Wealth, Sex, Sin and Hell – what is Wrong with the Catholic Church?
As a Roman Catholic, I mentioned to our learned editor Anna that it might be a good idea for me to make some observation on the appointment of the new Pope. She kindly agreed. I had, after all, enjoyed following the whole process enormously. I like the “Da Vinci Code” style mystery and plotting, the history, the pageantry, the eccentricity, and the beautiful setting. But as a tried to do so I soon found that I had to address wider issues with the Catholic Church, and its theology, philosophy and practices. In fact, I began to find this a daunting task, and a slightly worrying one as I do not want to upset some of those I know who are also Roman Catholic with my views, which are, shall say, not altogether orthodox. But here goes.
I should start out saying that if there are – as I would assume there must be – readers who have antipathy towards the Catholic Church itself, or organised religion in any form, I would understand that at once. If I was called upon and minded to do so, I could trash the Catholic Church (and a few other religions) with a few brutal lines. I could simply describe the obvious irrationality of being a member of an institution which, on no scientifically demonstrable basis, professes to guide the behaviour of more than a billion people, in the name of what I believe is traditionally referred to on Twitter as “the Sky Pixie”. I could point to endless intolerances displayed, cruelties done and wars fought in the name of Peace by religions of all sorts. I might suggest, as the late author Douglas Adams often did in his “Hitchhiker’s Guide” book, that any form of religion which involved the necessity of an innocent man being nailed to a cross was at best undesirable. I argue the case for the hypocrisy of an institution which asserts that it cares for the poor, and yet seats itself in the sumptuous, imperial magnificence of the Vatican City. I could describe a cabal of self serving old men, not themselves democratically accountable, electing one of their own to rule this empire. I could talk about sexual abuse. And some, indeed a lot of that, would be true, put that way. I am not blind to any of it. So please don’t switch off. But I remain a Catholic, and there are good and kind men and women in the Church, doing their best to make the world a better place. The question is: is the Church helping them do that as it should?
So what then of the new Pope. Francis I, formerly Jorge Mario Bergoglio?
Well, so far I have been reasonably charmed. I never warmed to his predecessor. I don’t know why, but I had a bad feeling about him. All that learning and theology is very nice, very impressive, but not necessarily concomitant with genuine compassion – or insight. And then there was that uneasy feeling that he had previously been tasked to investigate the sex abuse claim but had not exactly been keen to act to do so.
The new Pope is, of course, from the order known as the Society of Jesus – a Jesuit. For those who don’t know, the Jesuitical Order has a reputation for intellectual rigour and a militant, even slightly military attitude. They are a bit “hair shirt”, the Jesuits. There is that well known cliché that they are “the Pope’s Storm Troopers”, although I have heard from “Vaticanistas” that they may often be regarded of late as more hard-line than even the Papacy on some issues, such that they have become “the Pope’s Official Opposition”.
Anyone who has ever played a game of Rugby against a Jesuit orientated school such as Stoneyhurst that you are not going to be facing the milk of human kindness. In fact you will be facing well drilled, and probably quite dirty and fanatical violence. I well remember attending a mission at my local Church when I was a young man, conducted over a week with a Jesuit, a certain Father Edwards. He was very much in the classic Jesuit mould, a rather handsome man with the bearing of a war weary paratrooper captain, He impressive, a far cry from the insipid priests who usually droned on of a Sunday; as to which see further below. I recall too that during the course of my sacrament of Confession with him he observed that I was a much better and even holier young man than I gave myself credit for. Cunning Jesuitical psychology? The well known axiom attributed to the Jesuits is “give me the boy and I will show you the man”. Or foresight? Perhaps both; there is, in fact, a slightly harsh and possibly Jesuitical edge to my approach to life on many issues. In the end I am not sure I could put up with the strictness of the order. But I liked Father Edwards a lot.
Despite that Jesuitical background, the new Pope seems personally a great deal more charming than previous Pope. I like the stories I hear about him refusing to ride in limousines and taking public transport, and even when elected Pope picking up his own hotel tab. I like what I hear about his care and devotion to the poor and the needy such as victims of AIDS, which can’t have been easy. I very much approve of the choice of Papal name, Francis. St Francis was a deeply insightful man, and his love of animals commends him to me more than many other of the Church’s notable figures of the past. But he is 76, and a conservative on many issues. I don’t think there is going to be a lot of change. Perhaps from the insider’s point of view a safe pair of hands.
Now, as perhaps hinted at above, I am not blind to the faults of Holy Mother Church. Indeed, as a young man it was an institution which actively sought to thwart my education by doing its level best to block my path to a well known and celebrated Grammar School and force me to the local and (surprisingly for the Church) poorly run Catholic “Comprehensive” which had a reputation for low achievement, poor discipline and extreme bullying of “nicer” kids. I haven’t forgotten that, and I never will. In truth I attend Mass not because, but despite, many of the aspects of the Church. I am comfortable with the ritual, and find meaning in its familiarity and consistency, which sometimes I have to disassociate from the often well meaning but intellectually challenged person nominally in charge. Readers will have picked up a touch of intellectual arrogance from that last line. It was quite intentional. But I digress.
Anyway, the certainty and beauty of Mass is something which allows me to feel that I have been a part of something which has something sacred and mysterious about it. Mystery may be a pointless intellectual tool from a logical positivist’s point of view, but I don’t care. So, technically, are emotions such as surprise and awe and joy. It works for me. I therefore find it useful, and valid. A while ago, I visited our learned editor Madame La Raccoon in France, and attended Mass in the simple but beautiful old stone village Church at 8.00 am of a Sunday morning. Although I do not speak very good French, I felt perfectly at home and at peace, in a bond of unity with other souls of all ages, at peace and making my own communion with God. I could tell exactly where I was and what stage proceedings had reached. It was all rather beautiful.
Be that as it may I noticed this morning that the Holy Father has said that he wanted a poor Church for poor people. Now, that sounds rather lovely and humble and holy, but it is at that point I start to diverge, and my intellectual differences with the Church start to emerge. Let me try to explain.
When I was a little boy growing up I would be dragged to Church of a Sunday morning by my devout and loyal parents. Our parish priests tended to drone on about stuff, which all seemed to be quite meaningless, anodyne and even pointless to me. Jesus was nice. Let’s all be nice. It is good to be nice. And loyal to the Church, of course. Always that. The only good point about these expeditions was that I got to see Anne, the girl I had had a crush on at primary school. We were always the stars of the School nativity plays. She was the beautiful girl with golden hair and an angelic voice, so she was always cast as Mary. As I was the only one who could read properly, I did the narrations. But I digress again.
Even at the time, there seemed to be no practical point to this ritual other than blind loyalty and rote, and being able to look longingly at Anne. What I was hearing did not seem to have any practical relevance at all. What knowledge was being imparted of any practical use? Indeed, it was worse than that. Whether consciously or unconsciously, the message being preached seemed to be as follows: the world is a sad place, not a nice place. You are poor. It is OK to be poor, even good to be poor. You will get your reward in Heaven!
Now, as a quinquagenarian with a mind of my own and having spent a great deal of the past decade in the study of history, philosophy, religion, and theology, I have come to the conclusion which many readers who will have spent that time more practically engaged whether in the pub or gardening would reach in about two shakes of a donkey’s tail.
It is absolute bunkum. I would actually say that it is practically, philosophically and theologically bunkum. But I suspect we would get to the same point.
