 
Guilty Pleasures

Published by Bill Etem at Smashwords

Copyright 2014 Bill Etem

Cover Art by Spearcarrier at www.premadecovers4u.com

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This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Guilty Pleasures

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. It's not True Love, Merely Some Bondage Thrills between Mara and Kressida

Chapter 2. Hunting Down Killer Religions.

Chapter 3. Getting to Know Madge Undersee

Chapter 4. God's True Church.

Chapter 5. Is it True Love between Mara and Madge?

Chapter 6. The True Faith = The Divine Law = The New Law

Chapter 7. Hunting the Killer

Chapter 8. The Sign of the Cross

Chapter 9. The Inferno

Chapter 10. Divine Law, Temples of God, Selling the True Faith for Profits

Chapter 11. Mara's Confession

Chapter 12. More Religion

Chapter 13. Why Did Kressida Have to Die?

Chapter 14. Even More Religion

Guilty Pleasures

Chapter 1. It's Not True Love, Merely Some Bondage Thrills between Mara and Kressida

Kressida, a lovely 22-year-old postgraduate, was wondering why the woman beside her was touching her so often. Kressida was asking herself some questions. `Is she a lesbian? What gives with her?'

For a moment there Kressida couldn't remember the woman's name. But then her memory kicked in: Mara. Yeah, it's Mara. `Why the hell are you always rubbing yourself up against me, bitch?' muttered Kressida to herself.

Two men and four women formed the posse that was hunting for the murderer of Jake Leroy Westerby. Big Jake was more or less a big joke with the men-folk, but the chicks seemed to dig him. Truth be told, he was a sleazy, womanizing, two-timing, cheating scumbag! But Jake is history now, because the authorities found Jake's dismembered body in five different places. His head was in the bathroom; his left leg was in the kitchen. His right leg was in...Oh who cares or remembers where the hell his right leg was found?

The four women and the two guys in the posse left their Land Rover ten miles back, back where the trail of the murderer departed from a dirt road and then led into the rough country, into the high country. Land Rovers ain't any good when it comes to roving over land that's as rough and tough as the land they were crossing.

Kressida lay in her blankets, at their campsite, and she stared up at the fool moon, or rather, at the full moon. She liked to call it `that damn fool moon' in her Mississippi drawl. Not to suggest here that they were in Mississippi now – they were in Arizona – or they might actually be in Mexico – in any event they were close to the line, and perhaps they were over that line. For a few moments Kressida didn't have to deal with Mara slyly groping her. But then Mara was pushing herself against Kressida again, pushing herself in her rather aggressively seductive way. Mara was thrusting her breasts hard into Kressida's shoulder.

`Chick, I'm going to slap you and keep on slapping you if you don't stop molesting me,' said Kressida.

`If you slap me I'll be forced to defend myself,' said Mara.

`How you gonna defend yourself?' asked Kressida. `I'm a whole shitload tougher than you are, you and your sorry little ass.'

`Well, since you asked, I'll tell you how I'll defend myself. Better yet, I'll show you,' said Mara. Then Mara reached for Kressida's left wrist. Mara is just a little thing, mind you. She weighs maybe 110 pounds at the most. But Mara's grip on Kressida's wrist was a grip of steel. And then, in one effortless motion, which left Kressida too stunned to cry out for help, Mara pinned both of Kressida's arms behind her back. Kressida was stunned indeed, and too flabbergasted to scream out even while Mara made herself at home by unbuttoning the buttons on the front of Kressida's pajama top. By the time this operation was completed it was too late for Kressida to call for help. What was she supposed to do - wake up her parents and have them laugh at her? - have them laugh at the sight of her pinned to the ground by little Mara? So Mara just kept right on kissing and undressing Kressida in the light of that damn fool moon.

Kressida just lay there like a mannequin, just lay there like a sack of potatoes. Kressida couldn't think straight. She did nothing while she was being molested! She did, however, ask herself: `How can this little chick do this to me? Where the hell does she get the strength? I ought to be able to smash her face in. But it's like she's got the strength of 10 big dudes on steroids.'

`Sorry,' said Mara at last, as she stopped molesting Kressida. `I got a little carried away there. I just find you so incredibly beautiful. You're so gorgeous. It's like I can't control myself when I'm around you. You're intoxicating. You're so beautiful! I feel this euphoria, this bliss, when I'm holding you....I feel ashamed of myself, and yet exuberant and alive and thrilled all at the same time!'

`Oh, you feel exuberant, do you? said Kressida, as she buttoned up her pajama top after Mara released Kressida from the bondage in which she held her.

