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Hai Ngàn Năm Một Thuở: Chứng Từ Của Một Số Trí Thức Cơng Giáo   Giáo sư Đỗ Mạnh Tri - Trần Chung Ngọc     Giáo sư Đỗ Mạnh Tri Trả lời vấn Việt Tide    http://anhduong.net/binhluan/Dec05/GSDoManhTri-VietTide.htm      Trần Chung Ngọc   I VÀI LỜI NÓI ĐẦU   II DẪN NHẬP   III MỤC SƯ & LINH MỤC NHẬN ĐỊNH VỀ TÍN ĐỒ CỦA MÌNH   IV PHÊ BÌNH CUỐN "2000 NĂM MỘT THUỞ " 13   A Nhận định sơ khởi 13   Nhận định ba học giả Ki Tơ 16   B Phê bình ơng Đỗ Mạnh Tri: 18   1) Ông Đỗ Mạnh Tri Truyền Đạo Về "Ngơi Mộ Trống" 19   2) Ơng Đỗ Mạnh Tri Quảng Cáo "Tin Mừng" Phúc Âm 25   3) Ơng Đỗ Mạnh Tri Quảng Cáo Những Thuộc Tính Khơng Hề Có Của Giê-su 28   "Tình thương" Giê-su người, cỏ, súc vật 29   4) Ông Đỗ Mạnh Tri Phịa Ra Tinh Thần "Tự Do" Của Ki-Tô Giáo 30   5) Thủ Đoạn Truyền Đạo Thiếu Lương Thiện Của Ông Đỗ Mạnh Tri 32   6) Ông Đỗ Mạnh Tri Ca Tụng Vai Trò "Mẹ Thầy" Của Giáo Hội 33   7) Ông Đỗ Mạnh Tri Ca Tụng Đạo Đức Của Giới Chăn Chiên 34   8) Ông Đỗ Mạnh Tri Tin Những Chuyện Phịa Trong Tân Ước 39   Chứng minh Thánh Kinh thêm thắt sau 41   9) Ông Đỗ Mạnh Tri Ca Tụng Giáo Dân VN Đi Tiên Phong Trong Vấn Đề Tự Do Tín Ngưỡng 44   C Điểm Sơ Vài Ý Kiến Của Những Tác Giả Khác Trong Cuốn "2000 Năm Một Thuở " 46   Những điều nhận vơ giáo hội Ca-tô 50   A) Giáo hội vấn đề nhân quyền, công bằng, bác ái, tự do: 51   B.) Nền Thần Học Ki-Tô Giáo 55   Thực chất thần học Ki Tô Giáo 57   C) Văn Minh Ki Tô Giáo & Văn Minh Tây Phương 60   "Ki Tơ Giáo mang lại cho nhân loại 2000 năm nay?" 63   Sau vài tài liệu lịch sử khác 70   Văn hóa xã hội Việt Nam kỷ 14-16 71   V VÀO LỜI KẾT 76    Giáo sư Đỗ Mạnh Tri Trả lời vấn Việt Tide http://anhduong.net/binhluan/Dec05/GSDoManhTriVietTide.htm  Giáo sư Đỗ Mạnh Tri: “Tôn giáo phải giúp người dân biểu lộ phẫn nộ trước tội ác bất cơng xã hội” LTS: Sáng ngày thứ Ba, 29 tháng 11 vừa qua, nhiều ngàn người đổ Hà Nội để tham dự lễ thụ phong 57 linh mục thuộc giáo phận miền Bắc Việt Nam Buổi lễ diễn chủ tọa Hồng y Cresezio Sepe, Tổng trưởng Bộ Truyền Giáo Tòa Thánh Vatican Nhân dịp này, Việt Tide gọi điện thoại sang Paris hỏi ý kiến giáo sư Đỗ Mạnh Tri ông dành cho vấn sau Đinh Quang Anh Thái thực Giáo sư Đỗ Mạnh Tri trí thức Cơng giáo Từng trách nhiệm tờ Tin Nhà Sau Tin Nhà đình bản, ơng tiếp tục cộng tác với nhiều tạp chí Diễn Đàn Giáo dân, Viễn Tượng Việt Nam Ông tác giả nhiều tập sách giá trị “Ngón tay Mặt trăng”, “Di sản Mác xít Việt Nam”… đồng tác giả “Hai ngàn năm thuở, Ba mươi năm Công giáo Việt Nam Chế độ Cộng sản” (vừa phát hành) Giáo sư Đỗ Mạnh Tri sinh ngày 11 tháng Chạp năm 1931 Nam Định Trước hưu, ông dạy triết Việt Tide: Giáo sư nhận định ý nghĩa việc truyền chức cho 57 linh mục Việt Nam ạ? Giáo sư Đỗ Mạnh Tri: Năm mươi bẩy linh mục thụ phong lúc điều chưa xảy chế độ cộng sản Việt Nam Người chủ toạ lễ truyền chức lại Hồng y Cresezio Sepe, Tổng trưởng Bộ Truyền giáo Tòa thánh Vatican từ Roma sang Việt Nam Sự kiện biểu lộ lòng ưu Giáo chủ Giáo triều Rôma Giáo hội Công giáo Việt Nam, đồng thời khiến ta đặc biệt ý tới mối liên hệ phức tạp Vatican Hà Nội giai đoạn ‘nóng’ có chiều khởi sắc ? Vậy ý nghĩa lễ truyền chức linh mục cho 57 thầy phó tế nhiều Đối với nội Giáo hội Cơng giáo Việt Nam, miền Bắc, có thêm 57 linh mục, dĩ nhiên tốt, tốt Có thêm lúc 57 linh mục, cịn địi ? Nhưng xin đừng vội loá mắt trước số : 57 tân linh mục cho toàn miến Bắc, tức cho chừng 800 trăm giáo xứ ! Ai biết, nay, vài thay đổi, miền Bắc thiếu linh mục cách thê thảm Một giáo phận giáo phận Lạng Sơn, với 18 giáo xứ rải rắc 14 ngàn số vuông ba tỉnh Lạng Sơn, Cao Bằng, Hà Giang, mà theo thống kê Niên giám 2004, có linh mục cho 5.583 giáo dân, vị đó, vị sinh năm 1904 ! Giáo phận Bùi Chu, với lãnh thổ nhỏ nhiều, với 129 giáo xứ 370.000 giáo dân, có 56 linh mục Về lượng thế, chất người ta khơng thể khơng có nghi vấn việc tuyển sinh, đào tạo… Vì vào chủng viện hay khơng, vào chủng viện rồi, có lãnh chức linh mục hay khơng, cịn phải tuỳ thuộc quyền cấp Mà tiêu chuẩn quyền khác hẳn, khơng nói mâu thuẫn với địi hỏi đáng Giáo hội Về phía quyền, cho phép thụ phong 57 linh mục, lại “tạo điều kiện” để nghi lễ chuẩn bị cách đình đám diễn cách trang trọng, kể tuyên truyền cho “chính sách (đàn áp) tôn giáo trước sau một” “Đảng Nhà nước ta” Chính Đức cha Ngơ Quang Kiệt, Tổng giám mục Hà Nội, trả lời vấn đài RFI ngày 28.11 công nhận kiện quyền cho phép tryuền chức linh mục chấp thuận việc Tòa Thánh Vatican thiết tập giáo phận Baria “cho thấy sách tơn giáo Việt Nam có cởi mở, thơng thống đồng thời mối quan hệ nhà nước Việt Nam Tồ Thánh Vatican có chiều hướng cởi mở tốt đẹp” Người ngồi nhìn vào, thấy Chính quyền xem dễ dãi Công giáo, lúc nhiều tôn giáo khác bị đàn áp thẳng tay Như Giáo hội Phật giáo Việt Nam Thống nhất, Giáo hội Tin lành Mennonite, Phật giáo Hịa Hảo Tình trạng làm nảy sinh so bì tôn giáo Việt Tide: Từ năm 1975 đến nay, có Tịa thánh Vatican riêng Giáo hội Công giáo Việt Nam nêu vấn đề nhân quyền tự tôn giáo với giới lãnh đạo chế độ không, thưa giáo sư? Giáo sư Đỗ Mạnh Tri: Thưa anh, Toà Thánh hàng Giáo phẩm Công giáo Việt Nam lên tiếng nhiều lần, cách minh bạch Xin nhắc lại diễn văn trao đổi cách công khai trang trọng viếng mộ hai thánh Tông đồ lần cuối Giám mục Việt Nam vào đầu năm 2002 Tôi nhớ rõ, diễn văn chào mừng Đức Thánh Cha, Đức cha Nguyễn Văn Hồ có nói từ ngày thiết lập Hội đồng Giám mục Việt Nam (1980), giám mục nhiều lần lên tiếng để nói lên địi hỏi quyền người Giáo hội Đức Gioan Phaolô II, đáp từ nhắc lại nguyên tắc trước vào trường hợp cụ thể Việt Nam : Tơn giáo trị hai lãnh vực khác độc lập với xã hội, nhằm phục vụ người; đơi bên phải có cộng tác lành mạnh; để có cộng tác lành mạnh này, quyền phải tuyệt đối tơn trọng tính tự chủ tơn giáo Tự tơn giáo, thế, quyền người Có thể nói, tự tơn giáo mẹ thứ tự do, tự tơn giáo quyền tự biểu lộ ngoài, cách cá nhân hay tập thể xác tín có lịng : tự nói, tự viết, tự làm, tự hội họp, tự truyền