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Special Portuguese Spanish    

Year 8 - N° 373 – July 27, 2014

LEONARDO MARMO MOREIRA
leonardomarmo@gmail.com  
São João Del Rei, MG (Brasil)

 

Translation
Eleni Frangatos P. Moreira - eleni.moreira@uol.com.br

 
 

Leonardo Marmo Moreira

Roustaing and Ubaldi: a strange union of schismatic forces

The Roustaing movement is the greatest plague, a "thorn in the flesh" of the Brazilian Spiritist movement. Roustaing work is considered a mystification, and it is literally a very difficult weed to be pulled out from the Spiritist groups. The main book is "The Four Gospels", the author of which is the French lawyer J.B. Roustaing.

The Ubaldi movement grew around the work of Pietro Ubaldi, a psychic and Italian writer who came to live in Brazil and became know within the Brazilian Spiritualist groups, including the Spiritist movement.

Oddly, Roustaing and Ubaldi's dissidents have made an effort to become unified in a kind of single schismatic process, which can be found in some Brazilian regions.

The Ubaldi's movement would be, in some respects, a new edition of Roustaing's work. In fact, it is a work without the support of the "Universality of Education of the Spirits." Ubaldi and Roustaing defend the existence of the "Spiritual Fall," implying that reincarnation would be a kind of "Divine Punishment", a priori unnecessary, if the spiritual being fulfilled its evolution and behavior "targets" appropriately. We emphasize that this is precisely the major point of disagreement between Roustaing and Kardec. Thus, the attempted union between Roustaing and Ubaldi is supported by a clearly opposite concept to the Codification.

In fact, Ubaldi, as a kind of "redesigned Roustaing", also attracted many spiritualists in Brazil, becoming one more source of disturbance in our Spiritist movement too. 

The work of J.B. Roustaing predates Pietro Ubaldi's - In this context, at one point, Roustaing's followers saw that Ubaldi would be the hope of a salvation. This due to the fact that the nonsense divulged by Roustaing became more known, more studied and discussed than Ubaldi's, since Roustaing's anti doctrinal works had more supporters in the Brazilian Spiritist movement than the books of the Italian writer. Moreover, the work of Roustaing was published first, and, it is contemporary to Allan Kardec. It caused famous doctrinal clashes in France itself, where Gabriel Delanne was one of the authors who fought to save the Kardecian bases from being misinterpreted.

Therefore, it is a fact that at that time Roustaing's work was more known than Ubaldi's. Thus, the obvious inconsistencies of Roustaing's work were thoroughly explained in the light of the Spiritist Codification by renowned Spiritists, such as J. Herculano Pires, Julio Abreu Filho, Luciano Costa, Tourinho Nazarene, among others. There was no such a study regarding Ubaldi's work. To consider Ubaldi's ideas as a new point of view would be to furnish a new impulse to the schism already existing in the Spiritist movement since the nineteenth century. This would be an attempt to give support to Roustaing's anti Spiritist theses, because his followers were not able to defend the weak arguments contained in his "mater work."

Indeed, what Roustaing's followers have mostly done is to try and link, often in an undue manner, the name of renowned Spiritists in the past to Roustaing, since they have not been able to effectively present solid arguments to defend "The Four Gospels". 

In the evaluation of a message, its content is the most important - Allan Kardec recommends and makes it clear that the content of the message is always a priority in terms of evaluation. Secondly, the moral character of the medium that delivered the message, and, finally, the name of the spiritual author. Instead of analyzing the moral character of the medium, we should analyze the moral character of the embodied writer, when the work is not a psychic production. Similarly, we should also analyze the name of the spiritual author and the name of the illustrious confreres who supported or support, for any reason, works clearly contrary to the Encoding, since all individuals, as much distinguished and respectable as their contributions may be, they may eventually commit some error sometime. A person's personal opinion, as much as the bearer of the idea is known as someone honest and reliable, is not necessarily the truth.

Anyway, by simulating this fusion between schismatic works, Roustaing's followers could influence a good number of Ubaldi's followers, who would eventually leave Roustaing, or even become against him, since the works, however containing converging points, they also show significant differences.

In fact, Roustaing's followers have a need to sustain the inconsistencies of his work in other authors to confirm his opinions, even if such ideas are frontally opposed to Allan Kardec. Moreover, it was stated that the work "The Four Gospels" by J.B. Roustaing would be continued, and strengthened and ratified by a subsequent work. This project never turned up, neither through the medium Emilie Collignon, nor by Roustaing or any of his followers. 