`Yeah, Kressy, sweetheart, my darling, you really get to me,' said Mara.

`I got a question for you. How can you be so strong? What drugs are you on?'

`It's a variant of angel dust. It doesn't get me high though. It just kills my appetite and keeps me slim, and makes me Superwoman strong.'

`Yeah, but maybe it will drive you crazy, or maybe it will give you cancer. Ever think of that? That would be pretty funny watching you do what you did to me to some big dude.'

`Oh that happens sometimes with me and guys. But I mostly go for chicks. That's just the way I operate.'

`That's the way you operate on angel dust,' said Kressida. `But what are you really like?'

`You wouldn't believe me if I told you.'

`Try me,' said Kressida.

`Maybe I'll tell you, but first you have to take all your clothes off,' said Mara.

`Tell me some more about how you find me beautiful, and intoxicating. Tell me about the exuberance and the euphoria and the ecstasy you feel in my company,' said Kressida as her pajama top came off of her for the second time that evening.

Chapter 2. Hunting Down Killer Religions.

So, you see, Mara had to invent a lie, that lie that she was on a variant of angel dust. Mara is absolutely determined to not let anyone know that she is a hot cyborg nymphomaniac with the strength of ten big strong men. We'll get back to the adventures of Mara and Kressida and the 4 other people in that posse that's hunting for the killer of Jake Leroy Westerby, down in Mexico, or perhaps Arizona, but we'll get back to it a little later. I mean it's just a dumb story, just a dumb novella designed to give people some transitory thrills. It's not philosophy; it's not science; it's not the great literature; it's not theology etc., etc. It's not important stuff like that. It's just a semi-but-not-too-erotic adventure mystery sci-fi novella.

I'll get you back to the exciting murder mystery real fast. You can always skip ahead to the odd numbered chapters if you absolutely detest the even numbered chapters. It's not as if someone is holding a gun to your head and forcing you to read the even numbered chapters containing the religious info. I'm not holding you hostage, you know! You are perfectly free to ignore the even-numbered chapters.

On the one hand we have a story in the odd numbered chapters about a bunch of people hunting for a killer. And then we have the even numbered chapters, which are all about looking for killer creeds, all about hunting for homicidal ideologies, seeking out murderous religions which lead people away from heaven and drag them down to perdition. I mean, suppose Malachi 4. 1 is true. Malachi 4. 1, which is the first verse in the last chapter of the last book in the Old Testament says the LORD is going to set the wicked people on fire. I know, I know, some people say Malachi 4. 1 is a load of bull. Others are unsure what to think about Malachi 4. 1. Others still are quite positive Malachi 4. 1 is very true indeed. So, moving along, scriptures such as John 1. 1-14, Romans 9. 5, Colossians 2. 8-10 and 1 Timothy 3. 16 tell us Jesus is God. OK, now, assuming Malachi 4. 1 is true, then you have to be right in your assessment of Jesus. If Jesus is God then it is wicked to say Jesus is a false god, a bogus deity etc., as the Non-Christians say.

And of course if Jesus is not God, then the True God would probably consider it a wicked blasphemy to say that Jesus is God, which leads us back to Malachi 4. 1.

It's true that I'm a Christian, and I push scriptures like John 1. 1-14 and 1 Timothy 3. 16 – Jesus is God - and I push John 15. 6 – those who do not abide in Christ are like sticks which are gathered up and tossed into the flames – and it's true I push scriptures like Matthew 25. 31-46 and 2 Thess 1. 8, both of which deal with hellfire. The idea that you must subscribe to certain doctrines, or else you will be banished from a beautiful heaven forever and ever in the afterlife, and exiled to eternal perdition, is certainly not an idea that is unique to Christianity. Of course of course the Muslims will say that all of the non-Islamic religions which reject Allah and Islam are killer religions, murderous ideologies, vicious lies which lead souls straight to hellfire. The Koran is filled with verses saying you'll burn in hell if you reject Allah and Islam. Well, if you will burn in hell if you refuse to worship Allah then everyone on earth should immediately convert to Islam and everyone should obey the Koran. But then if Allah is a bogus deity and a fraudulent god, then of course you will want to avoid Islam.

Atheists of course hate all this talk of hellfire, seeing it as contemptible superstition. It is sort of startling to read about all this violence in all of these scriptures pertaining to torment and hellfire in the afterlife. Why there's Malachi 4. 1, Revelation 20. 12-15, Matthew 25. 31-46, Luke 16. 19-31, 1 Corinthians 6. 9-10, Revelation 14. 11....