I think the author, speaker commentator and high authority on a remarkable psychological work known as “A Course in Miracles” Marianne Williamson puts the matter this way. Any religion or philosophy which professes no practical application or benefit to problems and issues in this life and merely offers deferred rewards in the unknown hereafter is not really worth bothering with. It has no useful functionality. And to take the matter one step further, in theological terms it is actually, I suspect, technically incorrect. In my library I have a gentle little book called Prosperity Secrets of the Ancients, by a Methodist Minster, Catherine Ponder. In it Reverend Ponder analyses the Old Testament and explains a lot of the symbolism and metaphors being used. As she points out, in the culture of the Middle East then and even now metaphor is commonly used rather than direct communication. Ponder suggests that a great number of the metaphors and stories are intended to evoke attitudes of positivity and exhortations to go forth and prosper magnificently – with God’s blessing and help. To put the matter in a more neutral way, that “the Universe”, correctly understood, is trying to fill your life with abundance and prosperity. We are equipped with the psychological tool box which allows us to work with that power, but we have to learn how to use the tools.
In fact, it struck me the other day that many of the miracles of Jesus Christ described in the Bible are about, if not money, then more significantly, about abundance, about having more than enough.
We could, at this moment, pause to debate the nature of wealth. People have a tendency to equate wealth with amounts of money. It is not always the same. There have been times in my life, as when I was a student, when I have had very little money, but a magnificent and fantastic carefree lifestyle. At the moment I have a very high income but I am burdened by debt and commitments into which I was lured by someone who betrayed and abused my trust. My lifestyle is awful.
Now, if the dreary Parish priests had preached a message about having faith in abundance of God, or the Universe, about how the human spirit cannot be contained, about how faith can help overcome adversity, about joy; these would have been useful psychological or spiritual tools for life and meeting its challenges – you can take them either way, and perhaps it matters not whether you look at them with through either secular of non secular glasses.
But to my ears they preached a message of material poverty which was actually a reflection of spiritual poverty; a passive acceptance that nothing can change. That is practically, philosophically and “spiritually” misconceived.
I think it is for this reason that many Catholics I know, including myself, have real difficulties with simply being happy, and accepting that it is OK to be happy. I have not touched on the issue of guilt, but it is psychological tool which the Church deploys with aplomb.
What is psychologically correct is spiritually correct, and vica verse, and the converse is true. If you believe in a gentle and loving God, he would and could not create spiritual laws which would be a cross purposes with our real psychological well being. Living simply and free from too many cares is psychologically and spiritually sound. Living in abundance where there is more than enough to go round is again both psychologically and spiritually sound, and even better. Working solely for money is a psychological and spiritual dead end. And being in want, without abundance and with lack of fulfillment and waiting for some unknown reward after death is psychologically and spiritually unsound. As the saying goes, “I have been rich and I have been poor; and rich was better”.
I mentioned above the possible incongruity of the magnificent surroundings of the Vatican in the election of a spiritual leader. But consider the matter from a different matter. What better place than somewhere that is a magnificent testament to what man can do with his God given talents when he uses them? So I have no problem with that. But to validate that magnificence the Church must be engaged in spreading that magnificence into the daily lives of men and woman throughout the world, to help us all make our own experiences magnificent and a tribute to and expression of the Divine. Or just to be fantastic, if you like.
The Pope’s emphasis on humility is laudable. Humility is a virtue. As is quiet self confidence, which quite compatible with it, and is also a virtue. But with his emphasis on poverty I suggest the Holy Father is mistaken. I listened recently to a talk from the well known “New Age” guru, Dr Wayne Dyer. I would not agree with all that Dr Dyer has to say, but then as is apparent from this piece I don’t always agree with other people say, even priests or Popes of my church. But in it he said something very simple but perfectly sensible. He said you can’t make someone happy by being unhappy yourself. No matter how unhappy you get, you can’t make them happy by doing that. And you can’t make someone well by getting sick yourself. And so it is with money.
As it happens, despite my difficult circumstances I help someone who is struggling to find a job. Just little things like help with petrol to let this person get to interviews and so forth. Now, I can’t do that if I am poor. If I have abundance of money, I can help this person more. I can help other people too. I can help them improve their lives. I can be a philanthropist, or a saint: you choose the label. It does not really matter to me.
So we don’t want a poor church for poor people. We want a wealthy Church which is able to help people out of poverty into material and spiritual abundance. It is a subtle difference. Sort it out, Francisco.
If anyone still has the will to live, I will perhaps pen part 2 of this post and deal with topics which the Church needs to address: sex; the child and sex abuse scandal, and the rise of militant Islam.
Here endeth the lesson.
Gildas the Monk
So then, as a selfish, old fashioned, slightly cynical, semi detached semi Jesuitical mixed up Catholic, what do I think of the new Pope? Does the Papacy even matter?
Edited by Anna to add: Picture cheerfully filched from Dick Puddlecote.
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March 20, 2013 at 02:35 -
The pope, though we may call a powerful one in the Roman Catholic society, is still human that has his own mistakes and still he cannot please everyone. And just like any other leader, he may not be able to do all the things that is expected of him, but I guess it is also better if we see the good things he has done and not just the things he failed to do. He is still human after all.
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March 19, 2013 at 11:25 -
March 19, 2013 at 11:02 -
Malachi Martin :
From 1958 until 1964, Malachi Martin served in Rome as a Jesuit priest, where he was a close associate of, and carried out many sensitive missions for, the renowned Jesuit Cardinal Augustin Bea and Popes John XXIII and Paul VI. Released afterwards from his vows of poverty and obedience at his own request (but still a priest), he ultimately moved to New York and became a best-selling writer of fiction and non-fiction.
Martin had first made explicit reference to a diabolic rite held in Rome in his 1990 non-fiction best-seller about geopolitics and the Vatican, The Keys of This Blood, in which he wrote:
Most frighteningly for [Pope] John Paul [II], he had come up against the irremovable presence of a malign strength in his own Vatican and in certain bishops’ chanceries. It was what knowledgeable Churchmen called the ‘superforce.’ Rumors, always difficult to verify, tied its installation to the beginning of Pope Paul VI’s reign in 1963. Indeed Paul had alluded somberly to ‘the smoke of Satan which has entered the Sanctuary’. . . an oblique reference to an enthronement ceremony by Satanists in the Vatican. Besides, the incidence of Satanic pedophilia — rites and practices — was already documented among certain bishops and priests as widely dispersed as Turin, in Italy, and South Carolina, in the United States. The cultic acts of Satanic pedophilia are considered by professionals to be the culmination of the Fallen Archangel’s rites.
(p. 632. Emphasis added)
These allegations have largely gone unnoticed, possibly because Martin was so crafty in his descriptions that he might even have been referring to the coronation of Pope Paul VI. But he revealed much more about this alleged ritual in one of his last works, Windswept House: A Vatican Novel (1996).
In this story, he vividly described a diabolical ceremony called “The Enthronement of the Fallen Archangel Lucifer” supposedly held in St. Paul’s Chapel within the Vatican, but linked with concurrent satanic rites here in the US, on June 29, 1963, barely a week after the election of Paul VI. In this novel, before he dies, a pope leaves a secret account of the situation on his desk for the next occupant of the throne of Peter, a thinly-disguised John Paul II.
According to The New American, Martin confirmed that the ceremony did indeed occur as he had described. “Oh yes, it is true; very much so,” the magazine reported he said. “But the only way I could put that down into print is in novelistic form.”
