THE MORTAL SIN OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
by
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Was it perhaps Ben Franklin who said, “No one was ever argued away from a position that they weren’t first argued into?” Consider your own experience. The beliefs that came to you with mother’s milk and other family conditioning, have you given any of them up because you were persuaded by argument? Now consider the experience of imprisonment. Is it really a prison if you don’t know it or experience it as such? For example, Siddhartha Shakymuni, before he became known as the Buddha (lit. “the Awakened One”) was kept safe and secure by his father the King of Shakya in a pleasure palace. Surrounded by only beautiful young people and entertained with whatever delights a king could provide, he was in a golden cage he didn’t regard as a prison. Until one night when he snuck out. Suddenly “the real world” of “old age, sickness and death” on the streets of his home town changed his view. Spurred by lifetimes of compassion in service as a bodhisattva, Siddhartha fled the artificial confines of his gilded cage and devoted this next period of his life to finding the cause of suffering. To escape from a prison you must first recognize your surroundings as imprisonment. The advice to “think outside the box” is all well and good, but to do it you must first recognize where and what the walls of your box are. Note, however, that being aware of your prison walls might not by itself be enough to motivate you to escape. Siddhartha could have fled back to the security of his pleasure palace after first seeing old age, sickness and death on the streets of Shakya. In Plato’s famous cave analogy, the men chained facing a blank wall with only the shadows from passers-by at the sunlit opening of their shallow cave to entertain them, chose to stay chained even after one of their own escaped and returned to offer them freedom. They chose their prison over escape. In the film “Shawshank Redemption,” the convict Brooks finally is let out after fifty years of imprisonment. He soon hangs himself because he can’t adjust to “the real world.” He had become so “institutionalized” that he felt only safe and secure while in prison. This book is about the prison the Catholic Church disguises as pasture for its sheep. If a sheep is unaware of being “flocked up,” or being aware, chooses to stay with the herd, that’s understandable. What’s hard to understand is the how, why’s and wherefore’s of the Catholic Church confining the faithful like sheep in a pen of orthodoxy. Hard to understand and condone until one sees clearly that the faithful were made to think of themselves and addressed like sheep in sheep’s clothing when their souls true nature has the immediate splendor of royalty. The mortal sin of the Catholic Church amounts to an egregious cheat and a con. The Church convinced the faithful of the con that by nature they are convicts deserving their earthly imprisonment. The revelation that their soul is the potential to be one with All That Is could have freed them from the illusory prison of separation from their Divine Source. They were cheated out of that knowledge. It did not find favor with the Church authorities to teach it because that would have undermined their position of absolute power and control. My intent in writing this book is not just to call out the cheat and con perpetrated by the Catholic Church, but to show the faithful a clear look at their sheep pen. Knowing the pen for what it is, they have the option to escape.
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This book is about the prison the Catholic Church disguises as pasture for its sheep. If a sheep is unaware of being “flocked up,” or being aware, chooses to stay with the herd, that’s understandable. What’s hard to understand is the how, why’s and wherefore’s of the Catholic Church confining the faithful like sheep in a pen of orthodoxy. Hard to understand and condone until one sees clearly that the faithful were made to think of themselves and addressed like sheep in sheep’s clothing when their souls true nature has the immediate splendor of royalty. The mortal sin of the Catholic Church amounts to an egregious cheat and a con. The Church convinced the faithful of the con that by nature they are convicts deserving their earthly imprisonment. The revelation that their soul is the potential to be one with All That Is could have freed them from the illusory prison of separation from their Divine Source. They were cheated out of that knowledge. It did not find favor with the Church authorities to teach it because that would have undermined their position of absolute power and control. My intent in writing this book is not just to call out the cheat and con perpetrated by the Catholic Church, but to show the faithful a clear look at their sheep pen. Knowing the pen for what it is, they have the option to escape.