Don't think you can't find hellfire sermons in Hinduism and Buddhism and Judaism. Don't think that hellfire sermons are only found in Christianity and Islam. We've been over Malachi 4. 1, which has the LORD saying: `For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the LORD of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch.'

I'm a Christian. I push John 1. 1-14, John 15. 6, John 14. 23-26, Matthew 25. 31-46, 1 Timothy 3. 16, Psalm 2, Isaiah 9. 6, 2 Thess 1. 8 etc. So, naturally, I immediately dismiss all non-Christian creeds as murderous heresies, as killer creeds which lead people away from heaven and which drag them down to their eternal destruction in eternal perdition. Yes, I understand this angers many people. What can I say? If I'm a deluded fool, where did I go astray? Do you say Malachi 4. 1 is worthless? Do you say John 1. 1-14 is worthless? What about John 15. 6? 2 Thess 1. 8? Revelation 20. 12-15? Matthew 25. 31-46?

That's enough for this chapter. Chapter 3 picks up the search for the killer of Jake. Chapter 4 picks up the search for killer heresies within Christianity.

Chapter 3. Getting to Know Madge Undersee

Day dawned cold and bleak as the sun rose above the eastern hills to shine down on the six people in the posse hunting for big Jake's killer. Madge Undersee, Kressida Westerby's best friend, rubbed the sleep from her eyes as she tossed her blankets aside and sat up in her bedroll. She glanced round her. No one had yet got the campfire started. No hot coffee with no fire Madge reasoned with unerring precision. Madge got to her feet and went about the task of gathering sticks and brambles to start the fire.

`What the hell?' said Madge under her breath as she caught sight of Mara and Kressida lying naked together in each others' arms. `I always though Kressida loved only boys,' said Madge, again muttering the words to herself in a soft voice, so as to not awaken anyone. `Here we are looking for the murderer of her brother and Kressida is making love to some woman she barely knows! I declare! Will wonders never cease? I told her not to leave the farm. I told her she would only learn city ways in the big city. And now Kressida learned city ways in ways that I never imagined!'

Madge Undersee didn't grow up on a farm herself. Her parents were rich merchants. They sure were proud of their beautiful blonde 19-year-old daughter! She was rich and beautiful, but she wasn't too proud and too uppity to make friends with even the poorest girls in town, even though Madge's people were just about the richest and the most respectable people in town. But, on the other hand, it wasn't any sort of fancy town, it was nothing to brag about, that's for sure! Madge hailed from a coal mining town in an especially depressed section of Appalachia. Half the people in that town had to put food on their tables by hunting squirrels and other such critters and varmints. She knew this one girl who had to keep her mom and her younger sister alive for a few years by hunting game after her pop got blown to bits in an explosion in a coal mine. But then that girl got all rich and famous through various heroic exploits, and then everyone else in town wanted to get rich and famous through various heroic exploits. But, you know how it goes, not everyone can get rich and famous through various heroic exploits. It just can't happen! Some people, people who set out to make themselves all rich and famous through various heroic exploits, just ended up getting themselves killed, or they get sidetracked with a spouse and kids, or they got tossed aside by the world and they descended into drugs and promiscuity and gangs and sexually transmitted diseases, or they get lost in some other unenviable way in the big cities. And there, in the great metropolises of the world, one way or another, they succumbed to the corrupting influences of these great metropolises. Very few people, aside from that one girl, are able to attain fame and riches through heroic exploits.

Madge gather the sticks and brambles and got the fire started. Soon enough she had coffee a-brewin'. While she waited for the coffee she walked over to where Kressida and Mara slept naked together in each others' arms. `What a strange coincidence!' exclaimed Madge to herself as she looked at Mara's feet sticking out from under the blankets. Mara's feet were very small, and indeed her feet looked to be exactly the same size as the footprints that the murderer they were hunting had left in the sand a few miles back.

Chapter 4. God's True Church.

Resuming the hunt for killer heresies within Christianity – and a heresy is a false doctrine which is so false and evil that it leads those who profess that false doctrine straight to perdition. The most famous scripture on the True Church is Matthew 16. 13-19,

`When Jesus came into the region of Caesarea Philippi, He asked His disciples, saying, "Who do men say that I, the son of Man, am? So they said, "Some say John the Baptist, some Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets." He said to them, "But who do you say that I am?" And Simon Peter answered and said, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." Jesus answered and said to him, "Blessed are you Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven. And I say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hell will not prevail against it. And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven and earth, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.'

