'You are Peter and on this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it' (Matthew 16:18)?
To Everyone, from King Roman: Why I left the Catholic Church in 1986
Walter O'Brien, who as a young boy hacked into NASA to get a picture for his wall, had an IQ of 197, one of the highest Intelligence Quotients ever actually recorded, and alluded to in the clever TV series Scorpion. By comparison, the 20th century scientific genius Albert Einstein rated just 160, 37 points below O'Brien. My own IQ is genius level, although I don't feel like one at 78 years of age, and is 156, four points beneath Einstein. Interestingly, lovely Jill St John from the James Bond movie Diamonds are Forever, and married to Hart to Hart star Robert Wagner, has an IQ of 161, one point above Einstein.
The fact that so many people get conned or hacked out of life savings, especially through the otherwise totally amazing Internet, is an indication of how gullible many can be. Einstein observed: 'There are two things that are infinite; the universe and human stupidity'. However, because some people are gullible does not necessarily mean they are stupid. An example of this is Christianity, which is believed by two billion people to be true. Why? Largely because they have been raised in this belief, know no other, and have not researched on the Internet for the truth about what they believe. They simply accept without question what was passed down from their childhood.
I myself was a Christian for many years before becoming aware that all was not as it seemed. That the story of Jesus was first written from hearsay, in Greek language, up to half a century after he supposedly died. And that, although there were around 50 historians alive during the years Jesus allegedly lived, not even one of them wrote about him.
Not only this, but the Catholic Church, which I served for 20 years as a minister of several congregations of the Third or Secular Franciscan Order, after attending a Mill Hill Missionary seminary in Roosendaal Netherlands to test my calling to the priesthood, was based upon a lie. The lie was debunked by the Jesus Seminar in 1984. Recorded in The Five Gospels (Macmillan 1985, Harper Collins 1997), scholars of a variety of differing persuasions came to a unanimous conclusion that "Jesus did not say this; it represents the perspective or content of a later or different tradition".
What did Jesus NOT say? 'You are Peter and on this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it' (Matthew 16:18). Even this one official gospel Matthew in which the statement appears is only extant from the 4th century, in Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus, both in Greek language, and is estimated to have been written by some unknown author in 80 CE, around 50 years after Jesus reputedly lived.
There were many boys and men called Jesus in their name-sake's era. The name is more properly Yeshua, anglicized as Joshua. Strange that this is not the name given in English translations of the New Testament, isn't it? Well maybe not! after the Catholic Church condemned anyone who would change what was translated from Greek by presbyter Jerome in the 5th century into the Latin Vulgate.
How did the Catholic Church grow exponentially in the millenium of its independent existence since 1054 CE? Fear (and catholic births into large families, of course!) is the key. Prior to the split from what was the Christian Catholic Church we now refer to as Eastern Orthodox out of the New Rome, Constantinople, the Christian Church created by the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE would banish or exile unbelievers.
However, after 200 years of horrific Papal Wars (crusades) from the 11th to 13th century, which included rape, slaughter and sacking of the entire populations, men, women and children of muslim Jerusalem and later of christian Constantinople, the now independent Roman Catholic Church embarked upon 700 years of Papal Inquisitions. Knights Templar were massacred for false reasons - like false reasons used to illegally invade Iraq in 2003 in defiance of the UN and against massive global protests - and anyone who disagreed with the Church was denounced as a heretic. Bruno Giordano was burned to death in 1600, as were many other catholics during the 700 year reign of terror, allegedly in the name of Jesus, carried out by papal sanction, and executed by religious orders - Dominicans, Franciscans and Jesuits.
Inquisition pope Innocent 4 sent a crown to Grand Duke Mindaugas of Lithuania in 1253 to make him king under the required condition that he and all inhabitants of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which includes Belarus and Ukraine, submit to the Catholic Faith. This is why Lithuanians are Catholic now.
These were terrible times in which to live in Europe. The RC Church was one of violence, quite unlike the supposed person in whose steps it purported to follow. Popes and leaders were often corrupt, while many catholics knew no better or were too afraid to remonstrate or rebel against the Church's temporal power and authority claimed to be from Jesus and God.
Prime astronomer Galileo was another victim of the Inquisition, forced to recant his correct scientific observations and confined to his home until his death. Four hundred years later, Pope John Paul 2 apologized for the Roman Catholic Church's ill-treatment of Galileo - not much good to Galileo. And still there has been no apology for all those shockingly terrorised, tortured and killed by the Roman Catholic Church during the Crusades and Inquisition over a prolonged period of 900 years! Would people who learned of these things have second thoughts as I did? I resiled from Church and Order in 1986, shocked and disgusted by what I had learned.
The totally inappropriate name of the Holy Inquisition was whitewashed and lauded in 1909 by Pope Saint Pius 10 who called it the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office! The Catholic Church cannot get away today with all the terrible things the Catholic Church committed for nine centuries.
Twenty years after the Inquisition was whitewashed, in 1929 the Lateran Treaty was signed whereby Vatican City became a sovereign state independent from Rome.
In 1988, Vatican City was World Heritage Listed, a wonderful museum of outstanding art and of historical archives dating back to the 8th century.
Yet the Vatican remains at the same time a monumental reminder of the Roman Catholic Church's paradoxically anti-christian centuries of terrible violence and corruption.
Dr King Roman 12 April 2020
Notes
The name Vatican curiously, and one might well say like a warning to the world, comes from Latin language (Old Roman - like me!) meaning prophetic serpent, one who exploits a position of trust in order to betray it!
Illustrations above indicate how the wealthy could end world poverty if they had the will, and how they differ from the perception of Jesus by so very much.