Defining Left and Right

It is just one more example of the general idiocy of the Age that the Political Left and Right haven’t the self-consciousness to remain consistent to their own aims and agendas. Right-Wingers run plays from out of the traditional Left-Wing Game Book, and moronic Leftist, their heads spinning from Generations of Right Wing Propaganda, while still holding dear to their Leftist Social Sympathies, are actually more firm than any Right-Winger in renouncing the Traditional Leftist Means of ever achieving or implementing their Social and Political Goals.

First, let’s start with the basic definitions. The Right is for the Individual. The Right sees Order and Civilization as the Enemy. Their big Propaganda Buzzword is FREEDOM, but what is actually meant is ANARCHY. The Quintessential Right-Winger will reject any Civilized Institution, any Law, any means of establishing Order. You see, the Quintessential Right-Winger is convinced to the bone that in any fluid situation of utter chaos and confusion, that some Heroic Individual of Talent and Ability will be able to step in and assert his own Order, basically by asserting Personal Ownership over everything within his reach. In such a World View, any pre-existing Law and Order represents an obstacle that needs to be surmounted. Genghis Khan and Attila the Hun, as Free as anybody has ever been, never whined and cried about Law and Order and Family Values.

The Left is about Civilization and Community. The Left is about Collective Security against the Predatory Individuals from the Right – those advocates of Absolute Freedom from the Right, the Barbarians we were just speaking of. The Left is about the propagation and indoctrination of Moralities, in order to suppress through Culture and Traditions the animal impulses that support the Barbarian Right Wing Way of Life. The Left is all about Law, Order, Rules, Regulations. So anytime some Individual somewhere finds a new way to abuse, cheat, rip-off, or otherwise exploit and assert ownership over other people, enslaving his fellow Man, as it were, then the Left should find it as an occasion to make a New Law, a New Moral Distinction. The Left can therefore be defined in terms of the political means a Group takes to collectively protect itself from the predations and abuses of Free Predatory Individuals.

If one has trouble with Right and Left, think in terms of Wolves and Sheep, foxes and henhouses, tigers and the helpless Jungle Villagers. Predators verses the Herd. Yes, yes, the Right loves to see themselves as Noble Lions and Tigers and they have quite a disdain for the lowly Herd. The Vikings had put Horns on their helmets to give themselves a more Predatory animalistic presence. Athletic Teams tend to favor the more Predatory Animal Names. Thousands of Sport Franchises have their ubiquitous Lions, Tigers and Bears, but I seriously doubt that amidst all of that whether one can find a single Team of “Sheep” in the entire world. But, honestly speaking, the Right Wingers should remember that they are indeed Human too, and that their preoccupation with imagining and identifying themselves with Predators is an irrational insanity and a dissociation from Humanity. The World has every reason to be weary of such delusional fantasies. If a Wolf is dangerous, then what should we say of a man who thinks he is a wolf?

Now we arrive to where I have my misgivings. There is such Ideological Impurity in the World. The Right Wing, nowadays, are forever making one Law after another. Whatever happened to making the most out of Chaos. Yes, I suppose they see the advantages in making their own Rules – tax codes that exempt themselves, using the Mechanisms of Civilized Institutions to destroy Civilization. However, by continuing to co-opt the devices of Law and Order, they tacitly endorse the Law and Order which they should rather naturally wish to suppress. While they may be violating and perverting the true intentions of Law and Order, by retaining the Institutions, even if weakened and withered, Civilization, their Enemy, is nonetheless allowed to survive at least in skeletal form. Really, the next time the Republicans come to power, they need to do what the Soviet Bureaucrats had done when they had the opportunity to destroy their own Civilization by handing it over to Thugs, Mafioso, and that huge rolling Sea of Corrupt Russian Drunks, that is, simply take all the funds for themselves, and then sell-off all the Property of Government and the Courts, then walk out slapping a lock on the door as they leave. There! All Law and Order was gone in a moment! So it could have been for the American Right Wing, especially when they controlled both Legislative Houses and the Presidency. Government had always been their much declared Enemy, and so why all of their endless dicking around whenever they got into Power. Yes, they were obviously trying to kill Government with Deficit Spending, while making money at the same time -- all that Right Wing Government Spending, financed by Debt, was being funneled into their own pockets – simple Pillaging, after all, but they really need to check their own Investment Portfolios, to see how many Bonds for that Debt they are carrying themselves. Ordinary Poor People don’t exactly have a trunk-load of Government Bonds stuffed under their beds. No Government will ever let itself Die by Debt, especially if by renouncing that Debt, all of its own worst Enemies could be taken down, and the subsequent Re-Organization done under sunnier Political Skies.

Now, before discussing the Sins of the Left, let’s pick on that hint from the last paragraph referring to the Collapse of the Soviet Union, certainly a curious puzzle for those on the Left. What happened was a series of things. Everything was fine while Stalin was still in power. He had every anti-social element well locked up or chopping logs in Siberia. But Stalin died in ’53 and things slowly started going to hell. Khrushchev, his successor, was a reformer. He freed up the Criminal Elements, allowing the rise of Corruption and a Black Market. Brezhnev followed up by allowing an Exodus from the Soviet Union. American President Jimmy Carter urged a release of Political Prisoners, but the Soviet Union used the opportunity to exile all of its worst Criminals who were yet behind bars. The worst most amoral villains known in the History of the World were released to freely swarm upon the Globe. What this accomplished was to give the Russian Mobs access to valuable Western Currencies and to give them International Connections, allies in the British and American Spy Agencies, Corporations, etc. As things in the Soviet Union became worse, the Most Stupid Leader in the History of the World, Gorbachev, did everything he could imagine to aggravate the situation. Gorbachev promised a full blown campaign against Corruption, making the complete structural institutionalized Bureaucracy of the Soviet Union feel desperate for their own future… even for their own safety. Then, in discussions with the West, Gorbachev gave indications that he was willing to begin with democratic reforms and the privatization of Soviet Property. So the same Bureaucrats who feared being arrested at any moment now saw the likelihood that they would soon be tossed out of their Government and Economic Administrative Posts by either elected officials or private owners and corporate managers. So, coordinating their efforts with the various Black Market Bosses, the frightened and insecure Bureaucrats simply Privatized the Soviet Union to themselves and their allies in Corruption before Gorbachev was allowed to cut them all out of the action. But really, seen as a Historical Continuum, eventual failure was quite ordained the very moment when the Stalinist Ideological Purity was allowed to be so drastically violated, first by tolerating the freedom of Criminal Elements, and especially in releasing thousands of detainees who must have hated the Soviet System, and then finally in relaxing the strict and almost Universal Surveillance that Stalin had exercised that had been so successful in suppressing Corruption and Criminality.

And this brings to mind the greatest problem with the Left today, that they do not seem to recognize that Government, Law and Order are their natural Allies. The American and European Left had never really survived the Fascist Right Wing Propaganda attacks from the 1930’s and ‘40’s. Such Right Wings Pamphlets as “1984”, “Brave New World”, and Ayn Rand’s fascist scriptures. The Fascist West had united in declaring Government to be the Worst Enemy of an Enlightened Humanity. We should note, albeit reluctantly, that everyone thought Germany and Hitler were just fine until the Berlin-Moscow Pact signaled that Germany would no longer be Europe’s willing and even enthusiastic buffer against International Communism. Germany only became the Enemy when it seemed to ally with Russia. Then Germany, apparently to appease the West, attacked Russia, hoping for a quick Peace Deal with Britain and America. Yes, while the West declared no separate Peace, retaining the Soviet Union as a nominal Ally, we do notice that there was no longer the same priority placed on swiftly defeating Germany, not until after the Soviet Union had finally defeated the German Armies surrounding Moscow, Leningrad, and Stalingrad and began the push to expel the Germans entirely from Soviet Territory, signaling to the West that Germany could no longer be useful as a Proxy Army against Russia.

Anyway, the Anti-Communist propaganda at the time was so thick, and then the actual political, social and economic persecutions against the Left so effective, that to this very Day, the Left is still shy about recognizing its natural affinity to Government, Law, and the forces of Security and Surveillance.

Look at what we have today. The A.C.L.U.(American Civil Liberties Union) seen as a Bastion of the Left by American Right-Wingers, is more prone to protect Privacy Issues than almost anything else. Did Stalin ever twitch a finger to protect anybody’s privacy!? And why on earth would the Left ever wish to protect Privacy anyway?

Oh, yes. When the Left was being persecuted by a Fascist Right Wing, they co-opted the Right Wing’s own Privacy Concerns for themselves, so they could keep their own Secret Cells, well, secret. Yes, this was a good working tactic, for a moment in History – turning the Enemy’s own ideals against them. But after a Generation, people forget that it was only a sham!

The same applies to the Rights of the Individual. The Left’s priority should be about protecting the Community and the Sanctify of Central Government. The Left should be all about sustaining Social Order. Let the Right Wing worry about Individual Rights. The Right to Protest, taken into the Real World, is the really only just the Right to Riot. No Movement EVER really intends only to “Peacefully Protest”. What really happens is that Revolutionaries gather in a Capital City and collect themselves and wait, to see if they eventually can reach sufficient numbers, enough critical mass, to successfully capture control of the various Government Buildings and then behead everybody who gets in their way as they set up their own Regime. Now, why would any coherent Government allow for such a thing? Yes, it is the Strategy for Western Powers, who wish to destabilize existing Governments throughout the World, to insist that these governments surrender to their internal Revolutionary Forces. But even the United States does not tolerate large ‘Demonstrations’, not without enough of the requisite Permits and Conditions to leave them thoroughly de-fanged. We find Protest “Organizers” agreeing that all the ‘Protestors’ will arrive on buses, stay just for a single day, and then leave. Yes, there must even be a certain number of outdoor toilets. These are practically Government Sponsored Shows… Tour Groups… nothing like a really Protest, a real Riot. Oh, by the way, am I the only one to have noticed that whenever there is an actual Riot anywhere in the World, the Western Media refers to the rioters, without exception, as ‘peaceful protestors’. Oh, and no matter what the real issue is, the Western Media always insists that the rioters are “Pro-Democracy Protestors”.

Yes, there are Idiots on the Left who think that they can use an Institutionalized Governmental Leniency toward Protest and Riot in order to gather Revolutionary Political Power. But ultimately leaning upon such Ideological Inconsistencies is a huge mistake. One can not achieve Power through Insurrection and Riot and then suddenly clamp down against those very same things. Look at America – born out of Treason and Terror, Murder and Lawlessness – but now appearing so extremely hypocritical when it moves politically against modern Terrorists and Murderers – Modern George Washington’s and Modern Ben Franklin’s. Its better to simply disallow such underhanded and sordid violence from first to last. Law and Order must be achieved through Law and Order.

So it would be better for the Left to arrive to power by some legitimate Social Contract, and then to thoroughly institutionalize Independent Government and Centralized Planning, securing itself against every serious criminal threat as well as every avenue for serious Corruption. There should no longer be any shyness issues regarding Privacy. Honest Men have nothing to Hide, should be the Motto of the Day.

