Almost a month ago, many of you sent me this article, and the reason I have not blogged about it, is because I've had to think about it a bit. Indeed, it comes at a time when there is other space news quietly circulated, out of the spotlights of the mainstream media. Before getting started with this little mini-series of blogs, let me state for the record that these articles and blogs are my own "high orbital space speculations," a bit of dot-connecting of dots that could easily be connected in a very different way, and interpreted very differently. Let me also advise the reader that, over the years, I have known many people - including some well-known ones - who have claimed to have had, or been the victims of, some sort of "ET contact experience." For some of these people, the experience has been positive, and so their evaluations of ET tends to be positive. For others, the experience was ambiguous, often disturbingly so, and for them, their evaluations naturally tend to me negative. I make no claim to either perception, since I have not experienced it, nor do I wish to do so. I make no claim to the reality or lack thereof of such experiences, save to note that most of these people who have shared them with me, have struck me as sincere, sane, people, to whom something definitely happened. My own evaluations of the potential hostility of ET stem more from an analysis of what I think would have motivated the post-World War Two national security structure to maintain this attitude as their "working hypothesis," a hypothesis that once maintained over a time span of several decades, has become a component of its hidden culture.

With that in mind, I want to ponder, over the next three days, (1) a recent article about the Vatican and ET, (2) former President Bill Clinton and ET, and finally, (3) NASA administrator Bolden's strange remarks. Herewith is the Vatican article:

There are a number of arresting statements in this article, and the first of them occur in the opening paragraph:

"Earlier this month, the Vatican Observatory cosponsored a major conference on extraterrestrial life that brought together 200 of the leading astrobiologists in the world. One of the organizers stated that one of the goals of the conference was to figure out “how we can find life among the stars within the next two decades“. Certainly it would not be unusual for a group of astronomers and astrobiologists to get together and discuss such things. But why is the Vatican seemingly obsessed with this stuff? As you will see below, there are some high profile Vatican astronomers that seem quite confident that “something” is out there. In fact, one has stated that once it is revealed, “everything we think we know” may have to 'be thrown out'"

Notwithstanding the article's slight slant coming from a evangelical perspective, the observations it makes are, for the most part, generally correct from the standpoint of broad Christian doctrinal tradition. We will return to that in a moment. But for the present, note in the above paragraph that the statement italicized implies that there are those in the Vatican who are promoting the meme that any sort of "revelation" of anything to do with extra-terrestrials would be a paradigm changing moment. In this, the Vatican is simply rehearsing the conclusions of the Brookings Report.

Now we come to the crux of the matter, at least, as far as standard Christian doctrine is concerned:

"'Funes, who runs the observatory that is based south of Rome and in Arizona, held out the possibility that the human race might actually be the “lost sheep” of the universe. There could be other beings “who remained in full friendship with their creator,' he said. "Wow. "So Funes is actually suggesting that when we do encounter extraterrestrial beings, they may not have fallen into sin like humanity has."

The suggestion that any non-terrestrials encountered would not be subject to some form of the doctrine of ancestral or original sin is not a new one. It is, in fact, one implication of the doctrine as expressed in Christian tradition. Implicit in this reading of the doctrine is the oft-heard meme within Ufology that any non-terrestrials would, perforce, be not only technologically superior, but morally as well, since they have not inherited anything from Adam. This is, however, not all there is to the doctrine, in either its Western or Eastern forms, for in its formal expositions, the doctrine is understood to have been a cosmic event. It is not only man that "fell," it was also higher intelligences. Thus, to encounter someone within the Vatican who is dealing with such matters as non-terrestrial contact, stating such things, is - as the article itself avers - highly significant, and it could signal vast conceptual changes slowly under way in the Roman Church. Time alone will tell.

"And when they started out three years ago, Funes was saying 'I’d like to baptize an alien into the Catholic faith.' Well that’s not what they’re saying today. What they’re saying now is that they [aliens] are coming here and they’re going to baptize us into their faith and it is going to require us to make changes to our knowledge, to our understanding, of the Gospel. In fact, some of their deepest theologians have said, 'Perhaps everything we think we know about the Gospel is going to have to be thrown out.'”(Boldface emphasis added by the article's original author, italicized emphasis added by me)

He even sent us a copy of a private pdf, a literal goldmine of what he and the Vatican are considering regarding the ramifications of astrobiology and specifically the discovery of advanced extraterrestrials… in which he admits how contemporary societies will soon “look to The Aliens to be the Saviours of humankind.”

These propositions follow from the first assertion, and are consistent with it. It is, again, remarkable to compare these opinions with those profferred decades ago in the Brookings Report, which expressed concern over the potential backlash from "fundamentalism" if any revelation of a non-terrestrial presence within our celestial neighborhood were ever to occur.

"So what would happen someday if “aliens” showed up and claimed that they seeded life on this planet, guided our evolution and are now here to lead us into a new golden age? "And what would happen if the Catholic Church gave those aliens their stamp of approval?"

With this, we have the centerpiece of the article's concern, and frankly, I share it.

In my forthcoming book, Thrice Great Hermetica and the Janus Age, I point out that the existence of the New World was known to circles within Europe - the power elite of the time - who suppressed that knowledge while quietly exploiting it for commercial purposes. It is significant, when one considers all the evidence from that period, that when the revelation came, it came as a combined, carefully orchestrated, revelation involving political power(Ferdinand and Isabella), commercial and naval power(the Italian city-states represented by the Genoese Columbus and Genoese bankers), and the papacy(in the form of Giovanni Cybo, Pope Innocent VIII), which in turn represented not only its own international bureaucracy and power, but also a more hidden connection.

The revelation, in other words, consisted of an orchestrated consent between(1) financial and commercial power, (2) the one international religious bureaucracy able to sanction it(the papacy), (3) the political power, and (4) a hidden power connected to Innocent VIII. There is, of course, a final, fifth element, and that is the secret knowledge itself, the knowledge of a "New World," with its own civilizations, and the decision, finally, to reveal it. That decision came, I suggest, when the power elites of Europe were finally in a financial and maritime position to exploit it fully, and full exploitation required (a) the technology to do so, and (b) the financing to do so.

With this in mind, we have to turn to another curious incident in recent weeks, but that will have to wait until tomorrow...

See you on the flip side....