Windswept House is a sweeping novel, set on the grand global stage and the unfolding of the next stage of civilization, the ominously-named New World Order. It tackles head on a number of heavy issues from abortion to the Third Secret of Fatima, but the essential message seems to be this: Satanists lurk in the shadows, from the heart of the Vatican down to the local parishes, manipulating those fooled by the false spirit of Vatican II. They are doing their damnedest to subvert the Roman Catholic Church, while Pope John Paul II, intent on his geopolitical millennial endgame, fiddles about, waiting for a sign from the Blessed Virgin while the Church literally goes to hell around him.
In Windswept House, Martin was quite explicit about the conditions in the Vatican, opening the novel with the above-mentioned satanic ritual. In it, Satan was formally enthroned in the Vatican in the Chapel of St. Paul (by all reports a dark and appropriately spooky place). The ceremony was co-ordinated via telephone with another simultanious rite in South Carolina.
(This could be a reference to the claims of “Leo Taxil” who wrote spurious exposés of the Masons and fallen priests as devil-worshippers in the 19th century. He, too, claimed South Carolina — Charleston, to be exact — was a satanic headquarters. This was the hometown of Albert Pike, the only Confederate general memorialized in Washington, D.C., who reformed the Scottish Rite and was indeed an admitted “Luciferian.”)
In any case, since Malachi Martin was a Vatican insider who was there in a position to know, it is not his sources that make this claim difficult to believe, but his jesuitical agenda. Martin cared passionately for the Catholic Church, but as an ex-Jesuit (which may be likened to being ex-CIA, with all the ambiguity that implies), he combined his global vision with a reactionary orthodoxy that at times seems somewhat to the right of Loyola himself. It is temptingly easy to dismiss his claims on that basis alone.
For it is his militant traditionalism that many who lack his profound nostalgia for the Tridentine past find most difficult to take in Martin’s writing. His belief that the problems in the Church today are largely due to the Second Vatican Council seems far too simplistic. While Vatican II opened the windows of change, for better or for worse, the rot began to fester there long, long before. The Church of Rome would not be falling apart as quickly as it is if it were otherwise.
And while there is no real reason to believe that the morals of the College of Cardinals have improved substantially since the Rennaisance, it is difficult to believe that anyone of them would be so foolish as to undermine the papacy itself. Eliminate the pope — sure, that’s been done as recently as the last reign with the suspicious death of John Paul I (which Martin attributes to the KGB with inside help). However, destroying the papal office itself would destroy the cardinals’ own powerbase. The tail cannot wag without the dog.
If anything, it is his partisan passions that makes his tale doubtful. Looking at his earlier writings, it is hard to detect any inferences that the Devil may be indeed at home in Rome. However, his book Hostage to the Devil (1976) leaves no doubt that Martin believed that a very real, very personal force of evil was abroad in the world. Yet his first hint of any diabolic activity there comes towards the end of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Church (1981), a history book that sets out his worldview and concerns of the Faustian bargain with temporal power that the Roman Church made seventeen centuries ago and its corrupting effects ever since. It occurs with his first mention of that ominous saying attributed to Paul VI:
Paul realized in his last two years that something unimaginably ominous had been moving inexorably toward them, was already in their midst, and had nothing to do with the Holy Spirit. “The smoke of Satan has entered the church, is around the altar,” he remarked somberly. By 1978 and in the last few weeks of his own life, Paul knew that the rumbling tension of his world had grown to the a roaring, and that around him there was a conflagration feeding on the dry wood and the underbrush of the centuries-old kingdom. (p. 278, emphasis added).
In this history, we also learn that the worst pope of the Dark Ages, Benedict IX, “dabbled in witchcraft and satanism” (p. 132), and that Pius XII believed Karl Marx, the father of Communism, was himself a “dedicated and consecrated Satanist” (p. 175), but that’s about it.
From other sources, it is known that Pope Paul IV was indeed quite concerned about acts of priestly sorcery, but Martin gave no other clue before Keys that I could find that he was indeed aware of diabolic hijinks within the Vatican.
Indeed, Martin made no mention of such a rite at all in his mammoth novel Vatican (1986), of which Windswept House is in many ways but the sequel. This sweeping tale spans the years from the death of Mussolini at the end of World War II up to the election of the pope to follow John Paul II. In it, Martin was not afraid to dish the dirt, starting with the Vatican’s complicity with the Nazi “ratlines” that allowed them to escape to South America in return for stolen fascist gold. (See also the article here.)
It covers in generous detail the entire Vatican Bank scandal, the politics of Vatican II, the KGB infiltration into the heart of the Curia and its use of “liberation theology,” and the Vatican’s counter-moves into Eastern Europe. In doing so, the novel gives a very interesting look into the Vatican’s finances and the forces that actually govern the Church. (Oddly enough, of all the conspiratorial factions who had their hands in the game, the one he never mentioned was the powerful, cult-like ultra-traditionalist group, Opus Dei, which has become a potent player in Vatican affairs, including the banking scandals. He is also quite lenient on his former Jesuit colleagues, despite their involvement with Red-inspired liberation theology.)
Most surprisingly, Martin posited that there was a secret and unspecified “Bargain” between the Holy See and a mysterious governing body — the “Lodge” — that every pope since Pius IX had signed with the “Keeper” — apparently a member of the Roman Black Nobility trusted by both sides. For Pius had lost the ancient Papal States, yet this Devil’s bargain with Freemasonry allowed the Vatican to continue to exist as a political and economic power in the world.
As first set forth in Decline and Fall, Martin saw this diablolic compromise as permitting the world’s wickedness to corrupt the Church by exposing it to the temptation of temporal power, though he had made no mention of a pact with the Masons in that earlier book. The pact, if it exists, was nothing really new, just another step on the long road from Constantine. Though he used transparent psuedonyms, he made it obvious that he regarded John XXIII as a holy dupe and Paul IV, whom he did not like, as an even greater but far less spiritual one. Martin regarded the Ecumenical Council as having been virtually taken over by modernist heretics and Soviet puppets. By the accession of John Paul I to the throne of Peter, one of his characters estimated that in effect, half the bishops in the US were in schism, and a third in heresy. (Other sources have confirmed this is indeed a Curial view.)
In the end, the ultimate villians in Vatican are not corrupt bankers nor priests, nor even the Communists, but a force he called the “Universal Assembly” — a Masonic conspiracy of Western plutocrats, undoubtedly the Illuminati. Although other writers have alleged Curial members belonged to the Masons, Martin even accused Paul IV of being a Masonic Lodge member!
Freemasonry and the Catholic Church have had a long history of antipathy. The Church has long been suspicious of secret societies not under its thumb, and the Masonic claim of being descended from the Knights Templar, condemned as heretics, surely has not helped. Though relations have softened in the years since Vatican II, Masonry is still viewed with much suspicion and Roman Catholics are still forbidden to be freemasons. Even the “good” ones are scorned, much less the “Luciferians”. So how is that members of the Vatican elite could be associated with entities like P2, the infamous lodge involved in the Vatican bank scandals?
In any case, during the decade between novels, as the Catholic Church’s decline and the inability of John Paul II to stem the slide, Martin’s despair grew worse. Did he then merely imagine that satanists had to be responsible, or did he have some secret knowledge?