Oh, that above paragraph must have seemed quite scary to those conditioned to hate Civilized effective Government. We still are so thoroughly conditioned to hope in Democracy, despite our collective experiences in that regards. However, we need to seriously look at our Modern Problems. There is Global Warming. The World is running out of Food and Water. Petroleum is running out. Monetary Stability is not likely to improve as Debt Levels continue to increase. And War Profiteers do everything to instigate and then perpetuate New Wars. So by now we certainly should be entirely sure that Right Wing Governments, and even Mixed Right-Wing Left-Wing Governments, both sides sold out to Private Special Interests, could not possibly act in time to save anything. The influence of Private Interests even in the Election of nominally ‘Leftist’ Candidates and Parties is enough to guarantee that they would effectively act as Agents for the Right Wing. Once Independence is Surrendered, its all Right Wing after that. A True Left Wing must be entirely Public, Entirely Governmental, entirely Independent. Any Private Interest, any Special Interest that attempts to influence Government for its own personal and private ends is what it is – Criminal Corruption. The euphemism for it is ‘Lobbying’. Lobbying is what you get when you write laws legalizing bribery.

Yes, this essay must seem rather stark, for those who still support the Revolution of Modern Democracy. But keep in mind that Democracy was only a Historical Experiment. Tried only several times in History, it had never worked, not on a sustainable basis. Democracy was only a tool used by Internal Barbarians to overthrow weakened Kings or Decadent Oligarchies. For instance, the World today is still entangled in a Democratic Revolution because some selfish French Aristocrats were reluctant to pay taxes to their King and so they chopped his head off, and used the excuse of Democracy to make a Virtue of their Greed and Treachery.

Appearing only in weakened Civilizations, Democracies never proved able to rescue them. Actually, they only accelerated the ensuing Collapses. Yes, the Ancient democracies may have appeared successful in their particular moment – using Wars of Democratic Revolution hand in hand with Economic Imperialism they were able to gather some momentary Wealth, but then they quickly collapsed into Socio-Economic Ruin and Class Turmoil and Rebellion. Modern Western Democracy is demonstrating no effective innovations over the Ancient Democracies, but rather seems to be going down exactly the same road toward absolute Collapse.

I’ve read a great many books about current Politics. Whether from the Right or the Left, the books seem to agree upon One Thing – that Modern Democracy is simply not working. The Right blames the Left. The Left blames the Right. They are both right in that Faction stifles Faction. Government by competing and even compromising Factions will not work for us… not in our present extremes. The established Institutions and Practices of Democracy preclude the workings of an Effective, Independent and Non-Corrupt Government.

Now let us determine whether we should chose for the Left or the Right. The deciding factors are rather simple enough to easily grasp. Right Wing Barbarian Societies do best in sparsely populated areas – vast tracks of land are well suited for Herders and Hunter Gatherers – what we now call ‘Ranchers’. Barbarian Individuals can set up their own territory zones (ranches), and even get into pitched battles once in a while to straighten out border disputes and bolster all the traditional bragging about ‘spilling blood for the land’, and all that, but as long as the Population Density stays rather thin, not many people will get hurt and everything could continue on well enough… all until Population Levels rise. When there is no longer enough land for every Free Man, and people are pushed into slavery or servitude, then the real problems begin. The Golden Age for any Free Barbarian Regime is necessarily short lived, as Population Pressures force either a drastic restructuring of social institutions, or the pressures culminate in a devastating Civil Conflict that turns the Clock back to the very first minute and everything must be started all over again.

Of course, various Societies and Institutions have evolved, and they have all been something of a mix between Civilization and Barbarism to the extent that they can support more or less of a Population Density. To know how Civilized a Social Form is, simply look it up in History and determine how densely populated that Society became before it imploded under the combined forces of Disease, Famine, Rebellion and Invasion. So far China has seemed to be able to keep the most people living together side by side, but repeatedly even they have hit their effective Population Density Ceiling. So it seems that China must learn for the Future either how to become even more Civilized, or how to limit their Population Density to within a certain range. Hmmmmm… it might mean the same thing.


Anyway, we have our own Population Densities to worry about. If we must support a High Population Density, then we need a Highly Ordered Society. The greater the Population Density we expect to encounter, the more Highly Ordered our Society will have to become in response. In the most Highly Dense Societies every Human Resource and Requirement must necessarily be planned for, controlled, and even backed up with some form of social insurance. Crime and Corruption are Cancers which necessarily must be surgically removed at the earliest detection.

If the Right Wing wishes to predominate, then they have only one workable choice, which must certainly have occurred to somebody in one of their multi-million dollar Think Tank Organizations, and that is to instigate a Global Genocide – by War, Famine or Disease – in order to get the Population Density Levels back down to the levels manageable by the relatively Barbaric Liberal Democracies that they seem to insist upon. But if we wish for the World to survive along the same lines of growth in which it is traveling now, then we need to recognize that a Highly Structured Civilization is required. This complex structure would have to include the kinds of Central Planning and Security Surveillance Institutions that are familiar to us from the Traditional Left Wing… and an Ideologically Pure Left Wing at that. Not a squeamish and shy Left Wing Ideology, but a very take charge and in Control Left Wing.

The Age of the Unthinkable, A Review

A grasping, stupid but obviously well connected author (to get such a moronic book published and then distributed), Joshua Cooper Ramo, wrote a book he called “The Age of the Unthinkable”. He should have called it “Writing a Book without Thinking”. I suppose he envied the success of that “Tipping Point” book, and supposed any anecdotal book could do well enough to pay him for his time. I am sad that I bought the thing, as I only helped him to pay off on cynical argument.

What is wrong with the book? Well, while we hope that intellectual books should be helpful, this book, while looking for anything helpful, is largely pointless. But, following the books logic, it is actually partisan to a great deal of harm. What the book does, over and over again with its anecdotes, is show how screwed up the World is, but then again and again point out how a great many people, while contributing plenty to the disasters and catastrophes, are having great fun and making some big profits. Again and again the underlying intent of the book is to raise the question, that if so many people are still making such a ‘killing’, then how bad could it all be? As long as some people are still getting rich, it must still be all okay. Never once does the author evaluate the possibility of whether or not these new pockets of private special interests are helping or hurting the cause for the survival of our obviously endangered Civilization. Like so much in modern Media Thought, the good of the many is sacrificed to the lusts and decadence of the most successfully selfish Individual. We are all playing “King of the Mountain” and as long as we can all still point to a Winner, then the Game is not in vain. It never seems to matter that the game makes Losers of us all, all but the morally worst among us.

Oh, I don’t mean to imply that it was all about money. Often enough the author goes from speaking of making a financial killing to simply speaking in praise of actual murder. After all, who can speak of success in this Modern Age of ours without touching upon facility in slaughter as a huge plus in making one’s way in today’s quick paced World. We have anecdotes of an Israeli Intelligence Officer who overwhelmed every expectation on how many Palestinians, Lebanese, and Syrians he was able to have assassinated. How useful! All this unjust State Murder, practically from his own hand, could cause even greater Outrage all throughout the entire Middle East, necessitating even more and more Military Expenditures, even more Grants and Loans from the United States – all contributing to strengthen the position of the Special Interests that hired him on to begin with. What a great success! No Special Interest is really Evil and Corrupt that can still hire such bright and talented individuals. There is no Wrong that a little Cleverness cannot make Right. And the author gives us quite the moral guarantee that this is all simply wonderful!

But the author wished to be seen as being politically even-handed and fair, and so he treats us to a chapter and a half on how wonderful the Terrorist Organization Hizb’allah is. You see, being so proficient at staying ahead of Our Heroes, the Israeli Army, Hisb’allah couldn’t be all bad! Again, the notion that Success justifies anything, everything. Are we ever encouraged to wonder how Hisb’allah had so come to dominate Lebanese Politics? A bunch of men with guns and ammo belts. Hmmmm? The author never suggests any other possibility for Hizb’allah’s advancement other than that they must have been exceptionally smart, kind and caring. Not a word that could raise the awkward suspicion that Hisb’allah had only out-murdered all other factions in a bloody civil-war, but, then again, the Author did not need to hide from any such conclusion, as it would only fit well enough with his primary premise – anything for the sake of success. I suppose the only Reform our Author could suggest, if he could think that far, would be that people should be paid directly for such large Body Counts. If we can Praise Murder, then surely we can Pay for it!

Of course, the Author, knowing all this, also knows that it would be in horribly bad taste to spell out any of his implied conclusions. So he presents all of his arguments, while consistently leaving out the very last steps, the conclusions, the morals, or rather the anti-morals, of the story. Every chapter of the book therefore comes off as inconclusive. Just when the time comes to sum up his Point, he doesn’t. The end of the book suffers in the same way, that the Author couldn’t possibly admit to the grand purpose of his book without appearing to be the very devil incarnate himself. But he had to say something. So he tells us that the entire planet might be saved if we follow the tenure of all the examples he has given – the Israeli Assassins, the Hizb’allah Terrorists, the various Wall Street Predators who DIDN’T get caught, AND if we are all decent and caring. DECENT and CARING!? Didn’t he listen to himself? How possibly could Decency and Caring have anything to do with anything he had just set forth!? Never for even a single moment had he turned aside from success stories in murder, mayhem and economic anarchy, to suggest that decency or caring could ever ruin a competitor or kill an enemy. Oh, wait, he in fact did suggest that murders do indeed lead to further murders. So sad. But he leaves it there, never proposing how any Special Interest Group could ever possibly bring this Killing to an End by somehow monetizing the interests of Peace. Again, the Author is so thoughtless! Given just a moment to think about it, the Answer is Clear as a Bell – we could keep people Hostage – instead of just killing everybody, like all his other Success Stories, we could make people pay to stay Alive. Peace at last! Peace at Last! Thank God Almighty, Peace at last! Peace and a huge Profit Margin! Finally, decency and caring triumph!

Now shouldn’t we wonder that all of this moral ambiguity and applied cynicism – cynicism with a hug and a smile – must have made sense to the author. Well, after all, he was a protégé of Henry Kissinger. Just think how many resumes Henry must have plowed through before he found this Star. Then one must wonder of the absolute miracle that any Morality is left intact in the World while all the substantial rewards go to Evil. Virtues only consolation is the thought that all the Evil People must find it an absolute bitch to compete with each other. Success is so Fine, but they all look so tired out from the Effort. Even at the top of the World, Henry looked like a broken man.

Oh, and the book was so needlessly short. Sixteen dollars should have bought a few hundred pages more than 250. Plenty more could have been looked at to support the Authors ideas of gleaning Profits out of Chaos. Why, it is a shame the book did not look back to support itself with History. There could have been so much! For instance, how helpful might it have been to compare the slow and stagnating progress of Civilization in Europe of the Ninth and Tenth Century, as compared to admirably quick Success the Vikings had in sweeping all that wealth into their own pockets almost overnight. The Monasteries took centuries to accumulate what the Vikings could steal on a good evening. What a wonderful business plan those Vikings had! And “barbarian” is only just a name. Don’t be misled by mere labels. What really matters is the Success! Yes, burning down a Cathedral to steal a candlestick might seem such a waste. But there’s no Overhead! There is no Candlestick like a free and clear Candlestick!