bá v.v… Dĩ nhiên, tôn trọng tự người khác Sau Đức Thánh Cha khơng ngại nêu lên địi hỏi cụ thể Giáo hội Cơng giáo Việt Nam sở vật chất nhân sinh hoạt Nguyên việc, Gioan Phaolô II, xin Giám mục, anh em ngài, trở Việt Nam, loan báo cho toàn thể giáo dân Việt Nam biết Đức Thánh Cha cầu nguyện cho họ, mời họ noi gương thánh tử đạo Việt Nam lãnh nhận thách đố Tin Mừng, đủ nói lên chèn ép hạn chế cịn đè nặng lên Giáo hội Cơng giáo Việt Nam Có điều nói trên, nói đường lối chung Giáo hội Nhìn theo giịng thời gian, có lúc cương, lúc nhu Nhìn vào cá nhân hàng giáo phẩm có nhiều cách ứng phó Trước người ta đối chiếu thái độ Đức cha Nguyễn Kim Điền, Tổng giám mục Huế Đức cha Nguyễn Văn Bình, Tổng giám mục Sài Gòn Hiện nay, sau hai thư Hội Đồng Giám Mục Việt Nam Đức cha Phạm Minh Mẫn phê phán chế độ “xin cho”, lại có tiếng nói Đức cha Ngơ Quang Kiệt, Tổng giám mục Hà Nội, “cơỉ mở” với quyền Trả lời vấn báo Lao Động dịp lễ Giáng Sinh 2003, Đức cha Kiệt có nói : “Thực tế sách Nhà nước Việt Nam tôn giáo cởi mở, tôn trọng tự tín ngưỡng, tạo điều kiện để giáo dân sống tốt đời đẹp đạo”… Những lời phát biểu thế, cho thấy hàng giáo phẩm cơng giáo khơng có thống quan điểm tình trạng nhân quyền sinh hoạt tôn giáo Việt Nam Việt Tide: Một vị Hồng y Tòa thánh nhận định rằng, tự Giáo hội Công giáo Việt Nam tự chim bay nhẩy lồng Giáo sư nghĩ lời nhận định ạ? Giáo sư Đỗ Mạnh Tri: Tơi đồng ý với nhận định Hồng y Phạm Minh Mẫn, Tổng giám mục địa phận Sài Gòn, có lần phát biểu nguyên văn rằng: “tự mà chúng tơi muốn (nó) to bàn, tự người ta cho (nó) tách uống nước thơi” Nói trắng ra, quyền tự nói chung, quyền tự tơn giáo nói riêng, khơng có Việt Nam Cái gọi “tự do” Việt Nam thứ mà Nhà nước cho phép, quyền tự thực khơng có Chẳng hạn quyền đơn sơ quyền lại nước, đồng bào khơng có; đâu phải có hộ khẩu; tạm trú, tạm vắng phải khai báo với cơng an Dạo sau này, họ bớt kiểm sốt họ định kiểm sốt người nào, họ vịn vào quy định họ để bắt chẹt người dân Tư quyền dân chúng mà đồng bào khơng có Chúng ta cần khẳng định rằng, chế độ tại, Việt Nam khơng có quyền tự Chỉ có gọi “tự do”, người ta cho phép làm Các quyền đó, Đức Hồng y Phạm Minh Mẫn gọi “chế độ xin-cho” Nghĩa dân xin nhà nước cho Nhưng cho hay khơng cho cịn tuỳ người cho thái độ người xin Việt Tide: Cho tới nay, chế độ cộng sản quê nhà xem tôn giáo thứ thuốc phiện ru ngủ dân chúng; mà họ lại 57 linh mục truyền chức, mặt khác họ khe khắt với tôn giáo khác Theo nhận định giáo sư bối cảnh đó, làm cách để hài hòa thống với ạ? Giáo sư Đỗ Mạnh Tri: Thưa anh, tôn giáo ru ngủ Nhà nước Cộng sản không ngại đâu Trái lại Tôn giáo ru ngủ dân, chế độ an tâm làm ăn Tơi e ngại quyền cho phép cách dễ dãi coi nguyên tắc thực tiễn : quyền cấm khơng cho người dân làm, Bible, the Church, and Jesus Thus, unlike other maturing disciplines that discarded faulty thinking in their struggle to obtain truth, Christianity almost universally rejected the findings of scientific investigation that conflicted with traditional views about Scripture The intrusion of new perspectives into the exclusive sphere of Bible and Church was viewed as sacrilegious and therefore unacceptable    It was the beginning of the astrolabe mind - a mind entrenched against truth on the assumption that the Bible possessed ultimate know1edge; a mind which declared all biblical stories to be historic happenings; a mind which declared that what it considered sacred was specifically unalterable; a mind which made authority its truth rather than truth its authority!    The refusal to view new information as an ally against faulty religious assumptions arrested most of Christianity within the mental framework o0f the seventeenth century At its inception, The astrolabe mind was only slightly out of step with the newly discovered findings of seventeenth-century biblical criticism But as time progressed, Christians increasingly failed to keep pace with these findings Thus, the astrolabe mind became more and more antiquated and isolated from evolving knowledge    With the rediscovery of the scientific method in 16th-century Europe and the subsequent evolvement of the Enlightenment during the 18th-century, it was inevitable that a more rational analysis of Scripture would occur In a world becoming scientifically oriented, descriptions of walking on water, of demons, angels, resurrection stories, and other phenomena grew increasingly unacceptable as historical realities    In 1835-1836, The Life of Jesus Critically Examined, by D F Strauss, referred to some NT narratives as "myth" and defined those unhistorical elements as expressing a series of religious ideas Today, analytical studies continue to support and confirm this assertion The majority of scholars regard the following NT accounts and Church-developed doctrines as myth:    1) The virgin birth    2) The Incarnation (God in human form; that is, God as Jesus)    3) The work of Atonement (plan for salvation)    4) The resurrection    5) The ascension (Jesus' bodily ascent into heaven 40 days after the resurrection)     6) The Second Coming (the return of Jesus to raise the dead and to summon all to the Last Judgment    7) The Last Judgment (the judgment of all by God at Christ's Second Coming)    I took a trip to Lourdes in southern France I stood in the giant square in front of the Basilica and watched the Catholics of the world await the special blessing of this sacred shrinẹ I was jostled by the Italian ladies in their shawls, distracted by Eastern Europeans who whispered their prayers out loud I watched the sick on their litters, the American businessmen in their clean white shirts I saw priests wrapped in the cassocks of the world, excited Africans in their multi-colored native garb But most of all I saw the wrinkled faces, speaking out the sincerity of their pain They had come to ask a favor, like the Moslem hordes at Mecca, and to know a special contact