|
The prophecies of Nostradamus
Evening
Empires Will Fall
Before long all will be rearranged,
We
can hope for a very sinister century,
The
estate that was masked and alone will change,
Few
will wish to stay as they were.
Century
2:10
Before
long everything will be rearranged.
We
can expect a very strange century.
Women’s
estate that was masked and alone will change everything.
Few
will wish to remain the way they were.
Manuela Dunn
Mascetti and Peter Lorie
Nostradamus: Prophecies for
Women
(Manuela Dunn
Mascetti and Peter Lorie, Nostradamus: Prophecies for
Women,
Simon & Schuster, 1995, p.
155.)
Before long all will be rearranged,
Within decades everything will be
rearranged and the religious landscape will undergo major
renovation. The word "rearranged" means there will
be no drastic changes — just like rearranging furniture to
give a more rejuvenating atmosphere. There
will be no upheavals as this "lunar consciousness"
is about Self-Realization; a peaceful, tranquil attainment
of inner awareness, an awakening to Reality and Truth within. The direction will be
towards greater global peace, harmony and healing.
All dogmas and doctrines of the
religious institutions will be re-examined, rearranged and put in proper
perspective. Muslims will know that Shri Jesus Christ is
the Universal Savior. Hindus
will learn that Shri Jesus is now Shri MahaVishnu, the most
powerful deity of their pantheon. The Buddhist will discover
that without the Saviour's permission they will never be
able to enter the Great Lotus Forest. The Christians will
understand that Shri Jesus is the Door and His Holy Mother
the Destination. The Muslims will know that Prophet Muhammad
and Islam are, along with other Messengers and Holy
Scriptures, like petals of a beautiful flower. The
Jews will know that they are not the chosen people and the
Messiah they were waiting is Shri Mataji Shri Nirmala Devi. The
Buddhists will know that God and His Kingdom exists. The Hindus will know that all their
Gods and Goddesses are incarnations of the Great Adi Shakti.
The
pork-eaters, beef-eaters, vegetarians, thieves,
prostitutes and sinners are just as welcome to enter the
Kingdom of God as
popes, ayatollahs and bhagwans. So are all unbaptized
heathens, uncircumcised pagans and untouchable wretches. The
Good News of the Resurrection is for all His children,
barring none.
The
tyrannical reign of the religious regimes will finally come
to an end, and all humans will be able to embrace the
universal religion, and each other: This universal religion
will "have no location in place or time,
which will be infinite like the God it will preach,
and whose sun will shine upon the followers of Krishna
and Christ, on saints and sinners alike; which will
not be Brahmanic or Buddhist, Christian or Mohammedan,
but the sum total of all these, and still have
infinite pace for development; which in its
catholicity will embrace in its finite arms, and find
a place for every human being, from the lowest
groveling savage not far removed from the brute, to
the highest man towering by the virtues of his head
and heart above humanity, making society stand in awe
of him and doubt his human nature. It will be a religion which will have no place for
persecution or intolerance in its polity, which will
recognize divinity in every man and woman, and whose
whole scope, whose whole force, will be centred on
aiding humanity to realise its own true, divine
nature.”
"Right
Education for the 21st Century
We are
reaching the end of the 20th century and it is time we take
stock of what we have achieved in the field of education,
what have been our failures and whether we need to continue
in the same direction into the 21st century or do things
differently. In considering this question I would like to
explore the situation globally and not with reference to any
particular nation; also I would like to give a wide meaning
to that word education, to cover the entire process of
bringing up the next generation of children into adulthood
and not limit it to only what transpires in a classroom in
the school. A child is educated by the entire environment in
which it grows, and that environment is determined equally
by the parents, the teachers and the society around him/her.
All this and more determines the kind of individual we
produce, which in turn determines the kind of society we
live in.
It is important to bear in mind the relationship of the
individual to society. If we produce individuals who are
self-centred, aggressive, ambitious, greedy and competitive,
one cannot organize them into a society that is non-violent,
peaceful, co-operative and harmonious. If we organize them
into a communist society we shall have the violence and
domination that we have seen in communist societies. If we
organise them into a capitalistic, so-called free society,
we will have the violence and the divisions that we see in
such societies. It is not possible to bring a fundamental
transformation in society unless the individual is
transformed. Education is therefore the main engine of
social transformation, since it determines the kind of
individual we are producing. Governments, legislatures and
the law enforcement agencies are only organizations to
control the individual, they do not transform him.
Therefore, true social change is the major responsibility of
education, not merely the production of trained personnel.
The test of right education today is whether it is producing
good planetary citizens.
The way we live has changed drastically over the last
century and that change can be traced to what we have
achieved in the field of education. At the beginning of the
20th century human society, all over the world, was beset
with tremendous problems of natural disasters, famines,
epidemics, primitive transportation, inefficient
communication, lack of health care and poor agriculture. Our
system of education has helped us to change all that, to
develop all the knowledge and the power that was necessary
to make the transition to the modern society in which we
live today. There may still be some parts of the world that
are struggling to make those changes, but at least we know
how to do it. The great strides that we have made in this
century in the field of engineering, medicine, agriculture,
transport, telecommunications, and power are all a direct
consequence of our achievements in education and we have
reason to feel proud of what we have achieved. However, the
problems that human society is facing now are totally
different and the question that we need to ask is whether
the present problems can also be solved the way we have
solved the other problems, through greater knowledge, better
organization, more efficiency and more power. If so, then we
should continue in the same direction. If not, then we must
seriously consider whether we need an altogether different
vision of education for the 21st century. To examine that,
let me list what to my mind are the major challenges facing
mankind today.
MAJOR
CHALLENGES OF TODAY'S WORLD
i)
Groupism/division:
Perhaps the
greatest problem we are facing today is the fact that human
beings are divided into groups----racial groups, national
groups, religious groups, linguistic groups, economic
groups, political groups, professional groups ---- and each
individual identifies with his or her own group, feels
rivalry with other groups and cares only for the security
and progress of a particular group. These groups are in turn
willing to exploit each other, cheat each other and even
destroy each other in wars. This has become the greatest
single cause of insecurity in the world today. It is
responsible for most of the violence that we see in the form
of wars, terrorism, rioting and militancy. This is a malady
that afflicts the most progressive and highly educated
people as well as the most backward and illiterate people in
the world today. The reason for this is not difficult to
see. The individual identifies with a particular family,
country, religion and culture in which he/she is born.
He/she is taught to feel proud of it and defend its ways.
The mind of the individual then works like that of a lawyer
defending the me and the mine and attacking the `other'.
