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Priests Quotes

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Priests Quotes

“My path in life in life has always been to trust myself; my path in life has always been to trust my intuition, to trust my heart, to trust the inner true voice, to trust my inner source of love, truth and wisdom, which is already in contact with the Whole. I have always listened to other people, and to what situations in life can teach me, but then I have always listened to the silent whisperings of my heart.There is always a meaning with whatever happens. It is basically a question of perspective; it is a question of seeing a situation from the perspective of the limited personality, or to see a situation from the perspective of the unlimited inner being, from the perspective of the soul. It is a question of seeing the creative potential in every situation, to see what we can learn in every situation, and to be open to see how life will solve this situation.When we see the situation from the perspective of the soul, it is like watching the situation from the summit of the mountain, instead of seeing the situation from the perspective of the personality, to see the situation from the foot of the mountain. When we see the situation from the perspective of the soul, we can also see that both good and bad situations, both positive and negative experiences, are teachers in life to learn to create a greater understanding of the Whole.”

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Author:Swami Dhyan Giten
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“There are not many things that the different approaches of modern psychology agree about, but there is one thing that they all agree about: that people in groups and organizations, simply put, become more stupid. Individually people are more intelligent, because they have to take more responsibility. But in a group, people do not have to take the same amount of responsibility. People in groups and organizations tend to get caught up in the need of the ego to create hierarchies of power, status, positions, roles, norms and conformity. All organizations are more or less dysfunctional. The sign of a dysfunctional group is that the members of the group play three roles and positions: aggressor,denier and victim. It is always easier to follow the group without reflection or awareness, than to trust your own heart, to trust your own intelligence,truth, wisdom and creativity. It is not always easy to follow your own heart, but it always leads your right.”

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Book:Meditation: A Love Affair with the Whole - Thousand and One Flowers of Silence, Love, Joy, Truth, Freedom, Beauty and the Divine
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“Society destroys the very roots of trust. Society does not allow you to trust yourself. It teaches you all other kinds of trust: trust in the parents, trust in the teachers, trust in the church, trust in God, but the basic trust in yourself is destroyed. The man who trusts himself is dangerous to society, because a society depends on slavery. A man who trusts himself is an independent man. Freedom will be his life. His love will have a truth to it. The society needs dependent people, who do not trust themselves.”

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Book:The Call of the Heart
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“When reading the history of the Jewish people, of their flight from slavery to death, of their exchange of tyrants, I must confess that my sympathies are all aroused in their behalf. They were cheated, deceived and abused. Their god was quick-tempered unreasonable, cruel, revengeful and dishonest. He was always promising but never performed. He wasted time in ceremony and childish detail, and in the exaggeration of what he had done. It is impossible for me to conceive of a character more utterly detestable than that of the Hebrew god. He had solemnly promised the Jews that he would take them from Egypt to a land flowing with milk and honey. He had led them to believe that in a little while their troubles would be over, and that they would soon in the land of Canaan, surrounded by their wives and little ones, forget the stripes and tears of Egypt. After promising the poor wanderers again and again that he would lead them in safety to the promised land of joy and plenty, this God, forgetting every promise, said to the wretches in his power:—'Your carcasses shall fall in this wilderness and your children shall wander until your carcasses be wasted.' This curse was the conclusion of the whole matter. Into this dust of death and night faded all the promises of God. Into this rottenness of wandering despair fell all the dreams of liberty and home. Millions of corpses were left to rot in the desert, and each one certified to the dishonesty of Jehovah. I cannot believe these things. They are so cruel and heartless, that my blood is chilled and my sense of justice shocked. A book that is equally abhorrent to my head and heart, cannot be accepted as a revelation from God. When we think of the poor Jews, destroyed, murdered, bitten by serpents, visited by plagues, decimated by famine, butchered by each, other, swallowed by the earth, frightened, cursed, starved, deceived, robbed and outraged, how thankful we should be that we are not the chosen people of God. No wonder that they longed for the slavery of Egypt, and remembered with sorrow the unhappy day when they exchanged masters. Compared with Jehovah, Pharaoh was a benefactor, and the tyranny of Egypt was freedom to those who suffered the liberty of God. While reading the Pentateuch, I am filled with indignation, pity and horror. Nothing can be sadder than the history of the starved and frightened wretches who wandered over the desolate crags and sands of wilderness and desert, the prey of famine, sword, and plague. Ignorant and superstitious to the last degree, governed by falsehood, plundered by hypocrisy, they were the sport of priests, and the food of fear. God was their greatest enemy, and death their only friend. It is impossible to conceive of a more thoroughly despicable, hateful, and arrogant being, than the Jewish god. He is without a redeeming feature. In the mythology of the world he has no parallel. He, only, is never touched by agony and tears. He delights only in blood and pain. Human affections are naught to him. He cares neither for love nor music, beauty nor joy. A false friend, an unjust judge, a braggart, hypocrite, and tyrant, sincere in hatred, jealous, vain, and revengeful, false in promise, honest in curse, suspicious, ignorant, and changeable, infamous and hideous:—such is the God of the Pentateuch.”