with their God They drank the water there, which is noted for its miraculous effects They bought the plastic bottles to bring the water homẹ They bought rosaries and medals by the basketful and had them blessed by the pudgy hands of sweating priests They covered the grounds like locusts, bent on devouring each shred of special grace They kissed the feet of statues and groaned in mildewed shrines They confessed in every language and munched their mountain cheese Then, like a giant, content herd, they went home to bed And so did I, as sick as confused by superstition as I had been on that autumn day when the Spartans conquered Rome    Not only was I sick and confused, I was deeply ashamed as well This was my Church and there were the Catholic men I had helped to form, the statistics we added up when we counted the catholicity of our Church My mind was crowded with thoughts that refused to let me sleep I thought of the frightened catholics who worried and prayed in every parish I had served I thought of the man who is a Catholic and I think of him once again    The Catholic man sees the world through a system which forbids him to be himself He can walk the city streets and watch every face and every situation fall neatly into its proper category He has never really known the joy of search, the wonder of discovery, the exciting freedom of personal decision The world is a stranger to him since he judges its citizens before he really knows and understands He has been taught what to read, how to think, and whom to call his friend    I watch the Catholic come to Mass and pity the formation that warped his mind and distorted his religious sense He comes because he has been told to come by religious leaders who are as docile and listless as he He read the prayers wrapped in stilted phrases and make the gestures totally foreign to his modern way of life He lives in a world of jet and atomic bombs, and prays in a world of medieval magic He is bored in the presence of his God And yet he comes, because he has learned from his youth that hell is the home of those who miss Mass He is too frightened to admid he is bored    In his business his eye is tuned to efficiency and progress He looks for shorcuts, for new way to reach the public, for another service that will attract his fellow man He has views on world peace, opinions on fiscal reform, thoughts on crime prevention, mental health, and transportation in megalopolis But in religion he is a robot who can only recite the answers he has learned He will accept the priestly decisions without protest, appear thoughful when he hears a rehash of the truths he learned in school, and support the Church which has robbed him of his mind    The man or woman who is a Catholic has lost his touch with life He is afraid to read the books that others read, to see the movies that reflect our modern life    The Church, like a frightened and angry parent, takes too much credit for the help that it can offer man Consequently Catholics are treated as children and they continue to behave as such    The Catholic man opposed evolution and he was wrong He supported monarchy long after democracy had made the people free He promoted racial prejudice until "pagans" showed him he was wrong He fought mixed marriages and fights them still, although he enjoys the freedoms that pluralism has won He asks for freedom of conscience and expects protestants to raise their children in his faith    He has not the right to follow his own conscience, or the power to select the principles that give him help He is a Catholic, a child, who demands that another make for him his choice    Thus, the Catholic man cannot truly know the meaning of dialogue, but only give arguments to defend the position he has inherited from his youth    The Catholic man is an organized answering service whose first obligation is to protect his Church.)    (Most important, the impact of the scientific perspective is having now that even scholars working under a conservative Catholic imprimatur agree that much of what we know of Jesus is myth Scholars have known the truth – that Jesus was nothing more than a man with a vision – for decades; they have taught it to generations of priests and ministers, who not pass it along to their flocks because they fear a backlash of anger So the only ones left in the dark are ordinary Christians.)    (The problem is that people think they know what’s in the Bible, or at least what kind of material it contains Most of them are wrong: they are only familiar with a few churchapproved extracts, and are atonished not just how awful God is in the Old Testament, but also at how much less than perfect his son seems in the New The message of Jesus isn’t all good news; paradise is an uncertain prospect at best Taken as a whole, it could well be the Bad News Bible.)    (In Christ name millions of men and women have been imprisoned, tortured and killed In his name millions and millions have been enslaved In his name the thinkers, the investigators, have been branded criminals, and his followers have shed the blood of the wisest and the best In his name the progress of many nations was stayed for a thousand years In his gospel was found the dogma of eternal pain, and his words added an infinite horror to death His gospel filled the world with hatred and revenge, made intellectual honesty a crime,, made happiness here the road to hell, denounced love as base and bestial, canonozed credulity, crowned bigotry and destroyed the liberty of man It would be far better had the New Testament never been written – far better had the theological Christ never lived.)    (More alarming was the doctrine that "many are called but few are chosen" (Matt xxii, 14) Orthodox theologians - Mohammedan as well as Christian - held that the vast majority of the human race would go to hell Most Christian theologians took literally the statement ascribed to Christ: "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned" (Mark xvi, 16) St Augustine reluctantly concluded that infants dying before being baptized went to hell    Most Christians believed that all Moslems - and most Moslems believed that all Christians - would go to hell; and it was generally accepted that all "heathen" were damned The Fourth Lateran Council (1215) declared that no man could be saved outside the Universal Church    Berthold of Regensburg, one of the most famous and popular preachers of the thirteenth century, reckoned the proportion of the damned to the saved as a hundred thousand to one    A weaver of Toulouse, in 1247, remained unconvinced "If", he said, "I could lay hold on that god who, out of a thousand men whom he has made, saves one and damns all the rest, I would tear and rend him tooth and nail as a traitor, and would spit in his face.")    (Christ died for our sins, in accordance to the Scriptures; that he was raised to life on the third day, according to the Scriptures; and that he appeared to Cephas, and afterwards to the Twelve Then he appeared to over five hundred of our brothers at once, most of whom are still alive, though some have died Then he appeared to James, and afterwards to all the apostles.)    (In discussing the cruxifixion, I argued that the story of Jesus' burial by his friends was totally unhistorical If he was buried at all, he was buried not by his friends but by his enemies And not in a tinb hewed out of stone, but in a shallow grave that would have made his body easy prey for scavenging animals Those are grim conclusions, but I cannot escape them    With the Easter stories, are we standing on the solid rock of historical fact? Or, if not, haw are we account for the survival of faith in Jesus? And if we decide that we cannot read the Easter narratives literally, then how are we to read them? I raise these questions not just because for some twentieth-century people the notion of resurrection from the dead seems incredible on the face of it I raise these questions also because the New Testament record forces me to raise them Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John tell the Easter story quite differently - so differently, in fact, that we simply cannot harmonize their versions So we have to ask questions of intention and meaning    In a nutshell, these are my conclusions: First, the Easter story is not about the events of a single day, but reflects the struggle of Jesus' followers over a period of months and years to make sense of both his death and their continuing experience of empowerment by him Second, stories of the resurrected Jesus appearing to various people are not really about "visions" at all, but are literary fiction prompted by struggles over leadership in the early Church Third, resurrection is one - but only one - of the metaphors used to express the sense of Jesus' continuing presence with his followers and friends    Is the story of the empty tomb historical? No I've already explained why I doubt there was any tomb for Jesus in the first place I don't think any of Jesus' followers even knew where he was buried - if he was buried at all And the gospel writers don't come close to agreeing with each other on what they report So my conviction is that motives other than just history writing are clearly at work here    By the way, Paul is the earliest writer we have on resurrection - his letters are much earlier then the gospels - and he nowhere shows awareness of having heard an empty tomb story That's hard to understand, if an empty tomb was supposed to be the bedrock historical fact of Easter.)    10 (The empty tomb on Easter Sunday morning is a legend This is shown by the simple fact that the apostle Paul, the most crucial preacher of Christ's resurrection, and the earliest New Testament writer besides, says nothing about it As far as Paul is concerned, it doesn't exist Thus it also means nothing to him, that is, an empty tomb has no significance for the truth of the resurrection, which he so emphatically proclaims Granted, for Paul all of Christianity depends upon the resurrection of Christ - "If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain" (1 Cor 15:14) But in Paul's view, that has nothing to with an empty tomb He manifestly has no idea of any such thing If Paul had ever heard of the empty tomb, he would never have passed over in silence Since he gathers together and cites all the evidence for Jesus' resurrection that has been handed down to him (1 Corinthians 15), he certainly would have found the empty tomb worth mentioning That he doesn't proves that it never existed and hence the accounts of it must not arisen until later    This is the position taken by the most important Catholic theologian of this century, the Jesuit Karl Rahner: "The "empty tomb" is rather to be judged an expression of a conviction that had already become wide-spread for other reasons" (Schriften zur Theologie [1975], XII, 348) The belief in the resurrection is older than the belief in the empty tomb The faith of Easter was not the result of the empty tomb; rather, the legend of the empty tomb grew out of the faith of Easter It is a pious embroidery on an event that people wanted to imagine in a concrete sense    The Christians have misunderstood the resurrection of Christ pretty much from the beginning Equating the empty tomb with his resurrection, they mistook the one for the other They looked on the empty tomb as a sort of consequence of the resurrection, and then they classified it as a proof of the resurrection But an empty tomb can be empty for the most varied reasons, and it never proves that any resurrection occured Conversely, a dead man may certainly lie in a tomb: Such a fact is no obstacle to faith in his resurrection, because resurrection is something different from a dead man's coming back to life.)    11 (Giraldus Cambrensis: Transubstantiation, the Incarnation, the Virgin Birth, and Resurrection - all this had been intented by cunning ancients to hold men in terror and restraint, and was now carried on by hypocrites.)    