Oh, and the author might have given us an example from the Natural World. For instance, the Human Body itself. So slow it is. It takes a life time to grow a Human Body. Even in a child, weeks or months can go by without even noticing any increase, any obvious growth, not even incrementally. But a Tiger could rip a child apart in a minute. So we should all be tigers! Or even vultures. Even maggots can reduce a body to bones in just a few days. Violence and Decay are so quick, so Successful! Abandon Life and all those slow processes. Rome was not built in a Day, so to hell with Rome! Let us destroy instead. In these days, to be successful, one must be a Predator or at least a Scavenger. But be sure to be decent and caring about it! As long as we can add a kind word, any sin is forgiven.

Paul the Holy Spirit and Gnosticism

Paul the Holy Spirit and Gnosticism

The biggest problem with the Paulist Influence on Scriptures is that we no longer know exactly what we can trust in them. Even the four Gospels are chock full of props supporting the Paulist Doctrines. We are supposed to believe that Christ would rather contradict Himself than do anything in His Lifetime that would cast doubt on the subsequent Letters of Paul.

In most instances the writing of the Gospels and their dissemination was all in the hands of devout and committed Paulists. Of course if we could convince ourselves that these Scribes and Publishers were entirely honest, then our only problem would be in how to reconcile to ourselves a chaotic and contradictory Religion handed down to us by Genuine Revelation. But these Paulists were nearly all Greeks, and at a time when Greeks were not best known for their Honesty. While Greeks today can be assumed to be just as honest as anybody else (and how honest is that?), unfortunately, there was a different cultural and moral milieu back then. Honesty is the end of a long learned process steeped in self-denial and self-sacrifice. All kinds of Civilized Institutions are required to engrain and then maintain this milieu of Honesty. But telling Random and Opportunistic Stories for personal advantage is the first gift found in every clever fellow, and the Greeks were nothing if not Clever.

Then the Teachings of Paul that every Sin would be Forgiven would hardly help in the matter of supporting Honesty, or indeed, any Virtue. For if Moral Responsibility is taken off the table by some quasi-religious doctrine that tosses open the Gates of Hell to any Active Demon able to invoke the Name of Christ, than why not lie for advantage? And these Scribes thought they were lying for the Cause and Purpose of Religion. How could that be wrong? And they probably did not think of it as lying. In the absence of any real documentation or primary sources, or any strong traditions for seeking out documentation and primary sources, they saw themselves as filling in the blanks of what had to have happened, considering that their Doctrines and Teachings had to necessarily be True. They believed Paul and so they adjusted their Picture of Jesus to fit the mold of Paul.

I don’t mean to imply that the entire Ancient World was dubious and suspect. There were some Moral Influences and some traces of High Civilization. There was Zoroastrianism, out of Old Persia. History is uncertain of exactly when it first arrived, but its influence may have already been spreading for over thousand years by the Time of Christ. Old Persia had been crossroads between Egypt, Babylon, India and China and all points in between, and so the Zoroastrian Missionaries of Morality had access to every single one of the World’s more advanced Civilizations. But if we remember our History, Greece was perhaps the most resistant to Persian Influences. Indeed, the Paulist Greek insistence that Sins should be forgiven and Morality Nullified may have simply been an instance of Barbarian Reaction to the growing Moral Revolution – Western Freedom and Individuality standing against Oriental Morality and Order. The more things change, the more they stay the same. I can imagine that the Greek Barbarians longed for the good old days before the dampening influences of Conscience and Qualms, when Rape and Pillage were still just festive pleasures for Self Made Men powerful enough to play with the lives of others.

Now let us look at some of the reasons why we might seriously suspect that there had been some license taken with Biblical Scripture. Probably our best clue comes from the First Letter to the Corinthians, Chapter 9, where Paul makes it entirely and certainly clear that he wants his Missionaries to tell people exactly what they want to hear. It is the “Be all things to all men” speech. The Truth must take absolute last place. Making the Sale comes first! Act any act, tell any lie. Now, again I am surprised that both in the Catholic and Protestant Worlds there is no moral outrage. They do not hide this Scriptural Passage. I have heard it read aloud in both Catholic and Protestant Churches. Yes, Paul excuses himself on the grounds that he does all this lying and cheating in order to deceive New Converts, but even then! I thought our Civilized World had decided that the Ends do not Justify the Means. Anyway, we need to understand that after Paul had made this Point to all of his Followers, that there were no moral restrictions in the way of making new Converts, then after that fact we can hardly be expected to believe a single word they say or wrote. First Corinthians Chapter Nine puts the entire Bible into the shadow of Doubt.

This problem becomes acute when we try to decide what the Gospels mean in their discussions of the Holy Spirit. Now, from my own knowledge and experience with Mysticism and Spirituality, I could easily suppose that Jesus was describing how He Himself had come by Mystical Knowledge and Spiritual Understanding. By His portraying the Holy Spirit as being something of the Consciousness of God the Father, he was making the point that the Holy Spirit was not an Internal Phenomena, not a Subconscious Mind, but an External and Spiritually Objective State of Consciousness. “I and my Father are One” speaks to the Unity and Objectivity of the Mystical Experience. Christian Scripture is reluctant to point out that this same Mystical Identity with God is likewise the property of ANY Mystic. Indeed, there is no mystic among the thousands of mystics the World has known who has not had an experience very much akin to the same Mystical Experience that Jesus had. Jesus hardly pretended to be the only Mystic who ever was or ever would be.

But insofar as the Gospels were pressing the argument for the Divinity of Christ, they had to steer every passage toward the idea that Christ was a solitary and unique phenomena. Only Christ could have the Holy Spirit…until He was ready to share it… that would be the Party Line that the Gospels would take.

But after Christ died, then the situation drastically changed. Then the Leaders who co-opted the Christ Movement would need to invoke the cache and appeal of the Holy Spirit for their own uses. They would have to be able to advertise that although Christ was gone, the New Guys were just as good as Jesus ever was, by the Power of the Holy Spirit. This was the point of the Pentecost Story… that the Holy Spirit descended upon a Convention Hall of Christ Movement Survivors, and everyone suddenly had Mystical Knowledge and Miraculous Powers. Christ is Dead, long live the New Christs!

Here the Definition of the Holy Spirit saw its first unfortunate corruption or deviation from the Actual Truth. You see, the Holy Spirit was considered bound to the Spirit of Jesus the Historical Character. But, essentially speaking, Jesus was not the important variable in the equation at all, but God should have been the focal point. Remember, Jesus invoked the Holy Spirit to show his Identity with God Consciousness. Jesus saw what was important. God. That is understandable. But to invoke the Holy Spirit, as the Apostles did, to summon the Jesus Presence, well, I hesitate to call it a ‘corruption’ because it is difficult to imagine how Christ could be considered ‘corrupt’, but remembering the Transcendence of God Almighty we need to remember that anything less than God is less then what it should Be. If Jesus could keep in mind that he was less than God, then we should keep that in mind also. Certainly we can honor the Historical Jesus without having to pretend we have a Second God.

But so much Intellectual Gymnastics has gone into reconciling the Three Gods of the Christian Trinity with the requirement of Monotheism to have just One God. But none of it fools anybody. The rest of the Religious World is convinced that Christianity is Idolizing a Man in the place of God. Yes, Jesus was a Nice Guy, but only God is God.

Oh, just as a point of Theology, sometimes the Holy Spirit is referred to as the “Cosmic Christ” (The Life in All Things where Birth is just an Illusion), but this goes way beyond any reference to the Historical Person of Jesus H. Christ. Any personal history would be a disqualifier in something so Mystically Pure. Maybe we should think of the Cosmic Christ as what happened to Jesus when he finally gave up his personality, his identity, his individuality. The Life in All Things has no special corner, no special preference, no special Name. The Expansion into Infinity can only come at the cost of letting go of one’s little handful.

Anyway, although the Apostles at Pentecost did not get their Spiritual Metaphysics exactly correct, they did see the importance of Spirituality and Miracle in their New Religious Movement. But then we see another problem arise, that if the Holy Spirit really did make a General Appearance at Pentecost, then it was at best only temporary. Like the Parable of the Seeds had warned, the Holy Spirit, when it came, it failed to ‘take’, it failed to thrive. The Vine of the Cosmic Christ wilted and died. How do we know this? Well, we find that in the Book of Acts, which was written to propagandize the New Church and to make the absolute most of anything positive, that it was very slim on Miracles. The Gospels had cited scores of miracles, describing many miracles in close detail. We see nothing even approaching that same treatment in the book of Acts, and the Author, Luke, is the very same! In all the Letters of Paul, there is not a single Miracle… nothing worthy of Christ… a bunch of stretched coincidences… indeed, nothing that could today be certified by the Vatican, and the Vatican today is looser than it has ever been.

Well, yes, after the Gospels, there are indirect references to Miracles, but mostly in the negative context, where we are told of un-named others who were performing Miracles as acts of deception from the Devil. They no longer had any Miracles of their own, and felt as though they needed to criticize the Miracles of others. Remembering what Jesus had said in Mathew Chapter 12, that Miracles can come only from God, what seems most likely is that the Paulist and Peter Factions of the Early Church had somehow gotten outside of the Pall of the Holy Spirit. Without the Holy Spirit to keep them spliced into the Living Vine of the Cosmic Christ, their spiritual potency dried up. The Holy Spirit may have been fully vibrant elsewhere, but if there had been any evidentiary Letters or Chronicles to this effect, than they were likely suppressed by the jealous Early Church. We need to remember that the Nicest and Most Religious People are not those who are most likely to Win Religious Wars. And only the Winners get to Publish their books, while deciding what other books need to be collected up for burning, or even just to be left out of next years catalogue. The only Hint of Truth that Future Historians or Theologians can grasp at is the sense of whether or not what has been passed along seems to be either True to Life or True to God. One can hardly imagine the difficulty if the Winners in History prove out to be the Barbarians, and the Winners in Theology the Antichrists.

Now, keep in mind that just because the Real Holy Spirit had abandoned them, it did not mean that they abandoned the idea of exploiting some opportunistic Idea of the Holy Spirit. Where the Holy Spirit had been a Fact, when it was with them, when it left them, they turned it into a Promise. And a Promise can always be the perpetual Tomorrow that never quite ever reaches Today… a Check that never comes due to be cashed. The Holy Spirit would come with Faith, but somehow, it just so happened, nobody ever had quite enough Faith. Faith started as a Promise of Success but became the constant and continual Excuse for Failure. Paul never had to give anybody their money back. He would tell them to try again, and have more Faith next time. It was always their fault.

Let us examine some of the ways some of these Early Church Leaders propagandizing of the Holy Spirit. Peter used it to get away with murder. When he killed that nice young couple, Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5, because they were holding out on some small amount of money, he said that the Holy Spirit had miraculous struck them dead. It is not as though he could have easily confessed that he had deliberately smashed their heads in with his walking stick. I suppose some people believed him, but most of the Congregation promptly went out into the streets and elected a New Leader, Stephen, who was as quickly murdered by Paul and his gang of thugs. The Bible points to no connection, then, between Peter and Paul. But we need to wonder why it was that Peter became Paul’s most important and influential patron within the Church after that incident. Peter apparently had no trouble at all in forgiving Paul for that most convenient Sin, of having murdered his biggest political rival.

