Predation (as told by Grandmaster Thomas Knowlton)
From LanceaSanctum
Fellow Sanctified,
Recent conversations have inspired me to speak on the subject of predation. I've heard the term "predator", or some variation of it, more here in two months, than I have in decades of travel abroad. So I examined my scripture to see where this fascination with the term orgininates.
We are admonished in the First Canon to be wolves among sheep, and to treat the flock as prey. In this sense we are predators on mortal men, at least those who are not pure in their belief.
We are admonished in the Ninth Canon to respect those who most perfectly manifest their damnation, which is often taken to mean respecting greater predators.
If there are other references, they must be too subtle for my dull mind.
Yet I see on this email list predation being used to justify insulting others, challenging other sanctified, political infighting, and more.
Nowhere have I found in scripture words that indicate we are predators on each other. Nothing I have seen has indicated that even those who progress to such an age that they must feed on the blood of the damned should turn the focus of their predation away from the flock. For doing so would completely avoid our divine purpose: to put the fear of God into the flock. We are already damned by our nature, so there is nothing to be gained by being predators to each other. Perhaps one could argue that it hones the skills we use with the flock, but I find this a flimsy excuse. Better to hone skills against he flock themselves; it will be more useful that way.
So then I ask myself why it is that so many in North America seem fascianted with this predatory nature. Other Sanctified I have met on my travels understand our predatory nature and have accepted it. They have no more need to speak of it, than the flock does of the spiritual repercussions of food and water.
Which leads me to conclude that many here are uncomfortable with our predatory nature, and being uncomfortable with this aspect of damnation, they feel the need to constantly reinforce the concept for themselves.
Given this conclusion, I should like to state the following:
The holy rite of Recontre doesn't prove who the better predator is, it proves you couldn't settle a dispute any other way, and that the matter has gotten to the point where the covenant would rather have one antogonist eliminated than risk further dissent within the covenant. This is a sad state of affairs for any matter to have pressed this far, and I would pray for both participants. It is not something to be done lightly, for it virtually guarantees the loss of one of the Sanctified, and thus the loss of one serving God's plan.
The killing of the flock is not specifically prevented by my reading of scripture, but I would nonetheless discourage it. While we are admonished by the Eighth Canon not to grow too familiar with individuals among the flock, to be effective in our goal we must have some sympathy for the flock as a whole. If we lose sight of our humanity, and become only an unthinking predator among them, then we fail in or task of guiding the flock to God. Our entire existance is to drive the flock to God by demonstrating the wages of sin. Simply killing them is not the most effective means, for once dead they cannot speak to others of their renewed faith. And the act of murder takes us further from the flock ourselves, so that we might eventually lose sight of our purpose.
We are damned and sinners, and so there will be conflict among us. We are predisposed to de driven by pride, envy, hatred, and other sins. The Fifth Canon admonishes us to spread the word of Longinus among the damned, but otherwise the scripture focuses very little on how we deal with the other damned. This tells me that our focus should not be on these matters. Perhaps this is a reason why we have historically been allied with the Invictus who focuses on nothing but the secular matters among the damned; it leaves us free to worry about spiritual matters. But it does not serve God's purpose for us to become overly involved with the politics of the damned.
Which leads me to my final point, that we better serve God by working together than by competing with each other. To this I will only give one example. We have a limited time each night to perform the work God has given us. If we spend a great deal of time fighting amongst ourselves or becoming embroiled in the affiars of the damned, then we neglect our God given tasks as sanctified.
Sum Sanctus.
Thomas Knowlton
Grandmaster of the Ordo Praesidium Sanctum
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