands into the head wound of a truck driver whose oil field drilling pipe had shifted forward separating the top of the man's cranium. Father Francis was reading the following words as the man on the bloody gurney was wheeled by him by the two young EMS nurses in blue flight uniforms. The email read....
'Laminins are a family of proteins that are an integral part of the structural scaffolding of basement membranes in almost every animal tissue' You see.... Laminins are what hold us together... LITERALLY. They are cell adhesion molecules. They are what holds one cell of our bodies to the next cell. Without them, we would literally fall apart. And I knew all this already. But what I didn't know is what they LOOKED LIKE..
But now I do. And I have thought about it a thousand times since (already)....Here is what the structure of laminin looks like... AND THIS IS NOT a 'Christian portrayal' of it.... If you look up laminin in any scientific/medical piece of literature, this is what you will see.... the cross of Christ.
Father Nasrani knew the procedure well as he looked up to see the blood trail on the linoleum following the gurney down the ER hallway. The medical team would go into high gear with x-rays to determine the extent of the man's injuries and at some point he would be asked to phone the family and to intercept them as they rush in to the hospital and as the man makes his way to surgery. Nasrani thought of the man's tissues coming apart under the weight of the shifting payload and applied the image of the Laminin's t-cells to what had just happened....and to the history of his own ancestors whose deviations from the church's teachings had led to their separation and excommunication and persecution before a future Pope extended an olive branch and reincorporated them into the Roman Catholic Church. He thought of how the Apostles Peter and Paul had battled over the place of the Gentiles in the new Jewish-Christian community and their own authority in the church as a by-product in the First Century A.D.... and how the Goa Christians' founding Apostle, Thomas, would have made a good modern scientist or doctor because of his unapologetic passion for hands-on and evidential analysis of reality. Was Thomas influenced by another disciple, Luke the physician whose faith seemed to propel them toward the greater uncertainty of the East rather than down the alreadly established Roman highways toward the West? Nasarani wondered, why else would the center of science and learning in Padua have imported Luke's remains for memorialization to Italy's most progressive region where a reformation movement predated Luther's German advances under Peter Waldo and to a region near Florence and Venice where the world's leading merchant traders marveled at the wonders of their world? Why move Luke's remains there instead of leaving them where they were or to Rome? "Oh yes, that would have diminished the places of Peter and Paul!" he thought. "Politics as usual and we wonder why the pagan's follow our lead!"
Dear Samuel,
Thank you for reminding us of the meaning of creation in your analysis of the cross-like shape of the human t-cells. There is a church near here that had a cross on top of the steeple that had the cross member at the bottom rather than at the top. Kids in the town spread the rumor that it was a satanic symbol and the church suffered from the rumor. It wasn't a satanic cross, but the cross of Saint Peter who asked not to be crucified in the same manor as Christ because he was not worthy so they flipped him upside down and drove in the nails. So no matter how you look at it.... right side up or cross-wise or upside down....those T-cells still make a cross in my eyes, too!
Physicist Stephen Hawking said that creation was made out of nothing without a first cause....God... and Max Planck is namesake of the smallest sub-atomic particle called a Planck which is 100 billion times smaller than a quark and looks like a black hole. I don't care if it looks like a black hole or not....I still see a halo above the Christ! We see what we want to see I guess.
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