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A Dark Vision
Just how bad did Martin judge things to be? Extremely so, even if his traditionalist viewpoint saw little difference between homosexuality and pedophilia, neopaganism and satanism:
Suddenly it became unarguable that now during this papacy, the Roman Catholic organization carried a permanent presence of clerics who worshipped Satan and liked it; of bishops and priests who sodomized boys and each other; of nuns who performed the “Black Rites” of Wicca, and who lived in lesbian relationships.. . . every day, including Sundays and Holy Days, acts of heresy and blasphemy and outrage and indifference were committed and permitted at holy Altars by men who had been called to be priests. Sacrilegious actions and rites were not only performed on Christ’s Altars, but had the connivance or at least the tacit permission of certain Cardinals, archbishops, and bishops. . . In total number they were a minority — anything from one to ten percent of Church personnel. But of that minority, many occupied astoundingly high positions or rank.
. . .The facts that brought the Pope to a new level of suffering were mainly two: The systematic organizational links — the network, in other words — that had been established between certain clerical homosexual groups and Satanist covens. And the inordinate power and influence of that network.
(pp. 492-3. Emphasis added)
Vatican and Windswept House are novels where half the fun is trying to guess who the real personages are behind the fiction. Some are made ridiculously easy: the pontiff, who is referred to only as the “Slavic Pope” throughout the latter book, can only be John Paul II, of course.
More intriguing is an evil character described as the “Cardinal of Centurycity,” a powerful American Satanist, supposedly based on the late Cardinal Bernardin of Chicago, but who bears an odd similarity — doubtless coincidental — to Cardinal Roger Mahoney of Los Angeles. While this might just be a barb in the venerable literary tradition of putting one’s enemies in Hell, it must certainly have stirred up discussion in chanceries and rectories everywhere. Unfortunately, most of the other characters, if indeed based on real people, are much more difficult to pin down for someone unacquainted with the Vatican.
But these are minor quibbles. Like Vatican, The Keys of This Blood, and Windswept House were written for a wide and not necessarily Catholic audience, but all three books give an odd feeling of being intended for John Paul II himself. If Vatican was the first warning; Keys was written to show the pope that Martin understood what the pontiff was doing in the geopolitical arena and address his concerns for the Church’s internal situation. (One may be reminded of Machiavelli’s The Prince, written also by a courtier exiled from court.) Windswept House, however, even more than Vatican, is a much more dramatic and desperate plea to the pope to get off his throne and do something.
As for Windswept House, it did not receive the critical acclaim nor widespread publicity of his previous efforts. It has been virtually ignored, even though it was published by Doubleday, a major mainstream house. Reviewers, Martin said, “are steering away from it. They don’t know what to think about it; they don’t know what to say.” But Martin continued to speak out until his death, doing numerous radio interviews, such as regularly on “The Art Bell Show.”
At the time of his passing on July 27, 1999, Martin was at work on what he said would be his most controversial and important book. Primacy: How the Institutional Roman Catholic Church became a Creature of The New World Order was to deal with power and the papacy. This work was to analyze the revolutionary shift that lies at the heart of what many see as the breakdown of papal power. It was to be a book of predictions about the Vatican and the world in the first decades of the new millennium.
As far as is known, he never recanted on any of his claims that the scene in Windswept House was based on an actual satanic ritual in the Vatican in the first days of the reign of Pope Paul VI, nor that there exists a general satanic conspiracy within the Roman Catholic Church.-
March 19, 2013 at 11:27 -
Is that Part 2 ?
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March 19, 2013 at 13:06 -
Belinus. Can we look forward to 5000 words on the Pentacostals? And 5000 Bells rung on the Baptists. 10,000 at least on the Lutherans etc. etc. Or shall we just wait for Gildas’ Pt 2.?
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March 19, 2013 at 13:09 -
I have put Belinus on ‘permanent moderation’ for the foreseeable future – anything longer than a pithy 100 or so word comment and it will be consigned to the cellar, along with the spent carcass of dear Belinus. Enough is enough!
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March 19, 2013 at 14:29 -
tut tut…. bet you bin dying to do that from the first post….religion not your ting anna?
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March 19, 2013 at 14:35
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March 18, 2013 at 12:59 -
Galileo’s trial, witch roasting and the Inquisitions were indeed defining moments in the Roman Catholic Empire’s history of maleficium.
But it requires a colossal act of mind-blowing hypocrisy to restore its podium place alongside Islam and Bankers.-
March 18, 2013 at 13:14 -
The inquisition is an interesting topic. Back in 909 the Benedictine Monastic order was taken over by the Carolingian (the bastard lines).
They reversed the Benedictine doctrine on ownership of property and land.
From this was born the Norman conquest of Britain which became their stronghold.,
The Dominican’s followed suite and became a Norman expression and of course as you all probably know it was the Dominican’s that carried out the Inquisition.
During the reign of Henry VII the monastic orders in Britain came under attack, the direct response to the huge land and property grab the monasteries set forth, and the son Henry VIII decided to sack them all throwing the baby out with the bathwater.-
March 18, 2013 at 14:27 -
I hate to think of God as some kind of radical socialist but He was always abetting a land grab, belinus.
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March 18, 2013 at 17:49 -
Would it not be the case that in the formation of the Church the mighty of their day wanted to find some way of solidifying agreement over constant battle for power, brought to them as a covenant in the man Jesus?
That as such collusion had to be created by the mighty and powerful in order the idea would be spread to all to expand the boundaries of that peace?
After all it is not a good position to live when you run the risk of your wife and daughters being nicked by your neighbour just because his wife is ugly and old, that should you have a few possessions your neighbour has not, might disappear in the night or as you go about your day to day business and just to make sure there is no fuss, you get killed into the bargain, such must have been a reality worth changing.
In that sense the Church was to become the script by which all would behave, especially those nobles (the madmen) because they just could not play nice in the playground without teacher in position with boot and cane.
What happened was that powerful people would act under the charter of a monastery, or abbey who’s sole purpose was to uphold the doctrine to shift from feudal anarchy to sensible landlord. Power remained with the same psychopaths but they learned to treat their tenants better which allowed for the growth of trust amongst equals.
It would appear that so well did this system work that during their lives under peace they saw the validity of the idea and upon death had made preparations for their lands and property to be handed to the monasteries and abbeys, which then shifted to those men and women being buried in the grounds around the same.
That suggests willingness by those who did so to promote the growth of the Church itself, ergo it was a successful endeavour and superior to no church.
Of course with power we know comes the availability for a lot od sex outside the marriage as lowly but perhaps beautiful people offered their bodies to those with the power, and as humans the powerful would disregard the warnings of chastity as decreed by doctrine and bastards were popping up everywhere.
And of course those bastards became adults with a frustrated head…why can I not have the power and the glory assigned to those professing the Christian creed?
game on, they move together , they get smart and move to takeover the inheritance denied them for no fault of their own but for the sin of their parentage.
And of course those that created the bastards in order to remain in with the Christian game would deny their bastards entrance or they too would lose all. This creates anger.
Would it not then be the case that the aim of the bastards would be to usurp that which keeps them poor, forming alliance in mimic of their coveted aims, and when we consider the fact this game went on from the time of the Merovingian, then side by side grew the Carolingian also.
And so it was that battle was on between two branches of the same psychopaths with blood traits the same and so the memories stored within the DNA would position the bastards on the same path as that of their sinful parents, with all the same cunning and ambition, but for the bastards they might lack the wealth and prestige but gained in the fact they were not governed by the doctrine of their parents, as such they could and did use every dirty trick in Lucifer’s book, and became ‘the Lucies’ incarnate of there age.