12 (The claim was made that Christ rose from the dead and ascended bodily to heaven    It required many years for these absurdities to take possession of the minds of men    If he really ascended, why did he not so in public, in the presence of his persecutors?    Why should this, the greatest of miracles, be done in secret, in a corner?)    13 (Mankind must be aware of being fooled by the crocodile tears of the Roman Church's seemingly regretful reminiscences and contrite apologies: they are contrived for a specific purpose, like her faked miracles - to lure the unsuspecting into her fold)    14 (There is very little, if anything, that is original in the teaching attributed to Jesus Like the myth of Jesus itself, the sentiments he expresses are a hodgepodge of aphorisms and moral convictions that can be found in the ancient Egyptian, Babylonian, Persian, Greek, Buddhist, Confucian, and Hindu religions But one thing is certain: Christianity, a late-comer in the history of religion, merely plagiarized sentiments from Judaism and the so called pagan religions In his book Sources of Morality in the Gospels, Joseph McCabe quoted the moral views attributed to Jesus in the gospels and in parallel columns gave exact moral equivalents from Jewish and pagan writers.)    15 (Pope John Paul II always sees women in their biological dimension - either as mothers or as virgins who must follow the model of the Virgin; either they make children or they abstain from sexual intercourse Wojtyla never sees women as persons in the same way as he sees a male as a person.)    16 (Over a period of almost two millennia, the Christian Church has oppressed and brutalized millions of individuals in an attempt to control and contain spirituality The Side of Christian History Dark reveals in painstaking detail the tragedies, sorrows and injustices inflicted upon humanity by the Church This exposé is a compelling and passionate cry for human dignity and spiritual freedom)    17 (The book uses interviews with victims to examine children's unique vulnerability to priests and with priest abusers to explore their dangerous isolation It documents the failure of prosecutors, judges, psychologists and reporters to monitor bishops, who spend million of dollars to protect the church's image rather than its believers.)    18 (In fact, between 1984 and 1992, 400 Catholic priests in North America have been reported for molesting children To date, Berry estimates, $400 million has been paid by the church to resolve these cases One source projects that $1 billion may be paid by century's end.)    19 (I am familiar with many of the cases and situations about which Jason Berry writes I can assure the reader that to the best of my knowledge his reporting is accurate and restrained, indeed if anything almost too conservative It is my strong impression that the situation is actually much worse than it appears in this book One will become very angry, I suspect, as one reads through its pages, not so much at the victimisers, who themselves were oftrn, if not always, victims when they were children, but at Catholic leadership Bishops have with that seems like programmed consistency tried to hide, cover up, bribe, stonewall, often they have sent back into parishes men whom they knew to be a danger of the faithful.)    20 (New Vatican rules specifying that secret ecclesiastical courts will handle allegations of child sexual abuse by priests drew fire from advocates for victims' rights    The policy, they say, perpetuates the church's hush-hush handling of such allegations    "Vicims are doubly harmed - first by the abuse itself, and then by the shroud of secrecy surrounding it."    Tom Economus, president of Linkup, a Chicago-based support group for victims, said the rules will benefit priests who molest    "You have an opportunity to have your own private tribunal in the church", he said    "It's the fox guarding the henhouse," he said "They are doing the investigation, but you never know what's happening at the end.")    21 (What better time than the present for progressive, intelligent and courageous Catholics to break ties with the Vatican? Now is the perfect time to free one's self from the yoke of papal subordination and institutional arrogance to pursue changes in contemporary issues of birth control, clerical celibacy and the ordination of women, among others    Martin Luther broke away from the church in 1521 because he believed it was corrupt and morally bankrupt Little seems to have changed over the past 500 years.)    22 (Graham, Lloyd, Ibid., p.: 438: Thus the Catholic Church is founded on Peter whom, four verses later, Jesus openly calls Satan Thus if the Catholic Church is founded on Peter, it is founded on Satan – a fact we have long expected Peter’s story is the veriest nonsense – one mortal man endowed with the power over all humanity for all eternity In things religious, Catholics are indeed credulous but can they be so credulous as to believe that pre-Christian sages like Pythagoras, Plato, Socrates require this ignorant Jewish fisherman to bind and loose theirs souls? No, and neither are we.)    23 (It is not surprising, therefore, to learn that many biblical scholars believe the evidence indicates that this reference to Peter, like many other New Testament passages, was inserted at a later date.)    24 (The historical Jesus counted on the world’s coming to an end in his own lifetime And for this coming of God’s kingdom he doubtless did not want to found a special community distinct from