Modern Slavery and the Mercedarians: Seeking a Reinvestment in Ritual Redemption by Exercise of Applied Remythologization

Modern Slavery and the Mercedarians 

Seeking a Reinvestment in Ritual Redemption by Exercise of Applied Remythologization

• Introduction

• The Modern Mercedarian Mission: A Turn Away from Calculated Ritual 

• Consecrated Life and the Social Order

• The Mercedarians: History, Myth and Calculated Ritual  

• The Revised Fourth Vow: A Shift Away from Calculated Ritual 

• A Reinvestment in the Former Glory of The Royal, Celestial and Military Order of Our Lady of Mercy and the Redemption of the Captives by Applied Remythologization

• Mythic-lens Reconstruction: Two gods That Seek the Enslavement of Humanity

• Three Forms of Modern Slavery That Allow for Ritual Redemption

• Current Subsidiary Myth Construction

• From Micro Engagement to Macro Effect:  Charity to Ritual to Social Justice to Cosmic Evangelization

• The Onesiman Interface and Mercedarain Ransom

• Mercidariant Ritual and Cosmic Evangelization by Replacement

• Our Lady of Ransom: Myth, Ritual, and Cure

• Conclusion

Introduction

In these various writings, I don’t often dwell much on my personal life except when it is relevant to the topic at hand.  What is currently relevant to the topic at hand is that I am of the absolute least likely demographic to be enslaved during the course of my life.  But to believe that I could never be enslaved is a hubris that I, perhaps, cannot afford.  In fact, both old and new forms of slavery abound on our planet so prevalently that even someone in my position ignores them at their own peril.  The world still needs heroes, it still needs those willing to stand up for the oppressed and seek liberation for the world’s slaves.         

The purpose of this treatise is to reinvigorate the use of ritual redemption of slaves by the Mercedarian order.  We will pursue this end by reinvestment in a sacramental cosmology and motivate it by applied remythologization.  It is believed that this would lead to a more authentic expression of the Mercedarain charism, more vocations, and more effective evangelization by the order.  As importantly, it is hoped that the study of this treatise will help any reader grow in charity and seek to express beatitude in a world that is often harshly cruel to those enslaved.      

In the first section, we start with a reflection on the particular way that consecrated life is suited to social change.  After defining a stage theory of individual burnout concerning the passion of social change we will offer a rebranding of consecrated life as a place that allows a person to focus on social change but still abide in a community which bolsters that change.  We will then zero in on the one particular social ill, slavery, and how the Mercedarians have a deep history of engaging this issue.  After a historical sketch, we will offer an analysis of how their acts of ransom were more than simple acts of charity but were a ritual activity that creates a life of prayer by action.  We will then delineate an evolutionary shift in the culture of the Mercedarian order from ritual redemption to cognitive redemption .  In that evolution, we will see that the field of redemption shifted from one invested in a sacramental cosmology, to one invested in the post-enlightenment focus on ideas.   Our purpose here is to broach the question as to whether or not cognitive redemption  suites the charism of the Mercedarian order.

In the second section, we will apply mythic-lens reconstruction in order to craft a subsidiary myth that will give strength to the Mercedarian order and allow it to reinvest in ritual redemption.  We will begin with the variety that concerns celestial beings and sculpt a situation where two demonic celestial powers, Nation and Economy, are embattled over the enslavement of the population.  After discussing the overarching mystery (myth) that Mercedarain ritual redemption queues into, the redemption of humanity by the incarnate Son of God, we will show how the turn toward cognitive redemption  by some Mercedarians makes for a much weaker ability to evangelize Christ’s redemption to humanity.  In order to clarify the mission, we will lay out three forms of modern slavery that allow for ritual redemption, the prison system, wage slavery, and human trafficking.  We will then sculpt a subsidiary myth and showed how it is useful for evangelization of those redeemed, those who the redeemed are redeemed from, and of those who seek the same goal but do not appreciate the meta-myth of Christ’s redemption.   

In the third section, we will start by pointing out the interface between works of charity and advocacy for social justice.  We will remind the reader how the onesiman interface works on an individual level as an act of charity and the go on to demonstrate how it is taken to a new level when engaged in by a community as calculated rituals, such as the ritual redemption of the Mercedarian order.  We will seek to show how the ritual life of the Mercedarian order can impact the world on an individual level, a social level and finally a cosmic level through cosmic evangelization.  This can be done by calling out the false gods we worship, testifying to the enslavement those gods offer, and then implementation of the methodology of replacement.  We will offer examples of types of saints that would be great intercessors and illuminating examples for modern people to look to as personal beings who are true flesh and blood and not man made gods run amuck like Nation and Economy.  As a final tribute to the Mercedarain role in cosmic evangelization, we will turn the reader’s attention to Our Lady of Ransom and Our Lady of Mercy as much needed manifestations of the blessed mother to turn people away from the worship of Economy and its insistence of cruelty as a virtue.

The Modern Mercedarian Mission: A Turn Away from Calculated Ritual

In this first section, we will offer an analysis of how Mercedarain acts of ransom are more than simple acts of charity.  They are a ritual activity that creates a life of prayer by action.  We will then delineate an evolutionary shift in the culture of the Mercedarian order from ritual redemption to cognitive redemption.  In the second section, we will use mythic-lens reconstruction to demonstrate how Nation and Economy as false gods are enslaving the populace.  Then by use of applied remythologization we will create a subsidiary myth in order to motivate the Mercedarians to continue their beautiful charism of ritual redemption.  In the last section, we will seek to demonstrate the synchronistic interplay between individual acts of charity, advocacy for social justice, and cosmic evangelization.  

Consecrated Life and the Social Order

There seem to be a standard “stages of life” narrative that has been playing out in America since the Baby Boomer generation came of age in the 1960s grew to maturity in the 1980s.  The narrative runs thusly, a youth comes of age and, burning with a passion to solve the world’s problems, takes an activist posture that is anti-establishment and morally ambiguous through their twenties.  Then, having burned through that passion the individual learns to work within the confines of the established order.  From the point of view of a person in the first stage, this transitional settling down is a corruption or disregard of the former passion. From the point of view of the person who has transitioned, it is a maturing process from a misdirected youth.  From a practical point of view, this transition may spring from disillusionment and burn out.  Our society has a particular focus on the individual, thus the responsibility to change society is felt at an individual level and set against social structures.  This individual focus sets up a dynamic of fleetingly formed micro-structures of social change that cannot withstand the overarching power structure of our society.  As the individual fails and fails in the ability to effect macro-change, they invest in a more intimate form of community sculpting, seeking a family and the time that building intimacy requires takes away from the impetus to effect macro-change.    

This is a thumbnail narrative of an extremely complex reality.  But it gets us to the point where we can begin to comment on, how consecrated life is particularly suited to effecting macro change.  The treatise Two Paths for Expanding True Love stated, “The only desires you may have that would necessarily channel you into married life, would be the desire for a spouse, the desire for a fulfilling sexual life, and the desire to make human beings out of your body.  Notice I don’t say have and raise children, because consecrated have been doing these things for centuries by running schools and orphanages.  Other than that the two paths offer much the same opportunities, just from two different directions.”  One of the different discernments we discussed concerning the two paths was whether the person likes to work “small to big” or  “big to small”.  We noted a preference for small to big suites married life and it works on a best friend model.  However, “big to small” suites consecrated life and works on a socialite model.  In this treatise, we are attempting to expand one of those models to a particular field of engagement, the Mercedarian order and the enslavement of the modern populace to the Economy.  

In this treatise, we are beginning by reminding the reader that those in consecrated life have a particular duty call to sculpt the social order.  In Two Paths for Expanding True Love we pointed out the dynamic creative personal engagement of married life fills the time of the married couple in a way probably inconceivable to one engaged in consecrated life.  Perhaps one way to help consecrated communities engage and attract people is to offer themselves as an organized community for social change.  One of the main benefits of consecrated life is its ability to stay focused without the distractions and demands that come with married life.  Usually, this focus is advertised as a focus in prayer, but it is also often focused on spreading the gospel to the world.  What consecrated life offers is a mission focused lifestyle that is communal, organized, patient, enduring, and able to take on the most entrenched social evils.  The variety of missions in consecrated life reflects the variety of needs in the world, anything from intercessory skills to cognitive engagement, to physical amelioration.  Any given congregation could be focused on ministering at the level of charitable acts or the level of social justice.

A person engaged in married life cannot simply focus on one task.  As we noted in Two Paths for Expanding True Love their lives are dynamic and creative.  The married path is one that must navigate “the world” while creating and forming a community from scratch.  The level of dependency on a married person does not allow for singular focus.  We related some of the basic demands of self, spouse, and child care in that treatise before the individual even engaged in their ministry of professional life.  Add to this the married person’s own need to develop their personal relationship with God.  All of this must be done as the married couple discovers creates and activates the mission, ministry, and charism of their domestic church.  

In consecrated life, no one is dependent on the individual in the same way a child is in married life.  Nor is the sustenance of the entire community linked to one (or two) member’s success in ministry (one’s job) in the same way as in married life.  This freeing from “worldly cares” not only allows for contemplation but a singular focus on a mission the likes of which cannot be accessed by someone who takes their marriage and family life seriously.  Not only that, but when one joins an order, one joins with an understanding of the mission, ministry, and charism of the order which it has already formed.    

In the individual linear narrative, we started with, there is a breakdown of progress because no one person can bear the demands of social change.  By a refocusing away from the individual to the two vocational paths, which are communities, the person must discern and choose which path to take but is able to be more successful in their choice.  The problem is that orders are not always taking their privileged ability to impact society seriously, and thereby they are losing out on vocations and society is losing out on their beneficial impact.  If the narrative can be changed from one of doomed individual linear to one of the vocational choices to be made, not only could there be better participation in consecrated life, but we could have a better society as well. 

The Mercedarians: History, Myth, and Calculated Ritual       

For the remainder of the treatise, we will be using many spiritual techniques developed in previous treatises to speculate on how an order can reinvigorate itself and its mission to change the social structure and effect cosmic evangelization while remaining true to its particular charism.  I first became acquainted with The Royal, Celestial and Military Order of Our Lady of Mercy and the Redemption of the Captives, better known as the Mercedarians, over the year it took me to construct the book Dining Daily with the Saints: Three Hundred and Sixty-Six Recipes for Three Hundred and Sixty-Six Feasts.  Every day I would read all of the saints of the day, reading saintly hagiography is a favorite devotion of mine. Each day I would pick one that stood out and post the bio along with a relevant recipe into a monthly album on facebook. Over the first few months I quickly realized that this one particular order had an abundance of canonized members.  Many were martyrs following a pattern that I would find out was particular to their mission.  

From the 12th and 13th century on the Mercedarian order developed out of their founder Saint Peter Nolasco’s desire to free Christians who had been enslaved by Muslims.  Because of border skirmishes between bordering kingdoms a robust slave trade developed in southern Spain even between the Christians and Muslims.  A few orders sprang up to minister to this horrible situation.  Saint Peter Nolasco could not bear the thought of Christians languishing as slaves in Muslim lands, so he took as his mission the ransoming of slaves.  He and his companions would solicit funds and then take them to Muslim lands and buy slaves’ freedom, bringing them back home.  If upon arriving they were short on the money needed, members of the order were prepared by means of a fourth vow, “ . . . all the brothers of the Order must always be gladly disposed to give up their lives, if it is necessary, as Jesus Christ gave up His for us . . .”  In a situation where the courier lacked funds, this would mean that they would trade themselves for the captive and remain imprisoned while the freed slave went home.  The order Saint Peter Nolasco started continued the practice of redemption for a large part of its history.  As the reader can guess, many times the members were double cross by slave traders.  Because they preached as well as redeemed, the Mercedians ran afoul of the Islamic authorities.  Each of these scenarios leads to the martyrdom of many Mercedarians.   