He/she feels secure in identifying with his or her group but
this identification is in actual fact creating the greatest
insecurity in the world today.
ii) The
power unleashed by science and technology:
Human beings
have lived with wars and rivalry for thousands of years but
we cannot afford it any more due to the tremendous power
that science and technology have placed in our hands. Our
hatred of each other could only manifest in the killing of a
few individuals when we lived with bows and arrows, spears
and knives. Today, with our atomic and nuclear bombs we can
decimate a whole nation in a matter of minutes and no war is
a local war any more. This has greatly enhanced the urgency
of the problem since mankind is in danger of annihilating
itself in a nuclear war. We cannot therefore afford to
postpone the solution to this problem. Human history has
been a history of wars and if we do not learn now, we shall
soon be fighting our last war.
iii) The
environmental catastrophes:
Another major
problem we are facing today are the environmental
catastrophes about which we are constantly reading in our
newspapers and magazines :depletion of the ozone layer,
global warming industrial pollution, deforestation,
soil-erosion, nuclear fall-outs and over-population. The
root cause of most of these is the attitude we have
developed towards nature in the course of this century,
treating it as a resource meant to be exploited for our
benefit. With the development of science and technology and
the consequent industrialization there is a race between
different nations of the world to be the first to capture
the profits in the international market and achieve the
economic progress of their nation at any cost. Animals are
not looked upon as fellow living beings but merely as raw
materials for the meat industry. Rivers and mountains are
looked upon as objects to be exploited for producing
electricity or promoting tourism. Even children are regarded
as the `wealth' of the family. Nature is regarded as
something meant for our use, we being the masters of the
world. But are we really masters of the world ? Was the
world created for us ? Or, we are a part of the world, as is
every thing else and we need to live in harmony with all the
other parts, regarding them as friends and not as resources
? That is the way mankind related to nature for thousands of
years but in the last one century our attitude has changed
surreptitiously and unless this paradigm shift is undone we
are going to face more and more environmental catastrophes.
We may have better computers and faster planes but we will
not have fresh air to breathe and new diseases caused by the
disequilibrium will make life not worth living.
iv)
Dictatorships:
Another great
problem facing mankind is the fact that most of the
governments in the world, especially in the third world
countries, are still dictatorships --- military
dictatorships, communist dictatorships, religious
dictatorships and dictatorships in the garb of democracy.
There are very few countries where there is real democracy
and freedom of expression, political freedom, freedom to
grow, freedom to question, to think, to write what you
believe in. Dictatorships stifle dissent, they tell people
what to think, what to do and what not to do. The greatest
crimes of this century have been perpetrated under
dictatorships.
The very basis of dictatorship is the exploitation of the
weak by the powerful. So long as we believe that power is
meant for exploiting the weak, we still accept that might is
right, which is the law of the jungle. Both between nations
and within a nation one can see this uncivilized use of
power as a means of exploiting others. It has been said that
power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely; but
the evil does not lie in power itself. Power is just the
ability to do things. What dictates that it should be used
to exploit and dominate the weak and not help or protect
them ? Unless mankind can change its relationship with
power, power will continue to be used for destruction and
domination. So education must concern itself with bringing
about the right use of power, which is the true spirit of
democracy.
We object to dictatorship when it is at the level of the
government but all dictatorship is evil, whether it is in an
organization, a business or in the family. Therefore the
spirit of democracy needs to be inculcated in every
individual if the problems of dictatorship are to disappear.
v) The
breakdown of the family:
The
institution of marriage and family was set up partly to
regulate sexual behaviour but more importantly, to ensure
that we are able to discharge our responsibilities towards
the next generation. The human child needs to be looked
after, protected and helped to learn not for a few days or a
few months, as is the case with other mammals, but for a
period of 20 years, since there is a whole new dimension of
mental, emotional and spiritual growth involved. No one has
yet found a better way to ensure this than through raising a
child within a family with two parents. That is a
responsibility a man and a woman share when they produce a
child. Today, this co-operation between man and woman is
breaking down in modern society and the incidence of divorce
is now as high as 60% in some affluent societies. The worst
sufferers of this breakdown in co-operation are the children
and consequently juvenile crime is on the rise. Obviously,
we are not approaching life rightly and we need to rethink
where we have gone wrong.
vi) The
inertia in society:
Last but not
the least, is the great problem that society tends to
replicate itself. Prejudices and illusions tend to continue
from one generation to the next and so do the problems
associated with them. If the Jews teach their children that
the Arabs are their enemies and the Arabs teach their
children that the Jews are their enemies, the younger
generation grows up with the feeling of animosity already
ingrained in their mind. So the prejudices of the elders
continue in the young and so does the problem of animosity.
So, how is it to end ? It is the same with the Catholics and
the Protestants or the Hindus and the Muslims.
This animosity will never end so long as we educate the
children to obey and conform to what their elders are
saying. We must therefore create an inquiring mind, which
questions what it is told, is aware that it has many
prejudices that need to be examined and dropped and is
willing to undertake this task of discovering for itself
what is true. This process of doubting one's own opinions,
of discriminating between what is true and what is false is
the awakening of intelligence. It is inconvenient for the
elders to awaken the intelligence of the child because it
may begin to question them, question their values and their
way of living. But it is essential to encourage and respect
dissent if we are not to create a static society that is
inflexibly caught in a fossilized groove. There is too much
inertia in society today and the only way to change it is to
create a mind that is inquiring not only into scientific
questions, but also into social, moral and religious
questions. In other words a mind that is intelligent about
the whole of life and not merely one aspect of it.
THE ROLE OF
EDUCATION
If we are
facing so many problems at the end of this century of
stupendous progress, then we must stop and ask ourselves
what it is that we have done wrong ? Why are we facing so
many serious problems though we have amassed so much
knowledge, created so much power/ability and become so
'intelligent'. Do we need better controls or do we need to
change direction ? Will more of the same kind of education
as we have been imparting solve these problems? Do we need
still better computers, still faster airplanes, still more
goods, yet more knowledge and efficiency and will that solve
the problems we have discussed above ? If not, then should
we not re-examine our priorities in education and question
the very vision with which we have been working so far ?
The present
vision of education
What is our
vision of education today ? What kind of human being are we
aiming to produce ? The aims may vary a little from country
to country but essentially, all over the world, education is
aiming to produce a human being who is intelligent,
knowledgeable, hard-working, efficient disciplined, smart,
successful and hopefully a leader in his field of endeavour.
If one may most humbly point out, Adolf Hitler had all these
qualities and yet most people regard him as the most evil
person of this century. The only thing he lacked was love
and compassion. So what is there in our present day
education to prevent the creation of a Hitler or of little
Hitlers for that matter?
The holocaust, perhaps the greatest crime of this century,
was perpetrated in a country that had the best of science,
art, music and culture of the kind we are aiming to
inculcate through education today. So what is there in
present-day education to prevent the recurrence of the
holocaust ? Indeed, we are perhaps at the brink of a still
larger holocaust in which the whole of mankind may be
eliminated from the face of the earth in a nuclear war.
Present day education is basically developing greater and
greater power; but both God and the Devil (as conceived by
us) are infinitely powerful. Are we ensuring that the power
we produce will be used in godly ways and not in devilish
ways ? If not, then it is irresponsible to generate power.
The major challenges facing mankind today are not due to a
lack of education. They are not created by the illiterate
villagers in Asia or Africa, they are created by highly
educated and professional minds-----lawyers, business
administrators, scientists, economists, military commanders,
diplomats and the like ---- who plan and run governments,
organizations and businesses. So we need to look at the kind
of education we are imparting and not the quantity. When you
do that it becomes clear that we are producing lopsided
human beings : very advanced, very clever, very capable in
their intellect but almost primitive in other aspects of
life; top scientists and engineers who can send human beings
to the moon but who may be brutal with their spouses or
their neighbours; human beings who have a vast understanding
of the way the universe operates but little understanding of
themselves or their life.