Now it just so happened that upon in the Scandinavian countries Christianity was not as popular as it was to become in lowland Europe, why? well it interfered with the trade of the many, as such the bastards had allies, warrior allies who became known as the Viking, and promptly set about sacking every Christian entity they could. If you can’t get it through Jesus…nick it.
Which brings us back to Normandy, specifically Burgundy as the good psychopaths allied and built cohesion and abbeys, they too saw the usefulness of utilizing the warrior to further the dream of the Church.
Enter Charles Martel the ultimate warrior, a bastard, a Carolingian but Islam was at the door and so license he was given by the church and its nobles, go get um said they, ok said he, and before you know it Europe was in a little bit of turmoil, but fear not the ultimate king of war was born and trained by his grandfather, Charlamagne would enter the fray and kick the living daylights out of the Gauls and the Saxons for church and Jesus.
Now the Church having unleashed the cracken and being a bunch of girly frock wearing monks were pretty much fucked, and everything would change, but of course those marauding Muslims would be seen no more, that is after the launch of the pseudo-Jewish warriors of the Russian Steppes under King Bulan and his horde of Hun and Magyar conjoined in the rise of the Khazars.
http://www.iahushua.com/JQ/factsR3.html
Clever that Bulan, not wanting to be ruled by the Christian to his right nor the Muslim from the left, he imported Babylonian Talmudians.
And so it was that the bastards took control of the Monasteries in 909 AD, and what could have been a great means of protecting the freedom of the peoples to exist would shift again back to the feudal hell but from behind a cloak of morality that was the doctrines of Christ.
And here we are today falling right back into the bloodiness of war as the bastards move for the world under Babylonian statutes.
And all for a shag outside the wife….
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March 18, 2013 at 12:56 -
If you want to look beyond material concerns and literal interpretations of scripture, you might like to have a look at symbolic interpretation such as that of Alvin Boyd Kuhn. Kuhn
His works are mostly available free online. ‘The Lost Light’ gives an introduction. Lost Light -
March 18, 2013 at 12:54 -
Gildas,
May I please ask a serious question? Do you believe in –
1. God?
2. The Incarnation?
3. The Resurrection of Jesus Christ?
4. Life after death? -
March 18, 2013 at 10:39 -
I wonder if this is a sign of the things to come with the new pope
http://youtu.be/39Hz24H6cJg -
March 18, 2013 at 10:19 -
I had a good friend for 40 odd years. She was from Southern Ireland and steeped in the catholic faith. Mass sometimes 3 times a week BUT she would never allow herself overwhelmed by the trappings and power of the Irish catholic church. She said that the Ireland of the fifties was ‘priest ridden’. Her opinion, not that of her family. Indeed, one older nephew has just returned to his place of birth to live and take part in the ministrations of the local church, opposite his grandmother’s old house. My friend felt the church poked about in your life too much. Priests were too powerful and nuns sometimes overbearing and could try to become claustrophobic ‘friends’. She found English catholicism lighter on her shoulders. I am sorry to say later on,when terminally ill, she found her friends and a couple of relatives more of a help. She sent the priest away. I heard her say ‘this is your last visit, please don’t come again’. I was surprised and knew better than to ask questions. I find religions strange and think they oppress the mind and demand too much control.
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March 18, 2013 at 06:19 -
Father John Edwards died last year. I know this because I have just looked him up having not thought of him for many years. I became acquainted with him as a very young man (me, not him) and I have never forgotten how he could tell a story. He completely bewitched young convent girls who went on ‘retreat’ for a few days to Liverpool and came back transformed in to fervent Catholics with a mammoth crush on this unattainable man. I thought he might have gone further in the RC church because I have never met a priest like him. Being very tall, dark and extremely handsome probably added to his mystique. I never became a Catholic but he did make me think about it. I imagine that those young girls that I taught for a while remember him too. He was like a rock star and they inked his name into their schoolbags. Unbelievable.
Small world eh?
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March 18, 2013 at 04:15 -
Gildas; Instead of asking “What’s wrong with Catholicism?” Why not ask; “What’s right with organised religion?”
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March 18, 2013 at 00:11 -
Hi Gildas, your W,S,S & H is indeed a thoughtful piece, like the sea, deep in parts and also like the egg, good in parts. So many things to agree about, or get cross about.
I’m a Catholic, from birth, which is the easy way to become anything. So in some respects to say one is something from birth adds nothing to a discussion. My education appears to have mirrored yours, both of us attending schools run by Catholic orders, except mine was Christian Brothers, who I long thought were neither Christian nor Brotherly. I’ll never forget those long leather straps they used to belabor us with, seemingly for the most trivial of reasons (like the time I was reported walking along a high brick wall on my way to school, in my school uniform. Six of the best before the whole school, left hand of course, since I wrote with my right. Wouldn’t do to interfere with homework.).
But enough of the lighthearted reminiscences of the good old days.
It is easy to say that those monks were typical of the Church. Of course they are not. They were just unpleasant people, who had gravitated into positions of power over schoolboys.
Similarly I would suggest that the episode in which the local Church tried to block your parent’s choice of Catholic school, did not reflect upon the Church at all, but rather on those people in power, people who might probably been grappling with quota problems or something.
I don’t think there is anything to be gained by casting runes over the future path of the new Pope, or any Pope. Heaven knows, the Church has had it’s fair share of bad, even horrible, Popes. It is tempting for critics to suggest that the Church has had far more bad Popes than the population as a whole has had bad people. But this is assertion cannot be substantiated, since whereas in earlier ages Popes and other rulers had histories, common folk had none. Even nowadays, when one thinks about it, out of our global population in the seven plus billions, we know (a little) about rulers, politicians, slebs, sportspeople, and nothing at all about the common man and woman (excepting our families).
Similarly about the alleged sins of the Church. It is easy to list the sins of any organisation with a history, and let’s face it, no other organisation in history has anything approaching the longevity of the Church. But even so, suppose individuals, or groups point the finger, and indeed they do, frequently, why is it no one ever asks what sins have these accusers committed? As it happens, todays Gospel, (John 8:1-11) has Christ confronted by the Scribes & Pharisees, dragging in an adulterous woman. They wanted Jesus to agree that the woman be stoned, according to the laws of Moses. This was a very tricky situation for anyone to face since to suggest anything other than the Law as laid down by Moses (stoning to death), would in itself leave the speaker exposed to accusations of heresy. Jesus’ answer was quite simple. “Let anyone without sin cast the first stone”. No stones were thrown. Interestingly enough, although quite without relevance, I heard and read this story today in our little local church, somewhere in France.
Then there is Ms Williamson’s work, which says that “…any religion or philosophy which professes no practical application or benefit to problems and issues in this life…is not really worth bothering with.” To be sure, if one accepts that, it effectively disposes of religion. However, when one thinks about it, it also effectively disposes of Big Bang theory, for what practical use can anyone make of “knowing” about the starting moment of the known universe (much less knowing nothing about any period of anything before that). Whoops, there goes a huge section of scientific knowledge! Sorry fellers, blame that nice Ms Williamson!
After a few moments pondering upon the implications of Ms Ponder’s thought that the universe itself is trying to make us rich, I recalled G K Chesterton’s remark, “…When people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing — they believe in anything.”
