One reason people pay any attention at all to the Media is that they still worship status, are suspicious of authority, and don’t know the difference between the two. Once they realize that truth is more valuable to them than a glitzy broadcast, the revolution is already done.

–Pain

One thing that always puzzled Europeans about Americans was that we were very religious and at the same time we were anti-clerical all the way to the gut.

We think of Catholics as the most obedient to religious authority. Yet even American Catholics naturally react this way,

American Catholics are the mainstay of that church throughout the world. A priest once told me that American Catholics benefited from the fact that this is a very deeply religious country.

Unlike other countries, where most people are Catholic simply by default, Catholics here have an attendance record and pay for their churches on a scale that, while we bitch about it, leaves the rest of the world in awe.

Here there are a lot of bitches about the priest shortage. But other countries today produce almost no priests at all.

Practicing American Catholics are known to routinely ignore the Pope’s more extreme pronouncements on birth control and the like.

But they don’t do this for the European reason, Europeans simply don’t take their faith seriously and that is the reason they ignore what the Pope says.

Practicing American Catholics ignore the Curia when it writes up a fashionable statement that capital punishment is evil. This is not an irreligious attitude. They simply don’t think such social dictates are necessary to the Catholic RELIGION.

Ignoring the preacher when he doesn’t make sense is traditional here. We are RELIGIOUS, not SLAVISH.

I think that, in order to follow Pain’s advice, we need to get that back same natural American attitude toward the priest of our PRESNT established religion.

It is important to remember that that attitude is deep in our national consciousness.
I see it on the Internet all the time. That is why constant reference to “repeating what Mommy Professor says” is such a deadly effective tactic in online debate.

Look at the responses. Europeans and South American are always looking for a religious or Intellectual or Titled Authority to adhere to. This Mommy Professor stuff makes this habitual dependence so clear that it even bothers THEM.

But the “Mommy Professor” truth makes AMERICANS on the Net go ballistic.

One of the two people Jesus specifically condemned to Hell was the Jewish High Priest who read and knew the Old Testament backward and forward, as modern preachers recommend as the Path to Heaven. Jesus made it clear that that high priest preached and followed The Law perfectly. He stood at the front of the Temple and proudly depended on his adherence and his reading.

Unseen in the back of the Temple was a sinner and back-slider who meekly admitted his failures, present and future, and begged to be forgiven for them. HE, said Jesus, was saved.

This parable may have meant nothing. Jesus may have just been gassing off.

I doubt it.

It is downright funny that the Bible should say “Wise Men from the East” as a code-word for priests of the Zoroastrian faith.

Today scholars say the same thing, “Ex Oriente Lux”, “Light Comes from the East”

But today they mean that all knowledge and wisdom comes from Israel and Egypt and Mesopotamians on both sides of Israel.

When scholars said “Ex Oriente Lux”, “Light Comes from the East” today they mean that all knowledge and wisdom comes from Israel and Egypt and Mesopotamians on both sides of Israel.

But in Matthew, Israel was the Western Place the Wise Men rom the East came TO.

Today a “Christian theologian” likes to sound profound by denouncing everything he disapproves of in early Christian days as “Gnostic.” It sounds impressive and is nice and vague, like all phrases used by intellectual snobs. .

The actual Gnostics were snobs, too. They said that salvation was not for the common people — you know, the ones Jesus went out and preached to. Salvation was for Intellectuals who Truly Understood the Secrets in the Book.

In early Christian times those Secrets had an Iranian flavor. They were from the Orient of THAT day.

Gnostics separated the God of This World from the True God. In the newly-found Gospel of Judas, Jesus LAUGHS at the Disciples who are sacrificing to Jehovah and explains to Judas that they are worshipping The God of THIS World. If you know anything about Zoroastrianism, which modern theologians don’t, you will immediately recognize the Zoroastrian separation of Ahura Mazda, the Good God of the Next World, from Ahriman, the Zoroastrian Satan from whom we get our Satan, who was the creator and God of THIS world.

The Gospel of Judas was excluded from the canon because it was a Gnostic Gospel BACK WHEN PEOPLE KNEW WHAT “GNOSTIC MEANT.

Theologians and Renaissance “intellectuals” are and were still just snobs.

They just had a different “Orient” in mind.