It is this lop-sided development of the individual that is
responsible for all the problems we are facing today. As an
educationalist we must accept that when we impart knowledge
it is also our responsibility to impart or awaken the wisdom
to employ it rightly. Our present day education has not paid
serious attention to that responsibility.
A DIFFERENT
VISION OF EDUCATION
Keeping in mind what we have said so far, how should we
modify our vision of education for the 21st Century ? that
kind of mind should we aim at producing ? What values should
we try to inculcate ? The prescription would not be
identical for all countries and different cultures may go
about it in their own unique way, but the broad outlines can
be stated as follows:
i) Create a global mind, not a nationalistic one.
We are all citizens of one world and we share the earth
as our common habitat. What affects one part of the world
today is of concern to all of us. So we need to have a mind
that feels for the whole world and not just for one country.
We are part of one world, one humanity and if we can settle
issues within a country through democratic means and
adjudication, is it not right to do that also between
nations ? If we have a global mind that really did not
believe in "might is right" there would be no
armies and no wars. That is the future we must realize for
the 21st century. We may work for local problems but it is
important to do so with a global understanding.
ii)
Emphasise human development, not only economic.
Education must not regard children as raw material for
achieving the economic progress of the nation. It must
concern itself primarily with the development of all aspects
of a human being --physical, intellectual, emotional and
spiritual ---- so that he or she lives creatively and
happily as a part of the whole. Human beings may differ in
their abilities but they are not unequal, neither superior
or inferior. They must be respected irrespective of their
abilities. Goodness must be valued above efficiency.
iii)
Encourage inquiry, not conformity.
It may be inconvenient for the adults but it is important
that children grow up with questions, rather than answers.
At each age the questions will naturally be different but
the ability to inquire and to learn for oneself is more
important than to obey and follow unquestioningly what one
is told to do. It follows that there must be no fear in our
relationship with the child since fear kills inquiry and
initiative. The child must be free to make mistakes and
learn for itself without the constant fear of being rebuked
by an adult. Such a mind is rational, flexible and not
dogmatic, open to change and not irrationally attached to an
opinion or belief. This implies the absence of all
propaganda for any belief, including nationalism. "Our
country is the best country, our culture is the best
culture" is not true --- it is propaganda, which
divides people.
iv) Cultivate
co-operation, not competition.
The present
emphasis in the world on individual achievement for name and
fame is irrational and egotistic. We are all inter-related
and inter-dependent and little that is really meaningful can
be achieved alone and in isolation. Team work and the
ability to work harmoniously with others is more important
than individual achievement. Co-operation is the essence of
democracy. One works not for personal gain or reward but for
the welfare of the whole community, with love instead of
arrogance. It is important that each individual does his or
her best but it is not important that that should be better
than another. We are friends, brothers and sisters, not
rivals. If something good happens to my brother I rejoice
with him, there is nothing to feel unhappy. The sense of
competition that we are encouraging in children today leads
to envy, jealousy and rivalry. It sows the seeds of division
between human beings and destroys love and friendship.
Therefore, it is evil. The importance we have given to
winning gold medals in world-cup matches and Olympics is
based on propaganda and illusion. Does it really matter
which human being can jump one millimeter higher than all
the others? We are not asking the right question when we
ask, "Who won ?". The more important question is,
"Did they enjoy the game ?".
v) Create a
learning mind instead of an acquisitive mind.
The awakening
of intelligence is more important than the cultivation of
memory, both in life and in academics. If we give
information to the child we add to his knowledge but
intelligence is the ability to learn for oneself. What can
be taught is limited but learning is endless. The greatest
things in life are those that cannot be taught but they can
be learnt. The feeling of love, respect, beauty, and
friendship, cannot be taught but like sensitivity, it can be
awakened and this is an essential part of intelligence. The
ability to discern for oneself what is true and what is
false is also intelligence. It is important to create a mind
that neither accepts nor rejects an opinion or a view too
readily, but stays with the question, "Is it true
?".
vi) Create a
mind that is both scientific and religious in the true
sense.
Unfortunately
we have divided the scientific quest from the religious
quest of mankind and concentrated only on the former in the
educational process. In fact they are two complimentary
quests, one for the discovery of the order that manifests
itself in the outer world of matter, energy, space and time
and the other for discovering order (peace, harmony, virtue)
in the inner world of our consciousness. By mistakenly
equating religion with belief we have created an antagonism
between science and religion. Actually they are both quests
for truth into two complimentary aspects of a single reality
which is composed of both matter and consciousness.
A mind that
is purely rational, scientific, intellectual, can be
extremely cruel and devoid of love and compassion. One that
is only religious (in the narrow sense) can be overly
emotional, sentimental, superstitious and therefore
neurotic. We must therefore aim at creating a mind that is
both scientific and religious at the same time ---- one that
is inquiring, precise, rational and skeptical but at the
same time has a sense of beauty, wonder, aesthetics,
sensitivity, humility, and an awareness of the limitations
of the intellect. Without this undeniable balance between
emotion and the intellect, a mind is not truly educated.
Understanding oneself (self-knowledge) is as important as
understanding the world. Without a deep understanding of our
relationship with nature, with ideas, with fellow human
beings, with society, and a deep respect for all life one is
not really educated.
vii) The art
of living.
Education
must concern itself with the art of living creatively, which
is much vaster than the specific arts of painting, music or
dance which we teach at present. We have equated the quality
of life with the standard of living and we measure this in
terms of the Gross National Product or the per-capita income
of people. But is the quality of our life determined only by
the quality of the house we live in, the car we drive, the
food we eat or the clothes we wear ? Doesn't the quality of
our mind affect the quality of our life far more ? A mind
that is constantly worried, bored, envious or frustrated
cannot possibly lead a life of high quality.
When we
educate not for economic development but for human
development we must concern ourselves with the happiness of
the individual as whole, in which physical well- being and
comfort are a small but necessary part. Far more important
is the ability to work with joy, without comparing oneself
with others. If one is insensitive, there is constant
boredom and to escape from it a constant pursuit of
pleasure. The entire entertainment industry has come up to
capitalize on human boredom. When we teach children to work
for a reward and not for the joy of working, we teach them
to separate work from pleasure. Such a mind is energized
only when there is a reward, otherwise it lives in a state
of boredom. The art of living consists in enjoying every
thing one does, irrespective of the results it offers. One
then works creatively, with sensitivity and not for personal
ambition.
This, and
much more, is involved in the art of living. It cannot be
learnt like a formula. It is a by-product of one's
understanding of life and of oneself. Therefore we must help
students to come upon such understanding. Virtue, which is
the flowering of goodness in human consciousness, is a
by-product of self-knowledge. It is not something that can
be practised mechanically like a skill.
viii) A
holistic development of all faculties.
At present
education is geared to producing specialists. Some amount of
specialization in skills may be inevitable but we are human
beings first and engineers, doctors, lawyers, artists and
agriculturists afterwards. Therefore specialization must not
be at the cost of understanding what it means to live fully
as a human being.