The Mercedarian mission was founded out of compassion to alleviate suffering.  Its charism thrives on mercy through a particular charitable act, ransoming slaves.  This mission should strike deep to the heart of modern progressives, even secular humanist atheist, who are deeply concerned with oppression especially in the form of slavery as a greater issue of social justice.  Though the Mercedarians were not trying to change the entire system of slavery, and their action was one-sided toward Christians, their charitable acts point the observer to the greater problem of slavery.  For Saint Peter Nolasco, one impetus may have been that he could not bear the possibility of a Christian succumbing to the pressure of conversion for an easier lot in life in the Islamic empire.  There is also the drive of compassion toward the alleviation of temporal suffering was just as much a factor.  But there is an even deeper meaning and motivation that is lost on the secular observer.

The Mercedarians came of age in a time before Bacon’s Novum Organum called the world to focus on a better lot in life in the here and now through scientific advancements.  It is not as if hospitaler orders did not purposefully seek to alleviate suffering, but that alleviation worked in concert with a celestial purpose and meaning.  The orders that ransomed slaves such as the Mercedarians or the Trinitarians demonstrated an amazing formulation of calculated ritual in order to express deep mysteries of Christianity by means of their own life.  Previous to the advent of modern thought one’s exterior actions were as much a “prayer life” as one’s interior actions.  With the advent of modern thought, prayer moved completely to the interior, and exterior action was seen as “morality”.  The protestant reformation was facilitated by and marked an inward turn of spirituality against exterior demonstrations, “smells and bells gestures and vestures”.  It was noted in the former treatise Sacramental Cosmology how this resulted in the jettisoning of not only the Roman Catholic sacramental system by the Protestant denominations but the entire cosmology inherent to Christianity where it is understood that God conveys grace through physical reality.  The view now is that “spiritual life” is internal, which includes “prayer”.  The idea of physical ritual as prayer is foreign and inaccessible to many modern religiously minded people.   External ritual acts are seen as inauthentic, or more likely empty superstition.  The idea that a vocation makes one’s life, including the actions of one’s body,  prayer is all but lost to modern spirituality (hence the label “spirituality”).  One’s vocation may seek to make the world a better place, but that is “morality”, not prayer, because our new focus is on effecting this world “for this world”.  But if one realizes that a vocation is a ritual form of life, and ritual is prayer, then one regrounds one’s vocation back into higher meaning than simply service for the physical betterment of the terrestrial world, though that betterment is certainly a good effect.

We discussed in Sacramental Cosmology how the primary vocational sacraments make the participant’s bodies into the sacramental matter, which conveys grace as well as certain deep mysteries of Christianity. The Trinity is presenced by the married couple and the life of Christ in the incarnation is presented by the priest.  In Two Paths for Expanding True Love, we noted how consecrated life seeks to demonstrate the Eschaton by a vowed and ritualized life path.  Though this “vowed and ritualized life path” is not invested as one of the seven sacraments, it is made possible by the sacramental cosmology of ancient Christianity and an understanding of that cosmology greatly enhances how their lives are sacramental.  For this treatise, we are focusing in on one order, the Mercedarians, to show how they form their very lives, again inextricable to that is the use of their physical person, into a prayer that demonstrates a deep mystery of Christianity, redemption.  They use narrative appropriation from a meta-myth in order to sculpt a ritual life that is admirable even to today’s secular humanist.  There is the evangelical hook.  What is immediately appealing is the exterior ritual of redemption, the deeper meaning is introduced by the ritual itself.   All of this comes out with a simple question, “why do you do the things you do?”

Mercedarian ritual redemption queues into the sacrificial meta-myth of the second person of the Trinity in order to offer redemption.  The treatise The Spiritual Sacrifice of the Incarnation  discussed how the Logos sacrificed not just by the death of Christ on the cross, but even by becoming incarnate.  That sacrifice entailed not just entering into postlapsarian reality but taking on the consequences of this reality in order to bring us salvation, or a better word for this treatise is “redemption”.  Throughout the scriptures, God seeks redemption of his people.  The readiest example is the jubilee year surmised in Leviticus 25:10, “You shall treat this fiftieth year as sacred. You shall proclaim liberty in the land for all its inhabitants.  It shall be a jubilee for you, when each of you shall return to your own property, each of you to your own family.”  God himself constantly rescues the Israelites from slavery throughout the Hebrew Scriptures from Egypt, to the cycle of Judges, to exile in Babylon.  In Isaiah 42:6-7 God proclaims what could be the mission statement of any redemptive order such as the Mercedarians, “I, the LORD, have called you for justice, I have grasped you by the hand; I formed you, and set you as a covenant for the people, a light for the nations, to open the eyes of the blind, to bring out prisoners from confinement, and from the dungeon, those who live in darkness.”  But, according to Christian interpretation, the one who is “sent” here is Christ himself, the Logos and he is sent to redeem us.

The narrative that the Mercedarians are appropriating is this same redemption, particularly through the lens of ransom theory of justification. Salvation through the lens of ransom theories of atonement are not the most popular this day and age.  On a theological level, it quickly seemed odd that God would be beholden to a contractual power superior to his own omnipotence.  The evolution of ransom theory went from Saint Augustine’s, “God tricked the Devil” to Athanasius’ “Well, God boxed himself in when he told Adam he would die, so something had to be done . . .” then to Anselm’s counter-argument that “the devil has no honor, thus God need not honor his “debt”.  Ransom theories have never had a palatable systematic expression that preserved the omnipotence of God.  With the advent of modern biblical scholarship downplaying the historical accuracy of the Genesis narrative the idea of ransom theories as “transactional” is also eschewed.  

But for all its weaknesses, the ransom theory of atonement does play a critical part in the narrative appropriation of the Mercedarian ritual and, maybe, more importantly, speaks to a situation that allows for an experience of God’s mercy, regardless of systematic theology. The simple fact is, that people of all times have had to deal with issues of captivity and slavery.  These slaveries are threatened and effected by our own concupiscent urges, other humans, and even principalities and powers as defined in the treatise Cosmic Evangelization. Those principalities may be intelligent celestial beings or dynamistic forces of the universe, each separately, or both together. Any way one surmises, these powers can enslave humans, sometimes by humanity’s own consent. 

The overwhelmingly common presence of human slavery to other humans throughout human history has lead to the popular theological piety of the ransom theory of atonement.  Our interest is that this slavery does exist and does need to be stopped if we are all called to live as creatures made in the image and likeness of God.  And in the act of stopping it we can signfy something of the saving action of God.  

One thing driven home in painful detail in the treatise The Spiritual Sacrifice of the Incarnation is that God does not expect us to be able to come all the way to him on our own.  The incarnation teaches us that he comes to our level to do his work.  If he needs to use the language of “ransom” and paying debts to help us understand how far he is willing to go to offer release as prudential intervention he will, even if it’s isn’t the most systematic theory theologically.  It is prudential because it speaks to people in a situation.  The language and demonstration of ransom is for us and our betterment, not because God is bound by any contractual law superior to his omnipotence.  In our state, we cannot perceive of such pure self-emptying agapic love that exists outside of some kind of “exchange”.  

As we pointed out in The Spiritual Sacrifice of the Incarnation by the incarnation the Logos conforms himself to the consequences of original sin.  That means taking the form of a slave, both to Roman oppression and to the cosmological process of reordering resulting from the transition from The Fall to the Eschaton.  All things that enslave humans are either individual willful enslavements (such as to false gods or our own concupiscence) or willful enslavements of humanity that rob individual humans of will (such as all forms of oppression including economic enslavement).  As a human, and like all humans, Jesus is literally crushed to death by the burden of imposed slaveries.  But unlike any other human, he demonstrates perfect striving and conquers this slavery breaking its bonds and thereby freeing those of us who take refuge in his victory.  

The incarnation and the death of Christ as a ransom for our sins is the myth by which orders practicing ritual redemption draw spiritual power. Here we will briefly remind the reader that by myth we are not implying some sort of useless untruth.  In fact when speaking of “Christian myth” we might better say “mystery” as a more familiar term.  We will use the terms interchangeably for Christianity.  We are referring myth in the context of the quote by Rudolph Bultman we employed in Applied Remythologization, 

The real purpose of myth is not to present an objective picture of the world as it is, but to express man’s understanding of himself in the world in which he lives. Myth should be interpreted not cosmologically, but anthropologically, or better still, existentially. 

Myth speaks of the power or the powers which man supposes he experiences as the ground and limit of his world and of his own activity and suffering. He describes these powers in terms derived from the visible world, with its tangible objects and forces, and from human life, with its feelings, motives, and potentialities. . . . Myth is an expression of man’s conviction that the origin and purpose of the world in which he lives are to be sought not within it but beyond it -- that is, beyond the realm of known and tangible reality-and that this realm is perpetually dominated and menaced by those mysterious powers which are its source and limit. 

Myth is also an expression of man’s awareness that he is not lord of his own being. It expresses his sense of dependence not only within the visible world, but more especially on those forces which hold sway beyond the confines of the known. 

Finally, myth expresses man’s belief that in this state of dependence he can be delivered from the forces within the visible world. Thus myth contains. elements which demand its own criticism -namely, its imagery with its apparent claim to objective validity. The real purpose of myth is to speak of a transcendent power which controls the world and man, but that purpose is impeded and obscured by the terms in which it is expressed. 

This apt explanation was reiterated with the more authoritative source, Pope Saint John Paul II, in the treatise Paradoxes and Disorders.  Pope Saint John Paul II was more succinct in his Theology of the Body,

[T]he term "myth" does not designate a fabulous content, but merely an archaic way of expressing a deeper content. Without any difficulty we discover that content, under the layer of the ancient narrative. It is really marvellous as regards the qualities and the condensation of the truths contained in it.

   

From the founding of their order, the  Mercedarians have used the meta-myth, the mystery of the redemption, coupled with an augmentation of ransom theology to formulate a calculated ritual of redemption by means of narrative appropriation.   The treatise Intuitive Ritual Investment and Conscious Ritual Investment, defined calculated ritual as 

a ritual action that utilizes a symbolic language symbiotic with dream and myth, which seeks to invest one in and actualize deep human meaning.  It is calculated because it adds or is the interface of the collective unconscious expressed as myth and how this myth is consciously acted upon ritually.  This type of ritual is calculated for an effect.  The ritual allows for participation in meaning and myth and allows the participant to activate myth and meaning in their own life. 

          

It is important to invest in ritual as prayer in order to understand the Mercedarians’ motivation to ransom slaves.  If one sees myth as meaningless “untrue” fairy tales then the ritual acts cannot queue into the myth in any meaningful way.  Compounding that, if one sees ritual action as simply empty action trying to gain an effect by superstitious methodology, one most likely cannot comprehend how myth and ritual relate to Mercedarians who trade themselves for a slave and stay in their stead.  All that to say, if one can only conceive of ritual as theatrical action involving “faux mysterious objects” one most likely would not even understand how the Mercedarians are applying ritual to their lives.

We have previously noted how in our sacramental system, there are vocational sacraments that change individual Christian bodies into the sacramental matter and invests them as demonstrators of particular Christian mysteries (one might say myths).  However, the primary vocational sacraments are the sacraments of initiation.  Baptism Eucharist and Confirmation join the Christian body into the Church as a sacrament and thereby sacralizing any life path they may take in union with the Church.  For the priest or married person, there is a further sacramental investment to set their vocation, but this does not negate the vocational path of the consecrated or single person as a ritual that utilizes Christian sacramental cosmology.  These vocations are not sacraments of vocation, but they are made sacramental by the participant’s baptism.  The same is true for both consecrated, married, single, ordained, or any Christian.  A married person may have a job that they have chosen as a means to supplement their sacral expression in marriage.  For example, they may be an artist and seek to sacramentally demonstrate God’s creation and beauty by their own life.  Or they may be a firefighter and seek by that to demonstrate the deep mystery of God’s salvation.   The ritual here is a ritual of vocation. Its practice is the life pattern of the individual. It is ritual because the practitioner has found a way to invest that pattern to a myth or mystery of the faith, most likely by narrative appropriation.  

