Leo Volont
Registered Senior Member
Nowadays people’s choices of Religion seem only to involve what period and sphere of History one is to look far back upon – dead Prophets, dead Messiahs, dead Saints, dead Avatars, even a Buddha who died of food poisoning… from eating food that had gotten too old. How ironic. Yes, occasionally there are new appearances on the Religious landscape, but this is in the way of designer Religions, that is, People tossing out all Revelation and deciding simply from personal preference and taste as to what appeals to them in the way of Doctrine – people creating by themselves a Religion they can feel good about. That God Himself does not ever weigh in with His Opinion does not seem to bother them in the least.
Well, how would God weigh in with His Opinion anyway? He had in the Past. Again, there are all those old dead Saints, Messiahs, Avatars, Prophets and such. Miracles of Supernatural fact and knowledge – Saints doing the Impossible and knowing things it was Impossible for them to know. Religions were accepted not because they sounded good or met with certain aesthetic expectations. It was necessary that they be validated by the Supernatural. You see, the Ancient Peoples had at least that much common sense more than us.
Now, God could easily validate any of the New Designer Religions simply by effectively accrediting the Founder, or even any of the more assiduous of its members or devotees, for, after all, a string of signatory miracles should not be all that impossible for God to accomplish. It does make me wonder that People who design their own Religions do not feel horribly self-conscious that God so pointedly ignores them. Oh, one does hear the most foolish of comments – one Founder says that he deliberately has renounced Miracles as being SO egotistical. Yeah, that’s right! They aren’t all a bunch of frauds and fakes. It’s just that they have all renounced the Miraculous. Makes perfect sense.
Even some 50 years ago one could still read about living Saints and Miracles. All that seems now to be drying up, everywhere. It’s as though the entire World has been handed over to Hell in a Hand-basket, so to speak.
Anyway, all of the preceding was simply preface to the point I would like to make now, and that is that while people are looking back to find their Religions of Choice, well, I think they happen to be looking back too far. If one evaluates the History of Religion to determine any particular one Golden Age, one can discern a salient that occurs at none of the Founding Moments of any of the Major Religions, and none of the Major Scriptural Documents and Holy Books cover the events thereof. I am speaking of the High Middle Ages and Catholic Civilization. There were dozens of Saints of the First Magnitude and hundreds of others, and a significant few of them were frankly more miraculous than Jesus ever was – for instance, Saint Vincent Ferrer probably did more on his laziest day than Jesus accomplished in his entire lifetime.
You would think that the Catholic Church would capitalize on all of this, but they have two problems there. The first problem is that at the Council of Nicea in the 3rd Century they officially closed the Book on New Revelation – yes, saying in effect that if God were to speak again, in the Future, that He would be thoroughly ignored. Islam did the same thing. Indeed, so did the Sikhs. You see, it all comes down to basic Theology with the underlying assumption that God is Absolute, with one of the corollary propositions being that an Absolute God never changes… if a Doctrine seems complete, then the Theologians assume, a priori, that it would be impossible for God to add anything. So they Close the Book… whatever their Religious Book happens to be. Well, Catholicism closed the Book, and now they find that they would have a difficult time opening it up again to say that a Great Deal happened from the 4rd to the 16th Centuries. But it did happen, and so the Church has created something of a Loop Hole, as such things are called. All Miracles, Saints, Revelations and things of that order that happened after the Council of Nicea had affirmed God’s Practical Deadness, all such things are classified as ‘Personal Revelations’ – NOT Church Revelations which would be illegal, but if private Catholics wanted to believe such things on their own, then nobody would burn them at the Stake for it… well, not most of the time anyway. This is why there were so many Religious Orders created, as a Religious Order would give refuge to individuals who would wish to join with other in the celebration of certain ‘Private Revelations’. And as it happened, ALL of the grandiose and spectacular Religious Phenomena of the High Middle Ages, the Golden Age of World Religion, was not Catholic, in the Collective Church sense at all, but was always Revelatory in regards to some ‘Private Revelation’… well, as it would have to be by the very way that the Church forced itself to define such things. The Council of Nicea took away all discretion and latitude in such affairs and decisions. So it is that the Catholic Church virtually ignores its Greatest Moments, and why the Church does not write the New Bible that really ought to have been written.
Also, there is the matter that the Catholic Church AFTER the Wars of the Reformation was not the same Church anymore. One of the big secrets of History is that the Catholics TOTALLY lost that War. It did not end in a truce as we are asked to believe. Look at the facts. The Peace of Westphalia was one thing, ending the War between the Protestant and Catholic Combatants. But then there was the Council of Trent which followed quickly on the heals of the Political Peace Treaty. The Council of Trent redefined the Church, gutting the Practices that had held up Catholic Civilization, and making way for the Protestant Institutions which would lead the way to all subsequent Barbarisms. With that Redefinition of Catholicism, the Spiritual Holiness of the Church was severely damaged, and Saints almost disappeared from History, though there would still be a few now and again, but the Golden Age of Religion and Spirituality was clearly over. Now, after the Council of Vatican II from back in the 1960’s, where the Catholic Bishops pledged Religious Unity with the Protestant Evangelicals, who see no God but Paul, well, that was the complete Death of Catholicism – now its just a stiff cold stinking Body of what it once was… with an Ex-Nazi Pope in charge, of all things.
Well, there have been Apparitions for the last several hundred years, even intensifying in frequency and spectacle – Marian Apparitions – predicting all of this – the decline of the Church and the decline in the Providence and Grace of God, with People not deserving God’s Grace, and all of that. But what we need to keep in mind is that the Predictions look forward to Extremely Bad Times which will be followed by a New Era, a New Time. I suppose Religion will finally come back. And then, PLEASE, and I address here those who will be the SURVIVORS – PLEASE, throw out the Stupid old Bibles and instead pick up your notebooks, and take note of what you see and hear in the way of the Miraculous, in the way of Revelations of God. Write a New Bible. After all, the Old Stuff only let us down in the End, didn’t it?