The human
consciousness has several faculties (capacities) and I have
tried to group together words that we commonly use to
describe them, into four categories. Many of these over- lap
with each other but those within a category seem to me to
have a common basis and differ in a fundamental way from
those in another category.
Faculties
of human consciousness :
a) Intrinsic:
Perception, awareness, observation, attention.
b)
Thought-based: Knowledge, memory, imagination, reason,
analysis, criticism, science, mathematics, language,
concentration, intelligence (of thought), will.
c)
Feeling-based: Joy, beauty, wonder, aesthetics, humour, art,
music, poetry, literature, sympathy love, affection,
compassion, friendship. Attachment, desire, fear, hatred,
jealousy, anger, violence.
d) Beyond
thought and feeling: Intuition, insight, vision, wisdom,
silence, meditation, peace, harmony, understanding,
intelligence (not of thought).
The above
list is not exhaustive and one can add several other words
to it. Nor are the categories exclusive since thinking,
feeling, and observation all go on simultaneously in our
consciousness and also interact with each other. So this
classification is only for the convenience of discussion.
Education, at present, greatly emphasises the thought-based
faculties and to some extent cultivates those based on
feeling. For a holistic development of the individual it is
important that there is a deep understanding of all the
above faculties and they are developed in a balanced way. It
implies that in order to cultivate one faculty we must not
impair or damage another. This means one cannot use fear and
punishment to make students work harder since that destroys
inquiry, intelligence and initiative. One must not use
comparison and competition as an incentive either since that
destroys love and promotes aggression. One must not offer
rewards since that cultivates greed and insensitivity.
What
incentive then should we teachers use to make our students
learn ? It makes our task much harder. The challenge before
us is to reveal the beauty of the subject to the child so
that education becomes a joyous process and not a dreary
task to be achieved somehow. If we accept that challenge
then we must find ways to make education lively and
interesting for the child. A good school is one where the
children are happy, not the one which achieves the best
measurable results in academics. The real responsibility of
education is to reveal to the child all the beauty of life,
and there is great beauty in art, in literature, in science,
in mathematics, in music, in games and sports, in nature and
in relationship ---- indeed in every aspect of life. We have
a reasonably good idea of what it means for a tree to be in
full bloom. But have we seriously inquired what it means for
the human consciousness to be in full bloom ? Must not
education help us to discover that for ourselves ?
DIFFICULTIES
OF IMPARTING SUCH EDUCATION
There are
several difficulties in actually imparting such an
education. The greatest difficulty is that we have ourselves
not received the right kind of education. Therefore we must
not mechanically repeat what we know. We need to question
our methods and not merely repeat what our teachers and
parents did. It requires us to be original, intelligent,
creative and not merely asserting ourselves. Our minds are
conditioned into the old system, the old vision, therefore
we are ourselves obstacles in the way of the new ! One has
to be acutely aware of this fact and therefore not just
teach but also learn to break from the past.
In the new
vision of education we are not only taking the
responsibility to impart information and skills but also to
awaken sensitivity and creativity in the child. There is no
set method for doing this. These are things that cannot be
decided, practised and achieved. Yet, they get awakened in
the child if there is the right atmosphere in the school and
the home. It is our responsibility to create that atmosphere
---- an atmosphere of working co-operatively, with joy and
friendship, working hard but without personal ambition or
any sense of rivalry, an atmosphere of open-ness, of
questioning, of inquiry, and the joy of learning together.
Which means we ourselves must live and work that way.
Sermonising does not work. A child learns from what he sees
actually happening around him or her, not from what we speak
in the classroom. If it finds that we say one thing and do
another, it will also learn to do precisely that. Which
means we end up teaching hypocrisy ! A teacher who punishes
a child because he gets his sums wrong is not only conveying
to the child that it does not know how to do the sum, he/she
is also conveying that the strong can dominate and penalise
the weak ! So one has to be very very careful. There are no
short-cuts for imparting the education that we have
described above. The child imbibes the values he/she sees,
not those that are talked about.
Intellectually
we adults may know more than the child but in the larger
issues of life we face the same problems, the same
difficulties as the child ----- problems of boredom, worry,
fear, habit, conflict, desire, frustration and violence.
Therefore we need to learn along with the child, not merely
teach. It demands great honesty, humility, sensitivity and
patience. That is our difficulty ---- to be an educator who
is willing to accept that challenge and not seek an easy way
out. There isn't one. The deeper truths come to a reflective
mind as insights that cannot be taught by another. One
cannot do anything to create insights but one must not block
them with an ambitious and overly active mind which has no
time to stand and stare.
CONCLUSION
Mankind is
caught in a great illusion. It thinks it can solve its
problems through legislation, through political and social
reform, through scientific and technological progress,
through greater knowledge, greater wealth, greater power and
greater control. It may solve some problems with all this,
but those are all trivial problems and temporary cures. By
these methods we shall go on creating new problems on the
one hand and trying to solve them on the other to maintain
the illusion of progress. The famous humorist Ogden Nash
wrote, "Progress was all right once, but it went on too
long" ! We need to consider that remark seriously. If
we human beings do no transform inwardly, we shall soon join
the list of those unfortunate creatures that lived a million
years or so and then became extinct for they could not adapt
themselves. It is not certain yet if evolution of man from
the ape was really a step in the direction of survival. Only
time will tell. Survival requires not the intelligence of
'progress' but the ability to co-operate and love each other
and to live in harmony with nature. The ant has survived
longer than man. What we need now is not more ability and
more efficiency, but greater cohesion, greater compassion,
greater capacity to share and work together.
Education in
the 21st Century must therefore concern itself not with
greater 'progress' but with the inner transformation of the
human consciousness. It is not that this has not been
pointed out before. The Buddha, Socrates, Christ and
innumerable other sages in all cultures have pointed this
out long ago. Till now we have ignored what they have said
but still managed to survive somehow. We cannot afford to do
that any more, for we are inexorably heading towards a
nuclear holocaust which will make survival not worth it, if
not impossible. Therefore the issue has acquired an urgency
for mankind which was not there before.
In presenting
the vision of right education for the 21st Century I have
drawn heavily from the life and work of Madam Montessori (1)
and of J. Krishnamurti (2), both of whom have emphasised the
need for educating the whole human being and not merely the
intellect. Out of this vision, Madam Montessori developed
certain methods and techniques for use with small children
since she took upon herself that task. But the techniques
and materials she developed have meaning only when the
teacher shares her vision of life; otherwise the teacher may
use those very materials to inculcate a sense of competition
and achievement among the children ! A school is not a
Montessori school just because it adopts the use of those
techniques and materials. The technique does not create the
vision; it is the vision that creates the technique. It is
important to come upon that vision of life and to actually
live that way throughout life. Unless education helps the
student to do that it has very little significance. It means
we must be students all our life, living with deep and
fundamental questions. One such question is, what does it
mean for a human being to live in harmony with the cosmic
order ?
The
twenty-first century demands a total change in our outlook
on life and our vision of education."
Prof.
P. Krishna
We can hope for a very sinister century,

Third
Fatima Secret Text
The
following is the text of the third part of the secret of
Fatima as written down by Sister Lucia dos Santos, one of
the three children believed to have seen the Virgin Mary
in 1917.