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Book:Some Mistakes of Moses
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“The intellectual climate of the 1970s, for which the 1950s had already paved the way, contributed to this. A theory was even finally developed at that time that pedophilia should be viewed as something positive. Above all, however, the thesis was advocated-and this even infiltrated Catholic moral theology-that there was no such thing as something that is bad in itself. There were only things that were "relatively" bad. What was good or bad depended on the consequences. In such a context, where everything is relative and nothing intrinsically evil exists, but only relative good and relative evil, people who have an inclination to such behavior are left without no solid footing. Of course pedophilia is first rather a sickness of individuals, but the fact that it could become so active and so widespread was linked also to an intellectual climate through which the foundations of moral theology, good and evil, became open to question in the Church. Good and evil became interchangeable; they were no longer absolutely clear opposites.”

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Book:Light of the World: The Pope, the Church, and the Signs of the Times - A Conversation with Peter Seewald
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“Your natural being is not acceptable to the religions. Their conditioning has been going on for centuries and naturally you begin to develop a certain conscience, which is not the same thing as your consciousness. The conscience is social conditioning and the consciousness is our natural and ultimate nature. For the consciousness there is nothing in you. The religions have been teaching you that you are born in sin and that our natural nature leads to more sin. They have taught you that you have to fight with yourself; you have to fight with your nature. Their basic teaching is that your nature is evil and you have to reject it. Almost everything in you that is natural has to be rejected. Life has tube denied, love has to be denied, sex has to be denied and joy has to be denied. This is a very cunning strategy of the religions, so that they could catch hold and control humanity. They have repressed your sexuality that is our basic life energy. It is the energy that basically keeps you alive. The word sex has been so condemned that even using the world makes you feel like you are doing something wrong.”

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Book:The Call of the Heart
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“Most priests wish they were as righteous as they seem to most members of their congregations.”

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Author:Mokokoma Mokhonoana
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“It has been the practice of all Christian commentators on the Bible, and of all Christian priests and preachers, to impose the Bible on the world as a mass of truth, and as the word of God; they have disputed and wrangled, and have anathematized each other about the supposable meaning of particular parts and passages therein; one has said and insisted that such a passage meant such a thing, another that it meant directly the contrary, and a third, that it meant neither one nor the other, but something different from both; and this they have called understanding the Bible. It has happened, that all the answers that I have seen to the former part of 'The Age of Reason' have been written by priests: and these pious men, like their predecessors, contend and wrangle, and understand the Bible; each understands it differently, but each understands it best; and they have agreed in nothing but in telling their readers that Thomas Paine understands it not.”