Where Peter was blunt with his usage of Holy Spirit Propaganda, using it to take the blame for his fits of violence, Paul was significantly more clever and proactive. Paul would pretend to have the absolute Holy Spirit and use it to certify his own Easy Sell Designer Religion, custom cut to appeal to Wealthy Greek Merchants who were willing to pay big for a Religious Dispensation for Free Sin, with Immortality tossed into the Bargain. In all of Paul’s 14 Books – more than half of the New Testament – he never quotes Jesus even once. Jesus was not selling anything, and so Paul had no idea what to do with any of it. But Paul, needing the famous and prestigious Jesus Trademark to give his own Product any perceived value in the eyes of his Shopping Public, appealed to the Power of the Holy Spirit, which he claimed over and over again was as good as Jesus Himself. Paul went so far as to claim that he was the virtual Voice of Jesus, and he largely got away with it because Jesus was too dead to argue back.

The Church soon came to regret that they ever brought up the whole idea of the Holy Spirit. They allowed Paul to get away with it, because he brought in so many wealthy converts. But then other people also decided that they could do exactly what Paul had done, that is, start their own Congregations and make themselves seem like important Religious Figures simply by claiming to be. That is the Way with successful Business Plans… they are soon copied over and over again. There is never just one Hamburger.

Oh, and there is also the matter of the Genuine Holy Spirit. Just because there are many opportunistic fake Mystics does not preclude the existence of real and true Mystics… what were called Gnostics back then.

But the Early Church saw the Fakes as direct Rivals, and then they were embarrassed by the True Mystics because their was no painless way of explaining why Doctrines did not match up. Much of the Early Church’s time and treasure went into defending territory and Doctrine. It was all a huge bother for them. In any case they decided that this business of the Holy Spirit would have to be put to an end.

The Church was to institutionalize its Prohibition against the Holy Spirit, at the same time that they published their Bible. The Counsel at Nicea issued an order that forthwith there could not possibly be any further Revelations from God. God was not Killed, but He would be gagged. Anybody pretending to the Holy Spirit would be punished for it.

Well, they should have known that any Absolute Prohibition against Divine Revelation could not hold indefinitely. Only an Atheist can believe that God can stay silent forever. If there really is Something like a Holy Spirit, then it would continue to assert itself.

The Church had several ways of dealing with these Mystics of the Holy Spirit. Because it seemed so easy at first, the Mystics could be dismissed as Heretics and then killed. But this tactic was soon found to be complicated by the Public’s remembering these victims as Martyrs. Then there was all the resentments that the violence entailed. Also, Resort to Violence brought the Military into Influence, forcing the Bishops to share power with Governors and Generals, and the soldiers cost so much money. So in time the Bishops learned to respond to the Holy Spirit with a more measured approach. Mystics would be allowed to set up their own Religious Communities, but they would have to swear to celibacy, so they could not breed and multiply, and they would have to agree to walls and isolation so they could not influence the greater Catholic Public. Well, there arose many a Saint like the proverbial lamps that could not be hidden in the dark. Even from behind their Monastery Walls they exercised great influence in Medieval Europe and even later. But still, the Edict of Nicea still pertained, that the Doctrine of the Catholic Church was fixed, and no new Revelation from God would be recognized or accepted. The Saints could influence Society and Culture, but the Church itself would hold firm against them, and in every important aspect of Doctrine the Church would persist in ignoring its most gifted and enlightened Spiritualists. But because the Public grumbled that its favorite Saints were being treated with such apparent contempt and disdain by the Church, the Bishops decided upon a further Compromise Formula for dealing with its Saints and their Holy Spirit – they would call it “Private Revelation”. Now, the way it works is that it is okay for Private Revelation to agree with Canonical Teachings and Scripture, but it cannot differ or amend it in even the slightest degree. The Church keeps these Guidelines in mind when publishing the Histories of its Saints and their ‘Private Revelations’, and anything said or done that might be embarrassing to the Official Catholicism of the Bishops and Cardinals is allowed to be dropped off and forgotten.

I have always found that very disturbing, that rather than lifting up their Doctrines to the Standards set by their Christlike Saints, they strain and filter their Saints through a Doctrine that they had committed themselves to in their ignorant and benighted infancy without any real thought as to the moral, political or spiritual consequences.

Paul Against Paul

Paul Against Paul

Now, up to this point I have been more or less even handed in my condemnation of both the Protestant and the Catholic Churches, as the largest part of the Doctrines of both Churches are Paulist; however, when one decides to examine for increments and degrees of fault, then the prize of the devil surely should go to the Protestants. For, after all, at one time the Catholics did have a Civilization to look after, something the Protestants never had to concern themselves over, and so the Catholics found it necessary to qualify and improve their Doctrines in order to promote the various Virtues and genres of Righteousness necessary to a Civilization.

The Protestants, who never concerned themselves with anything beyond Membership Appeals, took one of two other roads, that is, they made a choice between the two alternative Doctrines that Paul offered, obviously to two far different levels of Clientele, for either Salvation and Forgiveness on the one hand, or for the Idea of Predestination and Election – that nothing anybody does matters anyway and that one is either damned or he isn’t. Most Protestants, being of lower socio-economic standing, fall into the first Group, picking Salvation, because it is difficult to imagine how very many of these people would prefer the cold hearted bastard approach chosen by the more Well-to-Do Protestants – the Presbyterians, Slave-traders, Titans of Business, and Republicans, who interpret the Doctrine of Election in their own favor, seeing their Wealth as the first of many Rewards from God, and the Poverty of the rest of the World as proof of their inevitable damnation and sign that no care or concern need be wasted upon them.

Anyway, the Catholics have always found it shocking that the Protestants of one small faction or another would so narrowly focus on such narrow selections of Paulist Verses for what would amount to their Complete and Absolute take on ‘Christian’ Doctrine. And every Protestant Faction acted about the same way in this, indeed, it was the only thing they could all agree upon, that every single isolatable word in the Bible was tantamount to being the exact and absolute Word of God. Whatever they picked and choosed and separated out from the rest could be taken as a Whole and Entire Absolute Truth of God.

Yes, I have mentioned this before, that the Protestants created and elaborated this Doctrine of Word of God as a means of making the Words of Paul equal with those of Jesus. If every Word is equally True, it eliminates the distinction between Jesus and Paul, which is exactly what they sought to do. Anyway, various Protestant innovators would pick through Paulist Scripture and find a nuance here or there with which to build a separate Church all his own, where he could be his own Pope and not have to share any of the proceeds with any of those annoying Councils of Elders or any other Self Appointed Popes. In this sense, much of Protestant Doctrine serves only for Power Grabbing.

The Catholics deserve a bit more credit. Though they published the Bible and insist that it is entirely the Revelation from God, they were more careful than the Protestants in that they maintained that the Bible needs to be considered within its entire context, and if any passage deserves more weight than any other passage, than the preference should be towards citations from Christ and sections of the Bible where the intent had often been repeated and made clear by multiple examples and numerous elucidations. Also, the Catholics never conceded the point that the Bible was Complete, in and of itself, but allowed that parallel Oral Traditions (such as the Story of the Fallen Angels which is held as true but is not told in any detail in the Bible because everybody knew it already ‘orally’… it was learned back then on every mother’s lap) and the Traditions of Church Teachings could be valid apart from Scriptural Reference. After all, the Catholics maintained, it was they who published the Bible. To them the Bible was not so much the Word of God as the Word of the Church – at best a collection of primary reference materials, and the Church reserved the right to add to the pile if ever it so chose to do so. If one Church Council can decide One Thing, the next Church Council can decide another. The Illusion of a continuous Church Tradition is belied by the radical changes implemented by some several revolutionary Church Councils in its History, Vatican II being the most recent Revolution. The message for us all is that the Church is free to do whatever it likes… which is not necessary a bad thing.

But this Freedom that the Catholics allowed themselves would become an irksome point for the Protestants, that the Catholics could take the license to Dogmatize outside of Scripture when they themselves were tied down to having to find at least one loose verse somewhere upon which to pin all of their Hopes and Dreams, their Faith and Doctrines.

Really, the Protestant viewpoint, that the Bible is necessary Complete is a bit of a violation of the underlying Greek Theological Metaphysics of it all, that God must necessarily be Absolutely Infinite. The finite nature of the Bible would necessarily exclude it from being ‘complete’. Some novels are fatter than the Bible! But I have a feeling that the Protestant insistence that the Bible should be considered complete was hewn and wielded only out of mean spiritedness, seeing no further intent behind it all than that they could use it to condemn the Catholic Church. For instance, the Extra-Biblical Argument would be used repeatedly to attack Mary the Blessed Virgin, as the honor showed to her by Luke never seemed quite enough to the Protestants to warrant all the Praise that the Catholics heaped at Her Feet. And since Paul never mentioned Her, they assumed she was not worth the mention. Yes, that is not exactly logical, as an omitted argument is really not an argument at all, but, again, the Protestants may have only been looking for vulnerability and opportunities for attacking the Catholic Church. Even Martin Luther, Father of the Protestant Rebellion, never could quite fathom the hostility that soon arose up against Mary. It was his first understanding that what he had started had entirely escaped his control. What Man lets slip the Devil takes charge.

Anyway, soon enough the Catholics took on a tradition of answering the selective and too narrowly focused Paulist Doctrines of the Protestants, by quoting passages out of Paul that qualified or even opposed their particular intent. It was using Paul to fight Paul. The Catholics thought that they were being exceedingly clever. But was this really so wise considering, at the end of the day, that most Catholic Doctrine likewise rested upon Paulist premises. Did it really serve their purposes to show that Paul was inconsistent and self-contradictory? They were too clever by half.

But the Catholics started small and did not imagine how far it could go. Indeed, my thoughts on Paul started the same way… as a new Catholic I went over the Paulist Letters simply to find where the Protestants had got them wrong. I found it was not just the Protestants…

But let’s move on to details. If we call to mind some of the most antagonistic points of the Protestant Rebellion we will remember the controversy between Faith and Works. The Protestants blamed the Catholics for trying to ‘earn’ their Salvation via ‘works’. The Protestants insisted that Salvation was guaranteed by Grace invoked by faith alone. There was no need to even lift a finger. The Protestants point this out in Romans 3:28 “For we hold that a man is justified by faith apart from works”. And then there is Romans 4:5 “one who does not work, his faith is reckoned as righteousness”. We have Ephesians 2:8 and 9, “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God -- not because of works, lest any man should boast.” Then, there is the broader assertion for Faith Alone in Romans 14:23, “for whatever does not proceed from faith is sin”. Finally we have what might be considered an actual prohibition against Works, from Galatians Chapter 5, as Works were so often equated with behavior according to the Law, “You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace.” It was Salvation by Faith or nothing at all. And if one were to simply read the verses they supplied, then it would seem that they had made a tidy case of it.

But the Catholics found a defense for their Good Works. See Romans 2: 6 and 7, “For he will render to every man according to his works: to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life”. This hardly admits to any Faith at all! Grace goes to he whoever marches sternly and steadily forward and takes it firmly in hand. Then we have Hebrews 6:10, “For God is not so unjust as to overlook your work”. Then we have the whole tenure of Galatians Chapter six which is toward Good Works, “whatever a man sows, that he will also reap…And let us not grow weary in well-doing, for in due season we shall reap…let us do good to all men”. Yes, while there is no absolute predication here of our Salvation upon Works, there is obviously the removal of any Curse upon Works, that to do good works would somehow be tantamount to ‘Boasting’ before God, a veritable rejection of Grace.