Which brings us nicely to God. Where do you get this idea that there is a “gentle and loving God”? Before you go too far down that road, consider for yourself the Bible story of the Garden of Eden. Consider what the situation was, what happened and what was the result.Sorry, I could go on, but other matters are pressing….
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March 17, 2013 at 21:31 -
Interesting article. Let me say up front that I consider myself a christian (note the small ‘c’) because I accept the principles on which Christianity is based. I am not a churchgoer.
I share your view of the last Pope. I never liked him but found John Paul to be a capable diplomat and a likeable man. As for this new guy, it remains to be seen if he is more Francis of Assisi or Francis Urquhart…
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March 17, 2013 at 18:58 -
Thank you for this thoughtful piece. Of course you are right to assume that there are people antipathetic to organised religion. I am one of them. For many of my generation the all-loving Christian God who used to intervene within the world from a position outside it disappeared like a puff of smoke up the chimneys of Auschwitz, Treblinka, Belzec and the rest. Just as well, perhaps, as he (wearing his Old Testament hat) was a pretty obnoxious, chauvinistic old tyrant, as no doubt poor old Mrs Lot would testify. Just the sort to pull the wings off a fly as a boy. Anyway, religious doctrine rooted in a fable – a mythical act of disobedience by the mythical parents of the human race – is surely fast losing credibility these days, in the west at any rate.
I don’t mean to decry the New Testament and the profound teachings of Jesus. But to attract widespread credibility these days amonst an educated western population a religious doctrine really has to show that it can comfortably accommodate concepts of a grand nature, corresponding to the awesome size and splendour of the universe we live in. The ancient dogma of institutionalised religions don’t begin to match in grandeur the picture of the universe that western science has revealed to us in recent times. I doubt if they will outlast the discovery, surely not far off, that extraterrestrial life exists, probably in abundance across the universe.
St Augustine had an altogether grander, panentheistic view which present-day religion seems to have lost sight of:
“I imagined…..as if there were a sea everywhere, and everywhere through measureless space nothing but an infinite sea;
and it contained within itself some sort of sponge, large but still finite, so that the sponge would in all its parts be filled
from the immeasurable sea. Thus I conceived thy creation itself to be finite, and filled by thee, the infinite.”
(Confessions, Book 7, Chapter V) -
March 17, 2013 at 17:58 -
Mighty generous assumption being made that “Francesco” is named after the Ascetic of Assisi, and not after Francisco Xavier, an original Jesuit. As soon as I heard he was a Jebby named “Francis,” I knew it was Xavier. And I’m not even a practicing Catholic.
As to the question of whether Catholics have problems being happy, I’m reminded of the saying by, I believe, H.L. Mencken that a Puritan is someone who lives in mortal dread that somewhere, sometime, somehow, someone else is enjoying themselves. Perhaps it is the same with Catholics. In fact, I believe most Catholics, if the truth were known, rather admire Ollie Cromwell, and believe his great sin was burning down Catholic churches (with Catholics inside, it must be said), but, similar to the corny dialogue from mad-scientist films, if only he had used his piety and zeal for the good! Many Catholics have that Puritan belief of the corrupt world in which most people are damned. What separates the Catholics from the Puritans is that Catholics can always be shriven by a man in a frock, and recite the Lord’s Prayer, Ave’s and Gloria’s in the quantity the fellow mandates, in order to feel like they’ve “got right with Jesus,” whereas the Puritans are never really quite sure they are, even unto their death.
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March 17, 2013 at 20:20 -
@ I knew it was Xavier. And I’m not even a practicing Catholic. @
May the Lord forgive you……….
Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio from Argentina chose Francis to be his papal name because St. Francis of Assisi is “the man who gives us this spirit of peace, the poor man,” explained the only Jesuit and first Latin American to be chosen as leader of the Roman Catholic Church.”
http://www.christianpost.com/news/pope-francis-jesus-not-pope-at-the-center-of-the-church-92023/#I65PHBiqvGZiKTfw.99-
March 18, 2013 at 09:20 -
He’s a Jebby. They are very good at concealing things, by a form of taqiyyah. That’s where the expression “jesuitry” comes from. Do the names Southwell and Garnet ring any bells? Of course (recalling Mandy Rice-Davies), “he would say that, wouldn’t he?” It is convenient that he could also point to the founder of the Franciscans as a model, and he may even sincerely believe that by taking the name Francis he honours the gentleman of Assisi as well, and can in all good conscience commend the life and good works of that man to all the faithful. It’s just that the fact of bearing the same name as one of the founders of your order honours that man as well cannot be lost upon him. (Of course, had he chosen “Pope Inigo” (Ignatius de Loyola) it would obviously have been more plain that that was what he was doing, but he didn’t.) And when you consider that Xavier’s work was to “go to all nations” (modern India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Japan) to spread the Gospel, and that, presumably, any modern Pope’s duties will include the same thing, the Xavier connection cannot be dismissed out of hand.
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March 17, 2013 at 17:51 -
Thank God………….
“Pope Francis will not follow Tony Blair”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/the-pope/9932998/Pope-Francis-will-not-follow-Tony-Blair.html -
March 17, 2013 at 17:44 -
Thank You, Gildas. I agree with so very much of what you say. Especially about French Churches when you don’t follow the language all that well, but you always do know where you are and what is going on. In particular, French Funerals are awe inspiring, and you actually feel as though someone has gone to a better place, even if you don’t actually believe it.
I am sometimes good with sarcasm and smart remarks, but not very good at explaining how I really feel. Probably embarrassment, and fear of laying myself open to ridicule, or even tears. I cry at the drop of a hat when I try to explain my wonder, so I don’t.The New Pope? A Jesuit. Our last Priest here was a Jesuit. Such a kind and understanding man who really did live in basic poverty. He died recently, well over 70 and still in office.
I don’t know all that much about The Catholic Faith, having come late to it, but I couldn’t have come to a better man than he was.
I have great hopes for Pope Francis. -
March 17, 2013 at 17:15 -
I had enjoyed the discussion…keep writing I am looking forward to following you.
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March 17, 2013 at 15:40 -
Thanks for the QUADRANT MAGAZINE LINK IP. It coincides with my outlook on child molesting…..close circle and families first and way down the line a collection of others. Read about the Wests and see how they were brought up by molesting in very close family and the terrible damage that resulted. We need to get a sense of proportion in this matter. Attend to those who are being molested now and more recently, where recall is more accurate. This is too much work for some. They prefere to act on historic ‘crimes’, especially when the alleged perpetrator is dead and can be freely molested by the MSM.
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March 17, 2013 at 14:24 -
“Santa Claus, Tooth Fairy, God – what’s the difference ? ”
I consider the first two to be of great importance. They teach a child that adults lie to you about matters of great significance. And help with the child’s eventual realisation that they were lying about the third.
They’re also a great help in the child’s learning about the usefulness of hypocrisy. If you don’t pretend to believe in Santa Claus, you might get fewer presents; if you don’t pretend to believe in the Tooth Fairy, you’ll forfeit the monetary rewards that that belief gets you. So the child is trained in the usefulness of pretending to believe in things that are clearly nonsense, which means that later in life they can more easily join that huge number of people who pretend to believe in God, because if you can fool God into thinking that you believe in him, maybe you’ll get some advantage. And if you can fool other people into thinking you believe in God, you’ll possibly get some social advantage.
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March 17, 2013 at 14:42 -
You do not believe in the tooth fairy….? My my what kind of upbringing did you have?
I will suggest one…an upbringing fixed to all things earthly temple without any idea of spirituality and mythos.