I write in
obedience to you, my God, who commands me to do so through
his Excellency the Bishop of Leiria and through your most
Holy Mother and mine.
After the
two parts which I have already explained, at the left of
Our Lady and a little above, we saw an angel with a
flaming sword in his left hand. Flashing, it gave out
flames that looked as though they would set the world on
fire.
But they
died out in contact with the splendour that Our Lady
radiated towards him from her right hand.
Pointing to
the earth with his right hand, the angel cried out in a
loud voice: "Penance, penance, penance!"
And we saw
in an immense light that is God, something similar to how
people appear in a mirror when then pass in front of it, a
bishop dressed in white.
We had the
impression that it was the Holy Father.
Other
bishops, priests, religious men and women were going up a
steep mountain, at the top of which there was a big cross
of rough-hewn trunks as of a cork-tree with the bark.
Before
reaching there the Holy Father passed through a big city
half in ruins and half trembling with halting step,
afflicted with pain and sorrow, he prayed for the souls of
the corpses he met on his way.
Having
reached the top of the mountain, on his knees at the foot
of the big cross he was killed by a group of soldiers who
fired bullets and arrows at him, and in the same way there
died one after another the bishops, priests, religious men
and women, and various lay people of different ranks and
positions.
Beneath the
two arms of the cross there were two angels each with a
crystal aspersorium in his hand, in which they gathered up
the blood of the martyrs and with it sprinkled the souls
that were making their way to God."
Text
of the third Fatima secret
Thus it will be a dark and evil century
as the Antichrist forces battle His messengers spreading the
Good News of the Resurrection, which the Third
Fatima Secret clearly illustrates. Even the Muslims will indirectly join hands
with the Catholic Church and prevent the Truth of the Great
Holy Spirit from spreading. Nostradamus’ particular choice
of the words, very sinister, is a dreadful
omen, a frightening premonition of the Battle of Apocalypse
that is about to commence.
The
bogus Vicar of Christ and his Church
will not be able to save itself, much less even a single soul. Thus:
-
a
grace period (Last Judgment) is given by the Great Holy Spirit to human
beings before the End (Second Coming):
"But they
died out in contact with the splendour that Our Lady
radiated towards him from her right hand."
-
it
begins the destruction of the papacy and the man who spiritually holds one
billion souls ransom by claiming to be the Vicar of Christ:
"Having reached the top of the
mountain, on his knees at the foot of the big cross he was killed by a group
of soldiers who fired bullets and arrows at him."
-
the
guardians of the religious regimes — priests, reverends,
bishops, popes, rabbis, clerics, imams, mullahs, shaikhs, ulema, ayatollahs, gurus, swamis,
pandits, brahmins, acaryas, bhagwans, granthis, gianis, lamas, monks, dalai lamas — will be
meeting their spiritual deaths for defying the Last Judgment:
"and in the same way there died one after another the bishops, priests,
religious men and women, and various lay people of different ranks and
positions."
-
humans
will be obeying the Message of the Resurrection (Al-Qiyamah):
“Pointing
to the earth with his right hand, the angel cried in a loud voice:
"Penance, penance, penance."”
-
and
actively taking part in the Resurrection by purifying themselves in mind,
body and spirit —
"the souls that were making their way to God."
The Qur’an also explicitly warns that the blind followers
of institutionalized religions,
particularly the Muslims, will defy the Resurrection —
even after being provided with irrefutable proof,
divine visions, descended angels, celestial signs, fulfilled
scriptural prophecies, manifestation of all major
eschatological expectations and the Message of universal
spiritual healing. This diabolical denial of their own Holy
Scriptures is indeed going to bring forth a very sinister
century. It will be a satanic century! It will be a dark century! It will be an evil century! The
guardians of religions regimes will again deceive their prisoners-of-religion
and deny all Truth. It will be an anti-God century! The
forces of Antichrist in all religions will band together to
destroy the Truth. It will be a corrupt century! The Armies
of Armageddon will use all their might to battle the Spirit
of Truth and the announcement of the Resurrection. It will
be the darkest of all centuries! Be forewarned, humans, be
forewarned!
"Failures
of Organized Religion.
There are a lot of things wrong in human relations which
religions do not address. But religions are supposed to be
dealing with that subject, because the entire purpose of
material existence is to overcome sin.
The worst problem in organized religions is that they
construct theologies, which can only be corruptions. The
constructs are analogous to competing with God in creating
trees and trying to do it in a factory, since humans cannot
control evolution.
All theologians subjectivize (or de-objectivize) the origins
of reality making themselves, their figureheads and God
sources of reality. It's like trying to pour the universe
through a funnel, and their heads are the funnel. Sin
conditions them to do that, because it puts subjectivity in
conflict with objective reality. Since sin does that, it is
a prevalent standard outside religion also, except that
science has been creating a general understanding of what
objective reality is.
Subjectivizing religion through theology is analogous to
saying that before you drive a car across a bridge, you must
repent, because God holds the bridge up, and it will
collapse if you don't repent first. Repenting, of course,
means joining some organization and making a donation.
Theologians are clueless of God's purposes. They assume that
religion has the purpose of producing some divine gimickry
such as "Keys to Heaven" or "atonement."
They cannot understand the objectivity of existence, where
worship and ritual create real psychological effects, and
morality pertains to the standard by which people do
everything.
Morality is the point here. It is not theologically taught
as the standard of human interactions but as an attempt to
please God by responding to his whims.
The real characteristics of morality are not determined by
the relationships between like-minded persons but by
relationships between opponents. Christ focused on that area
describing morality in terms of how people relate to their
enemies rather than their friends. One reason why is because
enemies are often not the culprits; they are often innocent
victims. Another reason why is because morality is
universal; it cannot change for enemies, even if they are
culprits. In other words, it is a sin to sin against satan.
Which brings an important point to the front. Sin is not
something that can be put on a list; it is anything that is
detrimental to someone else.
Examples of bishops not knowing right-from-wrong is in their
handling of sex abuse cases, where they do more to promote
the problems than solve them. The Catholic Church is being
bankrupted by the consequence. Another example is in their
squashing of opponents, who tend to be traditionalists, when
churches are being converted to social halls, or sex
education is being promoted in schools. They use lies,
trickery and degradation to subdue their opponents.
Moral problems are most visible in communication, because it
is the first response to all problems. People are supposed
to be objective, not only in what they say but in why, where
and how they say it. Objectivity includes relating to
enemies and friends by the same standards, as Christ taught.
But doing so is unheard of in the world. Motives are
advanced through selective standards. Nothing in organized
religion corrrects that problem.
Objective reality is the medium which sorts out problems and
creates life. But religious authorities are not teaching
that.
Subconsciously, sin creates a hate for truth and reason.
Life cannot be sustained under those conditions. Attempting
to create truth and reason is viewed as a threat to
religion, because it does not come from authorities. It is a
violation of the rules of Catholicism to propagate reason on
morality outside the Magisterium.
The official view in Catholicism is that the "Magisterium"
must be the source of the religion, because it is God's
work, and any other moralizing is a threat to it. So
anything conservatives say is supposed to be God's work, and
all else is a threat to it. Authorities and conservatives
eliminate all opposing realities by saying it is not the
Magisterium.
