The Church, War, and Politics

The central symbol of Christianity is a depiction of the violent murder of its culture-hero Jesus. His body and blood ar symbolically consumed in the Eucharist, a kind of metaphorical cannibalism. splay a book on the art of the Middle Ages and you ordain be inundated with endless graphic and disgusting scenes of mayhem and martyrdom.

While Christ's Sermon on the Mount as account in the Gospel of Saint Matthew was a plea for gentleness, love, and non-violence, the accounts of Armagedden in the Revelations of St. John at the end of the New Testament imbibe to be considered some of the most sadistic, vicious, and pathological manifestations of the gentle vision ever to be written.

It was Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung who exposed the seething violence of the human unconscious, which countless generations of people sop up been taught to repress, deny, or blame on the Devil. Martin Luther suffered from compulsive fears of his own sinfulness, which in part fueled his wondering(a) of Church doctrines.

The Inquisition was initiated in 1233 by Pope Gregory IX as a means of forcing heretic sects to come cover to orthodoxy (p. 207). The complete disconnect between ends and means is readily likely in the logic of murdering unbelievers to save them: "To burn the heretic was an act

of love toward the community, deterring by fear others who were be given to the same sin. It was an act of love toward the heretic, for he might be recalled buy fear of the fire and save his soul" (ibid.).

The Catholic Church never condemned Hitler. After World War II dozens of Nazi war criminals fled the Allies with the help of the Church, represent as priests. Cardinal Ratzinger, the new Pope, was a member of the Hitler y appearh organization as an adolescent. Cardinal Spellman of New York supported the cleanup spot of three and a half million Vietnamese by the United States in Vietnam.

Chilean dictator Agusto Pinochet was frequently photographed victorious communion during his reign of terror in Chile after a U.S. supported coup overthrew the democratically-elected government of Socialist Savador Allende. He was just imitating Francisco Franco, who was championed by the Catholic secret society musical composition Dei and warmly supported by the Pope.

There has not been a single right-wing dictator in the history of Latin America who has not been supported by the Catholic Church, although to their citation there stick out been dissident priests espousing Liberation Theology who have sided with the Sandanistas in Nicaragua or the poor and downtrodden elsewhere.

Liberal Protestant sects have a somewhat better human rights record, having spoken out against the Vietnam War and America's dark record of consistently supporting leadership who terrorized their own people during the Cold War. To their credit, American Protestant organizations much(prenominal) as Pastors for Peace have defied the blockade of Cuba, delivering medical
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