Yes indeed when god ruled Christendom advantage would be gained by promoting the covenant, today however, advantage is gained by promoting the temple of Torah and the enslavement of your fellow man… (see Jobcentre Plus Britain 2013).
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March 17, 2013 at 14:17 -
“Queen Victoria was Jewish girl”
Well, I never knew that. You learn something new from the internet every day.
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March 17, 2013 at 14:32 -
I think the key element of proof to that statement comes in the fact it was in the defiance of the Tzar against her wishes that ultimately ended with the House of Rothschild demolishing the Tzar for not allowing the creation of the 19th century version of a Russian Central Bank and United Nations, which led to both President Lincoln and Russia joining together in the fight against the money masters….
For not allowing the central bank the House of Rothschild promised they would destroy them…and they did. One would think given all the monarchs of the day were Victoria’s family she would have demolished the House of Rothschild during the 19th century for daring to threaten her kin…?
Order of the Garter ladies and gentlemen and its committee of 300 knights, (Committee of 300, the Olympians), understand its power and reach through its control of the fund to which all nations today are yoked, the Bank for International Settlements, its World bank and the monetary fund thereof, the IMF.
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March 17, 2013 at 15:11
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March 17, 2013 at 13:56 -
The thing about religion is that it is good for young people, but most will eventually grow out of it. Today my 4-year-old stepdaughter was packed off to church for the very first time with an 18-year-old friend of my wife, “so that she can learn about Jesus, and learn that if she doesn’t behave herself, God will punish her,” which pretty much sums it all up. I sincerely hope that the church can put the fear of God into her, because these days parents need all the help they can get, and it is damn useful to have a supernatural force on your side that can strike a disobedient child dead just like THAT without any legal consequences.
On the other hand, I remember all too well when I was only 11 years old, I conducted a public experiment on the school cricket field in which I addressed the skies and challenged God to strike me dead if he really existed. Fortunately he stayed his hand, otherwise I would not be writing this. However I did lose some respect for him at that point, because clearly he was not up to the same standard as his long-retired competitor Zeus, the deliverer of thunderbolts,whom I was later to visit at his lair in Crete.
I wish the Pope all the best. I am retired at 61 and the thought of taking on a high-level executive job at the age of 76 would fill me with dread, especially when it is a job that few normal people would want at the best of times. I am sure the Pope knows what I know and a great deal more, which makes his decision all the more courageous. It is a good idea taking the name Francis, as St. Francis loved animals, and although the Pope can never marry or have grandchildren who carry his own genes, I hope that he will get a Papal dog, or possibly a Vaticat, for company, to alleviate the loneliness of life at the top.
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March 17, 2013 at 14:06 -
I agree that in choosing elderly Pontiffs allows for the manipulation of the same by the masonic networks today in full control of the Vatican.
I have learned at great cost that in order to remain under the grace of the heavens one has to abide by the doctrines as set by the new testament.
I understand that each time we break from a particular aspect of doctrine we lose a little grace which leaves us wanting on the earthly plain somewhat. We then to replace what we lost in grace must contract with the kingdom of Earth, a kingdom controlled by Lucifer.In that sense the rise of the statue kingdom is a direct result of en mass loss of grace by individuals, regardless of what religion one claims to support.
Ergo it is not about an institution it is all about ones own personal relationship with the covenant itself.https://www.lifeinthemix.info/2013/01/freedom-first-rights/
There endeth the Sunday Sermon
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March 17, 2013 at 17:58 -
Maybe the reason for electing an ‘elderly’ Pope is nothing more than self-interest.
Most of the under-80 elector-cardinals are also quite elderly themselves, so if they elect a flaky old bloke, there’s every chance he won’t live very long and then, next time round, they all may still get another crack at the top job in only a few years. Elect a fit bloke in his 50s and they’d have no chance – a career-limiting vote if ever there was one.
Cynical ? But maybe nearer to the truth than many dare admit openly, certainly none of the cardinals would. -
March 17, 2013 at 19:07 -
Belinus, please share your secret tincture – and I hope it will not come under any form of price rationing.
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March 17, 2013 at 19:20 -
Not sure it would be for you sir as I am tea total, but I do entertain the heavenly mother on a Sunday…
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March 17, 2013 at 19:26 -
Wot Church do you go to? You can’t get a glass of wine in a Church around here for love nor money.
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March 17, 2013 at 15:19 -
Although I probably sound a bit cynical about religion, I think that once you accept it for what it is, it CAN be quite beneficial. For example, although most right-thinking people probably look down on the fundamentalist and Catholic churches of the US–for some good reasons–once you actually get on the ground in small town America, you see that these institutions play a very useful role in the life of lower middle classes working people, because beside providing religious services, weddings, funerals, etc. there are also a plethora of church based activities for children of all ages and young mothers which are quite free of drugs, alcohol, commercial TV and Internet pornography including child day care, Sunday schools, outings, picnics, choirs, music, summer camps, study groups and may be the only social organisations for families in those communities and certainly the only ones that offer such value for money. So it is not all bad, even if the TV preaching that to some extent feeds these churches is quite nauseating.
Here in the Dominican Republic almost every time I am at the airport in the US, I see groups of typically 12-15 late teens of both sexes with acne and bad haircuts under the supervision of slightly older adults en route to the DR to do “missionary work”. This provides an economical type of summer holiday activity for older teens, again with adult supervision and some alternatives to the usual drugs, pornography, and alcohol type of recreation that far too many fall into if they have nothing better to do. Of course the supervising ministerial staff are probably getting their jollies on the side with willing Dominican sex workers once the teens are tucked up in their cots, but then no one does anything without some kind of quid pro quo these days, and it is better than them doing it with their young charges.
I have never belonged to one myself since I suffer from the sin of pride, not being able to stomach having to pretend to believe in a load of nonsense and then try to influence others in the same direction as the price of admission, but I don’t begrudge others who have the knack of disregarding reality on behalf the the greater good of their family and community.
Of course religion deals hugely in guilt and in the fundamental churches the nonsensical (to me) Doctrine of the Atonement is massively important. The Catholic church (and Anglican, to some extent) too sees itself as the main commercial purveyor of relief from sexual guilt via the sacrament of confession. Those who like myself have very little ability to feel sexual guilt tend to be somewhat immunized against this aspect of religion, but many others may find it invaluable for that purpose.
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March 17, 2013 at 16:01 -
I think what you admit to be pride is in fact a response from sane and logical minds to the insanity pushed by clearly unworthy ecclesiastical garbage, take the Vatican II nonsense on contraception as example.
The Church has failed not because of the sins (off the mark) of the catholic people but for the outright sins of the priests, the bishops, Cardinals and pontiffs in allowing a shift from doctrine to let’s face it, to a doctrine of bollocks.
In so doing they have led the faithful astray, yet itself the consequence of foregoing your personal connection to spiritual doctrine to that as laid out by an earthly institution peopled by man.
That said any moral human would not follow a doctrine just because it comes from the designated font of all wisdom, clearly a position not enjoyed by the institution itself. But for children to come to such doctrines has the effect that error is promoted as fact, and for that the Vatican is responsible and today it is being thrown asunder.
Therefore it is not for Catholics to take on the sins of the Church, be they lay or priesthood, unless they choose to do so.
To my soul the Church has been in error in the manner in which it understood the divinity, not of Jesus the man, but in the message he brought back to man, ergo it has been pushed that he was a man-god when in reality the message was of god and therefore a divine doctrine.
