Biography Extract Rev. Gideon Jasper Richard Ouseley – Rev. G. J. Ouseley (1835 – 1906)- author/trasnlator of The Gospel of the Holy Twelve- Jesus said no to meat
The Rev. Gideon Jasper Richard Ouseley was born in Lisbon on the 15th October, 1835, the younger son of Sir Ralph Ouseley, K.C.B., brought over to Ireland on the death of his father, 14th May, 1842, by relatives, and educated in Dublin University, in which he graduated in 1858. On the 9th of December, 1906 he passed away in his seventy-second year.
He was ordained as a clergyman of the Established Church by the Bishop of Down and Connor, and appointed Curate of Warren- point, Co. Down in 1861.He did not long remain in a Church in which he found himself to be in a false position; and in 1870, having voluntarily renounced all eating of flesh, strong drink and tobacco as inconsistent with the humanity and the true religion of Christ, as taught by Him and His apostles, he was received as a priest of the Catholic Apostolic Church.
Before his reception into the Catholic Church, he fully explained to the Prior his views and beliefs—which on no account would he abandon. The Prior said he did not find in that which he expressed anything contrary to the faith of the Catholic Church. “Why then,” asked the Rev. Ouseley, “does not the Church teach it?” To which the Prior replied, “You are not at liberty to say it is the teaching of the Catholic Church, but you are free to believe and hold your views as a pious opinion.”
It was in such circumstances that he sought to propagate his beliefs. His desire was to saturate and transmute the Church’s own formularies with the true teaching of Christ and His Humanitarianism. He set about revising the formularies in place of concealing them.
While he was not a sectarian and hated to be dubbed as such, he would work with all true reformers and good men who would try to bring the people into ways of righteousness and raise them out of their barbarous habits of flesh-eating, strong drinking, and cruelty of every sort and kind.
He considered that “the direct cause of poverty, bad health and social misery was due to flesh-eating, alcoholic drinking and tobacco smoking”. He saw in their abolition “the only effectual means of the world’s redemption, whether as regards men themselves or the animals”. “The true and proper food for man was that which Mother Earth brought forth in plenty for the sustenance of her children”…
Author : Rev. Gideon Jasper Richard Ouseley