Well, how would God weigh in with His Opinion anyway? He had in the Past. Again, there are all those old dead Saints, Messiahs, Avatars, Prophets and such. Miracles of Supernatural fact and knowledge – Saints doing the Impossible and knowing things it was Impossible for them to know. Religions were accepted not because they sounded good or met with certain aesthetic expectations. It was necessary that they be validated by the Supernatural. You see, the Ancient Peoples had at least that much common sense more than us.
Now, God could easily validate any of the New Designer Religions simply by effectively accrediting the Founder, or even any of the more assiduous of its members or devotees, for, after all, a string of signatory miracles should not be all that impossible for God to accomplish. It does make me wonder that People who design their own Religions do not feel horribly self-conscious that God so pointedly ignores them. Oh, one does hear the most foolish of comments – one Founder says that he deliberately has renounced Miracles as being SO egotistical. Yeah, that’s right! They aren’t all a bunch of frauds and fakes. It’s just that they have all renounced the Miraculous. Makes perfect sense.
Even some 50 years ago one could still read about living Saints and Miracles. All that seems now to be drying up, everywhere. It’s as though the entire World has been handed over to Hell in a Hand-basket, so to speak.
Anyway, all of the preceding was simply preface to the point I would like to make now, and that is that while people are looking back to find their Religions of Choice, well, I think they happen to be looking back too far. If one evaluates the History of Religion to determine any particular one Golden Age, one can discern a salient that occurs at none of the Founding Moments of any of the Major Religions, and none of the Major Scriptural Documents and Holy Books cover the events thereof. I am speaking of the High Middle Ages and Catholic Civilization. There were dozens of Saints of the First Magnitude and hundreds of others, and a significant few of them were frankly more miraculous than Jesus ever was – for instance, Saint Vincent Ferrer probably did more on his laziest day than Jesus accomplished in his entire lifetime.
You would think that the Catholic Church would capitalize on all of this, but they have two problems there. The first problem is that at the Council of Nicea in the 3rd Century they officially closed the Book on New Revelation – yes, saying in effect that if God were to speak again, in the Future, that He would be thoroughly ignored. Islam did the same thing. Indeed, so did the Sikhs. You see, it all comes down to basic Theology with the underlying assumption that God is Absolute, with one of the corollary propositions being that an Absolute God never changes… if a Doctrine seems complete, then the Theologians assume, a priori, that it would be impossible for God to add anything. So they Close the Book… whatever their Religious Book happens to be. Well, Catholicism closed the Book, and now they find that they would have a difficult time opening it up again to say that a Great Deal happened from the 4rd to the 16th Centuries. But it did happen, and so the Church has created something of a Loop Hole, as such things are called. All Miracles, Saints, Revelations and things of that order that happened after the Council of Nicea had affirmed God’s Practical Deadness, all such things are classified as ‘Personal Revelations’ – NOT Church Revelations which would be illegal, but if private Catholics wanted to believe such things on their own, then nobody would burn them at the Stake for it… well, not most of the time anyway. This is why there were so many Religious Orders created, as a Religious Order would give refuge to individuals who would wish to join with other in the celebration of certain ‘Private Revelations’. And as it happened, ALL of the grandiose and spectacular Religious Phenomena of the High Middle Ages, the Golden Age of World Religion, was not Catholic, in the Collective Church sense at all, but was always Revelatory in regards to some ‘Private Revelation’… well, as it would have to be by the very way that the Church forced itself to define such things. The Council of Nicea took away all discretion and latitude in such affairs and decisions. So it is that the Catholic Church virtually ignores its Greatest Moments, and why the Church does not write the New Bible that really ought to have been written.
Also, there is the matter that the Catholic Church AFTER the Wars of the Reformation was not the same Church anymore. One of the big secrets of History is that the Catholics TOTALLY lost that War. It did not end in a truce as we are asked to believe. Look at the facts. The Peace of Westphalia was one thing, ending the War between the Protestant and Catholic Combatants. But then there was the Council of Trent which followed quickly on the heals of the Political Peace Treaty. The Council of Trent redefined the Church, gutting the Practices that had held up Catholic Civilization, and making way for the Protestant Institutions which would lead the way to all subsequent Barbarisms. With that Redefinition of Catholicism, the Spiritual Holiness of the Church was severely damaged, and Saints almost disappeared from History, though there would still be a few now and again, but the Golden Age of Religion and Spirituality was clearly over. Now, after the Council of Vatican II from back in the 1960’s, where the Catholic Bishops pledged Religious Unity with the Protestant Evangelicals, who see no God but Paul, well, that was the complete Death of Catholicism – now its just a stiff cold stinking Body of what it once was… with an Ex-Nazi Pope in charge, of all things.
Well, there have been Apparitions for the last several hundred years, even intensifying in frequency and spectacle – Marian Apparitions – predicting all of this – the decline of the Church and the decline in the Providence and Grace of God, with People not deserving God’s Grace, and all of that. But what we need to keep in mind is that the Predictions look forward to Extremely Bad Times which will be followed by a New Era, a New Time. I suppose Religion will finally come back. And then, PLEASE, and I address here those who will be the SURVIVORS – PLEASE, throw out the Stupid old Bibles and instead pick up your notebooks, and take note of what you see and hear in the way of the Miraculous, in the way of Revelations of God. Write a New Bible. After all, the Old Stuff only let us down in the End, didn’t it?