Most non-Catholics would immediately understand the Mass as a ritual.  It queues into an ancient story or myth (mystery).  There are ritual objects and chants.  There is even a priest.  What we are trying to get as is that in a sacramental cosmology the priest is also one of the rituals objects his body is sacramental matter.  Once one is initiated into the Catholic faith, one shares in Christ’s life as a king prophet and priest.  So the ritual actor in any vocation expressed as a calculated ritual is the one living the life.  Even if they are laity.  The treatise The Onesiman Interface discussed the three types of priesthood in the Catholic church,

For Catholics, Jesus, being the first order of priest we are going to discuss, is the summation of this and all other theocentric sacrificial systems.  Jesus’ sacrifice is the giving up of his life for the love of God and neighbor . . .

The next type of priesthood in the Catholic Church is that type that is ordained into the sacramental system of the Church.  Jesus is the one who instituted the sacraments, but they are carried out in his body, the Church, through the span of history by the ordained priesthood.  By their ordination, they become vessels by which Christ, through the sacraments, conveys grace.  During a sacramental ritual, the priest stands in persona christi not just in a dramatic or theatrical way, but in truth by his ordination.  The human priest himself is inconsequential in this position, but his physical body is a necessary part of the outward sign of the sacramental ritual.  Because of that, they may also stand alter christus in an informal way in a church community, this time dramatically or theatrically, because in the Catholic Church they have made a sacrifice of themselves and decided to live for the institutional church, putting off marriage and personal wealth.

This small personal sacrifice by the priest and his ability to stand alter christus in the Church community apart for sacral ritual leads us to how the laity is understood as holding a priestly office in the Catholic Church.  In the view which Paul has of the Body of Christ, all of the faithful form a temple of living stones made sacred by their sacrificial acts to Christ in their daily lives.  Any giving up or releasing to the deity puts one in the position of a sacrificial actor, that is, a priest.  Thus during the Eucharistic prayers, when the ordained priest says the collect, “pray brothers and sisters that my sacrifice and yours may be acceptable to God the almighty Father”, the “and yours” is a recognition that, though there is a ritually ordained priest functioning here according to the sacramental system, there is also a community of priests whose daily sacrifices are also on the altar being offered to God.          

Since the ritual object is the person’s body and how they use it in the world, the main technique of this ritual is narrative appropriation.  This was first defined narrative appropriation in the treatise The Dysfunctional Human Family and the Nontraditional Holy Family 

Narrative appropriation is one of the fundamental ways we as creatures find our meaning, individually and collectively, that is we garner meaning by stories and narratives.  We seek them out, test them against our familiar stories, dissect them and in the end either accept and embrace them or eschew and reject them.  Ultimately we appropriate the characters and stories into our personality (or culture on the collective level).  Usually, all of this is done outside the conscious realm, we garner morals and motives from the stories we subconsciously invest in absent our own consent.  The narratives don’t have to be complex, simply bought into to be effective.  Once they are bought into, then they have a real effect on how the person or culture thinks acts views itself, sets its morals.  This need not be systematic, only keeping with the story. 

By the combination of Christian mystery (myth), calculated ritual, and narrative appropriation the Mercedarians found a way to make their lives demonstrate Christ’s redemption by queueing into sacramental cosmology through both their baptism and narrative appropriation.

When a Mercedarian travels to a distant land and pays for the freedom of slaves he is channeling and participating in the narrative of redemption and salvation of Israel through the entire Old Testament, where God saves his people from slavery.  When the Mercedarian offers to stay in the place of the slave, they are literally presencing the incarnation of Christ, who took the form of a slave and stood in for us.  They utilize ransom theories and redemptive theology to effect calculated ritual as is evident by their fourth vow to, “always be gladly disposed to give up their lives, if it is necessary, as Jesus Christ gave up his for us”.     

The Revised Fourth Vow: A Shift Away from Calculated Ritual

As the nature of slavery began to shift, especially in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, so to did the fourth vow of the Mercedarians.  The vow slowly morphed from its thirteenth-century form, “to give up their lives, if it is necessary, as Jesus Christ gave up His for us” to a form  particularly suited to the calculated ritual we examined in the last part, “to Surrender of one’s life as hostage in Saracen Territory.”   By the mid-twentieth century, the changing nature of the world warrants an addition to the fourth vow.  By then the Mercedarian Constitutions and Norms reads, "The Mercedarian, urged by Charity, dedicated himself to God by a particular vow in virtue of which he promises to give his own life, if it will be necessary, as Christ did for us, to free from the new forms of slavery the Christians who are in danger of losing their Faith."  By the later twentieth century the vow had taken its present form, “In order to fulfill this mission we, impelled by love, consecrate ourselves to God with a special vow, by virtue of which we promise to give up our lives, as Christ gave his life for us, should it be necessary, in order to save those Christians who find themselves in extreme danger of losing their faith by new forms of captivity”

One can see two major additions and one omission in the newer forms.  The reader will notice that in the newer forms any mention of “surrender of one’s life as hostage” is absent.  The vow specifically mentioned “Saracen Territory”, but historical circumstances diminished the need to specify the territory or method by which one surrenders one’s life.  One will also notice a new qualification for who is to be sacrificed for.  The newer forms limit the requirement to sacrifice one’s life to those who are “in danger of losing their faith”.  That does not seem to have been the case for those enslaved by the Saracens.  If a Mercedarian were at the auction block in fourteenth century North Africa, it is doubtful that he checked on the spiritual fortitude of the slave being sold.  Imagine a Mercedarian friar looking at a Christian slave in a Muslim marketplace.  “Sir, are you stalwart in your Christian faith despite your enslavement?” Who wouldn’t answer a friar in the affirmative thinking it the better answer?  “In that case, you can stay here, I only redeem those in danger of losing the faith.”  This addition seems to point at a shift in the understanding of redemption.  That shift becomes clear when one begins to analyze the second addition, that the subject is losing their faith due to “new forms of captivity”.  

  The modern Mercedarian order has set standards for identifying new forms of slavery.  First, they must be oppressive and degrading to the human being.  It must spring from principles and systems opposed to the Gospel and put the faith of Christians in danger.  Lastly, the new form of slavery offers the possibility of helping, visiting, and redeeming people who are in such situations.  What the omission and two additions seem to indicate is a turn from ritual redemption to a form of cognitive redemption.  Ritual redemption is as we described above, one where the practitioner's body is a sacral instrument displaying one of the deep mysteries of the Christian faith by their vocation.  Cognitive redemption does not take place in the physical realm but in the mental one.  It is a redemption of ideas, not of the physical person.  In cognitive redemption, someone is in need of redemption because they are enslaved by poor ideas, and the redemption is an offering of freedom by freeing them from those ideas into better ideas.  

At this point, it is important to point out how vitally necessary both of these forms of redemption are as acts of charity.  There is a great need for both corporeal and spiritual works of mercy in the world.  But, the Mercedarian shift mimics the shift from ritual prayer typical of pre-enlightenment Christianity to interior spirituality typical of enlightenment thinking, where reason is put above “superstition” and exterior acts are morality, not prayer.  As Islamic empires waned and other powers began to rise, it makes historical sense that a shift would take place.  In the late eighteenth-early twentieth centuries, there was no longer great need to physically ransom slaves in the markets of North Africa.  The Mercedarians had landed in America and began exploring new forms of slavery by working with the destitute immigrant population there.  But across the world, the industrial revolution had fomented the political ideologies of both Fascism and Communism.  These ideologies tore Spain, the natal home of the Mercedarian order, apart.  In that war Communism was a godless power and Fascism was an idolatrous one.  It is possible that this experience along with the martyrdom of members in the Spanish Civil War led the order to begin to feel the need to shift to cognitive redemption. 

In 2015 Father Scottston Brentwood stated, “Mercedarians have been praying for over 60 years and looking at our cultural situation today, the Friars over the last decade have recognized this “attack on the family” as fitting all four of these criteria [for the new slavery] for what constitutes the proper object of the redemptive mission. The attack on the family is oppressive and degrading to the human person. In fact, it is a denial of who we even are as human persons. And it is born from principles and systems opposed to the Gospel. It has put the faith of Christians in danger through persecution: labeling of Christian belief as “hate speech”.

In these pages, we will not disagree with the Mercedarian assessment of our culture’s views of the family.  This was written about at length in the treatise The Dysfunctional Human Family and the Nontraditional Holy Family on the importance of family values to society.  Nor are these pages opposed to cognitive redemption.  Certainly, it is part of our task here.  But the Mercedarians had a beautiful ritual expression through a charitable corporeal work of mercy that was such a special charism for the world, even today.  Because of the enlightenment focus on reason and cognition, there is no lack of orders, theologians and Church apostolates that seek to affect cognitive redemption.  Most every diocese has some sort of apostolate specifically for family life.  But those in the church who are effectively fighting slavery in the world today are fewer and fewer. 

Fortunately, the Mercedarian order has by no means abandoned its impetus to ritually fight modern slavery.  Perhaps they are tempted to pursue the cognitive redemption route because they see the spirit as higher than the body.  This would be a mistake which would downplay the importance of the incarnation and sacramental cosmology.  They are aware of the new forms of physical slavery that exist and there are many who are wont to take up the cause of redemption.  But this turn is one that seeks to betray the original Christian genius of the order we are seeking to reinvigorate the call to ritual redemption by applying remythologization tactics to allow for greater moral clarity.  

In this section, we opened with a reflection on the particular way that consecrated life is suited to social change.  We hypothesized a stage theory of burnout concerning the passion of social change that results from modern society’s focus on the individual.  As a solution to that, we offered a rebranding of consecrated life as a place that allows a person to focus on social change but still abide in a community which bolsters that change.  We then zeroed in on the one particular social ill, slavery, and how the Mercedarians have a deep history of engaging this issue.  After a historical sketch, we offered an analysis of how their acts of ransom were more than simple acts of charity but were a ritual activity that creates a life of prayer by action.  We defined their action this way because the impetus was not simply social change or interpersonal spiritual growth, but action oriented by myth, the deep Christian mystery of the redemption, by narrative appropriation.  We then delineated an evolutionary shift in the culture of the Mercedarian order from ritual redemption to cognitive redemption.  The medium used in the analysis was the Mercedarian fourth vow, which evolved over time, presumably to better suit itself to the circumstances of the times.  However, in that evolution, the field of redemption shifted from one invested in a sacramental cosmology, to one invested in the post-enlightenment focus on ideas.   We lastly broached the question as to whether or not cognitive redemption suites the charism of the Mercedarian order.   

In the next section, we will apply mythic-lens reconstruction in order to craft a subsidiary myth that will give strength to the Mercedarian order and allow it to reinvest in ritual redemption.  We will begin with the variety that concerns celestial beings and sculpt a situation where two demonic celestial powers, Nation and Economy, are embattled over the enslavement of the population. We will then sculpt a subsidiary myth and showed how it is useful for evangelization of those redeemed, those who the redeemed are redeemed from, and of those who seek the same goal but do not appreciate the meta-myth of Christ’s redemption.   

In the third section, We will seek to show how the ritual life of the Mercedarian order can impact the world on an individual level, a social level and finally a cosmic level through cosmic evangelization.             