The error is in confusing the divinity of the doctrine with the divinity of the man, though to bring forth that doctrine the man and the divinity are connected.
One error begets a million errors over the time-frame of the Church, and that is the conclusion of absolute obedience to an earthly institution over that of the doctrine itself by those given the mandate to uphold the doctrine.
A clear sign that the Church fathers have been more in tune to the human aspect of earthly existence over that of the heavenly kingdom.I believe the great spirit is teaching this very truth to all man as we witness the destruction of an institution, yet we will suffer the same until it is realised that man and heaven connect within ourselves, that doctrine is there to light the path to oneness with the will of heaven.
A clear case of remembering ones own spiritual power over that of the power we perceive to be with the kingdom of earth.
We need to learn to say no, and mean it, even unto our earthly demise, the message encompassed in the life of the man we call Jesus.I am afraid thee Evangelicals and all such derivatives are in the for the shock of their lives when the end for them as individuals comes… and I say that because it is they who are in the driving seat to all things statutory control of our entire civil system through their position as charitable trusts ultimately operating for the masonic networks.
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March 17, 2013 at 16:42 -
I think what you admit to be pride is in fact a response from sane and logical minds to the insanity pushed by clearly unworthy ecclesiastical garbage, take the Vatican II nonsense on contraception as example.
Yes, but I suspect an awful lot of sane and logical people just swallow their pride and go along with the program so that the wife and kids can participate in various activities sponsored by the church or The Church.
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March 17, 2013 at 17:51 -
I would then suggest those claiming sanity and a logical mind are deluded.
relating to the guilt issue you presented, I understand that to be the conscience and its play in our lives, something the earth kingdom suppresses in order one can deride ones own spirit to further act against the soul. The idea of confession is to allow the conscience to balance again and the man to go on without becoming so wrapped in guilt to the point they do not become strangled by it and ripe for entrance into the world of the damned.God loves a sinner because that is how we learn our misdirected actions, but for some they move beyond the grace and become lost to the realm of the fallen, who of course being the most terrified of men need contract to feel secure in their movements.
I have never seen it written that god demands a written contract, the relationship with whom is from within in, a personal vocalised agreement.
The realm of heaven is of the spoken word the earthly realm is of the written, and perhaps the reason the early church frowned upon translations of the texts from Latin.
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March 17, 2013 at 13:45 -
I suspected long ago that the Church intends to allow the South American continent to become the new Catholicism, with this new pope my thoughts are confirmed.
The next move is to demolish the European Catholicism which of course is the original doctrine.Vatican II positions the Church at its highest levels of doctrine under the command of the Zionised Russian Orthodox Church, for this reality in Russia some 50 million Catholic Christian’s were slaughtered.
History has been slanted and millions murdered to get this far, for instance, there were more German Catholics and Freemasons murdered by the Third Reich than there was Jews. A reality required in order Germany would shift into the Theosophical Masonry it expresses along with global Freemasonry today.
The key comes in the form of the fact, Queen Victoria was Jewish girl and as yet I have still to find evidence that she ever entered St Pauls cathedral.
My ancestors were big Stoneyhurst Jesuits, they built the Church Sacred heart in my home town at which I was Christened. The Church has today been demolished.
I however was not brought up with religion, save for the Evangelical Cof E education I received. Itself enough to terrify any child from giving Jesus the time of day.
Today Stoneyhurst is the home of the masonic networks in Lancashire, how do I know this…? Quite simply it was the Masonic networks that gave me my introduction to all things elitism as I entered their mystery school in 1993 under the light of Prince Charles. That of course was my own fault for joining the British Parachute Regiment in 1987.In the year 2000 I left the networks and began to expose their games at my old high school in which they intended to kick off the race riots. I was successful in preventing the riots taking place in Accrington, a reality not enjoyed by Burnley, Oldham, and Bradford.
It was the study of history that helped me understand the need for Christianity as a doctrine for the creation of a great system to protect the people from the slavery of the Temple of the Torah, therefore i came to the subject of religion without having been brainwashed by Vatican II.
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March 17, 2013 at 15:13
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March 17, 2013 at 13:32 -
Thanks for your thoughtful words Gildas. I find the the new pope to look like Pope Pius, who sided with the other lot in WW2. He is from unfriendly Argentina. Has unwelcome views on the Falklands. So I feel rather wary about him, no matter what his humble presentation might signify. The retired pope was creepy. After Pope John he struggled. If the tourists and the faithful like showy pomp, lace and tall hats, no matter. Lots of religions have/had weirdly dressed ceremonies and have done so down the centuries……maybe some of us do have a God particle. Humans like ceremonial in many circumstances the world over. I have no strong views one way or another but I dislike strident atheism, surely another religion!. Just let the god lot get on with it and keep quiet. I hope the RC church can somehow get over the child molesting issues and get on with the practical good works it has always done in a cruel world.
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March 17, 2013 at 13:38 -
Gildas, sir, you might like to review this article before part 2.
http://www.quadrant.org.au/magazine/issue/2013/1-2/father-scapegoat
It takes a much closer, as well as a broader look at the sex scandals issue.
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March 17, 2013 at 18:00 -
Ahh Australia… well perhaps you might want to read this also before Australia is pushed up the pulpit as any kind of moral entity :
https://www.lifeinthemix.info/2012/03/profile-alpha-lodges/
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March 17, 2013 at 13:11 -
Sorry about the duplicate post, I am a geriatric
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March 17, 2013 at 13:25 -
If one were to rank/order Catholic, Protestant, atheist, Muslim, Jain, Jew, Geriatric, which order would you put them, Robbo?
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March 17, 2013 at 13:07 -
What is wrong with the Catholic Church?
Quite simply Vatican II :
https://www.lifeinthemix.info/category/vatican-ii/Malachi Martin, ex Jesuit Priest and advisor to three Popes explains it very well indeed :
https://www.lifeinthemix.info/2012/07/hostage-devil-malachi-martin/What Christian’s have failed to understand is the fact our entire British common law system is based in Canon Law, when the Church goes under statute we lose all :
https://www.lifeinthemix.info/2013/03/sue-pope-anti-thesis-place/I believe Benedict was a good man and has been forced to leave in order the anti-pope was installed. This new one appears more concerned with confusing the Catholics of Britain in his immediate stance on the political script that is the Falkland Islands.
And for an interesting read on China :
https://www.lifeinthemix.info/2013/03/china-raising-dragon-serpents-torah/Malachi believed that the Church is being crucified in the same manner as its chief, ergo god has left the building with the Benedict resignation and underground it goes again. The church through Vatican II has lost grace, and back we are to the real truth of Christianity…that it has always been a personal connection with god through the covenant that is the New Testament, over the false covenant that is the Old Testament.
And for the simple test to this reality, the Torah likes slavery the new Testament does not. Which is in force today over the new order being forced upon us?
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March 17, 2013 at 14:11 -
I would just add that in this Pontiff playing the script of the Falklands, a script the Argentinians have no time for, it will divide the Catholics of Europe as a whole, after all those European Catholics have never been fond of Blighty and any excuse to demoralise the Brits will not go un-acted.
The damn fiction is by far the prime theatre acted today….
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March 17, 2013 at 12:58 -
My late wife,s great grandad was persuaded by a priest to give up his life savings (gold sovereigns) in exchange for paper marks( first world war time) he died a broken man in his fifties died
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March 17, 2013
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