Mahinda Weerasinghe

( This piece was crafted by me in 2004 but my good friend ‘Mahindapala’, blocked me from placing it in the net, due it been “unholy” and in bad taste. He been a typical Buddhist did not want to see what I knew. As most people did not want to acknowledge, what is factual. Here I tried to deal with facts as acquainted by global historians so if there anything is questionable let me know, and I am ready to validate it!? Or we will have to repeat history due to our tolerance!)

On June 18, 1982, a body was found dangling underneath Blackfriars Bridge in London. Police was quick to establish that the dead man was no other than Roberto Calvi, the chairman and managing director of Bunco Ambrosiano, of Milan, Italy. It took even less time to connect Calvi to organized crime, political groups, secret societies, drug dealers, major financial institutions, and to a little-known shadowy entity called ‘The Institute for Religious Works’. The last being nothing less than the official bank of Vatican. The collapse of the Banco Ambrosiano and the involvement of the Vatican high officials revealed, how offshore dummy corporations propped up under the Ambosirano Group’s line of credit, funnelled millions of dollars that were simply siphoned off without a trace. Not that such hanky panky by the Vatican surprised anyone.  But there is a more vital reason for maintaining its concealment vis- -vis  its banking activity. Every pontiff up to and including those nineteenth century ones condemned taking of interest on loans (usury) under any circumstances, and this ban is officially in effect to this date. In fact Pius XII inaugurated its own bank under a cloak of secrecy, as recently as in 1942.

The last years we notice the Catholic Church being dogged by another ignominy. Its paedophile priests’ activities have entertained and amused the global society. Indeed we did not get to hear of such sex-capades the last months so we assumed that these priestly paedophiles have taken a sabbatical. Then we get to learn that Catholic priests of Canada are convicted of big-scale sexual abuse just the other day.

Why should such activities, shock us or surprise us knowing Church’s questionable past? They have been at it, since the time the Holy Fathers were anointed as ‘Vicars of Christ’. Surely the global society is not afflicted with amnesia to forget how they unleashed the Inquisition and intimidated millions of innocent believers, roasted women routinely by classifying them as witches, carried out holy wars in the name of God, destroyed tolerant old cultures, and strived their utmost to eradicate other creeds branding them as ‘superstitions’ of heathens? Indeed why should a few thousand priest and nuns indulging in sex make such a fracas now?

Just a few centuries ago the Catholic Church claimed to have the monopoly of the truth, “the whole truth and nothing but the truth”. They also had the gun-boats to back it. So unbelievers, heretics and pagans had to tread softly, if they were to avoid losing their life. The rise of secularism in the West has reduced their power of dictating their religious code to sceptics. But that does not mean they have lost their grip on Western powers entirely. Popes, cardinals and bishops continue their nefarious activities by using the usual covert, manipulative and shadowy methods. A good example is the last Pope John Paul whose main claim to ascendancy was the overthrowing the communist regime in Poland.

Key aspects of global politics and finances continue to be in the hands of the Church. Most people are unaware of the triple sovereignty of the Vicar of Christ: the Pope as the head of Vatican State, the spiritual head of the far-flung Catholic empire, and the dictator of the religious code to all Catholics. Internationally, the pope is not subject to any authority on earth other than God himself, and here there is no conflict of interest as the Holy Father has a direct pipeline to the Almighty. His Cardinals are Princes of the Church. Each diocese is considered to be a loyal fiefdom of the Church.

INFALLIBILITY OF POPES

In 1854 the Catholic Church found it important to announce the ‘infallibility’ of the Popes. Not that the popes have been fallible prior to that year. On the contrary, if anything, Vicars of Christ were infallible since they took over from Peter, only they underlined this fact that year. This claim to infallibility has serious consequences to scholarship, liberalism and individual freedom. No one could challenge the Pope’s authority. Science, for instance, was one of its first victims. Up to the last century all popes claimed that the sun was going round the world, and not the other way around as maintained by scientist. Indeed Galileo escaped by the skin of his teeth, from being roasted alive for contradicting this holy ‘truth’. He going by observations declared that the earth was circling the sun. When the inquisition came knocking on his door, Galileo realised his political – not scientific – blunder. He recanted forthwith and agreed with the “science” of the Pope. So if you were to fly round the world and find the world going round the sun, just keep it to yourself.