A Reinvestment in the Former Glory of The Royal, Celestial and Military Order of Our Lady of Mercy and the Redemption of the Captives by Applied Remythologization   

In this first section, we offered an analysis of how Mercedarain acts of ransom are more than simple acts of charity.  They are a ritual activity that creates a life of prayer by action.  We then delineated an evolutionary shift in the culture of the Mercedarian order from ritual redemption to cognitive redemption.  In this section, we will use mythic-lens reconstruction to demonstrate how Nation and Economy as false gods are enslaving the populace.  Then by use of applied remythologization we will create a subsidiary myth in order to motivate the Mercedarians to continue their beautiful charism of ritual redemption.  In the last section, we will seek to demonstrate the synchronistic interplay between individual acts of charity, advocacy for social justice, and cosmic evangelization.  

  Mythic-lens Reconstruction: Two gods That Seek the Enslavement of Humanity

When Pope Saint John Paul II commented on “myth” in the above quote he noted that “ ‘myth’ does not designate a fabulous content”.  But the treatise Applied Remythologization, note the technique of mythic-lens reconstruction as an application of the fantastic to the mundane.  In this case, the point was to garner moral clarity in a situation.  What we are going to attempt now is to supplement the meta-myth of redemption with a subsidiary myth, garnered by applied remythologization, in order to redirect the narrative of the Mercedarian order away from cognitive redemption back toward ritual redemption.

First, let's review the basic methodologies of applied remythologization.  The treatise Applied Remythologization described three different types of mythic-lens reconstruction.  In the first variety, we likened modern technological obsessions to ancient magical obsessions because each obsession bears on similar parts of human desire.  Mythic-lens reconstruction reminds the reader that technology seems morally neutral.  But it is no less morally weighted than perceived magical abilities of old.  Each allows the user to wield power, and therefore each calls for stewardship.  This is the type of moral clarity we are seeking by applied remythologization.  

The second type of mythic-lens reconstruction concerned terrestrial mythic beings.  In that portion of the treatise, we found out that dwarves, elves, and many other varieties of mythic beings still dwelled among us.  They are hidden in plain sight because of an empirical reinterpretation that has happened over the past two centuries.  Not only have they been hidden, but they have also been deemed unworthy of existence to the point of both silent and actual genocidal attempts.  Most examples we gave were people who are “syndromatic”.  The greater moral clarity here included both the ability to treat all with appropriate dignity and the ability to recognizes valuable spiritual lessons from people who we would otherwise deem useless or burdensome.

Our last variety of mythic-lens reconstruction concerned celestial beings, gods, angels, and demons.  This type of mythic-lens reconstruction is what concerns us now.  The treatise Toward Appropriate Thanatosian Piety noted how in modern times these gods are seen as either elemental, psychological, or sociological forces that betray a dynamistic cosmology (i.e. gods are powers or forces) as opposed to animistic one (i.e. gods are personal beings).  We went on to state in Applied Remythologization

We live in a world that offers a materialistic cosmology, which is to say an exclusively dynamistic cosmology.  But at the same time when one applies mythic-lens reconstruction concerning celestial beings, one begins to see that humans have a hard time keeping their dynamistic forces from straying into animistic territory.  We are now going to give a brief analysis of three harsh gods the of the modern world.  Each of these gods has its roots in a secular dynamism but each has at least in part morphed into an animistic reality.  The gods we will review will be The Nation, Science, and The Economy.  That these are false gods is not new to Christianity, but the intuitive sense is they are “false god” because, though they are powerless, like “gods” they draw people away from the true God.  Our contention with mythic-lens reconstruction is to remove the words “like” from the previous sentence and remind the reader that they are not powerless at all, but powerful as gods in the old cosmologies.

           

In the same treatise, through mythic-lens reconstruction, we set up the narrative of two gods vying for power in the modern world, they are called Nation and Economy.  It seems the Mercedarians have perfectly cued into the problem of how these gods enslave people through ideas.  The only fear regarding this is that the Mercedarians, because of their history in Spain, don’t respect the spectral nature of these deities, and how they play into each other's camps for victims of slavery.  Because of their history in Spain, the Mercedarians may fall prey to bias against the god Nation (expressed as communism) and by that accidentally through passivity fall into the camp of the god Economy (expressed as capitalism).  This would mean that they became passively embroiled in the soldiery of the opposing sides in a war between demigods offering freedom from one side (Nation) only to have the patient enslavement to another (Economy).  This speculation on my part derives from the inability of modern Christians to call out all false gods when we see them.  Instead, we only call out the false gods that don’t suit our own idolatry.  In this, we become tools of our own idols in their divine combat.  We diminish one false god only to make another more powerful.  Our lack of christocentricity inhibits our ability to bring people to an awareness of their true Lord Jesus Christ.  This may not be the case with the Mercedarians, but it is something for them to be cautious about.  

It is possible that our problem here is a clever evangelical application without the strong follow through of applied remythologization.  The Mercedarians made a good attempt at creative evangelization by seeking to translate old forms of slavery into new ones in order to continue applying their charism of redemption.  They are absolutely correct that these gods enslave people in a very real way, cause great suffering by this enslavement, and turn people away from Christ in the process.  But without applied remythologization, “cognitive redemption” is simply evangelization by another name.  If one does not recognize the truly dangerous status of how these gods manifest in the culture, then cognitive ransom is simply perceived as a process of ideas. The analogy then begins to break down, because there is no “ransom”, no “my life for your freedom”.  It is simply a process of persuasion.  Nothing is left or offered to attain this freedom except “time” a living sacrifice of the Mercedarians.  That is a worthy sacrifice for anyone, but not nearly as exceptional as the previous forms of ritual redemption.                   

The Mercedarian order is properly a military-oriented order.  Their origins are in the time of knights and knightly warfare.  Their arena is not properly the halls of academia or in the warm fluorescent-lit gathering rooms of archdiocesan organized conferences.  They were originally meant to put their bodies in harm's way in order to protect others behind enemy lines.  Many early members had been soldiers fighting in classical wars, who then flipped that narrative into a battle against slavery, fighting the “enemy” on another field.  We are now attempting a similar flip through applied remythologization.  The overarching problem is that their new cognitive ransoming does not fit in nearly as well with the meta-myth of the incarnation of the Logos and redemption through his sacrificial death.  In order to reinvest we are attempting to create a subsidiary myth that will allow them ground to better participate in that meta-myth and thereby engage in their charism.  This subsidiary myth is a terrestrial motivator to action by narrative appropriation that facilitates narrative appropriation of the meta-myth.  But first, we must set the field and explore some possibilities for modern slavery where ritual redemption is actually a possibility.  

Three Forms of Modern Slavery That Allow for Ritual Redemption     

Before getting into the details of subsidiary myth reconstruction for the Mercedarian order, it will be helpful to illuminate the field of battle.  We will briefly cover three forms of modern slavery worth aiming the tool of ritual redemption at.  The first form of modern slavery is the prison system, the second is the wage slaves and the third is the facilitatory global system of human trafficking.  The first two examples easily allow for old-school monetary redemption as does the last.  But, the last may actually offer the possibility of full investment in the Mercedarian motto, “My life for yours”.

In the celestial combat between Nation and Economy for dominance over humanity, Economy is on the rise.  One of the major tools the god Economy uses to enslave people, once a people give themselves over to Economy, is usury.  The ancient prohibition against usury adopted by all of the worshipers of the God of Abraham was not without reason.  It definitely inhibits slavery to the false god Economy.  There are many Levitical laws that point out the illicit nature of this action.  Fighting the effect of this evil is one of the main ways the Mercedarians can offer freedom to modern people.  The most important thing for Mercedarians to remember if they engaged in redemption in these fields is to keep their meta-narrative, the redemption, and their methodology, ritual redemption, public and constantly proclaimed.  By this publicity, the order will steer clear of becoming a secular humanistic endeavor, while at the same time being a beacon of Christ’s light and freedom to secular humanists themselves.  This is the beauty of a sacramental view, where morality is a prayer and even, in this case, a prayer through calculated ritual because of its particular investment.  

The first form of slavery we are going to point to is the prison system.  It is not a secret that mass incarceration has been a growing problem in the United States since the end of the second world war.  A detailed sociological analysis of this problem is beyond the scope of this paper, but it is certainly a concern of the church, having been commented on by the United States Conference of Catholic bishops in their statement Responsibility, Rehabilitation, and Restoration: A Catholic Perspective on Crime and Criminal Justice.  For this treatise it suffices for us to say that there is a powerful link between the need for a society to “house members away”, slaver for the purposes of labor, and the modern prison system and mental institutions.  What we can do is offer a reinterpretation of our prison system through the veneer of applied remythologization.  Our prison system in the United States seems to be an opening gambit of the Nation to extend an aristocratic authority that was invested in both eugenics and ease of life.  But it has quickly been appropriated by Economy to produce power for itself.  Of course what we are speaking of is the shift from a prison system set up to implement racist policies of post-war America, to a private prisons system, still bolstered by that same racism.  

What can the Mercedarians do in the face of the overwhelming structure, as daunting as the slave markets of the Saracens, if not more so.  They could become an order of lawyers, that is certainly a field of ritual combat, but it does not queue well into the mystery of redemption.  The traditional calculated ritual of the Mercedarian order generally revolves around a work of mercy, “ransoming slaves”.  In this case, we can look to the broken bail bond system in our country as fertile ground for ritual redemption. 

The bail bond system is meant to keep people from fleeing justice, but almost all study indicates that it has no particular merit in making that happen, and does an exorbitant amount of damage otherwise.  Generally, people who are held on bail have committed low-level crimes and have no means of flight.  The consequences of being held on bail are people losing their jobs, not being able to care for their children, and losing contact with loved ones. Holding people in jail who do not pose a significant safety risk also exacerbates overcrowding, creates unsafe conditions.  Lastly, being stuck (enslaved, innocent until proven otherwise) and unable to pay leads to a much greater chance of the inmate pleading out in order to reduce time.  This perpetuates the cycle of shame and crime. All of this continues because the bail bond industry, an industry that is maintained by usury, is invested in shaping the laws of the land to its benefit, using Nation as a tool of Economy.

Enter the Mercedarians, who, by ancient ritual invested in a sacramental cosmology, draw on their lay priestly abilities, raise funds, face shifty slave traders who profit from treating fellow humans as economic chattel (the private bail bond industry) and buy the freedom of those enslaved from those brigands, thereby spitting in the face of the god they worship.  This is ritual redemption, “it is Christ who buys your freedom”, says the Mercedarian who, drawing on their lay priesthood, acts alter Christus  ministering through works of charity.  With little money can come great effect, a great evangelization (through ritual and narrative appropriation) of the redemption of Christ, thereby proclaiming an evangelization of our sacramental cosmology, and effecting an abatement of suffering.  How could this scenario not make Saint Peter Nolasco smile from heaven? 

We can then expand this to debts of all kinds.  One of the more vague forms of modern slavery is the “wage slave”.  Many who bow to the god Economy would even deny the existence of such a thing calling it, instead, “freedom” in a classic demonic reversal.  The stalwart belief in the power of the economy through money has led many into a form of enslavement where they are overwrought with stress, anxiety and constantly robbed of joy.  Here we are highlighting the need for cognitive redemption, but what can the Mercedarians do in terms of ritual redemption?  A much discussed topic of the treatise Birth Control vs Labor Rights? was the minimal requirements for a Christian civilization, one that frees its citizens from worry and fear and allowed them to be open to the possibility of life.  In the United States, we are nowhere near the benchmark and seem to have deep-seated investments in the other direction.  

Many, even many who appear to “be afloat”, are playing credit card roulette.  Because the law of Economy operates by greed when this god is wrongly worshiped, it creates a wealth gap as the top set rules to allow themselves more and more at the expense of the rest of society.  One of the great tools of this oppression in modern America is credit, and the subsequent enslavement it causes by means of usury.     