One problem with the Magisterium concept, along with other
types of authoritarianism, is the assumption that there is a
truth which exists, and the true believers adhere to it and
purify it.
That concept is mindless. No one can produce a perfect
truth, or even a totally adequate truth, or arbitrate it for
someone else. People can only work towards it through
increased knowledge and evidence.
Truth is the communicated representation of unified reality,
which is approximately the same thing as objective reality.
Communication requires reality in two locations: source and
receiving point. Even if it exists at a source, it doesn't
automatically get to a receiving point. Even if one person
or a piece of paper has perfect truth, it doesn't
automatically jump into another person's mind.
How does truth get into someone's mind? Through everything
humans can produce for communication, reason and study.
Therefore, there can be no lines around truth. And
therefore, magisterium does not exist beyond a contrivance.
Magisterium is defined as teaching authority. To assume that
there has to be authority to teach anything is extremely
mindless. Certainly, there must be authority over
organizations including religions, but absolutizing it and
extending it to universal things like truth is perverse.
To try to draw a line around a perfect, or even imperfect,
truth is ignorance about the purpose and standards that
humans are supposed to have in life. People are supposed to
be determining what reality is and how to relate to it. The
concept of Magisterium assumes that there is no purpose in
life, because most of life is uninfluenced by the
Magisterium. The counter argument would be that all of life
should be influenced by the Magisterium. But that position
is saying that a few theological whims can direct all of
life. It is arrogance and irresponsibility.
The bliss of ignorance says that people are supposed to get
moral truth from the Magisterium and apply it to create
morality in their lives. The two questions are whether the
moral truth is in the magisterium and how it would be
applied.
Consider the question of whether moral truth is in the
Magisterium. Are not the Ten Commandments supposed to serve
that purpose? Maybe they needed to be expanded a little. How
much expansion is the right amount? The fact is that the
whole universe is the size that truth must be, not some
paper in the church archives.
Consider what Christ taught. He was crucified for breaking
the Ten Commandments through blasphemy. The Ten Commandments
were not enough. So he taught how to relate morality to all
of life.
If Church authorities are supposed to create morality for
everyone, then morality is an entity that can be passed
around. How does the morality get from church authority to
the rest of life? There is a mindless assumption that
morality can be created through phrases, advice, theology,
paper or whatever church authorities produce. That
assumption is extreme ignorance about what morality is and
how it is produced.
No paper can describe all that needs to be known about
morality. Therefore, people need to know how to make
decisions about morality by relating it to everything in
life. Christ taught a process of how to make those
decisions. Actually, he called it a path. A path controls
the process. He didn't call it a piece of paper.
Do you suppose that applying reason to a subject has
anything to do with the path that saves? Is applying reason
to a subject inside the magisterium or outside of it?
The magisterium is supposed to produce perfect and
infallible moral truth. The concept of purifying reality is
mindless. What would purified reality be? Would it be
separated from all other reality? How could it be purified
if it were not separated from impure reality? How pure would
it be if it were separated from all other realities?
What human minds do is acquire knowledge through
applications of reason. Knowledge increases incrementally by
building one element upon another. Correct reality gradually
replaces incorrect reality. Thereby, knowledge evolves, as
all realities evolve. Truth evolves, technology evolves,
biology evolves, social institutions and standards evolve.
If purified reality could be conceptualized at all, it would
be a hypothetical end point, not anything in past tense.
Pretending that there is a purified reality someplace defies
the process of how reality is handled.
One could say that Christ produced perfect truth. That
concept creates an acceptable figure of speech, because the
source material is extremely useful and reliable. But notice
what he taught; it is a process or path. He taught the most
rock solid basics of the subject, using examples and
parables to clarify unlike anything else in existence. And
then he said in essence, "Find this wherever you look
in life."
The thing that makes Christ's words a representation of
perfect truth is that they are a representation of objective
realities and laws found in life. The results are supposed
to be integrated into life, not separated from it.
And even then, no one can entirely agree upon the meaning of
what Christ taught. The ability to extract the "perfect
truth" depends upon the mental condition of the person
viewing it. Guess where the mental condition comes from. It
comes from a path; and the essence of the path is poverty.
If a magisterium were producing a perfect truth, the product
would be found at the bottom of society rather than the gold
vaults.
It is for this reason that truth comes from the bottom of
society rather than the top. The reason why Christ was from
Nazareth rather than Jerusalem, and why he walked in sandals
with the nobodies, is because truth could only originate
from the bottom of society, not the top. The truth of
Christ's words is a lot more perfect at the bottom of
society than at the top.
Mindless persons assume that they produce fact, while
everyone else produces opinions. Their facts are
unquestionable, because they come from authorities; and
everyone else's opinions must be discarded, because they
cannot be proven. Thereby, authority rules through fact over
opinion.
In other words, one of the main reasons why religion fails
to improve human standards is because there is no concept of
how to properly handle reality or truth. Christ said a lot
about it, but sin repels the truth.
Another major problem which religions do not directly
correct is the effects of subconscious forces which create
sin. Those forces are only overcome through poverty or its
related effects."
www.nov55.com/
The estate that was masked and alone will
change,
“Pope is another horrible fake guru sitting here.
Then we have another one which is of Canterbury
sitting there. All of them are false gurus — know
nothing about Kundalini, don't know anything of
Brahma, . . .
So they want to propound that they are the solution,
achieving nothing, spoiling the name of Christ, and
doing all kinds of things against Him stupidly,
without knowing the Divine."
|
|
|
The vast Catholic Church is the only
institution in the whole world that wears the mask of
infallibility and sells gift-wrapped salvation solutions to
their teeming sinners, a peculiar hereditary disease
afflicting all Christians. The absurdity of the papal
doctrines, as sound as their earth-is-the-centre-of-the-universe
theories, will be exposed to all humanity. The stench from
inside the Vatican — of its satanic birth, genocide,
falsehood, scandals, blasphemies, spiritual bankruptcy,
unholy baptism, empty rituals, deceptions, Mafia links,
stock speculation, currency market participation, corporate
connections, off-shore profits and multi-billion dollar
hoards — will waft around the world and reveal its dark
nature.
He does not
know the depth of his ignorance or the height of his arrogance. Neither
the Father, the Holy Spirit, nor Shri Jesus ever endorsed the following
facts which form the fundamental
faith and dark origins of the Catholic Church: original sin, hereditary
papal infallibility, Inquisition, purgatory, canonization, clerical hierarchy,
baptism, confession, celibacy, and simony.