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Book:The age of reason
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“If the bible be true, God commanded his chosen people to destroy men simply for the crime of defending their native land. They were not allowed to spare trembling and white-haired age, nor dimpled babes clasped in the mothers' arms. They were ordered to kill women, and to pierce, with the sword of war, the unborn child. 'Our heavenly Father' commanded the Hebrews to kill the men and women, the fathers, sons and brothers, but to preserve the girls alive. Why were not the maidens also killed? Why were they spared? Read the thirty-first chapter of Numbers, and you will find that the maidens were given to the soldiers and the priests. Is there, in all the history of war, a more infamous thing than this? Is it possible that God permitted the violets of modesty, that grow and shed their perfume in the maiden's heart, to be trampled beneath the brutal feet of lust? If this was the order of God, what, under the same circumstances, would have been the command of a devil? When, in this age of the world, a woman, a wife, a mother, reads this record, she should, with scorn and loathing, throw the book away. A general, who now should make such an order, giving over to massacre and rapine a conquered people, would be held in execration by the whole civilized world. Yet, if the bible be true, the supreme and infinite God was once a savage.”

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Book:Some Mistakes of Moses
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“Humanity has been living under a dark and destructive self-condemnation. Humanity has been poisoned and condemned, so that nobody thinks himself a beautiful being, nobody thinks himself worthy enough. If you condemn yourself, how can you grow and how can you worship existence? If you cannot worship existence within yourself, how can you worship existence within others? You can become a part of the whole only if you have a respect for the divine that resides within you. In creating you, God has already shown that he loves you. By loving yourself, you will know that you are a medium for God. In choosing you to be a medium, he has already loved you and respected you.”

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Book:The Call of the Heart
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“We have seen some gatekeeping or fencing-the-table language already beginning to rear its head in this context. One needed to be baptized to take the meal; one needed to repent to take the meal; one needed a bishop or his subordinate to serve the meal. This was to become especially problematic when the church began to suggest that grace was primarily, if not exclusively, available through the hands of the priest and by means of the sacrament. One wonders what Jesus, dining with sinners and tax collectors and then eating his modified Passover meal with disciples whom he knew were going to deny, desert, and betray him, would say about all this. There needs to be a balance between proper teaching so the sacrament is partaken of in a worthy manner and overly zealous policing of the table or clerical control of it.”

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Book:Making a Meal of It: Rethinking the Theology of the Lord's Supper
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“We are born free, but we are not allowed to live in freedom by the society. Everybody is born in freedom, but everybody lives in a prison. Everybody lives as a prisoner and dies as a prisoner. The most spiritual act in life is to live in freedom. Meditation is the way to regain your freedom. Meditation is the way to destroy all the barriers and bondages that have been created by the society, the state, the establishment, the status quo and the church. The society do not want you to live in freedom, because a free person cannot be controlled, manipulated and exploited. A free person cannot be reduced to a thing, a possession. The society do not believe in man, the society believes in machines, because machines are obedient and do not rebel. Man can rebel, which is why each child is chained in such a way that very few people are able to live a life of freedom. Meditation is a declaration of freedom. A meditator has to be alert, aware, adventurous and courageous to live in freedom. A meditator's search is for freedom, and when he is totally free he knows God.”

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Book:Meditation: A Love Affair with the Whole - Thousand and One Flowers of Silence, Love, Joy, Truth, Freedom, Beauty and the Divine
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“The moment truth is organized it becomes a lie. Jesus and Buddha never created any organized religion. An organized religion becomes politics. It becomes a manipulation, control and exploitation by the priests. You don't have to be Christians or Buddhists, because your own potential is to be a buddha. Buddha taught you to become a buddha. The people who were with Buddha were not part of any organized religion. They were free and independent individuals. Buddha did not want to be anybody's guru, he simply wanted to be a friend, a fellow traveler on the spiritual path. He wanted to create as many individuals in the world with absolute freedom in their soul with no chains to Christianity or Buddhism and with no scriptures, no teachings, except for awareness. He taught spirituality, not religion. Spirituality is not a membership of any church or cult, but a quality that transforms your being and makes your inner potential blossom. Buddha was available to help his people to become buddhas. He wanted a world of buddhas, who were free from organized religions and cults, and who would find their own wings to fly in the sky. Truth brings freedom, freedom from religions, cults and scriptures. Truth brings a silence, a peace and a sense of eternity, and immortality and deathlessness. But it has nothing to do with organized religion and cults.”