Ubaldi and Roustaing defend the thesis of the Spiritual Fall - Obviously, the fact that there was no subsequent work created a serious problem for Roustaing's followers because how could the "Revelation of Revelation" state a continuity that did not occur effectively. This prediction of a "definitive" work, coupled with the slow and gradual decay of the dissemination of Roustaing's work within the Brazilian Spiritist movement, led some of its leaders to elect the work of Pietro Ubaldi, as the continuation of "The Four Gospels". In fact, both defend the anti-Kardecian thesis of the Spiritual Fall. Moreover, this association is very weird, because Ubaldi, like Roustaing, was very vain.

It is even possible that Ubaldi exceeded Roustaing in terms of vanity, because he never considered himself a Spiritist, nor was he attached to the Spiritst movement, and always wanted to create his own movement. However, this egocentric position has a certain consistency, since he never said he was something, which he was not, i.e., he never claimed to be a follower of the Spiritist Doctrine. On the contrary, he always maintained serious criticism regarding the Doctrine. Anyway, Ubaldi's attitude was not so contradictory compared to Roustaing's, who considered "The Four Gospels" as a Spiritist work, although he strongly went against several basic principles of the Encoding.

On the other hand, it is significant the fact that Roustaing's followers chose the work of an author who never considered himself a Spiritist to complement and develop the work of Roustaing. Moreover, if J.B. Roustaing's work "The Four Gospels" was really a Spiritist work, would it not be natural to suppose that its continuation and respective development would be consolidated by a well-known author and a true Spiritist? 

Ubaldi did not become acquainted with Roustaing's work - Pietro Ubaldi's choice, or option, occurs precisely because the interconnection between the contents of the works of known Spiritist authors such as Andre Luiz, Joanna de Angelis, Philomeno Manoel de Miranda, among others, becomes almost impossible when considering J.B. Roustaing's ideas in his book "The Four Gospels".

Moreover, Ubaldi never considered himself a defender of Roustaing's ideas, and what is more relevant, according to some biographers, is that he did not even become aware of Roustaing's work. Now, it is not logical that the great promoter and developer of an "advanced course of Spiritism", as stated by some of Roustaing's followers, did not know the work of his predecessor. This fact, by itself, already shows how this link between them did not exist.

This interconnection was forged, in a certain undue manner, by Roustaing's followers in an eager attempt to revive proposals that have no doctrinal support within Spiritism. Therefore, the fallacies based on Roustaing's work remind us of a real patchwork of information and subterfuge, very much similar to the inconsistencies of Catholicism. Anyway, assuming the unlikely possibility that both works complement each other, it would surprise us that the Superior Spirituality is so chaotic, because being Ubaldi a priori so important for the development and validation of the theses contained in "Revelation of Revelation," he did not, in his 85 years of age, ever had the slightest  contact with The Four Gospels". Were our spiritual mentors so lost that they did not make it possible for the "Great Continuer" to become aware of his "precursor's" work? Let us remember that, at first, Pietro Ubaldi would have been the bearer of an ostensive mediumship, which would be one more opportunity for the author to be inspired and become aware of such an important work for the development of his own mission. And this did not happen. 

Those who do not accept Roustaing cannot be considered Spiritists. On the other hand, we may assume that Ubaldi was inspired to know the work of Roustaing, but rejected doing so according to his free will. In this case, we would then question the reason for such a procedure. Would Ubaldi reject "the Revelation of Revelation" on the grounds that it was not so revealing as well? In this case, who would be mistaken? Ubaldi or Roustaing? Or both? The Truth is one, but the distorted views of this truth are many. This makes it perfectly possible that two misguided authors mutually disagree between themselves with their points of view.

Roustaing and/or his "Spiritual Advisors" repeat until exhaustion that the works to take into consideration are "The Four Gospels", "Revelation of Revelation" or "The New Revelation", and "Christian Spiritism", as well." To top it off, Roustaing's fanatic followers in our country stated categorically that Roustaing's work is "an advanced course of Spiritism," emphasizing that "whoever does not accept Roustaing cannot be considered a Spiritist". Now, does this mean then that Leon Denis, Gabriel Delanne and Camille Flammarion and many others cannot be considered Spiritists? And what is worse, does this apply to Allan Kardec too? Therefore, can he not be considered a Spiritist too? After all, none of them accepted Roustaing's work.

The interconnection between the content of the works produced by spiritual authors, and embodied authors too, in a combined study is in no way an objectionable attitude. However, when two schismatic groups, who consider themselves Spiritists, become unified to maintain and promote ideas that hinder the doctrinal development of our movement, then this becomes a serious matter, which calls into question their spiritual responsibility.  




 


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