I thought that if this is going to continue, then it should have its own thread.
ryguy wrote:Ray - you implied that my beliefs on these matters are from "blind faith"...as though I'm not capable of doing the appropriate scholarly research into the historical evidence to make an appropriate decision. The comment was a last-resort kind of comment that I didn't expect from someone who usually displays maturity and scholarly eptitude.
That may have been what you inferred, but I assure you that I was not implying it. Let me state outright what I was implying: I was not implying you are "not capable" of doing the research, for clearly I know that you are. What I *was* implying was that you are selective in what data you address and what data you ignore, especially as it comes to question human (fallible) motives in what is well-known to be every bit a political organization as it is a spiritual one.
I have often spoken that we live in the Age of Information and that we are evolving towards the Age of Intention. This, to me, gives another perfect example of what I am talking about. It seems to me (I do not know it for a fact, only my conjecture) that you may acknowledge the failings of humans within the Catholic Church as INFORMATION, but it seems to me this is where your consideration of it ceases. In other words, what I perceive is that you admit "yes, people are fallible, and yes, people have failed and done bad things in the history of the Catholic Church", but that is where you leave it... at the level of information. It does not seem you are willing to explore those failures, and perhaps begin to piece together the motivations (intentions) behind those failures. Especially as they relate to a group of people attempting to achieve some goal, rather than just individuals failing.
I have pointed to some of the more obvious and public failings of the Catholic Church through the ages... Crusades, Inquisition, and the more recent failings of CHURCH HIERARCHY in dealing with the molestation scandals. Have you ever thought to question WHY the Church hierachy acted as they did in all of these cases? What was their motiviation? And were those potential motivations in line with Christ's teachings? Or could it be that there were political motivations as well?
Regardless of what Dan Brown writes about, the historical record of what happened between the Papacy and the monarch of France during the time of the Knights Templar is pretty clear. It is even more crystal clear that the Pope (a fairly weak person, Clement V) acted POLITICALLY to appease King Philip of France (let us not forget during this time, the King of France was the host of the popes who lived in Avignon) in cracking down on the Templars.
While it is just as likely that there were "human failures" within the organization of the Knights Templars, it is also accepted that up until the time of Clement V they were (according to the Catholic Church) doing "God's work". Clement and Philip drove the Templars underground. To believe that there is absolutely no connection between the fall of the Templars and the increasing power of the Masons would be to ignore pertinent data that shows correlations.
My own research shows that the Templars were holders of "mystical knowledge" that was some of the highest science of their day. This knowledge was also clearly known by the Masons as it was continually reflected in their skill as builders. The Templars were also shown to have done a LOT of excavations in and around the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Again, without lending credence to anything Dan Brown says, is it not POSSIBLE that some of what they found may relate to mystical knowledge of the sciences? My research tells me that a good bit of this knowledge is directly relative to the Tree Of Life as a "systems technology". The use of the Tree Of Life and "sacred geometry" precepts within Masony, while not openly discussed, is something I am more than satisifed with as being true. The form of the US government is DIRECTLY based upon the 3x3 matrix of the Tree Of Life.
It is my belief that there were motivations beneath the overt failures of the Catholic Church down through the ages. And those motivations were to keep certain knowledge OUT of the publics hands, for clearly it would weaken the political and control aspects of the Church. And I do believe that this can also be traced to the squashing of a great deal of Gnostic knowledge which was available not only during the days of the Canon formulation, but certainly was available to MANY "initiates" at and before the time of Christ. In fact, this knowledge stretches all the way back to Moses, and even predates him! Is it really just a coincidence that there are 10 Commandments and also 10 Sephira on the Tree Of Life?
Ray