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Book:Meditation: A Love Affair with the Whole - Thousand and One Flowers of Silence, Love, Joy, Truth, Freedom, Beauty and the Divine
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“I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved - the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced! With the rational respect that is due to it, knavish priests have added prostitutions of it, that fill or might fill the blackest and bloodiest pages of human history. {Letter to Thomas Jefferson, September 3, 1816]”

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Book:The Adams-Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence Between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams
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“It has happened, that all the answers that I have seen to the former part of 'The Age of Reason' have been written by priests: and these pious men, like their predecessors, contend and wrangle, and understand the Bible; each understands it differently, but each understands it best; and they have agreed in nothing but in telling their readers that Thomas Paine understands it not.”

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Book:The age of reason
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“When I was a child, I always hated being used in my father's sermons, shrunk to a symbol to illustrate some larger lesson, flattened out to give other people comfort or instruction or even a laugh. It did some violence to my third dimension; it made it difficult for me to breathe. 'That's not me,' I would think, listening to some fable where a stick figure of myself moved automatically toward a punishing moral. 'That has nothing to do with me at all.' If I had a soul, I thought, it was that resistance, which would never let another human being have the last word on me.”

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Book:Priestdaddy
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“My Ten Commandments: 1. God is a verb, not a noun. 2. Prayers are important only if they lead to corresponding actions. 3. Creation is an art. Science provides the tools for the artist. Anybody with the tools is not necessarily an artist. 4. Religion involves exclusivity and superiority. Divinity is inclusive and involves humility. 5. God by definition should be omnipotent. He should not require intermediation by priests and prophets. 6. All prophets have displayed exclusivity and superiority. (Refer to #4 above) 7. Rituals involve intermediation and often cruelty towards other fellows of creation. 8. Inclusivity and humility towards all creations of God is divine. 9. Rituals are antithesis of the divine. Rituals indicate a god and his intermediaries who are greedy, arrogant, revengeful and cruel. 10. God exists only for increasing happiness of all creatures.”

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Author:R. N. Prasher
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“The heart is small, but it has the capacity to love infinite. Man is born with the potential to become an ocean of love. But few people attain to this innate potential. The society, the culture, the civilization, the politicians, the organized church, the priests and the vested interests are all against the individual. They sacrifice the individual for the sake of the collective, the unconscious masses. The collective does not need love, on the contrary the collective needs hate. The Christians have to hate the Mohammedans, because the collective can only remain together in hate. One country has to hate another country, otherwise it will fall apart.In times of war countries become united against a common enemy. When they donot have a common enemy they start fighting amongst themselves. The individual can grow only through love and the collective needs hate, so thereis a conflict between the interests of the individual and the interests of the collective  crowd, the collective mob. The individual has to be very aware not to be exploited by the unconscious crowd.Unless the individual is aware, you can lose the opportunity to grow, to become mature and to attain your innate potential in life.”

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Book:Man is Part of the Whole: Silence, Love, Joy, Truth, Compassion, Freedom and Grace
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“The heart is small, but it has the capacity to love infinite. Man is born with the potential to become an ocean of love. But few people attain to this innate potential. The society, the culture, the civilization, the politicians, the organized church, the priests and the vested interests are all against the individual. They sacrifice the individual for the sake of the collective, the unconscious masses. The collective does not need love, on the contrary the collective needs hate. The Christians have to hate the Mohammedans, because the collective can only remain together in hate. One country has to hate another country, otherwise it will fall apart.In times of war countries become united against a common enemy. When they do not have a common enemy they start fighting amongst themselves. The individual can grow only through love and the collective needs hate, so there is a conflict between the interests of the individual and the interests of the collective  crowd, the collective mob. The individual has to be very aware not to be exploited by the unconscious crowd. Unless the individual is aware, you can lose the opportunity to grow, to become mature and to attain your innate potential in life.”