IMMACULATE CONCEPTION

A standard dictionary is of little help in getting any sense out of this one. So I will let the Catholic theologians explain (or indeed define) this slippery theme: –

We declare, pronounce and define that the doctrine which holds that the most blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instant of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the saviour of the human race, was preserved  free from all strain of original sin, is a doctrine revealed by God and therefore to be believed firmly and constantly by all the faithful.

 What it really specifies (means) is not only that Mary was untouched by human hands and was a pure virgin, but so was her parents their parents going on down the line to Adam and Eve! (In other words Virgin Mary and all of her progeny were conceived without sin (or sex to the vulgar). Don’t ask me to elaborate this intricate teaching of the holy church; I need a PhD from some recognised catholic university at least, to explain this in any logical way. But be warned; don’t go demanding to see a doctor’s certificate as testimony for any virginity cases, for the Catholic Church assures that someone has been informed by God as to this Immaculate Conception condition of hers, whatever that means.

MIXED BAG OF POPES

There were a number of nutty Popes, but out of these, Stephen VI takes the cake.
‘Vicar of Christ’ (in 891-896) was this named Stephen. All his contemporaries knew him to be totally insane, a qualification probably helpful in order to run this institution. In that year, this “God’s representative on earth” launched one of the most bizarre trials known to man, which even surpassed the Church’s own standards.  His earlier boss, the late Pope Formosus, had been dead for 9 months when Stephen took this original decision. He got Formosus’ corpse dug up from its tomb and arrayed it on a throne in the council chamber. The corpse, was wrapped in a hair shirt, and was democratically provided with corpse’s own defence council. Formosus helpfully maintained ‘a silence’ during the proceedings, while Pope Stephen raved and screamed at the corpse. When Stephen was through with his ranting, the corpse was stripped of all its clothes, its fingers lopped off and was dragged through the palace and hurled from a balcony to a howling mob below, who cast it directly into the Tiber.

In 964 Pope Benedict V is reported to have raped a young girl and absconded to Constantinople with the papal treasury only to reappear when the money ran out. This pontiff was eventually slain by a jealous husband. His corpse, bearing a hundred dagger wounds, was dragged through the streets before being tossed this time into a cesspit.

Then there has been an 11 year old Pope (Benedict IX 1032), at least one woman pope, who probably took everyone for a ride (in every sense), and even a holy father who created his own school of forgers. In fact in 1409 there was not one pope, nor two, but three holy Roman popes. Gregory XII, Benedict XIII and Alexander V)

Peter De Rosa in his ‘VICARS OF CHRIST, The Dark Side of the Papacy’ draws a fascinating picture of this institution. He found: “Further among the popes were a large number of married men, some of whom gave up their wives and children in exchange for the papal office. Many were sons of priests, bishops and popes; some were bastards; one was a widower, another ex-slave; several were murderers, some unbelievers, some were hermits, some heretics, sadist and sodomites; many became popes by buying the papacy, one at least was a Satan-worshipper; some fathered illegitimate children, some were fornicators and adulterers on a grand scale…”

Lord Acton, a catholic, asserts: “It (inquisition) was nothing short of ‘religious assassination… The principle of the inquisition was murderous.’ As to the popes, they ‘were not only murderers in the grand style, but they made murder a legal basis of the Christian Church and the condition of salvation”.

I have here scratched the surface of the papal history just to give a taste of what was in store for those nations that were invaded by believers of this ‘Holy Catholics faith’.

In the next part (Part II) I would take up how this questionable Judeo Christian Institution is; acting today as Judge, Jury and Executioner of Sinhalese Buddhists chauvinists and tried to unravel the holy truths hidden for these dolts since it landed the Lankan shores in 1503.