These dogmas
are a potpourri of
"false ideas about
life, and that's why they want to put these ideas on to God also, and try
to make Him also follow these concepts; where you had to confess, and you have to say you’re a
sinner, and you’re a born sinner, an original sinner — all
kinds of things. So, as you are branded as sinner, you see, always felt
guilty;"
|
|
|
“That the Church of Rome
has shed more innocent blood than any other
institution that has ever existed among mankind, will
be questioned by no Protestant who has a competent
knowledge of history.”
|
|
|
Hundreds
of millions of innocent lambs in the past have already been led to their
spiritual slaughter by atrocious popes who, by masquerading as Christ's
representatives, deluded so many nations. Moreover, hundreds of millions
are yet to perish of inner darkness in this century as they defy the
Resurrection, a spiritual genocide unparalleled in the annals of human
existence. The rise of the papacy is surely the work of the Devil, the Dragon in the
Biblical text Revelation, for no other force on Earth could have
misled so many for so long. Over the centuries it is clear that popes were not Vicars of Christ but of
Satan!
|
“The
Pope and the Council contained aspects of papal history completely
unknown to me. I had been brought up as a Catholic, had gone through the
usual six-year seminary course prior to ordination, had graduated from a
Catholic university, the Gregorianum in Rome, and had never come across
such ideas. This is partly to be explained by the partisan nature of
seminary education and the fact that in such establishments history is a
Cinderella subject. The misbehaviour of popes is lightly dwelt or even
excised, rather in the way that Trotsky was cut out of all Soviet history
by Stalin . . . My ignorance must also be set down to the preference
Catholics have for a history of the papacy that can be read with white
gloves on. It is not easy to admit that one's leaders were often
barbarians, or that the good popes sometimes did far more harm than good.
Thus,
quite late in my career, I felt obliged to examine the history of Catholic
ideas and institutions, the later of course including the papacy. It was a
long and sometimes painful form of a self-education.”
|
Peter de Rosa, Vicars of
Christ: The Dark Side of the Papacy,
Bantam Press, 1988, p. 455-56.)
(Peter
de Rosa is author of many books including Bless Me, Father,
Christ and Original Sin, and Jesus Who became Christ. In Vicars
of Christ. He dispels myths about the papacy in favor of hard facts,
and provides everyone, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, with the true,
alarming story of the dark origins of the Church.)
|
The
Church-feared Third Secret of Fatima will now take effect and even the
might of Satan will not be able to stop the impending destruction of its
Lair. Be forewarned, Mighty Rome, be forewarned!
The
reign of the 'infallible' popes — living icons of satanic lies,
hypocrisy, evil, debauchery, blasphemy from whom hundreds of millions
today seek salvation — is about to end. How were so many fools made to
believe something that is not even written in the Bible? This being the
case, why won't others succumb to that which is written, but deviously
misinterpreted to mislead?
Something
is terribly wrong with the Catholic Church — very much wrong! God
Almighty enlightens and gives humans absolute
individual freedom to pursue Him, and not to be enslaved to a single man
for salvation. But
Lord Jesus' victory is assured over His adversary who regards himself as
"the ruler of this world." Be rest assured that the Last
Judgment frees all humans from the tyranny of religious regimes!
Vatican
life was never dull or wholly evangelical. There were authoritative
tales of drunkenness and sexual orgies, some of which were truly
inspired by Bezulbub. For example, another Prince of Carnal Life Alexander
VI, "was reputed to have had incestuous relations with his
daughter, the gorgeous Lucrezzia. If so, and it is not certain, it was a
record even for a Renaissance pope to have had sex with three
generations of women: his daughter, her mother and her
grandmother."
His
Holiness Pope John XII (955-63) "was a true debauchee (referred to
by some sources as an ‘incestuous satanist’), partially as a result
of his pampered upbringing. John was allegedly fatally stricken
(possibly apoplexy) in the midst of an adulterous act; he lingered eight
days before expiring."
Beatissimus
Pater Pope Julius II was
tall, handsome, and naturally, a great womanizer. Thus it was no
surprise that "on Good Friday 1508 his Master of Ceremonies
reported that his Holiness could not allow his foot to be kissed, 'quia
totus erat ex morbo gallico ulcerous', 'it was completely riddled
with syphilis'." This was a disease very common among priests, a
peculiar clerical hazard.
Prostitutes gladly welcomed the clergy with
open arms (and legs) since priests always paid higher prices for their
sexual services. St Bridget made this remark to Pope Gregory: "The clergy are
less priests of God than pimps of the devil."
Giovanni
de' Medici was an abbot at seven, cardinal at thirteen (the youngest
ever) and pope at 37. Our Most Holy Lord Pope Leo X was peculiarly pious
and had neither mistresses nor bastards. However, he was a latent
homosexual, highly addicted to "those pleasures which cannot, with
decency, be mentioned."
Benedict
IX (1032-44) gets a lot of votes for being the worst pope. "A
depraved lecher infinitely more concerned with carnal pleasures than
with the business of running the papacy . . . Like Nero, he achieved the
extraordinary: Both managed to shock their contemporaries."
Our
Most Holy Lord Pope John XII "copulated with a long list of ladies,
including his father's old flame and his own niece," and ran a
harem in the Lateran Palace.
Pius
II acknowledged that Rome was "the only city in the world to be run
by bastards" and successive popes made sure history recorded the
era as the Golden Age of Bastards. The Most Blessed Father Borgia had
ten illegitimate children from pretty Vanozza. Pope Julius II had three
while still a cardinal.
Alexander
VI's "eye for pretty woman was said to be infallible, even in old
age." From Giula Farnese, a ravishing 15 year-old beauty married to
Orsino Orsini, he sired a daughter, Laura. "That is why Giulia
became known throughout Italy as 'the Pope's Whore' and 'the Bride of
Christ'." By offering the pleasures of youth to his Holiness she
secured a red hat for her brother, the future Paul III, who was thus
nicknamed "The Petticoat Cardinal." At the age of fifty-eight
Alexander VI took another fresh mistress.
The
False Prophet Pope Alexander VI (1492-1503) was another Borgia. Our Holy
Father was "a debauchee whose spiritual concerns were almost
entirely overshadowed by matters of flesh, gold, and
aggrandizement." He made his son Cesare a cardinal at the age of
eighteen — even though he was not a priest.
On
October 31, 1501 one of the most blasphemous acts in Vatican history
took place in the heart of Christendom. "Cesare invited his
favourite sister Lucrezia and the pope, the only other male present, to
a festival called 'The Joust of the Whores.' Fifty of Rome's finest
danced in increasingly scanty attire before finally disporting
themselves naked around the pope's table . . .
In a frenzied finale, the
whores fell on their knees, scrambling in the rugs for chestnuts which
the Borgias threw to them like hogs."
There were reliable rumors,
perhaps for good reason, that His Holiness Pope Alexander VI
"preferred an orgy to a high mass."
An
influential Irish Roman Catholic religious order involved in teaching
generations of youngsters has issued an unprecedented high-profile
public apology for sexual and other abuse inflicted over years in its
institutions.
The
congregation of the Christian Brothers in Ireland has taken out
half-page advertisements in Irish newspapers admitting that some
victims’ complaints have been ignored. The admission follows a number
of prosecutions initiated against members of the order, other Irish
religious societies and Catholic clergy in recent years over sex and
other crimes, often dating back decades.
The
Christian Brothers have traditionally been associated with boys’
schools in Ireland, for many years. At one stage the order ran more than
100 schools and eight orphanages. The apology refers to harsh punishment
dealt out to pupils and to sexual abuse. Telephone numbers on both sides
of the Irish border were listed to provide help on a confidential basis
for any pupils who experienced ill –treatment or abuse at the hands of
its members.