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Book:Man is Part of the Whole: Silence, Love, Joy, Truth, Compassion, Freedom and Grace
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“The fourth thing about authenticity and to create loving relationships to yourself, to others and to life is to learn to love yourself. If you love and accept yourself that is the beginning of accepting all. Then all is good as it is, in that experience life takes on a new joy, a new gratefulness.If you reject yourself, you are rejecting existence. If you accept yourself, you have accepted existence. Then life is good, you feel grateful. Then whatsoever happens is good, because it happens out of the whole. But you have been conditioned for centuries not to love and accept yourself. Nobody has ever told you that you are good as you are. Once you are incapable of loving yourself, you will never be able to love anybody. You can love others only if you are able to love yourself. A person who loves himself sooner or later starts overflowing with love.Love yourself because if you don't love yourself; nobody else will ever be able to love you. You cannot love a person, who hates himself. How can you love a person, who is condemning himself? He cannot love himself, how can you love him. He will not believe you. He cannot allow anybody to love him, because he knows that heis unworthy of love. And you know what you are: worthless. That is what you have been told by the parents, the priests and the politicians. Nobody has ever accepted you as you are. Nobody has given you the feeling that you are loved and respected, that you are needed and that this existence will miss you, that without you this existence will not be the same. Without you this existence will lose some joy, love, beauty, truth and poetry. Nobody has told you that you are love and respected by existence. Love and accept yourself,relax into your being, you are cherished by the whole. Once you start feeling this love and respect of the whole in you, you will start growing roots in your being. Only then you can love people, you can love the trees and the animals. Love is only possible when there is a deep love and acceptance of oneself, of the other and of the world. And then you will be surprised: life is always ready to shower you with gifts. Life is always ready to give abundantly, but we cannot receive it, because we don't feel that we are worthy of receiving it. Accept yourself, love yourself, you are God's creation.”

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Book:When the Drop becomes the Ocean
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“They like to use those fancy words. They don't like to say “raped,'” he said. “They say “misdeed,' “inappropriate touching,' “mistake.' That's insulting. I'm not a mistake.”

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Book:In the Shadow of the Cross: The True Account of My Childhood Sexual and Ritual Abuse at the Hands of a Roman Catholic Priest
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“I was amazed, shocked, and sickened by what I heard throughout the day, over and over, by many victims' stories. I can think of no one with whom I didn't recognize a common thread. These monsters, these evil priests, used the same words and methods on all of us. With each session, I would find something that sent a cold chill down my spine. It amazed and frightened me that the actual words used on me, to rape me, to rape me, were the same as the words used on so many others from all over the United States. You would think that all these priests either were educated in how to concur and rape us, or they met privately with each other to compare notes and develop their plan of attack on us. The pattern was so much the same, with the same words, that you would swear it was scripted and disbursed to these priests. Do they secretly have closed-door meetings on how to abuse us? A chilling thought. Neary's routine of saying the “Our Father” during the rape and making me say it with him, repeating the “thy will be done” over and over, the absolution given me after he “finished,” the threats of having God take my parents away, the lectures about offering my suffering up to God, etc., etc., etc. My experience was identical, word-for-word, to that of many others. The exact words during the abuse were not just close, but exactly the same, as if it were some kind of abuse ritual. Ritual abuse is not limited to the religious definition and can include compulsive, abusive behavior performed in an exact series of steps with little variation. How could these similarities occur without the priests taking the same “abuse seminar” together some place, somehow? Was it taught in the seminary? In some dark corner? It goes beyond coincidence—the similarities in deeds and verbiage that these predators use on us. It truly chilled me to the very marrow of my bones.”