So you can choose any church that you want to choose: the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the new Russian Orthodox Church, which as of October of 2018 has divorced itself from the Eastern Orthodox Church, though no doubt the new Russian Orthodox Church would insist it is the same old church as the church of Constantine, Justinian, Peter the Great etc. Anyway, choose any church you want to choose: the Church of England, the Southern Baptists, the ELCA, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints etc., and you arrive at the logic that it is either God's True Church or else it is not God's True Church. Take any church you want, and you will see that it is either the Bride of Christ or else it is not the Bride of Christ. It is either the True Church or else it is not the True Church. The gates of hell have either prevailed against that church or else the gates of hell have not prevailed against that church. Now if the gates of hell have prevailed against some church, then it stands to reason that this church has been subverted, has been corrupted, and so it leads people to perdition not to heaven, in which case it deserves to be called a killer church, a murderous church, and in this book we are looking for killers, for murderers. Now suppose you are in a church which the gates of hell have prevailed against, but suppose you are delusional, and you insist that the gates of hell have not prevailed against this church of yours. You insist you are in God's True Church, the Bride of Christ, the Church which Christ founded on a rock, the Church which the gates of hell will not prevail against. But if you are deluded, if you are not in God's True Church, if you are in some false church which the gates of hell have prevailed against, then your delusion will lead you to perdition, unless of course you wise up and recognize reality and escape from your delusion, and see that you are in a false killer murderous church which drags people down to eternal perdition.

Take the Roman Catholic Church, for an example. We have two options with Rome. We have a Case 1 and a Case 2. Case 1 says Rome is God's True Church, the Church which Christ founded on a rock. Case 1 says the gates of hell have not prevailed against Rome. Case 1 says Rome leads people to heaven. Case 2 says the Roman Catholic Church is not God's True Church. Case 2 says the Roman Catholic Church is not the Church which Christ founded on a rock. Case 2 says the gates of hell have prevailed against the Roman Catholic Church. Case 2 says Rome leads people away from heaven and straight to perdition.

Let's assume Case 1 is true, let's assume Rome is God's True Church, then the smart thing to do is to always obey Rome, God's True Church. If you always obey God's True Church then you will certainly go to heaven and you will never go to hell. But if you rebel against God's True Church then you might certainly go to hell. So often we meet Cafeteria Catholics – these are people who insist the Roman Catholic Church is God's True Church, but they are also people who insist it right to sometimes rebel against Rome, right to rebel sometimes against the Church which these Cafeteria Catholics say is God's True Church. A Cafeteria Catholic might refuse to venerate one or more of the people canonized by Rome, or perhaps he refuses to accept Rome's pro-life position on abortion, or perhaps he rejects Rome's doctrine on birth-control, or perhaps he rejects Rome's position on gay marriage, or perhaps he rejects the Dogma of Papal Infallibility – even though that Dogma specifically damns those who reject that Dogma. So you have to wonder about the sanity of a person who says that the Roman Catholic Church is God's True Church, who says that Rome always leads people to heaven, but then he goes on to insist that it is sometimes wise to risk hell by rebelling against God's True Church, by rebelling against the Roman Catholic Church. Doesn't it seem crazy to you, doesn't it seem delusional to insist that, sometimes, it is wise to risk going to hell by rebelling against God's True Church? If you always obey God's True Church then you will always go to heaven.

I realize lots of people reject the premise that the Roman Catholic Church is God's True Church. I reject it also. But if you accept that premise, if you insist Rome is God's True Church, the Bride of Christ, the Church which Christ founded on a rock, and then if you go on to insist that sometimes it is wise to risk going to hell by rebelling against God's True Church...

That just seems so insane, so delusional, so crazy to me.

Apropos of delusions St. Paul writes in 2 Thess 2,

`Now, brethren, concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and our gathering together to Him...Let no one deceive you by any means: for that Day [the Second Coming of Christ] will not come unless the falling away comes first, and the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself above all that is God or that is worshipped, so that he sits as God in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God...and then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord will consume with the breath of His mouth and destroy with the brightness of His coming. The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders, and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this reason God will send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie, that they all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.'

Tons and tons of readers are bored with theology. They want fiction, adventure, escapism, romance etc. H. L. Mencken, an old-school opinionated newspaper man, an agnostic, at least I seem to recall he was an agnostic, said the attention span of the typical American on subjects outside of money-making and love-making was 3 minutes. But he said that decades ago. Don't you think it's down to about 3 seconds these days? So you have to slip in the theology you're teaching when they're not looking. Plus I got a shot of a hot cyborg chick on the cover, so I got to give readers more of that story, to avoid a charge of false advertising. OK, getting back to the steamy adventures of Mara and Kressida...