Israel, with its own creed, its own cult, its own constitution, its own office All this means that in his own lifetime Jesus never found any church He had no idea of founding and organizing a large-scale religious operation that would have to be created )    25 (Jesus has no intention of founding a “church” and certainly not a “church universal.” For an authentic example of Jesus’ view, consider Matt 10:5-6, which expresses the exact opposite of a universal commission: “These twelve Jesus sent out, charging them, “Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Two further authentic passages are Matt 15:24, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” and Matt 10:23, “You will not have gone through all the towns of Israel, before the Son of Man comes.” Jesus himself – and all theologians have by now acknowleged this – believed that the Kingdom of God would be coming soon But that is the opposite of a world mission in the grand style    The Church has turned Jesus into its propagandist For this reason we take everything that presupposes or dicusses or promotes the existence of a Church as interpolation by the authors of the Gospels into Jesus’ original sayings That includes Jesus’ hailing Peter as the rock on which he will build his church (Matt 16:18), since Jesus never meant to found a church It’s not Jesus who’s speaking here; it’s the early church, which was interested in having such a leadership position and authority figure because of its growing hierarchical structure In the inauthentic chapter 21 of John – that is, in a later addition to the actual gospel – the idea of a deputy is already clearly developed Peter becomes the shepherd of the flock of Christ He takes over the functions of Jesus, the former and actual shepherd, as his representative Shortly afterward, the Church began to think that the important thing was not the person of Peter The Church decided that the office Peter held was the bedrock foundation of the Church, and that Jesus established it permanently With this concept we have the popes as Peter’s successors and Christ’s deputies, and the papacy as the foundation of the Church.)    26 (In fact during the two centuries and more that the Catholic Missions have been operating in China and the Indochinese peninsula they have probably not converted more than ten scholars in all The entire educated and governing class of the population has evaded their proselytism In general Catholic missionaries only recruit from among the lowest classes, and mainly among those who, for various reasons have been rejected by Annamese society.)    27 (In 1766 at Abbeville, France, a teen-age boy was accused of singing irreligious songs, mocking the Virgin Mary, marring a crucifix, and wearing his hat while a religious procession passed Criticizing the church was punishable by death The youth, Chevalier de La Barre, was sentenced to have his tongue cut out, his right hand cut off, and to be burned at the stake The great writer Voltaire attempted to save him The case was appealed to Parliament in Paris The clergy demanded death, warning of the dire spread of doubt Parliament showed mercy by allowing the youth to be decapitated instead of mutilated and burned alive He was first tortured to extract a fuller confession, then executed on July 1, 1766 His corpse was burned, along with a copy of Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary.)    28 (La civilisation, cette lumière, peut être éteinte par deux modes de submersion, deux invasions lui sont dangereuses, l'invasion des soldats et l'invasion des prêtres L'une menace notre mère, la patrie; l'autre menace nos enfants, l'avenir.)    29 (I did not learn to think As the years of childhood slipped through a frustrated adolescence (in the seminary) into the days that were supposed to be those of manhood, my mind was molded in an intellectual pattern as effectively as though it had been cast in concrete    The closest approach to science that I experienced in those 21 years was that a non- laboratory course in elemental physics Of the world's really great literature, in 12 years I learned practically nothing Its greatest lights were locked in the prison of the Index of Forbidden Books    In short, I was not educated I was merely endoctrinated I had achieved the level of the rigor mortis of intellectual mediocrity    I had become an automaton, a priest of sacred, half known rites as meaningless in the efficacy as the chants of a Puerto Rican woodoo priest    I was an ecclesiastical technician trained to mold other young, pliable minds )    30 (Because of its political and economic importance and its monopoly of education, the Catholic Church was the arbiter of Latin-American society It taught the Indian and African slaves to embrace fatalism on the promise of a better hereafter It planted the seeds of machismo brought from Spain and Portugal It encouraged a deep strain of cynicism among the upper classes, who learned that they might anything, including slaughter innocent peasants, as long as they went to Mass, contributed land and money to the Church's aggrandizement, and baptized their children These were the "good Christians" honored by the Latin-American bishops Their descendants run the military regimes that today govern two thirds of the area's people Look behind a dictator, there stands a bishop.)    