Oh, there is Paul’s puzzling dissociation from Good Works. For instance in 1st Corinthians 15, “I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God which is with me”. Paul starts out by bragging about his Works, but then has to quickly apologize, claiming to be passive in Grace, dodging to stay within the bounds of his own Doctrines. But we are left with the impression that Good Works are Good.

But criticism and argument can go far deeper, even deep enough to erode the pillars of Salvation itself. Go back again to Galatians chapter 6 and read further down – “fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, party spirit, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and the like. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God”. Here, quite clearly we find Paul making a direct connection between behavior and Salvation. We are given a complete list of sins that Jesus will simply not tolerate. We can detect the same reasoning earlier in Romans Chapter 3, that while “All fall short of the Glory of God”, we have the assurance several verses further on that “God passes over former Sins”. But what is implied is that only Sins in the Past Tense are forgiven, and that Salvation is not meant to cover any chronic character flaws or personality disorders resulting in a continuing pattern of imperfect behaviors. It brings us to the startling conclusion that one is only Saved if one has obviously and manifestly been made Perfect by Grace. Apparently we are all to be judged upon the Character and Behavior Profile we present at the time of our Demise, and if on the day before we die we are not entirely Christ-like then we are in fact screwed.

Now, let us not be too pessimistic. Go over that list again – “fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, party spirit, envy, drunkenness, carousing”. This is not an impossible standard, especially for an old man or old woman who is dying in the midst of a loving and supportive family. Over the last several thousand years I can imagine that hundreds of thousands of Souls have died in the requisite Purity, not touching the terrible Sins that Paul describes, so much so that Salvation would be theirs, Grace or no. Being Good and refraining from Evil may be all the Salvation anybody needs.

But my ideas here are hardly entirely original. It is an idea that has occurred to many ‘heretical’ sects throughout History, that Religious people should be Good, and that continued Sinning is counter-indicative of Salvation. Indeed, such proclamations have been repeatedly tossed up as indictments against the profoundly corrupt College of Catholic Bishops, Paul’s biggest Partisans within the Church. But the Bishops have always rejected these ‘heresies’, on the Argument that Humanity’s Original Sin allows for continued sinfulness even while within the State of Grace. I think we have Saint Augustine to thank for this augmentation and exception to Scripture. It is one case where the Protestants stand shoulder to shoulder with the Catholics, and John Calvin hardly uses a phrase that Augustine hadn’t used before him.

Anyway, back to the eroding supports of our Immortal Salvation… we hear so much of the importance of Faith, and so any Doubt would be a huge problem for us. The Protestants have tried to guard against this kind of doubt, by proposing a rather historically recent doctrine of “Once Saved Always Saved”… which makes a great bumper sticker, but has only shaky scriptural references for its support. There is the ‘Magic Word’ passage in Romans Chapter 10 – “if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved”. That’s it! Final. Saved is saved is saved is saved. It is a fine doctrine as long as one looks no further. But Paul goes on to list further areas where Salvation can be revoked. In Romans Chapter 11, which emphasizes God’s prerogative to do whatever He likes, Paul declares that God’s kindness toward the Saved can quite turn on a dime, even without provocation or cause. In Colossians chapter 1 we find that Faith must not waver, but also that the Faith needs to be entirely factual – all the little details have to be just right. With so many ‘Christian’ Doctrines currently circulating, and with the combined logical contradictions telling us that it would be nearly impossible for any Doctrine today to be ‘exactly’ true and pure, well, how certain can anybody’s Faith be when opposed by such odds? One might suppose it easier to replace the Struggle for Faith with the Struggle to simply behave one’s self.

Oh, in reading this essay, for anybody who may have noticed, this strategy of using Paul to counter Paul at least vindicates Paul from being considered a total Antichrist. Really, here I must admit that to call Paul ‘the’ Antichrist probably makes more out of him than he would ever deserve to be. The truth is that Paul was neither as good nor as bad as people made him out to be. We can allow that he probably never fully intended the corruption and fall of a Civilization. But, still, he is not blameless either. If one reads the Letters of Paul carefully and honestly, then, although he did qualify and condition his Teachings, he nonetheless argued for an overall System or Doctrine of Amoral Salvation. We can see this mostly in Paul’s letter to the Romans – not the first Letter Paul wrote, but placed first in the Bible, indicative of its Systematic Importance. What I suppose happened was that Paul was drawn in by the tendency of his Time to Vastly Oversimplify Everything, that is, to draw up Large All-Embracing Answers to Things, to create a Unified Philosophy, a Grand System… an Easy Answer. So in a fit of Megalomania, he dashed off the Letter to the Romans. His primary intent was to demonstrate that God could recognize the existence of Gentiles, a People of Faith, and not just the favored Jews, a People of the Law. But obviously Paul got carried away with himself, by the power of his own verbosity and arrived at a construct for a Salvation independent of consideration for Individual Moral Responsibility – a mechanism for the Forgiveness of Sins which would be interpreted by subsequent Generations as a License to Sin. Yes, the little details would argue against it, but that was all just the ‘fine print’. Nobody ever reads the fine print, and that is what the crooks all count on, isn’t it?

So we cannot forgive Paul entirely on the grounds that he has been woefully misunderstood. In both First Corinthians chapter 15 and in the second Chapter of Galatians Paul repeats the notion that unless the Salvation Doctrine is True, then Christ died for nothing. It is not really a logical argument, is it? But, really, we are supposed to believe that the entire fabric of Christian Salvation rests upon the assumption that a bunch of Jewish and Roman Special Interest Groups couldn’t have simply decided to just have Jesus murdered for the sake of their political convenience. Oh, and we need to remember that Paul belonged to one of these Special Interest Groups, the Pharisees – sworn enemies of Jesus, and Paul was probably extremely active in lobbying to have Jesus murdered (for was he not later the highest ranking Persecutor of the Christians? Paul did not become the Great Persecutor in a single day. It was likely his Life Work up to then). Considering how much effort Paul and his fellows put into murdering Christ, it is really a most disingenuous argument he puts forward, that Jesus died because of the metaphysical requirements of Salvation. Paul was there, he knew the Truth. He knew why it was imperative that Jesus should be killed, and it wasn’t so God could implement a Salvation that would serve only to Forgive the Murderers of His Only Beloved. Jesus was cut down so the rise of a a Messiah would not upset the Status Quo. Too many people were making good money for them to wish to upset the apple cart or rock the boat. Paul, at the time, liked things just the way they were and voted with all of the other Pharisees to have Jesus put down. Indeed, Paul probably put forward the Motion himself to murder Christ or he gave it a quick Second.

But Paul did not let it end there. Having killed the Messiah, it played on his mind until he decided to be a Messiah himself. Somehow he justified it in his own mind that it would be okay for himself to upset the Status Quo. What was forbidden to Christ Himself would be okay for Paul. Yes, people argue that Paul carried on the Name and Fame of Jesus. But we should consider how much better it might have been had Paul and his fellows let Jesus live. We might assume that Jesus would have accumulated more fame for Himself than Paul’s stunted little imitation, unless an excess of Fame is something we can more expect from the Devil. After all, how much Popularity can we expect for things like Moral Responsibility and Righteousness. Paul probably allowed himself advantages Jesus would never have taken, such as selling Free Sin in the slummy City Centers of Athens and Carthage. But Jesus may have well evened things up with his Miracles and genuine Saintliness. In any case, we can be fairly sure we’d have a better body of Teaching and Doctrine from a Jesus Christ who had been allowed to live to ninety years than from One who had been snuffed out at 33.

Yes, Paul invoked the name of Jesus Christ over and over again. But that never made Him Jesus Christ, despite his claims. How many crazy people today claim to speak with the Voice of Jesus Christ, and nobody thinks twice of believing them. In charity such people are given anti-psychotic drugs. But when Paul makes the same crazy claims, it is treated like The Word of God. That makes us crazy, doesn’t it?

It is perhaps History’s greatest tragedy that not only was Jesus murdered, but that one of his Murderers was able to rise up to usurp His place, co-opt His Name, and distort his Teachings and pervert His Doctrines.

The Faculty of True Discernment

When I first started with Kundalini Yoga, decades ago, my old Guru had told us that it would make us ‘smarter’. I often wondered at that promise, since so many my fellow practitioners didn’t seem so extremely bright. I figured it was all relative, and that before they started Yoga they must have been REALLY stupid. But I was so young back then. I hardly suspected that the Yoga might take years before it would have its effect.

Did I eventually become “smarter”? Well, I suppose my old Guru had to find some word to express what he meant. He chose the word “smart”. But what happened in my case, or the way I would describe it was that I would recognize the truth, have a sense of certainty about it, when I heard it or saw it. Maybe I was incrementally better at ‘thinking up’ the truth of things, but being an original thinker was only a small part of it. It was not so much a case of thinking fast or thinking new but thinking sure, of being certain of things. Remember, one of the best ways of being smart is recognizing the truth when you hear it from others.

I was lucky to be able to identify a certain point in time , a moment when the transition came about, when the ‘smartness’ kicked in. This part of my life had been punctuated by a Dream, the Dream of True Discernment.

The Dream Scene was a well sun lit grassy field with large rocks and fallen trees that created a natural gathering place for hikers and nature lovers to sit down and rest. There was this woman who was sitting down and playing a guitar and she was... I have to say it ... an extremely ugly woman. But her guitar playing was the most beautiful I had ever heard. Then came along these men, really crude guys, who approached, and gathered around her to ridicule her merely for being so remarkably unappealing. I was concerned that this would annoy her enough so that she would stop playing, and I became irritated that their boisterous laughing itself was making it difficult to hear the beautiful music being played, and so I told the young men, "Listen! Everything else aside, can't you hear the quality of that music. We are in the presence of some real talent here. So Shut the ____ up!" Then the lady, who had seemed oblivious to all of us up to that point, suddenly looked up, and looking me square in the eye said, "The faculty most worthy of cultivation is the faculty of True Discernment".


In an instant I was transported to a moon-lit arbor. It was a young growth forest with as many bushes on the forest floor as the trees around them, which formed a low canopy. The air was cool, and this felt like a nice place to be. Much of the Moon light came through and gave a silvery glow to the furry little down-covered pods on the drooping branches of the willow trees. I was a disembodied presence, simply witnessing; I would not be an Actor in this Dream; I would just watch. What I witnessed was a beautiful Greek Goddess… I would guess, Diana, Goddess of the Hunt. She was clad in a pearl-white translucent toga, belted at her waist, and she was barefoot. With a bow in her hand and a quiver of arrows slung over her shoulder, she was serenely languid and in no hurry. It was breathtaking, and I knew this was a special vision. But the tranquility was shattered when along came this strong coarse bearded man – too old to be called young, but not old enough to be supposed wise. He was delighted to happen upon such a pretty woman and of course wanted to make her acquaintance. He said, boastfully, as if boasting could endear him to her, "I am on the hunt tonight and it is a great misfortune for the poor creatures, because I am such a good shot that they certainly don't stand a CHANCE".