Chapter 5. Is it True Love between Mara and Madge?

That evening, the evening after Kressida's big maiden voyage into Lesbian sex, Mara was sort of distant and aloof from Kressida. This is partly because Kressida has a big mouth, and she was telling her friend, Madge, what she and Mara had been up to the night before, not that Madge hadn't already put two and two together and came up with four. But, while the ardor Mara felt for Kressida had grown cold, the ardor Madge was showing toward Mara was burning red hot. The two of them huddled beneath their blankets round the campfire as the leader of the posse, Don Jose Sanchez, was conducting a review of the key facts in the case of the murdered Jake Leroy Westerby.

`To begin at the beginning,' began Don Jose, `One, numero uno, we know that the murderer was the last person to see Jake alive, and we know that Mara was the second-to-last person, the penultimate person, to give you some fancy lingo, to see Jake alive. We know Mara had gone over to Jake's place for dinner on the last day of Jake's life on this earth. Two, we know, from Mara's own testimony, that the murderer is a small Arab man, we know this because she saw that man flee Jake's house, when she returned from a quick trip to the liquor store, to pick up a bottle of Jack, you know, Jack Daniels. It was Mara, in her car, who bravely followed the murderer, who was fleeing in his car, into these desolate mountains. Three, one would almost think the murderer is an immensely strong female Arab, judging from the feminine nature of the miniscule footprints in the sand that this Arab guy left behind him. But, obviously, no female, big or small, Arab or otherwise, is capable of ripping Jake Lerory Westerby limb from limb the way he was ripped limb from limb. Five, wait, four....'

As Don Jose Sanchez elucidated points 4, 5, 6 and 7, Madge whispered some sweet words to Mara. `You're so smart, and so brave. I could never have chased after a vicious murderer the way you chased after him. I just think you're wonderful. You're beautiful. You're witty. You're brave. You're voluptuous. Could I ask a favor of you, Mara, sweetheart? I got this cramp in the side of my hip. Kressida told me you got really strong hands. Would you massage my hip to help me get rid of this cramp? Maybe it would be best if you massaged both of my hips! That's just preventative therapy. That way I won't get a cramp in my good hip.'

`Yeah, sure,' said Mara.

So the two of them removed themselves from the campfire and the company of the others, and found a secluded place, behind a grove of pine trees, where they could have some intimacy in privacy. The moonlight was shining down on the two of them in that romantic way that moonlight has. Of course Madge wasn't suffering from any cramp in her hip. She just wanted to get out of her clothes. She just wanted to get naked, and get down on all fours; she just wanted to feel Mara's strong massaging hands on her naked hips, and feel Mara's strong massaging hands on her breasts, and on her whole naked nubile body, for that matter.

`That's weird,' Madge was saying, while the two of them took a rest from their insatiable passion, while the two of them stretched out languidly on their blankets, and gazed up at the moon and the stars. `That's weird how Jake got so confused in his last dying moments. The neighbors are quite clear in stating that he was shouting "No, No, No Mara! Don't murder me!" when, in fact, of course, it was the small Arab man, the Muslim terrorist that you saw, the man with the small feet who left that brief trail of footsteps, miles back, who murdered Jake. You would think Jake would have had enough common sense, even in his last deranged dying moments, to not get you confused with the some Arab terrorist.'

`Well, Madge, darling, Jake had a lot to drink that evening. Jake sent me out to get that second bottle of Jack after he drank the first bottle of Jack.'

`It's just one of those crazy unexplainable mysteries,' Madge opined, `it's just one of those inscrutable phenomena that strike us mortals dumbstruck in this big huge universe from time to time. I mean, how amazing it is that none of the liquor store clerks remember seeing you. You're pretty unforgettable with all that cleavage you like to flash,' said Madge. `But you say you went to the liquor store, and that's good enough for me. No doubt those clerks were all drunk or stoned not remember you. That's not so complicated. That's not so inscrutable...Say, I'd just love it if you would do that thing that you do to me, just one more time, pleeeeeze? I just love how you practically crush the life out of me using just one of your arms, and how you hold me in captive blissful bondage - with just one of your powerful arms! - while your other arm and your other hand are free to fondle the most intimate parts of my body...'

`Madge! You naughty, naughty girl!'

`I know, but I just can't get enough of you!'