31 (The effort to stamp out any opposition to the popes and their obsession with maintaining the rule of the Catholic Church has continued down through the ages In this century, however, it has been more of a rear guard action, with the Church seeking to protect its dwindling authority by making alliances with whoever would serve its interests The collaboration of the popes with fascist governments in Europe and South America shows the shameful extremes the popes have been willing to go to, to preserve their position    The Church opposed the Mexican war of independence and excommunicated its leaders Later the Church fought the establishment of the federal republic system and vigorously protested the inclusion of the principle of religious freedom in the Mexican constitution ln 1930 the constitutional government was toppled in Argentina and a fascist dictatorship established, complete with martial law Since the new regime proclaimed its allegiance to Catholicism, it was quickly supported by the Church In 1936 the pope was eager to ally himself with Spain's fascist dictator Francisco Franco in his effort to squash the Spanish rebellion As its reward the Catholic Church was established as the state religion (With the approval of a democratic constitution in 1978 after the dictator's death the Church lost this privilege.) The Franco deal, however, was merely an aside to the role the Church would play in the rise of consolidation of power of Hitler and Mussolini, a role the popes would like us all to forget Pope Pius XI signed a concordat and the Lateran Treaty with Mussolini in 1929, and called him "the man sent by Providence." Four years later, Papal Nuncio Monsignor Pacelli, who was soon to become Pius XII, urged the Catholic Party to vote for Hitler in the last German election prior to the Nazi takeover    It made no difference what atrocities a government committed against humankind as long as it was shrewd enough to let the pope retain his titular authority When Ante Palevich set up the Catholic state of Croatia and slaughtered 600,000 persons, primarily those belonging to the Orthodox Church who opposed his rule, the Catholic Church was mute.)    32 (I assure you that much more telling evidence tying Stepinac to the Nazis For example:    - By appointment of Pope Pius XII, Stepinac served as honorary chaplain of the Ustache army, which was under Nazi command    - Stepinac was awarded the Grand Cross and Star, a Ustashe medal he proudly displayed at Nazi rallies    - Hundreds of Franciscan priests, under Stepinac's juridiction, staffed many of Croatia's concentration camps.)    33 (Spellman was the papal point man to lead America into deeper involvement in Vietnam According to a Vatican official letter, the pope "turned to Spellman to encourage American commitment to Vietnam."    All US relief to the South was funneled through the Catholic Church's agencies and only Catholics were appointed to government positions by Diem Although these policies resulted in a wave of conversions, Catholics still made up only about 12 to 13 percent of the South Vietnamese population Not surprisingly, the resentment among the Buddhist majority soon resulted in their open resistance to Diem's policies As the situation deteriorated, Diem resorted to mass arrests and suppression of the Buddhists, closing shrines and monateries As the Church should have known from its own early experience, persecution can only strengthen a cause As a horrified world watched, the Buddhists resorted to the ultimate act of passive resistance and several monks set themselves ablaze During these terrible times, when I, too, was a Catholic, I don't recall one word of criticism of Diem's policies from a Catholic priest or bishop However, it finally became too much for President John Kennedy, who withdrew US support for Diem Diem was soon executed in a coup Throughout this dreadful ordeal the role of the Church followed true to the course of its sordid history.)    34 (James Kavanaugh, A Modern Priest Looks At His Outdated Church, p 6: Our theology, however, has become a scholar's game It is a code of rules accumulated in the petty wars of religious bitterness It is a tale of tired truths, which only serve to rob man of personal responsibility and reduce him to the listlessness of a frightened slave Theology took away man's mind and left him memorized words This is the theology I learned and transmitted in every confession I heard, every class I taught, every sermon I gave to the guilt-infected flock.)    35 (William Harwood, Mythology's Last Gods: Yahweh and Jesus, p 16: One by one the various books of the bible were discovered to contain errors of fact; inaccurate guesses; rationalizations; prophecies ex-post-facto, usually combined with prophecies of the future that proved inaccurate; and unmistakable, deliberate lies Had this discovery been allowed to reach general public, Judeo-Christian mythology would have suffered a blow from which it could not have hoped to recover Facing elimination, the current Pope appointed his own historians to examine the secular historians' conclusions and find the flaw in their evidence that he believed must be there The outcome was that the Papal historians confirmed that their bible really was falsifiable fantasy They presented the Pope with their reports and, when he promptly suppressed them, they all ceased to be Catholics So the Pope ordered his propaganda machine to invent an alternative methodology to combat that of the historians, a methodology created for the specific purpose of reaching the conclusion that the Judeo-Christian bible is nonfiction, no matter how severely the evidence had to be distorted in order to achieve that objective That methodology was 'theology' Such was the power of the world's theocracies that, despite the publication of thousands of scholarly books and articles refuting every part of the JudeoChristian bible, to this day the existence of unchallengeable proof that the bible is a work of fiction is unknown to ninety percent of the population of Christian-dominated societies.)    