The Rebel Nun

by Marj Charlier

It began when Christianity first swept across Gaul, and the church demanded the obliteration of the pagan rituals, shrines, and deities that had guided our tribes for centuries. It continued as the church declared women unclean, threw us out of the clergy, and denied us the right to sleep with the priests to whom some of us were married.

Same as always

The story of our struggle will end only when our kingdom is no longer at the mercy of the patriarchy and the church, the matriarchy flourishes anew, and pagan traditions are again celebrated across the land with impunity.

Same as always!

Since the first Council at Nicaea one hundred fifty years before, bishops had denied women ordination, even going so far as to suggest women had no souls. Women were declared unclean, and we were prohibited from touching the sacramental objects. Priests could no longer sleep with their wives, and the Council of Macon advised married clergy to avoid their spouses completely. It seemed only a matter of time before priests would not be allowed to marry at all.

Nothing has changed in 1,500 years!

“It is the way of the world of men. Mortality is nothing to them—especially the mortality of others.”

Why do men kill for more land & more power?

I knew my mother had been ill, contaminated with the worms that enter the brain and steal part of our being.

Dementia?

I am now an old woman but I have yet to suffer worms in the head as many people do before their bodies succumb to disease or abuse.

Dyslexia?

The world is a random, violent place, and those who expect justice or expect the just to be rewarded are deluded.

World's justice

I became a healer, but a different kind than the faith healers who traffic in superstition around the countryside. My potions are far more effective in relieving pain and healing wounds than the incantations of the Christian charlatans who profit from the diseased and injured by the laying on of hands and prayers muttered in ersatz tongues.

Accurate description of today's charlatans

To be a Christian to Gregory, then, was to believe in Christ, His resurrection, and His purpose on earth, not necessarily to act in ways we believe represent “Christian” behavior today.

And nothing has changed in almost 1,500 years!!