Chapter 6. The True Faith = The Divine Law = The New Law

We left off in Chapter 4 on the theme of the Antichrist, and strong delusion afflicting heretics. You just can't move forward, I mean move forward in the right direction, if you start off on the wrong foot with the Roman Catholic Church. If you say that the gates of hell have prevailed against Rome and say that Rome is a killer church which drags souls down to eternal perdition, if in fact Rome is God's True Church, then your delusion will lead you to perdition. But then, on the other hand, if you say Rome is God's True Church, if you say the gates of hell have not prevailed against Rome, if in fact the gates of hell have prevailed against Rome, if in fact Rome is not God's True Church, if in fact Rome leads people to perdition not to heaven, then you are suffering from a killer delusion which will lead you to eternal perdition.

We have already looked at these people called Cafeteria Catholics. Again, these are people who insist that the Roman Catholic Church is God's True Church. But then they go on to rebel against the Church they insist is God's True Church. So their thinking seems patently delusional. I suppose you might say that merely because they insist Rome is God's True Church, this doesn't mean they are 100% convinced Rome is God's True Church. Usually Cafeteria Catholics have some sort of political agenda they want to push, and evidently, they have convinced themselves that they will not be damned for rebelling against the Church which they say is God's True Church.

It hurts like hell to burn yourself on a hot stove for 1 second, so if a Cafeteria Catholic has convinced himself he will only endure a few months or a few decades, at the very most, suffering temporary torment in the cleansing fires in Purgatory, and then he will be admitted into eternal heaven, well, on the one hand, yes of course, a few decades of torture burning in fire is nothing compared to the darkness of eternity damnation, but that doesn't mean burning in fire for a few decades is no big deal! Let us assume that Rome is God's True Church. Now if a Catholic adopts the Cafeteria Catholic philosophy, a philosophy which might get him tossed into eternal perdition, or it might get him tossed into Purgatorial fire for at least a few months, and perhaps a few decades, whereas if he would simply obey Rome he is assured of heaven...

If Rome is God's True Church, and if you could just have enough sense to always obey God's True Church, Rome, then you will most certainly go to heaven, and you don't have to worry at all about eternal perdition, don't have to worry at all about burning in Purgatory for a few months or burning in Purgatorial fire for a few decades.

And of course if Rome is not God's True Church, if Rome is not the Bride of Christ, if Rome is a false church which leads people straight to eternal perdition, then of course all Catholics, not just the Cafeteria Catholics, are delusional when they insist Rome is God's True Church.

Another scripture aside from Matthew 16. 13-19 which testifies to the existence of a True Church would be Revelation 20. 12-15. If ones name is written in the Book of Life then one is in the True Church. If ones name is not written in the Book of Life, then one gets tossed into a lake of fire, and all those tossed into the lake of fire are certainly not members of the True Church. Ephesians 4. 4 mentions `there is one body.' That's St. Paul's term for one True Church.

Christ said at the Last Supper, Matthew 26. 28: 'This cup is My blood of the new covenant which is shed for the remission of sins of many.' And of course in the Old Testament, in Jeremiah 31. 31-34, God says He will write His new covenant, His new law, on the hearts of His people. If one has the new covenant written on ones' heart then one is a member of the True Church. Let's look at Jeremiah 31. 31-34:

`Behold, the days come, sayeth the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers, in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of Egypt; which My covenant they broke... but this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days sayeth the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and I will be their God and they shall be My people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, sayeth the Lord: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.'

So one is in the True Church if one has God's new law written on his heart.

On this theme recall St. Paul's words in 1 Corinthians 3. 16-17,

`Do you not know that you are a temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? If any man destroys the temple of God, God will destroy him, for the temple of God is holy, and that is what you are.'

2 Thess 2 mentions the Antichrist sitting in the holy place. This is often taken to mean that the Temple in Jerusalem will have to be rebuilt in order for the Antichrist to sit in the holy place. But if the Antichrist writes evil heresy on the hearts of Christians, then he would be sitting in the temple of God, in the holy place. Obviously, the Antichrist can't write evil heresy on the hearts of True Christians, because a True Christian has the new covenant / Divine Law written on his heart. But if we have immature Christians, recently baptized Christians perhaps, these people might be considered the temples of God even though they really don't know much about the New Testament. Perhaps they never read 1 Corinthians 11. 27. Perhaps they celebrate holy communion in an unworthy manner.