36 (David Voas, The Bad News Bible: The New Testament, Introduction: Theology, once queen of the sciences, now seems merely queen of the cloisters, still gossiping about the same old stories long after the choir boys have grown up and moved on It's a shame Granted, theology - the study of God - suffers from the suspicion that it has no subject, or at least none we can study It is the only field with experts who don't know what they are talking about Their subject matter being inaccessible, theologians must resort to the odd couple of imagination and authority Christian thinkers now have the job of showing that scripture makes sense, is consistent, and appears morally defensible This can be difficult.)    37 (Sans les missionnaires et les chrétiens, écrit Mgr Puginier, les Francais seraient comme les crabes auxquels on aurait cassé toutes les pattes La comparaison, pour être triviale, ne manque pas de justesse et de force En effet, sans les missionnnaires et les chrétiens, les Francais se verraient entourés d'ennemis; ils ne pouraient se fier personne; ils ne recevraient que de faux renseignements, méchamment donnés pour compromettre leur situation; ils se trouveraient donc réduits l'impossibilité d'agir et seraient rapidement exposés des vrais désastres Leur position ici ne serait plus tenable, et ils ne verraient forcés de quitter un pays où leurs intérêts et leur existence même serait compromis.)    38 (The destruction of all evidence of Christianity's gnostic and pagan source was "the first work." It was the evangelists themselves who started it, in Antioch, as stated in Acts By order of the Church the books of the Gnostic Basilides were burned, likewise Porphyry's thirty-six volumes Pope Gregory VII burned the Apollo library filled with ancient lore Emperor Theodosius had 27,000 schools of the Mysteries paprus rolls burned because they, contained the doctrinal basis of the Gospels    Nor did the destruction end with the Founders; the fanatics they made carried on the work: the Crusaders burned all the books they could find, including original Hebrew scrolls ln 1233 the works of Maimonides were burned along with twelve thousand volumes of the Talmud In 1244 eighteen thousand books of various kind were destroyed According to Draper, Cardinal Ximenes "delivered to the flames in the square of Granada eighty thousand Arabic manuscripts." On finding similar lore in the New World, the Spanish Christians destroyed it and the temples that contained it    All evidence of source destroyed, the Christian Fathers coulld now substitute their own absurdities And to substantiate them they altered words and inserted verses that did not exist in the original texts On this same subject Massey wrote thus: " They had almost reduced the first four centuries to silence on all matters of the most vital importance for any proper understanding of the true origins of the Christian superstition The mythos having been at last published as a human history, everything else was suppressed or forced to support the fraud."    According to their teaching "the blood of Christ washed away the sins of the world," still with us What it actually washed away was the sanity of the world In due time its doctrines so bedeviled the Western mind that Agobard of Lyons wrote thus "The wretched world lies now under the tyranny of foolishness; things are believed by Christians of such absurdity as no on ever could aforetime induce the heathen to believe." Should the skeptical reader wish a sample, we offer another tale of Christian martyrdom, this time about the precursor of the curse, lohn of the Gospels According to the saints, John, when very old, incurred the anger of the Emperor Domitian To punish him, the latter had this holy man thrown into a caldron of oil and resin A fire was lit, and when the liquid began to boil the jeering crowd heard a voice singing in the flames - the Christian Shadrach, etc When the caldron boiled dry, there was John still alive and quite unharmed Jerome, Eusebius, Tertullian all relate this miracle and practically all hagiographies contain it And now if these eminent Christians could believe this absurdity, they could believe anything even the Gospels.)    39 (No mere recitation of statistics can convey the immeasurable evil that the Roman Catholic Church dispensed in God's name From the time that the papacy cemented its power with the state in the fifth century until the Renaissance, the cloak of ignorance and superstition was draped over Europe The light of freedom was extinguished It is no longer fashionable to call them the Dark Ages, but indeed they were The ancient Romans had libraries of 500,000 volumes, there was not a library of over 600 volumes in Christian Europe the period 500 to 1000 Scientific advance, especially in medicine, came to a screeching halt Human culture regressed to a more brutal level   Ironically, it was the initiation of the Crusades against the Muslims that shed a ray of intellectual light through the gloom of ignorance and primitive superstitions Unlike the Christians who sought to destroy all knowledge that contradicted their theology, the Muslims had preserved the wisdom of the ancient Greeks Moreover, they had made significant advances in Mathematics, philosophy, and science When the Crusaders returned from the East they brought with their spoils of war the seeds of knowledge which, eventually, gave birth to the Renaissance Along with the pile of plundered Eastern artifacts and phony relics, the Crusaders also brought back the art and literature of ancient Greece The writings of the Greek philosophers, which the Church had suppressed centuries before, reappeared Some of the philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle were accornmodated in Church doctrine Indeed, the writings of Thomas Aquinas, especially his demonstrations for the existence of God, were basically a rehash of Aristotle But more importantly in the long run, Greek humanistic philosophy found fertile ground in the minds of those who were painfully aware of the futility of theological speculation and the evil of papal dogmatism