Why I am an O. C.-Phobe

by H. N. Stokes

Editor of DIVINE LIFE :—

I have the honor of being one of those whom the President of the American Section of the Theosophical Society calls “O. C. Phobes”. I am not an enemy of the Theosophical Society, but on the contrary I am a member as loyal to its original purposes as any, and I have used my influence both publicly and privately to persuade those who would leave it because of its recent freaks to remain in it. I am an O. C.-Phobe, not because of anything which enemies of the Theosophical Society, or of Mrs. Besant, or of the Old Catholic Church have said, but because of what I have personally heard Bishop Wedgwood state, because of what he and Bishop Leadbeater and other lights of this church have said in the publications of the Theosophical Society, and because of what I have read in its own documents, including the Liturgy of the Holy Mass, authorized and approved by Wedgwood and performed at Krotona. Further I am an O. C.-Phobe because I have been convinced by the numerous letters of remonstrance, protest and abuse which I have received, that the contact with the teachings of this church with Theosophy has a tendency to destroy the power of logical thinking on ethical and theosophical subjects.  (More . . . )