Now a Christian, regardless if he was baptized decades ago, or merely a few hours ago, when quizzed by an Atheist, or by anyone else for that matter, when asked if he has God's new law inscribed on his heart, is under some pressure to insist that he does indeed have God's new law written on his heart, because, if he says God's new law is not written on his heart, then, this Christian is saying he is not a True Christian; he is saying he has no reason to hope for salvation. A True Christian has God's new covenant written on his heart! He is the temple of God. I'm not saying you have to memorize the entire Bible by heart, but how can a Christian have any sort of Divine Law written on his heart if he is in rebellion against the New Testament?

If we were to assume that Martin Luther was right to reject the Roman Catholic Church and reject the Eastern Orthodox Church, because both lead people to perdition, because neither is the True Church, because the gates of hell had indeed prevailed against both of those two churches, then this does not prove that the gates of hell had not prevailed against Luther. The main evidence, to modern Protestants at least, the main evidence saying Luther did not have the Divine Law written on his heart is that he burned women accused of witchcraft at the stake – see Paul Johnson's A History of Christianity – plus he rejected the Epistle of James and the Book of Revelation, the ending verses in the Book of Revelation call down curses upon those who reject the Book of Revelation, and he sided with the rich nobles in their slaughter of the poor peasants, and he wrote some vicious words against the Jews when they failed to convert to Lutheranism.

Of course even if Luther was a heretic who led people to perdition, this doesn't prove that some 21st century Lutheran sect leads people to perdition. Don't you think that one of the strongest arguments against various Protestant sects in the 21st century is the argument saying they celebrate the Eucharist in an unworthy manner? 1 Corinthians 11. 27 says it is a terrible sin to celebrate the Eucharist in an unworthy manner. These Protestant churches give the bread and the wine to anyone: to Sabbath violators, to pro-choicers, to pro gay marriage people etc.

Lots of Christians will say that lots of Christian Churches lead people to heaven. Suppose a Protestant says Rome leads people to heaven when in fact Rome leads people to perdition. Then, when a Catholic kid asks that Protestant if Rome will lead him to heaven, or if he should renounce Rome, and then if the Protestant tells the Catholic kid - `No need to renounce Rome because Rome leads people to heaven,' then that Protestant is like the Devil, in that he leads people to perdition, and so that Protestant is a heretic on the road to perdition. Or suppose Rome leads people to heaven. Suppose Rome is God's True Church. Then it is stupid to be a Protestant. It is stupid to risk eternal perdition by rebelling against God's True Church, the Roman Catholic Church, by being a Protestant.

Do you get how the Roman Catholic Church is either the Church which Christ founded on a rock, or else the Roman Catholic Church is not the Church which Christ founded on a rock? Do you get how Rome is either the True Church which leads people to heaven, or else Rome is a false church which leads people to perdition?

True Christians, temples of God, people who have God's new law inscribed on their hearts, ought to be familiar though with a brief defense of Christianity. Everyone knows the Mosaic Law, the Old Law, is filled with lots of laws which must be considered bad laws. And Ezekiel 20. 25 tells us God gave the children of Israel bad laws because He was angry with their rebelliousness. Laws demanding the slaughtering of bulls and goats, laws demanding the execution of Sabbath violators, the execution of conjurers and necromancers, the execution of homosexuals, are just not good and sound laws. The Mosaic Law is an eternal law in the sense that it will be eternally remembered, and some parts of the Old Law are carried over into the New Law – the Ten Commandments – the commandment to use just weights and measures – various holy days and sacred convocations described in the Old Testament are carried over into the New Law.

So, to review, if you claim you are a True Christian, if you are a temple of God, if you have God's New Law inscribed on your heart, the new covenant mentioned by Christ at the Last Supper, the new covenant mentioned by God in Jeremiah 31. 31-34, and therefore, you understand the True Faith which leads to heaven and you claim that you do not teach a single heresy which leads people to perdition, - if you claim all that - then you have to be right in your claim, because, if you are mistaken, if you have fallen into heresy on one or more issues, if you have fallen away from the True Faith, if you lead people via heresy away from heaven and straight to perdition, then you are more than merely mistaken. I mean, there's a hellish, satanic aspect to your mistake. Heretics don't mean to lead people to perdition - heretics have good intentions, of course - nevertheless, if the upshot of a person's religious mistake is that he leads people away from heaven and leads them instead straight to perdition, then this is so serious a mistake that it is, essentially, a satanic sort of mistake.

So, those of us who are Christians are under tons of pressure when we are asked if we have God's new covenant written on our hearts, because dire consequences arise if we say Yes, and dire consequences arise if we say No. A Christian has no reason to hope for salvation if God's new covenant is not written on his heart. But, then, to insist that one does have God's new law written on one's heart, to insist that one doesn't teach a single heresy, then, one simply has to be right, or else, you know, eternal perdition is the penalty for teaching heresy – false doctrines which lead people to perdition.

