What Happened to Religion?

Organized religion, that is.

Organized religion, irrespective of place and time in history*, has always been a form of ideology, serving to secure the established order. After all, the masses need something convincing and comforting towards succumbing to their fates ("They deserve to suck d*, but it's okay, because as Obama used to say, "help is coming"; well, as always, you need quite a bit of imagination to see the "help" materialized).

In the Middle Ages, monks/nuns were "hired hands" for prayers. Convents and monasteries also served as depositories for the nobles' lower-ranking sons and daughters without much dowry that, of course, was still excessive enough to secure the position of abbess for the daughter, of an abbot for the son or, for the latter, papal nomination to become a bishop was not out of the question, assuming a hefty gift escorted the request by a prominent member of nobility.

Theoretically, it was the corruption of the Church that gave rise to Protestantism at the beginning of the 16th century. Surprisingly, this time, it won out. There are at least two reasons for its success:

1.       Monetary and ideological independence: rulers got sick of having to pay an annual tax to the Pope, so they preferred to save some money and nominate their own church leaders, with the extreme case of Henry VIII, who nominated himself, creating a tradition that the Anglican Church still maintains (the Queen is the Anglican “Pope”), which also created a novel form of national pride and a sense of independence. Previous heretic movements used to be wiped out without much ado. After Protestantism, Roman Catholicism prevailed in the Holy Roman Empire (with quite a bit of Jesuit assistance) that happened to control the Pope, too.

2.       For the disenfranchised, the appeal of Protestantism came from translations of the Bible into the vernacular. Previously, the average believer was illiterate, but book printing brought in cheaper books to replace the hand-crafted calligraphy of codices, so all of a sudden, books became more and more affordable for the masses. Breaking away from liturgy and traditional theology were indispensable for creating an identity (a denomination). Being allowed to pray in one’s own words also contributed to the allure.

The world could use prayers today, too, but instead, literacy is going out of fashion.

St. Thomas Aquinas merged Theology with Aristotelian logic, but I consider the very effort a fallacy (unless the Pascalian "road to God" is discounted, but Pascal had personal experiences, too, which were considered Protestantism at the time, so Jansenism was wiped out in 1711), because it wants to address an existential question (Do I want to live in a world without a benign Creator?) with logic.

Atheism is plain dumb; there is obviously a Creator, but the question is, whether "it" means well or is only engaged in a stupid computer game at a higher elevation of existence. That question cannot be answered with logic, so the answer enters the realms of emotions, intuitions and, ultimately, of the person's existential needs.

Considering the self-destructive nature of humanity, it has reached global levels. Previously, empires were graciously allowed to fall to someone else to carry on, but this time, nobody will have been left to start over.

Sometimes I wonder if "Pope Francis" has been a double from the beginning or just part of the pure evil that is still being installed and institutionalized by the monsters. Either way, he is propagating some form of communalism in which the person can be sacrificed “for the good of the majority.” This is all the more peculiar and astounding, because that was the exact argument for Christ’s crucifixion.

Communalism is not limited to the Roman Catholic leadership; it’s all over the place, in the name of scientism and a paroxistic aberration of altruism.

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* The rulers in the area of China didn’t bother to unify an ideology, but the logistics are the same.

In the last 2,500 years, Confucianism has been maintained as the etiquette for the rich and Taoism as a copying method for the poor. The latter has some spiritual contents with its emphasizing an “inner voice” it calls “the Tao,” but the same inner voice exists in just about all religious practices.

Confucianism, however, opens up some room for social mobility by introducing a rudimentary form of meritocracy with the Imperial Exam, which, apart from the inevitable corruption involved, functioned in a manner similar to “The American Dream,” thus giving some hope for the poor and giving them a reason why they deserve to be servants.