Morals, Ethics and Personal Responsibility....

Merry Meet Family, Friends, Followers and Lurkers,

Due to the overwhelming response to my entry entitled "Rebirth Without Rebellion" regarding Rev. Kendra Vaughan Hovey and the closing of the First Church of Wicca, I felt I needed to post a follow up.

So many of those who were members of her congregation have felt, as have I, a sense of betrayal as a result of her disloyalty to the Wiccan community and many have generously come forward to share their own opinions, as well as to shed some much needed light on a side of the story that I'm sure Rev. Kendra would much rather remain in darkness.

According to the Reverend Kendra, the two greatest downfalls of the Wiccan faith are:

1) A lack of standardized clergy training and the expectation that a High Priest and High Priestess would conduct themselves in a moral manner and..

2) That there is no clear defined code of ethics within the Wiccan faith and no principles that "call us up to a "higher place of nobility, social responsibility and respect for human dignity"



So, you may be wondering why, after practicing the Wiccan faith for so many years, even going as far as opening her own church based upon these beliefs would she develop such a glaringly unfavorable opinion of the Wiccan community? No, my friends, I'm afraid it wasn't her newly formed relationship with Jesus Christ.

Reverend Kendra broke the bonds of trust to herself, her congregation and the Wiccan community and instead of accepting responsibility for her actions, she blamed the Wiccan religion for her own lack of a clearly defined code of ethics. In essence, she fucked up, literally and figuratively, and it's all our fault!

That being said, the Wiccan religion does not make one moral or ethical. You do!

For example, if you, generally speaking, of course, decide you want to explore a polyamorous relationship, you've just made a personal decision that requires....go ahead, you can say it, we already know, "personal responsibility". For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term "polyamory", polyamory has been defined as the philosophy and practice of loving more than one person at a time with honesty and integrity. Many Pagans choose polyamory, many do not...again, it's a matter of personal choice. Personally, I have been in a monogamous relationship for the past 23 years, I have been Pagan for about 15 of those and I know myself and my relationship well enough to know that polyamory is not something we would be interested in exploring. Again, a "personal choice".

One of the basic concepts of the Wiccan system of beliefs is that we accept full responsibility for our actions. We don't have a book to tell us to behave morally and ethically. The tenet, "An it harm none, do as ye wilt", places the responsibility for our moral and ethical behavior firmly where it belongs...on us. One's own personal code of ethics or morality can't be found in a book, but in a place much closer. Our hearts. That's not to say that some of our own personal choices will not, at times, test the boundaries of right and wrong, but that's not a fault exclusive to Wiccans, but to all human kind. When mistakes are made however, we need to admit first that the fault is ours...and accept the consequences. As Wiccans we refer to this as the "Law of Return" or more commonly, the "Threefold Law". This is a lesson that Rev. Kendra would do well to brush up on rather than pouring through books to justify her own faulty morals and ethics.

This my friends, in my humble opinion, is the true essence of the Wiccan faith.

I have provided (thank you, Priestess Aura) the link to Rev. Kendra's sermon entitled, Polyamory" that I'm sure some of you will find...enlightening.

http://www.firstchurchofwicca.org/PPDLectures2008.html

In Darkness, Light!


Tracy