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Book:In the Shadow of the Cross: The True Account of My Childhood Sexual and Ritual Abuse at the Hands of a Roman Catholic Priest
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“The first days of January 1942 brought enormous amounts of snow. The reader already knows what snow meant for the clergy. But this time the torture surpassed the bounds of the endurable. At the same time the thermometer hovered between 5 and 15 degrees below zero. From morning till night we scraped, shoveled, and pushed wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of snow to the brook. The work detail consisted of more than 1,000 clergymen, forced to keep moving by SS men and Capos who kicked us and beat us with truncheons. We had to make rounds with the wheelbarrows from the assembly square to the brook and back. Not a moment of rest was allowed, and much of the time we were forced to run. At one point I tripped over my barrow and fell, and it took me a while to get up again. An SS man dashed over and ordered me to turn with the full load. He ran beside me, beating me constantly with a leather strap. When I got to the brook I was not allowed to dump out the heavy snow, but had to make a second complete round with it instead. When the guard finally went off and I tried to let go of the wheelbarrow, I found that one of my hands was frozen fast to it. I had to blow on it with warm breath to get it free.”

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Book:Priestblock 25487: a Memoir of Dachau
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“On Good Friday last year the SS found some pretext to punish 60 priests with an hour on "the tree." That is the mildest camp punishment. They tie a man's hands together behind his back, palms facing out and fingers pointing backward. Then they turn his hands inwards, tie a chain around his wrists and hoist him up by it. His own wight twists his joints and pulls them apart...Several of the priest who were hung up last year never recovered and died. If you don't have a strong heart, you don't survive it. Many have a permanently crippled hand.”

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Book:Priestblock 25487: a Memoir of Dachau
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“In medieval times, contrary to popular belief, most knights were bandits, mercenaries, lawless brigands, skinners, highwaymen, and thieves. The supposed chivalry of Charlemagne and Roland had as much to do with the majority of medieval knights as the historical Jesus with the temporal riches and hypocrisy of the Catholic Church, or any church for that matter. Generally accompanied by their immoral entourage or servants, priests, and whores, they went from tourney to tourney like a touring rock and roll band, sports team, or gang of South Sea pirates. Court to court, skirmish to skirmish, rape to rape. Fighting as the noble's substitution for work.”

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Book:All Shall Be Well; And All Shall Be Well; And All Manner of Things Shall Be Well
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“...Turn our thoughts, in the next place, to the characters of learned men. The priesthood have, in all ancient nations, nearly monopolized learning. Read over again all the accounts we have of Hindoos, Chaldeans, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Celts, Teutons, we shall find that priests had all the knowledge, and really governed all mankind. Examine Mahometanism, trace Christianity from its first promulgation; knowledge has been almost exclusively confined to the clergy. And, even since the Reformation, when or where has existed a Protestant or dissenting sect who would tolerate a free inquiry? The blackest billingsgate, the most ungentlemanly insolence, the most yahooish brutality is patiently endured, countenanced, propagated, and applauded. But touch a solemn truth in collision with a dogma of a sect, though capable of the clearest proof, and you will soon find you have disturbed a nest, and the hornets will swarm about your legs and hands, and fly into your face and eyes. [Letters to John Taylor, 1814, XVIII, p. 484]”

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Book:The Letters of John and Abigail Adams
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“When the late Pope John Paul II decided to place the woman so strangely known as “Mother” Teresa on the fast track for beatification, and thus to qualify her for eventual sainthood, the Vatican felt obliged to solicit my testimony and I thus spent several hours in a closed hearing room with a priest, a deacon, and a monsignor, no doubt making their day as I told off, as from a rosary, the frightful faults and crimes of the departed fanatic. In the course of this, I discovered that the pope during his tenure had surreptitiously abolished the famous office of “Devil’s Advocate,” in order to fast‐track still more of his many candidates for canonization. I can thus claim to be the only living person to have represented the Devil pro bono.”