Jesus reminds us, “blessed are the poor”.  The fairly common interpretation is that the wealthy person relies on his money and goods, whereas the poor person more readily relies on God because he is aware of the fickleness of money.  What we are suggesting is a tactful evangelization by the Mercedarians. Again, they have the charism of ritual redemption, by which they spread awareness of Christ’s true redemption by utilizing their truth of this beatitude.  By paying off credit card debt the Mercedarians place themselves in a key position, through their lay priesthood, to extend the compassion of Christ and allow their fellow humans to feel his redemption, in small ways first, then larger.  In this case, much like the widow’s mite, the Mercedarian can have a great impact with little investment.  For many, a few hundred dollars relief can get them strides ahead and an abundance of relief from anxiety.  That relief is the relief of redemption.  The clever Mercedarian can the cue into the metanarrative in order to spread the gospel, which is truly the good news.  

One invested in the worship of the cruel god Economy will wrathfully retort, “But they don’t deserve it!  They should suffer because they are lazy and got themselves into that situation by their choices (their freedom).”  Even if that were one hundred percent true (which is doubtful) such an outburst betrays a lack of understanding of the free gift of Christ’s redeeming grace.  Regardless of their previous choices, they are now enslaved to an evil god, though Christ has won their freedom.  The Mercedarian is simply spreading that good news by ritual action invested in a sacramental cosmology.  We, none of us, deserve Christ’s redemption.  Christ entered into our suffering by the incarnation to bring salvation and relief to all God’s people.  That is the narrative of redemption.  

Credit cards are only one of many tools used to enslave humanity to the god Economy.  Another form of debt increasingly used to form wages slaves in the United States is student loan debt.  This debt, coupled with medical insurance costs is a way that wage slaves are kept in line.  The proliferation of student loan debt works off of the myth of the American Dream and the fallout from the Enlightenment hyper obsession with cognitive education.  Youth are told that any “good” job required a college education.  Consequently, all jobs wanting to be seen as “good jobs” require a college education, even though one is not needed for the vast majority of those jobs.  With a false demand for an education generated by Economy, the prices skyrocket, and the laborer goes into a job with extremely limited options because of the debt they bear.

Add to that the medical insurance industry, whose only product is selling America's fear back to them.  It is near impossible to get adequate healthcare without the “right type of job” once again, this limits the freedom and mobility of the laborer.  Once a laborer who carries a significant (required) student debt signs up for a coveted job with insurance, there are few options but to keep this job for his own survival, and to the absolute limit to his freedom.   

What can the Mercedarians do?  Can they open free trade schools and hospitals?  That is certainly one charitable response, but it is not the response of ritual redemption.  Ritual redemption requires payment for the release of slaves.  In this case, the thing keeping the wage slave in check is debt and insurance.  So the Mercedarians would pay off student debt,  thereby granting a level of freedom from the influence god Economy, rendering to Caesar what is Caesar’s and thereby buying the freedom of a slave.  The Mercedarian can offer payment of medical bills of those enslaved by debt to an inflated medical industry.

The immediate feeling of the average American would be, “wage slavery is not slavery”.  We have a narrative about slavery, it involves you, or more likely your ancestors, being kidnapped from your home and forced to work by violence and violent threats.  You know you are a slave because you cannot choose your work, go where you desire or say what you please.  You can also be abused by your master with no recourse.  But stepping back from this picture one can immediately see how similar it is to the predicament of a wage slave.  Perhaps a wage slave was not kidnapped, but why should the narrative require a kidnapping?  Once the narrative allows for that kidnapping to have happened to an ancestor, what difference does it make?  Most of the circumstances on the ground are the same.  Modern wage slave cannot choose their job, even if they have the capacity, desire, and fortitude to be skilled in that way.  Most wage slaves cannot move about freely.  Wage slaves are threatened by violence if they step out of line or seek to assert their own dignity.  If the #metoo movement or the #blacklivesmatter movements have taught us anything, it has taught us that most wages slaves are abused by their superiors even physically and they have no recourse.  If one’s only picture of slavery is working in a hot cotton field with a taskmaster on a horse brandishing a whip then one misunderstands slavery as it has manifest throughout history, one misunderstands slavery as it has manifest in early America, and one misunderstands slavery as it has manifest in modern America.  The modes and methodologies of slavery through human history are as manifold needs of the cultures that enslave.  To lock in on a myopic picture only does humanity a disservice.

But if one needs their small box then the last type of slavery to discuss is more akin to the myopic view.  It also has its genesis in the same problems as the others we have discussed, poverty and usury.  This form of slavery is human trafficking.  It often starts with someone buying into the anti-gospel of the Economy.  “Go here or there and they have jobs and a good lifestyle.”  Then one goes into debt to be transported to a place where they can live that dream, but much like the American wage slave, the debt keeps them limited in their options.  Unlike the American wage slave, who has a small amount of government protection, because we still invest in the god Nation, people who are the victims of human trafficking have no protections against their enslavers, thus the slavery is much more obvious and brutal.  This enslavement often means forced labor, sex trafficking, and little hope of escape.

Enter the Mercedarian, this field is different than the other two.  The god Nation has little to no sway, there is no law except the law of Economy.  The clever Mercedarina must effect ritual redemption by finding these slaves, who are often hidden, and then enter redemptive negotiations with their captors, who may not even be willing to admit they own slaves much less offer terms for freeing them.  This ritual would take gaining the trust of the most devious and untrustworthy types of people, then entering into negotiations with them, negotiations that could easily turn out very bad for the well intentioned Mercedarian.  “My life for yours”, the Mercedarian motto.  What kind of hero would a person have to be to face such odds and succeed?  Not only succeed in the psychological game that must be played, but succeed at spreading the gospel the entire time.  The Mercedarians did not go covertly to Saracen territory, and it would be assumed that they would not approach the human trafficker in disguise, but proclaiming, both their mission and their baptismal priestly purpose, the use of calculated ritual to free slaves and demonstrate the redemption of Christ.  It may end in betrayal.  It may even end in death.  But that is the Mercedarain charism.  They are knights and noble warriors, not cowards or coverts.

Current Subsidiary Myth Construction

The Bible is not shy about using military imagery, even in its most violent and grotesque.  As we now move to create a subsidiary myth aimed at allowing a place for knights of the Mercedarian order to draw inspiration, we must first reflect on both proper and improper ways to utilize marshal imagery in Christian life.  When teaching the Old Testament to young people it is necessary to square why God relies on tribalism, demands war, killing, and even genocide.  These assumptions and commands do not square easily with Jesus, who requires that we turn the other cheek and spread the gospel to all nations.  Some students immediately make peace by intuitively falling into the errors of Marcion of Sinope, rejecting the “Old Testament god” as a different and evil god.  The skillful catechists will be able to teach the students the intricacies of how human need is reflected in the unfolding of salvation history.  Then the catechist can open the toolboxes of genre and allegorical interpretations that help readers draw useful moral and profound spiritual meaning from the text while remaining orthodox.  Unfortunately, what those lessons are, when it’s appropriate to apply allegory and how to correctly do it is beyond the scope of this particular treatise.  Because our endeavor is to create a subsidiary myth, what we are interested in is the appropriate way to apply a military allegory such that it bolsters rather than diminishes Christian charity.

Among certain circles of Catholic culture, it is popular to draw on military imagery to demonstrate their faith.  This is by no means a useless strategy.  From the Centurion, whose servant Jesus healed, to the Theban Legion, to Martin of Tours, there is no shortage of noble military figures to look to for inspiration of Christian life.  But it would be noted that the parts of these figures lives that are inspiring are not taking of life or even military tactical skill.  These people are examples of self giving, which is the best Christian the virtue of military life.  The classic narrative of military virtue is a person who willfully sacrifices time and comfort form some good, usually protection of the weak or innocent.  That sacrifice can even end in that person giving their life for this protection.  This very obviously syncs with the metanarrative of the incarnation.  An auxiliary narrative is an officer or soldier who is an occupier but does not “lord their authority over their subjects like the Gentiles”.  Rather the occupier, instead of bringing death and destruction, helps the populace and builds their community up.  

Each of these narratives obviously keys into the life of Christ, his mission and his methodology.  The most shocking thing about this narrative appropriation is that soldiers should be “bad guys” in Christianity, much like tax collectors and Samaritans in the New Testament.  It seems like it would be impossible to square their career with Christian value.  That early Christianity so readily exalted such figures shows how powerful Christ's Redemption is.  Even a vocation born out of the absolute brokenness of this world can be turned to a vocation that brings Christ’s life to the world.  

The problem with the current use of marshal imagery in Catholic subculture is that it often draws the narrative in differing ways.  First, these subcultural expressions are obsessed with the trappings of marshal imagery rather than the virtue of marshal sacrifice.  There is no problem with sacralizing and utilizing style, but absent virtue it is useless vanity.  Also, most often the trappings do not come from modern military images or even Roman imperial imagery, but almost exclusively from the era when Christianity launched the crusades.  Any sort of detailed study of the Crusades is beyond our purpose.  It is a complex phenomenon which doubtless inspired individuals to both heroism and villainy.  But the niche meme culture that surrounds the crusades is not about the Christian virtues exemplified in the vocation of a soldier.  They usually involve tribalism, violent posturing, veiled threats, conquest, and domination.  These are all of the most unchristian things about military life and culture.   

These vices are the demonic coming into play.  War is the breakdown of order and beauty.  In his work through the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith Instruction on Certain Aspects of “Theology of Liberation” then Cardinal Ratzinger stated,

The truth of mankind requires that this battle [for liberation] be fought in ways consistent with human dignity. That is why the systematic and deliberate recourse to blind violence, no matter from which side it comes, must be condemned. To put one's trust in violent means in the hope of restoring more justice is to become the victim of a fatal illusion: violence begets violence and degrades man. It mocks the dignity of man in the person of the victims and it debases that same dignity among those who practice it.

That one can find virtue in war at all is one of the greatest demonstrations of God’s power.  War between nations is most likely either a demonstration of the god Nation flexing its muscle through its devotees or the god Economy utilizing the weaker god Nation in order to bolster its own power.  When the true God is invoked in this area, it is a form of idolatry and a breaking of the third commandment.  When one uses religion to inflame war one is shaping a false god with words, making God into what God is not, and utilizing his name to serve these other false gods (Nation and/or Economy).  The result is death, destruction, horror, abuse, domination and a host of other demonic qualities.  With a simple survey of the Catholic subculture obsessed with marshal imagery, one sees this error in spades.  These errors are built on the idea that Christianity destroys and replaces. But Jesus, by his incarnation, did not destroy and replace, nor should his adherents.  Christ beckons and fulfills, thus so must we.  And though fulfillment may mean cutting away of some bad habits, this is not a cultural war, it is an activation of Christ in and through each culture of the world.

From the outset, the Mercedarian order has utilized marshal imagery in the best way.  Again, many were soldiers who did fight in temporal wars but managed to flip both the god served, the meaning of the battle and the battlefield itself.  Instead of fighting for Nation or tribe, they fight for the one true God.  Instead of self glory through violent dominance, they offer themselves as slaves, the lowest humiliation.  Instead of fighting on a literal battlefield, they moved the battle to the slave markets and toward a spiritual plain.  Using the trappings of war as a bolster to courage and fortitude, they constructed a spiritual warfare, which has a temporal battlefield through ritual action, and one which lacks all the ills of war while extolling every good virtue of the classical warrior.  Any modern Catholic or Christian who is enamored with marshal imagery applied to Christian life would do well to make a close study of this Mercedarian postlapsarian inversion, lest they fall prey to demonic influence and see evil as good as opposed to redeeming a fallen world.     

