2006, the year of the faux pas, the wrong move, the flawed message, week judgment.There was Zidane’s head-butt at the last world-cup-soccer-game, Israel – Lebanon battering ram’s reaction to each other’s challenge, Ms Condoleeza Rice “New Middle East” speech, Mel Gibson intoxicated tirade, and now Pope Benedict XVI’s quoting 14th century Manuel II: “Show me Just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”
How should we interpret Jesus Christ’s message of love and peace in 11th, 12th 13th 14th and subsequent centuries of Christian Church campaigns for control of the Holy Land and to gain more followers? Were Crusades not by the sword? What about the wicked activities the Vatican employed to compel South American indigenous people into Christian conversion? Should we forget the sadistic horror, the terror of torture, the persecution, the fear, the burning at the stake, the unjust, excessive sufferance of hundreds of thousands of innocent people, prescribed and approved by the Church unHoly Inquisitors?
More evil than that cannot not be imagined… Those Christian Church abominations were not promoted by the -- benevolent nature of God -- but were the mandate of a politically organized religion of which His Holiness is the present supreme leader. The important lesson here is that today’s and future popes will need to remember that even though they appear clad in costly medieval regalia and live in sumptuous palaces, they are as human beings, neither infallible nor holy, as the Church they represent would have us believe.
Buddhist thought: Being vigilant of the three doors of karma is to remove the conditions for three poisons to grow, the three doors are - Speech, Action and Thought.