Diana remained silent and seemed in no hurry to reply, but rather pulled a strangely unique arrow from her quiver. She held it out a moment so that the hunter could see that it was probably the most crocked arrow that could still be straight enough to be shot from a bow. She loaded it onto the string and pulled back in preparation of shooting... then turned her head to the side so it could be seen that she obviously had no intention of aiming, and she released the shot. SHHHOOOOPP, the arrow whistled off and lodged inside a bush I could see the arrow’s feathers sticking out. She walked over and took hold of the arrow’s shaft and withdrew it from the shrub, and, amazingly, there impaled on the arrow was a limp dead game bird. Then she spoke, not to the Hunter, but to me, "Chance? Nothing happens by Chance".' Then I awoke.

What does it mean? The first part of the Dream was prelude to the second part. If I had not seen behind the appearances in the First Dream, that is, if I had not recognized the Beauty behind the ugliness, I would not have been shown the Second Part of the Dream. The injunction "The faculty most worthy of cultivation is the Faculty of True Discernment", was to be my guiding mantra, that is, if I were to properly understand the next part of the dream, indeed, to understand my subsequent Life. The Night, the Trees, the Moon Light, the Anima Goddess – This was my inner life. The Bearded Hunter was my aggressive persona, my conceit, pride, perhaps even my intellect. The Huntress provided a lesson that teaches that a Greater Unity would always subsume and transcend any actions of the Hunter. Could this Unity be understood? No, not entirely. The Arrow was crooked and no deliberation guided its aim -- it was released into Fate. Yet there was Intention, there was Will. The Goddess meant to hit the Bird. Apart from Design and intelligent Pattern, pure Volition can resonate well enough to evoke its own Results. But the dynamics of Pure Volition are beyond ordinary cause and effect. Things happened because of Destiny and Will.

But what is left for True Discernment to discern, if we omit the rational? Well, there is a certain sense of Importance, as though it were a kind of wake the Destiny leaves in its path, or a kind of glow that one sees outlining Acts of Will. If we see Life and the World as arbitrary, a conglomeration of accidents, then we dismiss it. But to see it as a potent riddle with imbedded meaning, then that makes us look at it harder and deeper. And sometimes we can use Logic and Reason to see the Truth of Things, and sometimes we can see the Truth directly.

Allow me to conclude by saying that where normal physical light allows us to see normal physical reality, the Spiritual Light and the Yogic Energies help us to both see and feel our Spiritual Reality and to discern the Meaning in our Lives and in our World.

Paul Commits the Unforgivable Sin

The ‘unforgivable sin’ is the sin of insulting the Holy Spirit, but to understand exactly how one can possibly insult the Holy Spirit, one needs only to consult the 12th Chapter of the Gospel of Mathew, which is where we hear of the Unforgivable Sin as well as all the appropriate context.

The circumstances were thus: the Pharisees were following Jesus around hoping to find evidence by which they could accuse Him. People of the town brought Jesus a man who was blind and dumb because of demonic possession. Well, Jesus casts out the demon and the inflicted man can suddenly see and speak. The Pharisees, turn this good deed around, supposing it a great crime, by declaring that it is only because Jesus serves the King of Demons that he can cast out demons himself. In short, it is argued that Jesus has power over Evil because he sides with Evil.

Jesus hears these accusations and argues against them, giving some of his most famous quotes in the process. A Kingdom divided against its self will fall. Would Satan drive out Satan?

Anyway, Jesus is highly offended by the accusation that He only does Good in order to deceive people. So Jesus declares emphatically that goodness comes from good people and evil comes from bad people, oh, which is an echo from Mathew 7’s “We know a Tree by its fruits. A rotten tree cannot produce good fruits”.

Jesus is in fact so offended by the Pharisaic Accusation that he goes on further, probably working himself up in a progressing outrage, declaring something of an axiomatic rule, that while anything else might be forgiven, it can never be forgiven when anyone attributes Goodness to Evil.

Why did Jesus get so upset? And why did Jesus take such an inflexible stand? After all, we must admit that it IS possible that people might take up the Cloak of Kind and Good Hypocrisy in order to gain political advantage – to use Acts of Humanity by way of a Deception. But does Interested Motive entirely do away with the Good Results? I think that Jesus saw all of this in a broader and more optimistic perspective. It puts me in mind of what Jesus said of the Hypocrite who makes a great show of his prayers, fasting and public charities, that he will get his reward, a worldly reward, but that the genuine Devotee who acts in greater sincerity will get a better and more spiritual reward. Jesus never supposes that the Hypocrite is Evil for doing Good Deeds for a Worldly Advantage. Jesus even allows such Hypocrites their Worldly Rewards. Goodness is Goodness. Jesus does not begrudge a deserved reward, and while allowing that some Motives are higher than others, finally concludes that there is never a reason too small for doing Good. If a Rich Man wants to show off by giving a beggar a ten dollar bill, the beggar still eats and drinks just as merry as though his benefactor was an absolute Saint. So whatever the motive, God and Jesus would never be silly enough to ever discourage any Act of Human Kindness. They are already rare enough.

Now let us look more closely at the Argument of the Pharisees – it can be reduced to the simple proposition that All shows of Goodness and Kindness can be suspected of being Deceptions of the Devil. What can be the only result of such a flagrant argument than that all Public Charities or even Polite Public Behaviors would be discouraged, and people could only believe themselves to be above reproach while they are mean, nasty and selfish to everybody. It might as well be a Republican Convention.

I think everybody could conclude that Jesus had a better eye and ear for Doctrine, and a better sense for the repercussions that any silly idea could have on an entire body of a Religion if it were allowed to take hold. So he stressed above any other thing that no Act of Goodness could ever be an object of Blame. The Sin against the Holy Spirit, the Unforgivable Sin, was to accuse Goodness of being Evil. If Goodness and Sin were allowed to be so misconstrued, Moral Religion would become impossible.

Now look at Paul’s writings in the 11th Chapter of the Second Letter to the Corinthians. Paul accuses the Real Apostles, the Apostles who had actually been appointed by Christ, he accuses them of only adopting the Appearance of Righteousness, and only in order to present a Deception, just like “Satan who can make himself appear as an Angel of Light”.

Can we see the ramifications here? First, Paul gives us cause to believe that any Act of Human Kindness is more than possibly only a Deception. This is exactly the kind of logic that Jesus most severely wished to condemn, when it came from the Pharisees.

Secondly, with the comment that Satan in fact could and often did systematically counterfeit the Highest Angels of God… well, perhaps no statement of Scripture has done more harm to Spirituality. Ever since Paul spoke these careless words, it has made it IMPOSSIBLE for God to communicate with anybody in a Paulist Church, and be believed. Before Paul, there could be Seers and Profits who were given Revelations from God. After Paul, we can only admit to people who are probably being deceived by Satan pretending to be a Messenger of God. If Paul did not kill God, he did manage to gag Him. It turned a Living Church into a Dead one. After 2000 years, not a new word has been added to Scripture. It is not that nothing has happened, but after Paul, none of it could be any longer believed. Paul’s most lasting legacy has been to cast doubt upon everything Good and Holy.

Oh, and about Paul’s assertion about Demonic Angels of Light… has anybody ever thought of how Paul could ever possibly know such a thing… that sincere and honest people could be Deceived by Demons pretending to be High Spiritual Personages. It seems an odd statement especially coming from Paul, who lays all of his Claim to Fame upon a Spiritual Vision, which, according to his own words, might just as well have been a deception from Satan himself.

Well, actually not. First, we only have Paul’s word that he received any Vision. Secondly, even Paul tells us that the only thing that was said to him in his Vision was that Christ blamed him for being a terrible persecutor of Christians. This was all probably quite true. Jesus struck Paul blind and kicked him off his horse and then berated him for being such a scum bag. What is not to believe? The misunderstandings arise when people call this Paul’s “Conversion”. When did Paul ever convert? When did he even say he ‘converted’? In fact, Paul never changed. Paul never stopped being a terrible persecutor of the True Christian Church. What happened, on the way to Damascus, was that Paul figured out that he could tell the Vision Story just as it happened with a slightly different bent and a much happier ending, and put it all to his advantage. Indeed, if one goes over the Book of Acts, we find that Paul tells of his Vision three different times, and each time he recounts the Story, he tells it differently (Luke must have noticed this, which makes us wonder about Luke’s true loyalty to the Paulist Movement). The Conversion Story became like a joke he would tell. As time went on, he told it better and better. The Truth did not matter so much as the Desired Effect he wished to achieve.

But this only goes to show Paul’s inherent stupidity. With his entire Career depending upon people believing in Visions, he declares that ANY Vision might just as well be Satan appearing as an Angel of Light. When we therefore realize that Paul was stupid, it puts so many other anxieties to rest, in regards to so many other contradictions within Paulist Doctrine and Teachings. We don’t have to agonize about some reconciliation in some Higher Wisdom that only seems like Stupidity to the Worldly Mind. No, we can finally just acknowledge the obvious, that Paul was an idiot. The fact is that Paul spoke at the moment for the advantage of the moment and likely never gave anything a second thought to anything he ever said or wrote, and probably never even remembered anything anyway. He was an opportunistic idiot.

But, to move on, where does this bring us, in regards to Greater Christian Doctrine, that Jesus teaches One Thing, and Paul teaches the exact Opposite. Jesus teaches that Holiness will invariably appear as Holiness and that Demonic Evil will appear as Demonic Evil and that to attribute Goodness to Evil is the Worst of All Sins. Paul teaches that any Act of Righteousness is likely to be a Deception, and that all apparent Messages of God are in fact likely to be horrible deceptions from a Satan who can take any appearance up to and including God (for it had been an old Hebrew definition of God, that He was the Angel of Light).

The Protestants tell us that they believe every Word in the Bible to be the veritable Word of God. But, apparently, whenever there is a conflict, Paul is deemed to be more God than even Jesus is. In Every Protestant Doctrine, and in most Catholic Doctrines, wherever there is a choice to be made between Paul and Christ, Paul is chosen. Why? Well, Jesus was appealing to Righteousness and Spirituality. But the Words of Paul could be used for all kinds of Political and Financial advantage.

Oh, as a last word… I always wonder why no Believing Paulist Christian ever expresses his surprise or shock that Paul whips out the same argument against the True Apostles that the Pharisees had used against Jesus. They SAY they read the Bible, but this could not possibly be true or they would have long ago come to the same conclusions that I have, particularly after catching Paul in passages like these.

Why I Converted to Catholicism

Why I Converted to Catholicism

Just more than several years ago I converted to Catholicism, which by all accounts seems a very rare and peculiar thing for any non-Catholic to do. Many people, both Catholic and non-Catholic would wonder why a person would do such a thing, especially as officially converting takes too much work to be done simply on a whim. So to answer this general curiosity, here I will attempt to explain why I decided to convert.

Of course, the entire story would be complicated even if the core motivations were simple, so please expect a depiction of all of the textures and terrain undulations of not a perfect situation but of a real one.