Now we can begin construction on a subsidiary myth that can hopefully re energize the Mercedarian order and help them, as well as other redemptive orders, utilize their calculated ritual in effective ways with the best virtues of a soldier.  We have already applied half of the necessary mythic-lens reconstruction. We used the first variety to point out two false gods involved in combat, one side waxing (Economy) and one side waning (Nation).  We have established a particularly powerful and alluring narrative trope, the darkhorse “underdog” the one true God and his servants whose presence in this war is practically covert because they are deemed non contenders.   

In the course of this war, major populations have been enslaved to each of these gods by a host of techniques, not the least of which is a collection of powerful mind control spells cast by mages of each side.  We can reach this imagery by applying the first variety of mythic-lens reconstruction concerning the world of magic.  The methodologies of these magicians and how the cast their spells was hinted at in the treatise  Applied Remythologization,

What if one had a magical book that could tell or teach one’s owner to intuite the future?  What if there were magic books that had the knowledge of magical mind control?  Prediction of the future is always suspect in the sacred scriptures. Even the prophets rarely predict the future, and almost to a man distinguish themselves from the type of “prophet” who is a prognosticator.  The feeling is that time belongs to God.  To seek knowledge of the future is to seek to manipulate God’s providence and hold one’s self over God.  It also always leads to and feeds great anxiety.  We have a host of very accurate prognosticators on our culture from benign to manipulative.  Weathermen and market analysts are the two most obvious examples.  Weathermen are, no doubt prognosticators, they seek to tell one the future based on their ability to observe and use artifacts, some of which are attuned to heavenly artifacts: satellites.  Market analysts not only seek to tell the future, they use that ability to manipulate the minds of others.  The instill fear, cause people to act and dabble in another variety of magical control, the social sciences.  The most amazing application of mind control is the media advertising industry.  Most people would see characters in a mythic fantasy who undergo a quest to rest magical devices from a cult of wizards who have captivated the minds of a populace and are bending them to their will as the completely justified character.  This variety of mythic-lens reconstruction allows one to see that you are in that world now.

  

We have pointed out that these techniques of enslavement couple with another technique, most common to Economy, the prolific use of usury.  This spell is extremely strong, yet it is also the place where the Mercedarians make their ritual stand. 

Here we have a seemingly worthless order of fringe knights who are maneuvering in a war that is causing nothing but suffering.  They are not there to take over and dominate according to the order of Nation or Economy.  Their desire for authority operates according to Christian power dynamics. They are there to fight for the side of their God, the side of compassion, mercy, justice and to bring those enslaved by these false gods to an experience of freedom to join the side of the one true God.  Their major weapons are acts of charity in the form of ritual redemption, weapons they use to bring freedom, but a weapon that can cost the knight his own temporal freedom, and even his life.  These soldiers are specialized knights who fight battles in a much larger war of cosmic evangelization.  They know their expendable nature, and they know that the “big picture” is beyond their immediate objective.  As noble outcasts, they are focused on their object, liberating the slaves of various dark lords, knowing that their job will be thankless.  There is a subsidiary myth that queues the one who appropriates it into many powerful tropes. 

If those invested in the current Mercedarian push toward cognitive redemption worry about this narrative, they needn't.  The ritual redemption of slaves has always offered more than ample opportunities for evangelization.  Early Mercedarian martyrs were not killed because they went to Saracen territory to redeem slaves, Muslims have no problem doing commerce with Christians.  The Mercedarians were martyred because they would wander the streets of the territory preaching to those who would otherwise not hear it.  Or, if imprisoned, they would offer comfort and preach Christianity to their fellow captives.  By Islamic law Muslims must tolerate Christians in their land, the trade is that Christians are not to proselytize.  

The same dynamic can play out in bank offices, on the phone line of credit card and insurance companies, and in the billing department offices of hospitals.  It can most certainly be done in the darker realms where human trafficking is conducted.  Again, in those places, less tolerant of the gospel, is where the real physical danger for the modern knight manifests.  But these examples of idea based cognitive redemption are only light skirmishes compared to the effect and power ritual redemption has for evangelization.  As calculated ritual, it draws its power from the sacramental nature of the cosmos and not only symbolizes freedom but effects it.  At the point of redemption, the one being redeemed actually feels freedom from the oppressive power of a false god, the same freedom Christ has to free them completely if they switch sides.  Ritual redemption is an outward sign of a  hidden Christian mystery in a profoundly effective way.  It certainly leads to cognitive redemption if the knight and the order effectively explain why they are buying freedom.  This evangelization requires that the knight somehow, probably subtly, relate the meta-myth of Christ’s redemption, especially if anyone asks, “why are you doing this?”  Such a question allows the knight to demonstrate what freedom from these false powers looks like.  He is not beholden to monetary calculation or cultural expectation.  His Lord only seeks to spread justification through compassion.  To see someone walk the walk first and then explain why immediately neutralizes any suspicion of hypocrisy, a chief moral crime in the modern world and one “organized religion” has a reputation for.  Far to often people are subjected to hearing preachers talk the talk, only to find out that no walking is ever done.

This leads to the greatest evangelical opportunity for the mercenaries, the secular humanists.  The ending of economic bondage is a huge goal of the secular humanist.  The secular humanist is generally biased toward seeing a “religious” person as a hypocrite who has infantile beliefs, does no good, and much damage in the world.  How powerful would it be for a secular humanist to come into cooperation with a Mercedarian knight, witness absolute self giving and be forced to ask, “why?” only to have the retort be a solid concise theological answer.  They could see what they had never seen before, that these are not “fairy tales of a sky wizard” but mysteries (myths) that compel to action.  At the very least it would engender respect because the secular humanist has no cosmology to offer as good an answer to the question “why?”.  This is a classic example of what we called an evangelization of fulfillment in the treatise Digital Evangelization, 

An evangelization of fulfillment first recognizes the work of the Holy Spirit in the target, noticing how the target is correct in some way, then developing that correctness beyond itself as it is praised.  “How” they are correct could be dogmatic factoids, but it could also be spiritual technique or practice, moral intelligence or action, vocational exercise, etc.  From there through careful connection and meaningful application the evangelizer can begin “to reveal in the Person of Christ the whole of God's eternal design reaching fulfillment in that Person” to expand the understanding of the target beyond the goods of the faith they already have through the Holy Spirit towards other goods not yet aspired to.  Only after all this does one begin to condemn false or detrimental practices and beliefs.  An evangelization of fulfillment takes its starting point from Genesis Chapter 1, where “God looked at everything he had made, and found it very good. Evening came, and morning followed—the sixth day.”  The traditional theodicy Augustine attached to this assertion from Genesis is that evil has no ontological status.  Rather it is a privation of good.  So the evangelization of fulfillment seeks to develop goodness first, destroying evil by filling its void with goodness.                          

Here the secular humanist is approached with common ground and a common task.  This philia is then developed in such a way that agape can be demonstrated by the Mercedarian, which leads to a lesson of the agapic redemptive action of Christ.  This should enkindle eros (desire) in the secular humanist that would drive the secular humanist to learn more about Christian cosmology and mystery (myth).  This seems to be a more effective way to the goal of cognitive redemption than the way some Mercedarians seem to be seeking to employ now.  The current strategy of simply engaging in the arena of ideas lacks the backing of ritual because it has made the classic modern mistake of forsaking a sacramental cosmology.  This is the poor tactical strategy allows the secular humanist to continue to see the Mercedarian knight as one who holds to “fairy tales” and is a great hypocrite, preaching goodness but spreading evil.  

The Mercedarian order is meant to be an order of action, an order of ritual before rhetoric.  With the construction of this subsidiary myth, the hope is to draw such action-oriented participants to better effect the specific mission of the Mercedarians as a strategy for effecting the general goals of the church as a whole. 

In this first section, we offered an analysis of how Mercedarain acts of ransom are more than simple acts of charity.  They are a ritual activity that creates a life of prayer by action.  We then delineated an evolutionary shift in the culture of the Mercedarian order from ritual redemption to cognitive redemption.   

In this section, we sought to apply mythic-lens reconstruction in order to craft a subsidiary myth that would give strength to the Mercedarian order and allow it to reinvest in ritual redemption.  We began with the third variety of mythic-lens reconstruction, the variety that concerns celestial beings.  We laid out our situation where two demonic celestial powers are embattled over enslavement of the population.  Those powers are Nation and Economy.  We went on to point out the overarching mystery (myth) that Mercedarian ritual redemption queues into in terms of narrative appropriation, the redemption of humanity by the incarnate Son of God.  We then sought to show how the turn toward cognitive redemption by some Mercedarians makes for a much weaker ability to evangelize Christ’s redemption to humanity.  This demonstrated the need for a new subsidiary myth to bring the Mercedarian order back to ritual redemption. 

We then laid out three forms of modern slavery that allow for ritual redemption, the prison system, wage slavery, and human trafficking.  We attempted to show how one of the tools for the strengthening of Economy over Nation is the reintroduction of Usury.  This allowed for the enslavement of the population in multifaceted ways.  We then offered strategies for the Mercedarian order to perform ritual redemption in the fields of the corrupt bail bond industry, the credit card industry, the medical industry, and finally and most obviously in the human trafficking industry.     

Lastly, we sculpted our subsidiary myth concerning the Mercedarian order.  We discussed the proper way to utilize military imagery for Christian piety.  This would involve those parts of military life the involve protection of the weak and self-sacrifice.  We contrasted that with how marshal imagery is often used in popular piety in absolutely in appropriate ways.  We then constructed our subsidiary myth and showed how it is useful for evangelization of those redeemed, those who the redeemed are redeemed from, and of those who seek the same goal but do not appreciate the meta-myth of Christ’s redemption.   

In the next section, we will start by pointing out the interface between works of charity and advocacy for social justice.  We will remind the reader how the onesiman interface works on an individual level as an act of charity and the go on to demonstrate how it is taken to a new level when engaged in by a community as calculated rituals, such as the ritual redemption of the Mercedarian order.  We will seek to show how the ritual life of the Mercedarian order can impact the world on an individual level, a social level and finally a cosmic level through cosmic evangelization.  This can be done by calling out the false gods we worship, testifying to the enslavement those gods offer, and then implementation of the methodology of replacement.  We will offer examples of types of saints that would be great intercessors and illuminating examples for modern people to look to as personal beings who are true flesh and blood and not man made gods run amuck like Nation and Economy.  As a final tribute to the Mercedarain role in cosmic evangelization, we will turn the reader’s attention to Our Lady of Ransom and Our Lady of Mercy as much needed manifestations of the blessed mother to turn people away from the worship of Economy and its insistence of cruelty as a virtue.        

From Micro Engagement to Macro Effect:  Charity to Ritual to Social Justice to Cosmic Evangelization      

 

In the first section, we offered an analysis of how Mercedarain acts of ransom are more than simple acts of charity.  They are a ritual activity that creates a life of prayer by action.  We then delineated an evolutionary shift in the culture of the Mercedarian order from ritual redemption to cognitive redemption.  In the second section, we used mythic-lens reconstruction to demonstrate how Nation and Economy as false gods are enslaving the populace.  Then by use of applied remythologization we will create a subsidiary myth in order to motivate the Mercedarians to continue their beautiful charism of ritual redemption.  In this last section, we will seek to demonstrate the synchronistic interplay between individual acts of charity, advocacy for social justice, and cosmic evangelization.  

