The Baha'i Faith & Religious Freedom of Conscience

From: Ron House <house@usq.edu.au>
Subject: Re: Infallibility and deception
Date: Sunday, August 15, 1999 8:36 AM
Smaneck wrote:
> 
> Ron writes:
> 
> >On the Baha'i Studies mailing list, I recently posted a criticism of the
> >Universal House of Justice, which, summarised, was this: that Baha'i
> >apologists on the Internet allow less informed Baha'is to believe that
> >the UHJ is infallible, when the original term actually is better
> >translated as morally perfect, sinless, or something of that nature;
> 
> Dear Ron,
> 
> That is the principle meaning of ma'sum; the word translated as infallibility.
> But Baha'is are free to have various understandings of what that means and I
> certainly am not interested in imposing mine on anyone else. In the post you
> are responding to I  was simply pointing out that to try to make too sharp a
> distinction between letters from the House and those from the Secretariat
> written on behalf of the House is probably a dead end as far as considering the
> divine guidance contained therein. And as far as I'm concerned ma'sum carries
> with it the meaning of providing such guidance.
> 
>  Much of the problem we have been having with you is that not only are you
> unwilling to give this same tolerance to others
I am sick of your paraphrasing my views in vindictive and dishonest
terms.
> but you went so far as to
> condemn the House of Justice itself for not insisting on a more limited
> meaning of infallibiliy. You even stated categorically that they had fallen
> under divine judgement and that this was what the Tablet of the Holy Mariner
> referred to when it spoke of of the ark being "cast out."
I stated categorically that this was offered as my personal opinion.
> This kind of dicourse
> can only be disruptive to the list purpose of Baha'i Studies.
As I pointed out on the list, my opinion amounts to the belief that a
prophesy of Baha'u'llah's is coming true. I leave it to the good readers
here to ponder the spiritual conditions prevailing on a Baha'i list
whose moderators find that such a belief "can only be disruptive".
-- 
Ron House            house@usq.edu.au
The evils of each age always seem self-evidently right at the time.

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