ReligionAtheismDevilSatanPriestsPopeTestimonySainthoodDeaconsMother TeresaVaticanDevil S AdvocatePope John Paul IiPro BonoFanatacismBeatificationCanonisationMonsignors
Book:Hitch 22: A Memoir
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“Why do scientists never debate philosophers? It’s because they know they would be destroyed in argument, when they have to actually clarify their ridiculous and embarrassing belief system. Mandarins, in their little priesthoods, hide behind jargon so that they know that no outsiders can laugh at their lack of clarity. They create an in-language so that only the insiders can know how absurd the belief system is, and they all have a vested interest in maintaining the fiction. That’s how the Mandarin system works. They don’t dare to be clear because then it would be clear that they are the emperor in his new clothes and know nothing at all.”

ClarityPriestsAmbiguityJargonScientistsIvory TowerObscurantismSophists
Book:The Mandarin Effect: The Crisis of Meaning
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“The Pope would have an easier job than the President of the United States in adopting a change of course. He has no Congress alongside him as a legislative body nor a Supreme Court as a judiciary. He is absolute head of government, legislator and supreme judge in the church. If he wanted to, he could authorize contraception over night, permit the marriage of priests, make possible the ordination of women and allow eucharistic fellowship with this Protestant churches. What would a Pope do who acted in the spirit of Obama?”

ReligionChurchChristianityPriestsCatholicismPopeEucharistPriesthoodClergyCelibacyContraceptionProtestantismEcumenismWomen Clergy
Author:Hans Küng
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“There now remain only a few books, which they call books of the lesser prophets; and as I have already shown that the greater are impostors, it would be cowardice to disturb the repose of the little ones. Let them sleep, then, in the arms of their nurses, the priests, and both be forgotten together. I have now gone through the Bible, as a man would go through a wood with an axe on his shoulder, and fell trees. Here they lie; and the priests, if they can, may replant them. They may, perhaps, stick them in the ground, but they will never make them grow.”

PriestsCowardiceReposeNursesRefuteDebunkGreater ProphetsLess Prophets
Book:The age of reason
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“When a misfortune strikes us, we can overcome it either by removing its cause or else by changing the effect it has on our feelings, that is, by reinterpreting the misfortune as good, whose benefit may only later become clear. Religion and art (as well as metaphysical philosophy) strive to effect a change in our feeling, in part by changing the way we judge experiences...and in part by awakening a pleasure in pain, in emotion generally...The more a person tends to reinterpret and justify, the less will he confront the causes of the misfortune and eliminate them; a momentary palliation and narcotization (as used, for example, for a toothache) is also enough for him in more serious suffering. The more the rule of religions and all narcotic arts decrease, the more squarely do men confront the real elimination of the misfortune - of course, this is bad for the tragic poets (there being less and less material for the tragedy, because the realm of the inexorable, invincible fate grows ever smaller) but it is even worse for the priests (for until now they had fed on the narcotization of human misfortunes).”

PainReligionSufferingSinPleasureChristianityPowerPriestsReligions
Book:Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits
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“Altho' I rarely waste time in reading on theological subjects, as mangled by our Pseudo-Christians, yet I can readily suppose Basanistos may be amusing. Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity. It is mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus. If it could be understood it would not answer their purpose. Their security is in their faculty of shedding darkness, like the scuttlefish, thro' the element in which they move, and making it impenetrable to the eye of a pursuing enemy, and there they will skulk. [Letter to Francis Adrian Van der Kemp on 30 July 1810 denouncing the Christian doctrine of the Trinity]”

PriestsRidiculeSuperstitionTrinityWeaponChristiansAbracadabraThe Trinity
Book:Letters of Thomas Jefferson
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“I reflected on other victims I had met and how they were raped right on the altars of their own churches. Some of them were altar boys, and they were abused before or after mass. An altar boy walked right in front of us as we sat there. I began to shake, sweat, and become very uneasy. I felt frozen in my seat.”

ChurchCatholicPriestsRitualRapeRitual AbusePedophileAltarRitualistic AbuseClergy Abuse
Book:In the Shadow of the Cross: The True Account of My Childhood Sexual and Ritual Abuse at the Hands of a Roman Catholic Priest
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