The Onesiman Interface and Mercedarain Ransom

In the first section of this treatise, we discussed one benefit of consecrated life for society.  We noted that such a community has the longevity, focus, and fortitude to act decisively on issues of social justice.  We then danced around the scope of how the Mercedarian order approaches a certain problem, modern idolatry.  For this treatise’s interest in the Mercedarians the scope runs thusly; modern idolatry, cognitive enslavement of the populace, physical enslavement of the populace, to individuals who are enslaved cognitively, to individuals who are enslaved physically.  This scope starts with a root problem and then runs the spectral length between social justice and works of charity.  Since we began the treatise extolling orders for their ability to change society, why spend so much time on an order that is invested in a work of charity? 

This question hints at the same concern that some Mercedarians seem to have.  Mercedarian altering of the fourth vow seems to be born out of a concern that the root cause of the problem, as a bigger issue, is not being addressed.  How can freeing people from debt enact the cultural change that we need in order to have a more Christian world?  That is to say, “works of charity don’t solve the problem.”  But buying slaves in the 14th century didn’t solve the problem of slavery either.  It is an ancient dilemma that offers a true dichotomy for individuals, but a false one for humanity especially redeemed humanity.  Does one concentrate on the alleviation of suffering by acts of charity in their life, or work for the bigger picture and advocate for social justice?  It seems the original charism of the Mercedarian order threw its lot behind works of charity.  But the two fields are not hermetically sealed.  The tactical field of Mercedarian action is the physical enslavement of individual people.  Freeing them furthers the cause against cognitive enslavement, which synchronizes with advocacy to aid social justice.  The individual must choose their path, groups must choose their path, but the Church works on all levels as one body.

The  treatise The Onesiman Interface discussed how the relationship between acts of charity and social justice can have an exchange, especially as it concerns participation in the mass. What that treatise called “charitable devotion” we are speaking of in this treatise as calculated ritual.  In that treatise, the devotion was charitable giving to the indigent on the individual level.  In this treatise, the calculated ritual happens on the group level as the ransoming slaves.  

As it is, the manner of the devotion forces a strange cognitive dissonance in that the charitable actor who must see himself as acting as Christ to heal the world, yet one must also see the impoverished as Christ at the same time, standing in for Christ in the absolute weakest state of humanity. One can see in this devotion Christ mirrored to himself, as healer and servant between the two actors.  What is being offered here is a chance to meet Christ as the vulnerable indigent and to re-do what humanity failed to do the first time around, to see him as a creature in the image and likeness of God and treat him with basic respect.  This should give the layman actor a sense of complete joy at the opportunity of giving and wipe away any sense of superiority or pride at having given to charity.  In this relationship, the indigent has done the giver a favor.  This is how the onesiman interface changes society and how the relationship works as a sacramental, a physical devotion that offers grace that disposed one to reception of the sacraments.  The grace offered through this devotional act of charity is then brought to the liturgy and offered at the collect, “my sacrifice and yours”.         

That treatise dealt specifically with the indigent, but it can easily be applied to the slave as well.   But more to the point, the Mercedarian act of ritual redemption can move beyond the individual level toward the level, to the social level, to the level of cosmic evangelization, because it does not involve a myth or mystery one on one.  The myth they draw on is pan-human, the redemption of humanity.  This aims the ritual beyond personal devotion, beyond social change by changing interpersonal relationships to something more, cosmic evangelization.

Mercidariant Ritual and Cosmic Evangelization by Replacement     

The particular brand of cosmic evangelization the Mercedarians must use is cosmic evangelization by replacement.  The treatise Cosmic Evangelization discussed this methodology in detail.  It must be remembered that we are dealing with actual false gods when we speak of Nation or Economy, not simple “ideas”.  Our stint at the first variety of mythic-lens reconstruction assured us of that.  They are demonic gods because they seek to draw worship to themselves instead of leading to the worship of God as angelic celestial beings do.  Cosmic evangelization by replacement is the most drastic way to deal with the entrenched false (demonic) god who will not be converted.

The last variety of cosmic evangelization is replacement.  If a malevolent celestial power is ultimately rebellious or unable to convert, the evangelizer can exchange from a demonic celestial power for a saintly celestial being who resides in the heavens and intercedes for us.  The ritual activity is still shifted from latria to dulia, but the heavenly being is also shifted from angelic to human, a reminder that it is the humans who are judging the angels.  

False gods need glory to survive.  Otherwise, they starve and disappear.  The strategy is to starve the god by shifting from latria to dulia.  If that false god works into the field of dulia then the god can survive and be converted from a demonic power to an angelic power.  The first step to making that happen under the current ideology is to free the populace from cognitive enslavement.  The Mercedarian order most certainly identifies the problem correctly.  But simply pointing out to one that they are enslaved does not necessarily free them, even if it is cognitive enslavement.  To believe one could free someone this way is a common mistake of post-enlightenment humanity’s absolute trust in rational ability.  It denies original sin and trusts absolute autonomy.  Pointing out the enslavement is only a possible first step.  

A strong campaign of digital evangelization, especially one involving content conveyance which demonstrates clearly the reality of both cognitive and physical slavery on the world.  Next, the Mercedarians must not be afraid to take their experiences of ritual redemption to comment dialogues in order to spread the word concerning their mission.   There is a great amount of ignorance and disinformation concerning the situation of slavery on the digital continent, even in the Catholic corners.  One can see by the image below that there are Catholics who are completely ignorant of their peril and would rather play church politics than address demonic physical enslavement of entire populations.       

Mercedarians should be at the forefront of such a comment box to proclaim loudly the demonic nature of these false gods, and their own mission in the war against them, the redeemers of the enslaved.  This public stance and the proclamation of their personal experience with the enslaved population can go far to aid in the efforts of social advocacy. 

But we are calling for more than just an information war.  Our concern is that the shift from ritual redemption to cognitive redemption downplays sacramental cosmology at a time when awareness of it is almost lost.  But perhaps, more importantly, it is also less effective in a world where the digital continent saturates the evangelical landscape with every argument and opinion.  Arguments are less and less persuasive and more and more sport on the digital continent.  

A further complication is the assumptions of argument in our current enslaved culture.  Cosmic evangelization calls for the power to be replaced, but one must pick an appropriate strategy for this.  The methodology of the treatise Cosmic Evangelization was ritual,  the same as is being offered now.  And again, we see it as more effective because of the competitive argumentative environment we have as well as the success that the “mages” of Economy have had in setting the terrain.  One of the major problems in this war is that the gods have cloaked themselves in dynamism, and thus become “ideas” to most people (even those who consider themselves Christian) instead of gods.  They present themselves as organizing mechanistic principles of society, not oppressive powers that draw worship away from God.  Their impersonal nature first allowed them to be beyond moral scrutiny.  Nation has been less successful at presenting itself as a scientific endeavor (perhaps because of democracy) and this may be the reason it is now on the weaker end of the struggle.  However, Economy has presented itself as subject to science and therefore economic principles are “laws”.  But this strategy has made Economy master of even science because now all actions are calculated by economic law, even which scientific matters are explored and how they are explored.   

More troubling is that economic law becomes the method of moral scrutiny itself.  Now when one listens to new stories and any kind of moral calculation is made it is almost invariably based on economic calculations.  Once one sees this power for what it is (a false god) it is painful for a Christian to here.  Worse yet, the perceived mechanistic nature of economic law puts it beyond the control of the state and outside the scope of divine morality in pretty much the same way the law of gravity is.  We laugh at the ancients for sculpting gods of wood and gold and then enslaving themselves to them to the point of actually fearing their power, when in reality, “they just made them up!”  Yet here we are in the exact same situation.  

It seems that the god Economy is beyond reform as long as it remains seen as a dynamistic mechanistic power.  Our best bet is call out this power then replace it with personal intercessors.  The power of these saints to intercede for us as well as their personal stories remind us of what our true purpose in life and gear us away from using standards of false gods as our standards and turning us toward the standard of the one true God.  

It must be remembered that we do not expect to escape market commerce or the idea of nations.  We are not seeking escape, we seeking to disenfranchise them from any sort of divine status and replace them with beings who seek dulia instead of latria.  Since this ritual action takes place in connection with social justice one of the great places to turn for potential candidates would be the many saints who were kings.  They are personalities that can be called upon to intercede and exemplify. Catholics who think that the social justice teaching of the church is a newfangled “modernist heresy” need look no further than the saint kings of old to see how false this is.  In the ancient world, the king “is the state” so in as much as Christianity tries to sculpt a narrative of what a good king is, this is social justice.  The tradition of this goes back through the entire Old Testament with the greatest example being the dynamic between David and Saul.  There are three basic narratives for Christian saint kings.  The first is the king who by his rule subjugated the state to God by using his kingship to evangelize his people.  This reminds us that the state should bring out the best in its people, even a secular one.  The second is the king who showed the subservience of the state to God by abdicating the throne to pursue consecrated life.  This shows us that the pursuit of God is more important than the pursuit of worldly power.  The last type is the type that used their position to alleviate suffering and show true Christian power dynamics by using their kingship to serve the poor.  Examples would be Saint Alkmund of Northumbria, Saint Casimir of Poland, or Saint Edward the Confessor to name a few.  These kings show how the use of wealth is subject to the common good and economic law is not beyond moral law.  The first step in cosmic evangelization would be to extol these types of saints more publically, not just as information, but in action and ritual.  In a time when Nation and Economy have enslaved a large part of the population, these types of saints can be powerful intercessors and excellent exemplars.  As Christian politicians and economists act in the world, they can use their position to explain why, tying into the lives of these saints as subsidiary myths the meta-myth of King of Kings, who by his rule demonstrates all of these qualities.  

Another excellent exemplar was an original attempt at cosmic evangelization by replacement.  When the communist sought to elevate the state to the highest worship, one of their subsidiary myths revolved around the character of “the worker”.  As a response to this, the Church began a devotion Saint Joseph the Worker who demonstrated labor for divinity, not for the state or monetary gain. This devotion can be coupled with Saint Homobonus Merchant and Confessor.  This excellent candidate is one who was a simple merchant who was successful in business, charitable and took every opportunity to offer good advice to his client.  These two together can give light to those oppressed by the economy and give them a narrative to appreciate in the own labor.  Labor now is seen as a means to an economic end, and people are reduced to that same end.  These great saints show us how labor is part of what it means to be human and has a deeper meaning than economic generation.  These great saints give workers not only a narrative but also an ear in heaven who personally cares for their plight.     

Our treatise mostly concerns the Mercenaries and their order has no shortage of canonized.  They are not the best candidates for replacement of the Economy per se, but they can be a looked to as lights of a simple principle, people are worth more than money, and whatever it costs to alleviate suffering, it is worth it.  This is true on an individual level and it is true on a social level.  If this treatise is correct, and Nation and Economy are celestial powers, then they are powers run amuck.  They seek only latria and therefore fit the definition of demonic celestial powers.  By the act of ritual redemption, the Mercedarian order shows that money is less important than human fulfillment.  That personal microcosmic ritual action elicits the social question, who serves who?”  Does nation serve humanity or does humanity serve the nation?  Does economy serve humanity or does humanity serve economy?  A causal study of how people on the digital continent discuss obligations concerning either will reveal a large number of people who are quite comfortable having humanity enslaved to one false god or another.  But examples of otherwise can help undercut the inversion that allows the assumptions of enslavement to proliferate.  Mercedarians have such a ritual in ritual redemption.  It demonstrated and effects agapic love in a way that subverts slavery to celestial powers.         