According
to reports, in Newfoundland, Canada, nine of the lay brothers of this
order were convicted of abuse-related crimes at an orphanage. One of the
most senior figures in the Catholic Church in England and Wales had
defended his decision to allow a known paedophile to continue working as
a priest, despite warnings he would re-offend.
A
BBC investigation found evidence suggesting Archbishop Cormac
Murphy-O’Connor ignored the advice of doctors and therapists that
Father Michael Hill would carry on assaulting children. An investigation
for Radio 5 Live found one priest under investigation who was still
working. Another, recently suspended, was allowed to work in a primary
school while under suspicion of abusing children. He had been accused of
abuse twice before.
Since
1996, six priests have been convicted of child abuse. In each case, the
church knew of previous allegations. The Church introduced the
guidelines following the case of a Midlands priest jailed for sexually
abusing seven children. Numerous complaints had been made against him,
but the Church failed to call in the authorities.
Archbishop
Murphy-O’Connor told BBC News 24 he “regretted exceedingly what
happened” – namely that after he allowed Hill back to work in 1985
after suspending him as priest, Hill went on to indecently assault more
altar boys and was jailed in 1997. Hill was jailed after pleading guilty
to nine counts of indecent assault and one of gross indecency, committed
over a 20-year period.
The
spokesman said since 1994 the Catholic Church has had strict rules in
place which state that if a complaint is made against a priest, social
services should be informed and the priest removed from parish duties.
The police is informed of such incidents, but he said parents themselves
frequently did not want to get law, for fear of putting their children
through a trial.
Archbishop
Murphy-O’Connor has now agreed that boys abused by the priest should
receive compensation, but as part of the settlement they were required
not to speak publicly about what happened.
A
BBC News investigation in 1999 revealed evidence that some catholic
bishops in the UK were failing to follow the church’s protection
guidelines, allowing priests accused of child abuse to continue working.
John
Wilkins, editor of Catholic weekly The Tablet, says, “the image of the
church has been tarnished appallingly by paedophile priests around the
world. And this has damaged the church’s reputation in the UK. It has
done enormous damage to priests themselves –their morale is very low.
They feel depressed and defensive. It has been appalling for church.”
“There
is mistrust between parishioners and their priest, the general public
and priests. There is mistrust between parishioners and their priest,
the general public and priests as suspected paedophile priest would most
likely be shuffled sideways to another parish. Today, the church
authorities inform the police, move the alleged abuser to a safe house,
and suspend him or her from pastoral duties.”
“Last
October Pope John Paul II sacked Father John Lloyd, who raped a 16-year
old girl and indecently assaulted two altar boys in south Wales- the
first such dismissal of a British priest in recent history. The Pope
dismissed three American priests in 1998, and sacked two diocesan
priests in Ireland in recent years.”
Yet
Mr. Wilkins questions whether those at the top of the church hierarchy
take the issue seriously enough. The Pope has twice received the former
archbishop of Vienna, Hans Hermann Groer, at the Vatican, despite
allegations that he had sexually molested young clergymen.
Public
apology:
The
Irish government has launched an inquiry into allegations of abuse at
so-called industrial schools, where children were detained if their
parents were deemed too poor to look after them, or if they stole or
played truant. The 52 schools, run by Catholic religious orders and
backed by the government, closed in the 1970s. Campaigners say the
priests and nuns subjected most of the children in their care to
physical or sexual attacks.
Following
these and other allegations made during the 1990s, the Christian
Brothers, the Oblates of Mary Immaculate and the Sisters of Mercy have
issued public apologies for abuse inflicted over the years in their
institutions.
The
Christian Brothers have also been implicated in sex scandals in Canada.
More than 300 former pupils at Mount Cashel orphanage, Newfoundland,
have alleged the lay brothers abused them. The scandal forced the order
to sell property and assets to pay legal and compensation bills.
Compensation:
In
1998, the Roman Catholic Church in Dallas, Texas, agreed to pay more
than $30 million to 12 former altar boys molested by a priest. Church
authorities allegedly ignored warnings and covered up Father Rudolph
Kos’s activities. He is serving a life sentence for more than 1,300
attacks carried out between 1981 and 1992.
Back
in Britain, this year the victims of convicted paedophile Father Eric
Taylor have said they plan to sue the church for failing to protect
them. Taylor is serving a seven-year prison sentence for sexual offences
against children in Father Hudson’s Homes in the 1960s, a Catholic
charity.
Earlier
this month, Father James Murphy pleaded guilty to 18 charges of indecent
assault against seven children at south London parishes from 1976 to
1990. He attacked some of his victims in church itself. In April, prison
authorities in Ireland moved Father Eugene Greene to another jail
following attempts to kill him. The retired priest is serving a 12-year
sentence for abusing altar boys.
Four
years ago, Father Adrian McLeish, of Durham, was jailed for six years.
He had abused four boys-the sons of parishioners-and boasted about it on
the Internet. Police had seized the UK’s biggest collection of child
pornography from his home. Although Mr. Wilkins says it would be
difficult to link the scandals to the falling numbers attending mass,
“it certainly won’t put attendance up”.
|
“The
Lord Jesus Christ is the Head of the church, in whom,
by the appointment of the Father, all power for the
calling, institution, order or government of the
church, is invested in a supreme and sovereign manner;
neither can the Pope of Rome in any sense be head
thereof, but is that antichrist, that man of sin, and
son of perdition, that exalteth himself in the church
against Christ, and all that is called God; whom the
Lord shall destroy with the brightness of his coming.
(Colossians 1:18; Matthew 28:18-20; Ephesians 4:11,
12; 2 Thessalonians 2:2-9)”
|
|
|
"It’s
a very serious thing they have done against Christ. And still going on.
Still this Catholic Church, though being exposed so much, is still going
on — in India also, all over. It’s stupid. This Protestant Church also is
going on everywhere. What good name have they brought to Christ, one
should see. The first and foremost thing He has said that you must enter
into the Kingdom of God, that you must be born again.
So it’s all
mental: You are born again. You have a certificate. We are born again.
Finished. So this mental attitude of the West is responsible for killing
the great Incarnation of Christ, so I think it’s another crucifixion.
Mentally, you cannot understand spirituality."
Shri
Aksamaladi-dhara Shri Nirmala Devi
Few will wish to stay as they were.
In this century few will wish to
remain faithful to the Church, an evil entity that deceived
so many hundreds of millions over so many centuries. What
hope of salvation lies in the dark corridors of this
God-forsaken place? What powers of redemption remain in an
institution responsible for the extermination of countless
souls? What compassion exists in an organization whose
baptized popes extracted exquisite pleasure from inflicting
excruciating pain on their victims? What type of ‘unholy
ghost’ turned the entire papal hierarchy into a torrid,
teeming, writhing mass of lusty, licentious, fornicating
clergy? Who empowered the Church in its long, lurid history
of blasphemy — His Holy Spirit or Satan? To whom does the baptismal Mark in the biblical
Revelation belong — His Holy Spirit or the Beast? Who is
marking the babies, the most vulnerable of all? Who is
marking the dead, the most hapless of all?
And why does the Spirit of God plead:
Come out of her, My people, that ye may
not partakers of her sins, that ye receive not of her
plagues.
For her sins have reached into heaven,
and God hath remembered her iniquities. | | |