First, let me begin by telling of a precipitating moment, a catalytic prelude to my Conversion. I was visited by my adult daughter in the American Southwest and we decided to pass our time sightseeing. We went to quite a famous old Catholic Mission. I had seen it all before, but when asked by my daughter to go inside the Church with her, I felt some discomfort at the notion and sent her ahead by herself without me. I would have had no hesitation about walking in alone, but as my daughter was a Catholic and I was not, I felt it would be incongruous – the mixing of a tourist with a true believer would have presented a clash against my sense of good taste. And then there was another dynamic involved. I had once been a Protestant, and was still tinged with that strange complex which effects nearly all Protestants, which is a hate for Catholicism that is carefully and repeatedly indoctrinated from the earliest Sunday school lessons, paired with an unavoidable envy for the apparent genuine religiosity of the Catholic Experience – a pageantry and flow of religious emotions which Protestantism is at a complete loss to match, which is the very reason why the Leaders of Protestantism find it so necessary to carefully and repeatedly instruct upon the necessity for hating Catholicism. You can see it is a spiraling set of dynamics which feed upon themselves. Hate is the Protestant’s best defense against Envy. So where I could have gone into that Mission Church alone, I was afraid my envy would show to my quite perceptive daughter. But there was no hate, and this I will have to explain in the bulk of this presentation.

One does not ever instantly know why one feels certain things, until one has had time to think about one’s feelings. We conduct much of our behaviors by the dictates of our feelings, and would not know why we act the way we do until we find time to reflect upon our conduct with our intellect. Not accompanying my daughter into that Mission Church puzzled me and I found myself going over that decision like a philosopher trying to solve the Riddle of the Sphinx. It finally occurred to me that if I was envious, than there was nothing to prevent myself from becoming Catholic. My parents were dead, and probably would not have cared if they had still been alive. Of course, if my early protestant conditioning, to hate Catholicism inveterately in my heart and soul, had still been entirely intact, it would have never occurred to me to even consider a Conversion. So, what made Catholicism even a little bit sympathetic to me?

First, for years I had studied and participated in some of the movements of the World’s Higher Moral Religions – Sufism (which better represents old Zoroastrianism more than it does modern Islam, no matter what the Sufis themselves say about it, as they are all quite under duress to pretend to be good Muslims), Spiritual Hinduism and Yoga, and Mahayana Buddhism, together with the other Traditions that had borrowed all of their Spiritual Capital from these sources, along as from elements of Spiritual Catholicism. I had been a Monk at an Aurobindo Ashram, a high initiate in Kundalini Yoga, and had followed a number of Gurus (along with a stint in the Peace Corps, as I believe actual service to Humanity must go hand in hand with one’s Spiritual Quest). And what did I notice in my active acquaintance and experience with the adherents and followers of these Higher Religions? It was that there was in every case some interaction and sympathetic communications between these Spiritual Groups and those of various Catholic Religious Orders. Indeed, Monks, Catholic and Non-Catholic alike, would visit each other’s Monasteries, Shrines and other establishments and partake somewhat in each other’s spiritual practices hoping to gain some insight, in the spirit of Spiritual Fellowship. It was no small matter to me that Spiritual Catholicism was not held in disgrace by the other Higher Religions of the World, as the same cannot be said of Protestantism (which is seen not so much as a Religion but as an excuse the West has contrived to not have any Religion at all – Protestant Salvation is represented as coming from a free Grace that requires neither spiritual practice nor even morality, and Christians are encouraged to refer to themselves as ‘sinners’, while Good Works are shunned. Where is Religion in any of that? Civilization can survive only on a basis of a wide acceptance of moral and spiritual assumptions and a lot of very hard good work, all of which Paulist Christianity dismisses as non-essential, and even as detrimental to their Salvation by based upon Faith alone). One would not willingly associate oneself with a Religion that would bring a moral or spiritual scandal to oneself. One needs to be able to correctly discern both Christ and the Devil. Something can call itself a Religion, but if it propagates the Devil and puts forward Satanic interests and Doctrines, I should hardly suppose we should concede to its Religious pretensions. Charity and Christian Love does not demand we hand our Sheep over to the Wolves, no matter how well-tailored be their Sheep’s Clothing.

Then there was the matter of History. I’ve always studied and read History – in College I majored in it, before going over to Philosophy. I’ve always considered that Catholic Civilization did rather well for itself, though many would argue the point, but when all things were considered in the balance, Catholic Civilization grew and even thrived, and lived up to not only some Spiritual Ideals but even some material ones as well. Indeed, from the Papacy of Gregory the Great to the defeat and the collapse of Catholic Christendom in the Wars of the Protestant Rebellion, was it not almost exactly the “Thousand Year Reign of Christ on Earth” promised by the New Testament Prophesies. Oh, and perhaps I should point out that the “1000 Year Reign of Christ” could not have begun until a Pope arose who would challenge Paul’s strangle-hold on Christian Doctrines, and particularly that doctrine requiring the submission of The Church to secular political authority found in the Epistle to the Romans. Christian Civilization would have been impossible had Pope Gregory the Great, and others in his footsteps, not established the Catholic Church as a central political power, a final arbiter of disputes and a court of last resort, which alone could make peace and commerce possible over what would have been a cluster of perpetually warring cities and states.

Back a few years ago, while still very much a Non-Catholic, I would often go Online and discuss my political and religious views, and would occasionally be surprised to find myself, a disinterested bystander, so to speak, defending the role of Catholicism in History. However spotted the History of Secular Catholicism, the facts point out that as a Civilization, Catholic Christendom was the most successful Civilization in the world this last two thousands years – the only Civilization which had been able to stand against the invasions of first the Huns, in the 6th and 7th Centuries, and then the Mongols in the 12th to 14th. The much maligned Crusades were actually a political and military success in preserving Christendom, that is, Catholic Civilization (for which no one today is grateful, no, not even the officials of the Catholic Church as even the Popes themselves nowadays issue hand-wringing apologies for having deployed armies that were solely responsible for having saved Christendom when everywhere else less hardy civilizations were swept into the basest and cruelest barbarism, not because they morally renounced an active defense or because they did not make what must have been the most valiant efforts to defend themselves, but because the imperfections of their Institutions made an effective defense impossible). Such successes, in Catholic Christendom, were only possible as the Church was able to exercise an effective Secular Authority over a body of nationalities that behaved effectively like the component states of a great Catholic Empire. The policies that could sustain this Jurisdiction, the saving Grace of our Civilization, are to be commended… not apologized for. This is not to say that the Catholic Church did not often have to resolve Social and Religious Conflicts of its own making. If certain Bishops had gratuitously and even foolishly provoked civil wars, we can certainly lament their inexcusable stupidity while still understanding the absolute necessity of re-establishing Territorial Integrity. One should not provoke Rebellion, but at the same time one can also not excuse Rebellion. It is silly for Protestants and Anti-clerical Masons (who dominate the politics of almost every Nation we would suppose to be Catholic) to accuse the Catholics of having fiercely suppressed Rebellion when certainly no Protestant or Masonic Nation has ever permitted such liberties in their own jurisdictions. The American’s who killed millions in their own Civil War must be disingenuous when they accuse Catholics of killing in order to sustain their Union. And the modern Non- Catholic and Anti-Clerical European Nations have committed genocide with far less justification than Christendom ever demanded.

But Spiritual and Historical Respectability are only incidental factors in my Conversion – reasons why it would not be considered disgraceful to convert to Catholicism, but not yet providing any positive incentive for Converting. As I indicated before, I already suppose that there are other Higher Spiritual Religions – the World outside of Catholicism is not entirely devoid of Grace. How can I say such a thing, now, as a Catholic? Well, because there are Saints of God who have been manifest in all of the Higher Religions of the World. One can hardly expect that the Cosmic Christ would limit His Dispensation only to those people who would have the audacity to claim some Divine Benefits for having murdered the Messiah of God. We must remember some of those important though mostly tacit lessons of the Bible, one of which is that The People’s of the Three Kings of the East did not inflict violence upon The Christ but rather paid their Tribute to the King of Kings and asked only for Christ’s Glory. They did not reject Christ… but in point of fact they were the first and perhaps the only peoples to ever have actually bowed before Our Lord while He was still among us. Certainly that should be rewarded with Grace as equally as with those who offered Christ only suffering and then murder, not so much bowing before Christ or Worshipping Christ as attempting to trade His Body to God for that License of Free Sin which Christians call Salvation.

And the Fruits of this Approval from the Cosmic Christ appear in the miraculous lives of the Saints, both Catholic and Non-Catholic. The Proof of Divine Favor is in the Supernatural Fruits of the Saints. This is pivotal. This is very important. One needs to remember the Logic of the Prophet Elijah. Elijah did not propose to argue for a Belief System. Elijah did not emphasize the aesthetics of his doctrines – how the religion he proposed could appeal to the sensibilities of each individual’s self-interests. No. Elijah wagered that he could bring down fire from Heaven to validate his own Religious Views, while betting that those with opposing Religious Views could not – That Spirit would only answer to True Religion. The Validity of Religion would rest upon the Evidence of the Miraculous – the Supernatural Mandate from Heaven. We would know True Religion by the Divine Power invested in Its Saints – this is the Lesson of Elijah (And as Catholics we should understand that Elijah was the Prophet who would found the Order of Monks at Mount Carmel which would later, during the Crusades, be the foundation for the Catholic Carmelite Order, whose habit seems to be a favorite of Our Lady, who, when She appears in Religious Garb at all, is perhaps always dressed as a Carmelite, representing an Order that began with Elijah… an Order both Jewish and Catholic simultaneously. This is expressive of a Religious Unity which Catholicism’s apparent Gentile Fixation largely renounces, even while Our Blessed Virgin Mary wears the cloths of Judaism. And do we forget that the Magnificat is a Jewish Prayer? Catholicism may one day need to review its position that this first Schism in the Church was entirely necessary – the Schism which separated the Gentile Congregations from the Apostolic Church of Messianic Judaism. Following Paul into separation, faction and division seems to have been only a House dividing against itself). Catholicism has never had a total monopoly of Saints. But then it occurred to me, that the Catholics, over the last two thousand years, have perhaps had the greater number of First Magnitude Saints. Catholicism has had a dozen Great Saints where between all of the other Religions combined there may have been only about half as many (Protestantism, the Religion of Paul, having had none over the period of five hundred years). The Spiritual Communities of the World could hardly ignore Catholicism’s fine winning record. The Vine of Christ is identified by its fruits, no? Now, if one would desire to be a Saint oneself, does not one’s odds improve by joining the Team that has shown the most successes in that Endeavor?

Then there is the matter of Divine Revelation. My first acquaintance with any notions of a particular Divine Revelation going exclusively to Catholics (though Heaven does not seem to distinguish between the Roman, Orthodox, Coptic or Thomasian Rites) was not through any formal education or reading, but came by a chance encounter with a rather special Catholic Priest of my acquaintance. You see, back in the nineteen-eighties while I was still affiliated with one of the Oriental Religions, I became acquainted through a Hare Krishna girl, who was also a Catholic, with a Dominican Priest, Father Tom, who was then running a relief operation to feed the poor – mostly migrant farm workers. I found myself with time on my hands and so I asked Father Tom if he could use a volunteer. He became quite a spiritual mentor and gave me my first informal lessons regarding the Blessed Virgin Mary. I had already acquired some pictures of the Blessed Virgin which added to the population of the Pantheon which cluttered my Spiritual Altar and took up much of the space on many of my walls, and told Father Tom of the ones I recognized in his own collection. His eyes quite lit up when he found he had uncovered a Marian from such an unexpected source, and I was from then on inundated with all kinds of Marian information and intelligence, particularly regarding the instances of recent Revelation in the Apparitions of Our Lady. Of particular remembrance, he made a gift to me of a Supernatural Photo of the Blessed Virgin’s Apparition in Medjugorje Herzegovina. It showed a translucent Lady against a granite wall in which one could see both Our Lady and the granite stones immediately behind Her. Perhaps Father Tom prayed for my Conversion, but it would take years for that prayer, if there had been one, to come to fruition.