Our Lady of Ransom: Myth, Ritual, and Cure

This leads to one last figure that is worth reflecting on, a figure that is so important for the Mercedarians, Mary under the title Our Lady of Ransom.  One of the most demonic aspects of a mechanized dynamistic power of Economy is the ability it gives for people to be cruel and accept no moral responsibility.  “Economy” is why these people suffer, it has nothing to do with the morality of our laws or the interpersonal dynamics of our market culture.  This is made all the more potent by certain American myths, such as “The American Dream”.  America has a narrative of coming here and pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, scrimping, saving, doing without working hard and succeeding in a better life.  This myth asserts that if one works hard then Economy will reward with abundance for the individual. This is a false narrative for most people these days and this myth has been used to bolster productivity absent any compensation.  Promises not kept are a hallmark of demonic powers.  Worse still, this myth has allowed people to look upon suffering as due to laziness.  The suffering could never be ascribed to a poor economic system, it must be that the people aren’t serving the economy properly.  The steadfast belief that the mechanistic economy takes care of us as long as we play by the rules is catastrophically coupled with the assumptions that the rules are “suffering until it pays off”.  Then, because our economy is immorally structured, it never pays off and when anyone dares to point out the suffering there is a vitriolic backlash of, “I work hard, they need to work harder and go without.”  Such an odd narrative for a country supposedly possessed of such abundance.

Bringing Our Lady of Ransom to the forefront reminds the populace that mercy is the order of the day in a Christian society.  We desperately need freedom in the particular.  That is, freedom on an individual level from one of the more powerful weapons of this misguided Economy, usury.  Then we need freedom from the overreach of the celestial being itself.  We must teach society to halt latria aimed at Economy and channel it to dulia aimed at Our Lady of Ransom.  And since She is a Marian manifestation the hyperdulia she deserves my well combat the false latria the Economy seeks to garner.   Her feast, the feast of Our Lady of Mercy, should shine a light on the enslaving cruelty one can witness in the American marketplace individually on a daily basis and socially as an upward trend for generations.  

Devotion to Our Lady of Ransom and our current predicament calls to mind the parable of the dishonest steward from Luke 16

Then he also said to his disciples, “A rich man had a steward who was reported to him for squandering his property.  He summoned him and said, ‘What is this I hear about you? Prepare a full account of your stewardship, because you can no longer be my steward.’  The steward said to himself, ‘What shall I do, now that my master is taking the position of steward away from me? I am not strong enough to dig and I am ashamed to beg.  I know what I shall do so that, when I am removed from the stewardship, they may welcome me into their homes.’  He called in his master’s debtors one by one. To the first he said, ‘How much do you owe my master?’  He replied, ‘One hundred measures of olive oil.’ He said to him, ‘Here is your promissory note. Sit down and quickly write one for fifty.’  Then to another he said, ‘And you, how much do you owe?’ He replied, ‘One hundred kors of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Here is your promissory note; write one for eighty.’  And the master commended that dishonest steward for acting prudently.

“For the children of this world are more prudent in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.  I tell you, make friends for yourselves with dishonest wealth, so that when it fails, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.  The person who is trustworthy in very small matters is also trustworthy in great ones; and the person who is dishonest in very small matters is also dishonest in great ones.  If, therefore, you are not trustworthy with dishonest wealth, who will trust you with true wealth?  If you are not trustworthy with what belongs to another, who will give you what is yours?  No servant can serve two masters. He will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.”                  

  

This is one of those parables, like that of the day laborers, that Americans hate because we can not square it with our worship of  Economy.  “Why does the master commend him?!? He stole his property!”  There is an in-depth analysis through analogical interchange in the treatise  The Onesiman Interface,

Jesus’ commentary on the parable revolves around how people trust and use wealth as opposed to trusting God and friendship.  Offhand it is easy to interpret the dishonest steward as the reader and the rich man as God.  This is an easy and accurate interpretation because everything we have belongs to God, in what we have and what we do we are simply his stewards.  If debt is a stand in for mercy then this parable is a simple retelling of a common theme of Jesus’, “the measure with which you measure will be measured back to you” or “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”  This interpretation also gives credence to the shocking last line where the steward is commended by his master with no comment as to how or why.  Of course, God would commend mercy.  

However, when applying an analogical interchange, what if the rich man were God, the steward was my neighbor and I was the debtor?  If someone offered me mercy or forgiveness, yet it seems beyond his ability to offer that, do I trust that God is merciful?  Do I trust that God can offer forgiveness through people who are fallible and flawed?  Do I trust that God will commend the “unjust steward”?  Or will I stay wrapped in guilt, bordering on sinning against the Holy Spirit. 

Again, what if the reader is the rich man and the steward were a neighbor?  Now the parable is no longer about God’s mercy, but about our ability to see the good in others.  This man has misappropriated my wealth and now has used more of it to win friends upon his discharge.  The question is why would I commend him?  It boggles the mind.  The commentary of Jesus helps us understand that this parable is about attachment to money.  If I can’t find a reason to commend the steward, perhaps I am too attached to money.  I can’t see that having friends is more important than sheer wealth, that real relationships are more valuable that symbolic metal.          

The entire parable jars our worship of the false god Economy because it places mercy above money.  Usury cannot work if mercy takes precedence over interest in money and our modern economy cannot work without usury.  Exhalutating the virtue of mercy is the Meredarain call and mission.  By their own calculated ritual, ritual redemption, they have the effective power through their baptismal priesthood to spread the gospel.  They then extend that opportunity beyond their own order by a subsidiary ritual, The Sodality of the Scapular.  This devotion “is a spiritual organization of the lay faithful, who have a special devotion to Our Lady under the title of Our Lady of Mercy, and who desire to be spiritually united to the work of the Mercedarian Friars in the ransoming of Christian Captives”.  

This is the way the Mercedarians can spread the word of the true celestial powers, powers the love mercy and joy, not cruelty and impersonal objectifying suffering.  This scapular allows the faithful to mark themselves as harbingers of mercy over cruelty, starving Economy of its untouchable status, its lust for latria,  and its recently attained status as the arbiter of right and wrong.  Then Economy can be put in its place, low of the list of powers and a humble servant to Our Lady of Mercy.  The Mercedarian has the charism, the organizational structure, the staying power, and the fortitude and the ritual weaponry to fight this fight.  Will they raise their banner and will we turn to their call?  

In the first section, we offered an analysis of how Mercedarain acts of ransom are more than simple acts of charity.  They are a ritual activity that creates a life of prayer by action.  We then delineated an evolutionary shift in the culture of the Mercedarian order from ritual redemption to cognitive redemption.  In the second section, we used mythic-lens reconstruction to demonstrate how Nation and Economy as false gods are enslaving the populace.  Then by use of applied remythologization we will create a subsidiary myth in order to motivate the Mercedarians to continue their beautiful charism of ritual redemption. 

In this section, we started by pointing out the interface between works of charity and advocacy for social justice.  We noted how the onesiman interface works on an individual level as an act of charity but is taken to a new level when engaged in by a community as calculated ritual. The latter can be seen in the ritual redemption of the Mercedarian order.  We then pointed out that the Mercedarians do have a part to play in the larger picture of social justice, but even more, cosmic evangelization.  We noted how the order can help on the digital continent by calling out the false gods we worship and testifying to the enslavement those gods offer.  We also noted the methodology of replacement, that these demonic powers must be replaced by celestial beings who seek only dulia.  It was noted that the dynamistic impersonality of Economy and its mechanistic interpretation has allowed it to be placed above Nation and even above morality, becoming the most common calculator of moral action in modern times.  We offered examples of types of saints that would be great intercessors and illuminating examples for modern people as personal beings who are true flesh and blood and not man made gods run amuck.  Lastly, we turned the reader’s attention to Our Lady of Ransom and Our Lady of Mercy as much needed manifestations of the blessed mother to turn people away from the worship of Economy and its insistence of cruelty as a virtue.           

Conclusion

In the first section, we opened with a reflection on the particular way that consecrated life is suited to social change.  We hypothesized a stage theory of burnout concerning the passion of social change that results from modern society’s focus on the individual.  As a solution to that, we offered a rebranding of consecrated life as a place that allows a person to focus on social change but still abide in a community which bolsters that change.  We then zeroed in on the one particular social ill, slavery, and how the Mercedarians have a deep history of engaging this issue.  After a historical sketch, we offered an analysis of how their acts of ransom were more than simple acts of charity but were a ritual activity that creates a life of prayer by action.  We defined their action this way because the impetus was not simply social change or interpersonal spiritual growth, but action oriented by myth, the deep Christian mystery of the redemption, by narrative appropriation.  We then delineated an evolutionary shift in the culture of the Mercedarian order from ritual redemption to cognitive redemption.  The medium used in the analysis was the Mercedarian fourth vow, which evolved over time, presumably to better suit itself to the circumstances of the times.  However, in that evolution, the field of redemption shifted from one invested in a sacramental cosmology, to one invested in the post-enlightenment focus on ideas.   We lastly broached the question as to whether or not cognitive redemption suites the charism of the Mercedarian order.  

In the second, we sought to apply mythic-lens reconstruction in order to craft a subsidiary myth that would give strength to the Mercedarian order and allow it to reinvest in ritual redemption.  We began with the third variety of mythic-lens reconstruction, the variety that concerns celestial beings.  We laid out our situation where two demonic celestial powers are embattled over enslavement of the population.  Those powers are Nation and Economy.  We went on to point out the overarching mystery (myth) that Mercedarian ritual redemption queues into in terms of narrative appropriation, the redemption of humanity by the incarnate Son of God.  We then sought to show how the turn toward cognitive redemption by some Mercedarians makes for a much weaker ability to evangelize Christ’s redemption to humanity.  This demonstrated the need for a new subsidiary myth to bring the Mercedarian order back to ritual redemption. 

We then laid out three forms of modern slavery that allow for ritual redemption, the prison system, wage slavery, and human trafficking.  We attempted to show how one of the tools for the strengthening of Economy over Nation is the reintroduction of Usury.  We then offered strategies for the Mercedarian order to perform ritual redemption.     

Lastly, we sculpted our subsidiary myth concerning the Mercedarian order.  We discussed the proper way to utilize military imagery for Christian piety.  This would involve those parts of military life the involve protection of the weak and self-sacrifice.  We contrasted that with how marshal imagery is often used in popular piety in absolutely in appropriate ways.  We then constructed our subsidiary myth and showed how it is useful for evangelization of those redeemed, those who the redeemed are redeemed from, and of those who seek the same goal but do not appreciate the meta-myth of Christ’s redemption.  

In the final section, we started by pointing out the interface between works of charity and advocacy for social justice.  We noted how the onesiman interface works on an individual level as an act of charity but is taken to a new level when engaged in by a community as calculated ritual.  The latter can be seen in the ritual redemption of the Mercedarian order.  We then pointed out that the Mercedarians do have a part to play in the larger picture of social justice, but even more, cosmic evangelization.  We noted how the order can help on the digital continent by calling out the false gods we worship and testifying to the enslavement those gods offer.  We also noted the methodology of replacement, that these demonic powers must be replaced by celestial beings who seek only dulia.  It was noted that the dynamistic impersonality of Economy and its mechanistic interpretation has allowed it to be placed above Nation and even above morality, becoming the most common calculator of moral action in modern times.  We offered examples of types of saints that would be great intercessors and illuminating examples for modern people as personal beings who are true flesh and blood and not man made gods run amuck.  Lastly, we turned the reader’s attention to Our Lady of Ransom and Our Lady of Mercy as much needed manifestations of the blessed mother to turn people away from the worship of Economy and its insistence of cruelty as a virtue. 

In Instruction on Certain Aspects of “Theology of Liberation”  Cardinal Ratzinger states,

Liberation is first and foremost liberation from the radical slavery of sin. Its end and its goal is the freedom of the children of God, which is the gift of grace. As a logical consequence, it calls for freedom from many different kinds of slavery in the cultural, economic, social, and political spheres, all of which derive ultimately from sin, and so often prevent people from living in a manner befitting their dignity.

It seems that the Mercedarian order was founded on calculated ritual that aims at the heart of this matter and works on every level.  That original charism is not only worth keeping, but it is also one of the most effective solutions to modern slavery available to a committed Christian.