Then, coming back to the near present, several weeks after the incident with my daughter at the Mission Church, I saw a tabloid newspaper that had one of those ubiquitous stories, largely fictional, regarding Our Lady the Blessed Virgin. It intrigued me. It brought back my memories of Father Tom. I bought it and took it home and began to do a series of Web Searches in hopes of validating the story. There was just enough Truth in the tabloid story to provide me with some more reliable links. It seems Father Tom had not gone into quite enough detail 20 years before. There had been hundreds of Revelatory Appearances of the Blessed Virgin during our Christian Era. Some, such as in the instances of Guadalupe and Fatima, have objectively and certainly been proven to be of miraculous origins. And then there were the hundreds of other instances of Divine Apparitions which must be miraculous if the anecdotes regarding them can be believed, as they certainly should be, as they carry the weight of any number of credible witnesses whose testimony could well meet legal muster. We must remember that not all evidence is Scientific, yet atheists often insist that Evidence that would be entirely sufficient in a Court of Law should not count at all in the judgments of our own minds.

While other Religions may have had Saints, it seems that Catholicism is the only Higher Religion to enjoy a sustained Revelation from Heaven. Unfortunately there have always been factions in the Catholic Church who would oppose these Revelations – I would suggest they are the ‘weeds’ Christ spoke of, rising up to choke out the Wheat. The Bishops seem to have often acted as though they were jealous of Our Lady. For instance, in the early centuries the Bishops forbade any New Revelation being added to what they called “The Depository of Faith” – apparently, they had no appetite for digesting ever new communications from Heaven, and would save themselves from such responsibilities by deliberately cutting off all commerce with God. This slamming shut the Door of Revelation could easily be seen as a deliberate affront to the ongoing Revelations from the Blessed Virgin Mary. But, despite the obstructionist Bishops, the Revelations would continue, coming to the Religious Orders and the Holy Laity, while the Bishops, despite themselves, would be forced to recognize it, calling it ‘Private Revelation’. Yes, the Bishops may have been reluctant to show their approval, but it was a case of their either following their flock or their being left behind without a flock. This, in fact, accounts for all those differences between Protestantism and Catholicism, where Catholicism had opened itself to the influences of these Revelatory Apparitions of Our Lady and the teachings and experiences of the Saints. After all, had we been left with only the Depository of Faith, that is, only the Bible, would we today not be in much the same deplorable shape as Protestantism, which only allows itself the Bible, to be cut off from all current and continuous Revelation from Heaven. It is often argued that Absolute Truth need not be updated regularly, but we need to remember that the Bible was published containing 14 Letters from Paul, who most certainly could bear with quite a great deal of updating. Also, I might add that it seems as though it should be some kind of Divine Law, that those who deliberately make it their policy to reject Revelation should never receive Revelation. Protestants then have shut themselves off from God. But thank the Good Lord that Catholicism left open that ‘Private Revelation’ Loop Hole. Indeed, Catholic Openness to these almost continuous Marian and Saintly Revelations would be instrumental in establishing a High Christian Civilization, a Civilization that would peak in the 11th and 12th Centuries, where a Kingdom of a thousand Cathedrals would rise up, all referred to in short as an “Our Lady’s of ‘This’” or an “Our Lady’s of ‘That’”. Catholicism, in its highest moments and manifestations, was a Religion of Our Lady. Christ was appreciated and worshipped mostly because He came so well recommended by His Blessed Virgin Mother.

As the Apparitions of Our Lady had converted Europe, so they would convert the New World, primarily through the instrumentality of the Miraculous Apparition of Our Lady of Guadalupe, which remains a visibly verifiable Miracle to this day.

So… back to the Weekend of the Tabloid Newspaper – remembering back, I largely went sleepless while searching the Web and studying the History of Our Lady and Her Apparitions. Approaching Monday morning, I decided to convert. Still feeling some discomfort with walking onto Catholic soil without belonging or having been invited (When has any Non-Catholic ever been invited by anybody to Convert? If there is such a thing as a Catholic Missionary, he must be the member of the most secret of Religious Orders). It had not occurred to me to research the actual process of becoming a Catholic. If I had, it may have significantly altered what turned out to be a very positive experience. I went off to pursue my Conversion with only the vaguest ideas of what would be expected of me. I thought that appealing to the Church’s bureaucracy would only perhaps bog me down, and it would be better to start with the advice of a knowledgeable Lay Person. So, I went to a small Catholic Bookstore in my neighborhood. I’ve always found I could trust Business People in the Religious Markets for their ability to provide practical and to the point spiritual advice, where the official Clergy can often be profound but mystifying, and even discouraging where they think they are not doing their jobs unless they can enumerate every single possible negative and toss up every possible barrier they can conceive of (these are the same Clergy who find it so difficult to recruit new Clergy. Hmmmm, I wonder why). It turned out this Shop was owned by a Third Order Carmelite Lady. I walked in and wasted no time in asking, “I suppose one needs a Sponsor in order to become a Catholic?” It only took this Lady a few seconds to size me up with her gaze and then she replied “Yes, you will”, and she proceeded to give me a list of details -- places to go, people to see, and she told me that she would consent to be my Sponsor -- my ‘Godmother’. I did not know at the time that she was the most fearsome of all God Mothers in the American Southwest, and that all of the Clergy were quite terrified of her. I would be her 18th God Child to be sponsored into the Catholic Church, and I received quite the red carpet treatment owing to her ‘intercessions’.

But back to that day. I asked if she had a 24K gold Miraculous Medal to sell, but her shop was on the poor side of town and she didn’t carry the more expensive inventory items, and so she drew a map to the more upscale Catholic Store across town where I was able to purchase a medium size Miraculous Medal, which I still wear. I needed some token of Catholicism because my decision to Convert came right after Easter and so I would be in the ‘pipeline’ for a complete year before becoming officially a Catholic, that is, before being allowed to receive the Holy Sacrament (I’m sure they must have taught me why it is necessary to violate all the rules of Civilized Hospitality by refusing to Feed the Hungry, especially those who Hunger for Things of the Spirit, who Hunger for Christ; and why it became the Policy of our Modern ‘Peters’ NOT to feed His Sheep as soon as they might complain of their Hunger. But apparently this Sensible Teaching didn’t make enough of an impression for me to remember it).

Not much later I learned from my God Mother, a Third Order Carmelite we must remember, of the Sacramental Nature of the Brown Scapular (which sources from the Carmelite Order). It instantly seemed to me to be a most indispensable item, and so we both insisted, God Mother and God Child, to the Carmelite Parish Priest that the ‘rule books’ said nothing about the need for being a fully Baptized and Confirmed Catholic before one can be enrolled into the Order of those who wear the Brown Scapular, and so I received The Brown Scapular, which made my waiting for the Holy Sacrament that much more tolerable. Then a little later I received the Chord of Saint Philomena, and then my God Mother insisted that I take the Chord of Saint Joseph, and memorize his famous Prayer from the Fifth Century ( “Hail Saint Joseph whose Protection is so great, so strong so prompt…”). I was instructed on how to multiply up Holy Water. All the while I read or became familiar with most of the books in her little Shop. And among the Statues and Paintings, I learned my Catholic Saints. By the time the RCIC Classes began, I was fairly well settled in and prepared for them. There was rarely any assigned work besides reading, but I would try to hand in at least one ‘Paper’ a month, so that the deacons could report favorably back to my Godmother… I wanted her to be proud of her newest protégé.

So that is the Story of what lead up to my Conversion. I wanted to become a Catholic and carried through and became a Catholic. But am I entirely satisfied? Do I wish the Catholic Church were different, were better? Well, certainly. We all must keep in mind that Christ prophesized that His Church would be a mixture of Wheat and Weeds. What rational person would wish to have the same appetite for Weeds as for Wheat? And yet I see very little discernment among the Catholic Intelligentsia, if there even is such a thing, for differentiating between the Good and the Evil within the Church. I have never found an open Forum for Catholic Discussion… everything sensible seems to be at the same time ‘heretical’, making discussion impossible… nobody is allowed to think. Questions can be asked and the Same Answers are given in reply that have always lead in the past to all of the Divisions and Unrest which have marred our Catholic History, as though nobody had ever heard the Words of Christ which say that Bad Doctrine can be recognized by its Bad Results.

Well, what good does complaining do? After all, Christ DID say that the Weeds would be with the Wheat well until the End of Time, that is, until the Final Harvest. Well, soon enough this Day of this Final Harvest will come, when the useless, barren and even positively evil Doctrines that have crowded out the Good in Our Church will no longer be able to sustain a defense based on duress, suppression and forced silence. Mary will confront Her Bishops and suddenly it won’t seem so obvious that they should have chosen Paul over Christ. Perhaps, the drive for Revenues always made Paul’s Popular Wide Way attractive to the Bishops who were mercenary enough even from the time of Peter’s murdering Ananias and Sapphira for their money. But hadn’t Christ quite condemned the Wide Way as the Way to destruction, and did He not advocate the less appealing but the only effectual Way – the Narrow Way of the Teachings of Righteousness and Perfection. On the Day of the Harvest we must decide whether we belong to the Church of the Wide Way, or of the Narrow? The Catholic Church contains Both. The Catholic Church provides a Choice, a Test – a Great Fork in the Road. It is both the Church of the Paul’s Bishops and the Church of the Holy Religious Orders, the Righteous Laity, and of Mary the Blessed Virgin. It is both the Church of Christ Her Son, and the Church of Paul, whose credentials must be wondered at considering that he never spoke a single word commending the Blessed Virgin or indeed ever quoted a single statement of Christ.

Yes, I know that these matters of Doctrine may be confusing, but we should remember that we have not been left without guidance. While we still receive the Revelations and Apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary, there is hope that Her Patronage and Sponsorship will bring us through to completion and perfection, and that She, with Her Angels and Saints, will sustain the Wheat while holding back the encroachments of the Weeds.

So, in short, I converted to Catholicism because it is the World’s Last and Only Living Religion, experiencing an Active Communication with Heaven, through Saints, and Seers (once called Prophets and Oracles), and receiving Revelations from Divinity Itself through the Intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary. I have not converted to a mere Belief System, but to an Institution that embodies the Living Vine of Christ on Earth, nurtured and watered by the Blessed Virgin Mary Mother of God Herself. To be a Catholic is to be under the Pall of Her Grace.

….Oh, allow me to add some subsequent history. I had noticed that after each Holiday Season, I and many others would come down with symptoms of respiratory illness, and I was able to infer that the smoke from the incense was making myself and others sick. I mentioned this to both the Parish Priests and the Arch Bishop of the Diocese and was frankly smiled at. Well, I suffered the indignity until the next set of Holidays whereupon they again brought out the Smoke. And then there was the election of Cardinal Ratzinger to Pope. The man had given every one of the Cardinals who voted for him their jobs. “I make you Cardinal, and you can make me Pope”. It simply was not honest and ethical behavior. So while I enjoyed the Sacraments for a number of years, I suppose that the Catholic Church of the Secular Clergy, the Bishops and the Pope must get along without me.