You don't want to be deluded. Recall those words from St. Paul and 2 Thess 2: `The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders, and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this reason God will send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie, that they all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.'

Chapter 7. Hunting the Killer

Joe Westerby, Jake Leroy Westerby's littlest little brother, gazed down at Madge and Mara as those two libertines lay naked together on their blankets. The Arizona sun, or perhaps it was the Mexican sun, had cleared the eastern horizon two hours ago. `This is like Sodom and Gomorrah, it's like Babylon,' muttered Joe to himself as he considered the wanton decadent languor of these two naked ladies, sprawling in their passion and dissipation before his eyes, reposing as if they reposed in Babylonian splendor on the desert floor. Tattooed in small but visible lettering across the top of Mara's butt – her tramp stamp, so to speak – were the words:

I HATE JAKE

I HATE HIM, I HATE HIM, I HATE HIM!

I'M GONNA MURDER THAT CHEATING S.O.B.

I'M GONNA RIP HIM LIMB FROM LIMB

`Let's shake it, gals. We gotta hunt down that damn Arab terrorist that murdered my brother,' said Joe Westerby. `I don't see how you two lovely ladies can expect to lasso a bad guy if you're just going to lay there making love to each other all day long.'

`Can't really argue with your logic there, Joe,' said Mara as she sprang to her feet, and sort of kicked up her heels, in that beguiling way that voluptuous yet athletic chicks do when they possess full confidence that there is not an ounce of belly fat on them, and not an ounce of cellulite on their thighs either.

Joe's wife, Marybeth Westerby, who possessed both belly fat and face fat, in enormous quantities, and who also possessed huge, ponderous thighs, considered Madge as Madge first got to her feet, and then as Madge staggered, more or less, over to the latrine. Madge moved in a fashion which was wholly devoid of the silken grace and the powerful athleticism which signalized Mara's movements.

`I'll rustle up some breakfast for you gals,' said Marybeth. `I'm suppose you're famished after your night of sin and debauchery.'

`Do I detect a hint of judgmental disapproval in your voice?' asked Kressida.

`Don't you quote me, daughter, that `Judge Not Lest Ye Be Judged' scripture, or I'll put my fist in yer face,' exclaimed Kressida's mom, Marybeth Westerby.

`All right, stop yer squakin. We're lookin' at a long day of huntin' down Jake's killer. Save yer energy for trackin' the terrorist,' said Mara, mocking the way the Westerbys spoke, as she made her return, and as she started to wash her naked body with isopropyl alcohol.

Chapter 8. The Sign of the Cross

We'll get to the cross in a second but let's first look at the Roman Catholic crucifix. If we say the Roman Catholic crucifix is an image of a Roman Catholic version of Jesus, and not image of a Mormon version of Jesus, and not an image of a Jehovah's Witness version of Jesus, well what does all this mean? A Mormon version of Jesus is a version of Jesus who says the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is God's True Church, and this Church upholds the True Faith and leads souls to heaven. A Roman Catholic version of Jesus is a version of Jesus who says the Roman Catholic Church is God's True Church and this Church upholds the True Faith and leads people to heaven. Of course there is only one version of Jesus, which we call the True Version of Jesus, or simply the True Jesus. Now if the True Creator of the Universe / the True God / the True Jesus says Rome leads people to heaven because Rome has not fallen into heresy, because Rome is God's True Church, then there is certainly nothing wrong with the Roman Catholic crucifix. But if the True God / True Jesus says that Rome is not the True Church, and says Rome has fallen into heresy and so Rome leads people to perdition, then there is a big problem with the Roman Catholic Church, and there is a big problem with the Roman Catholic crucifix. If the True God / True Jesus says Rome leads people to perdition, then the Roman Catholic crucifix, which is an image of a version of Jesus who says Rome leads people to heaven, is the image of a false god, provided, again, the True God indeed says Rome has fallen into heresy and leads people to perdition. And false gods are beastly gods because they lead people away from heaven and drag them down to perdition. So, if the True Jesus says Rome leads people to perdition, then the Roman Catholic crucifix, an image of a version of Jesus who says Rome leads people to heaven, is the image of a lie, the image of a false version of Jesus, the image of a false god, and false gods are beastly because they lead people to perdition, and so the Roman Catholic crucifix becomes a suspect for the `image of the beast' mentioned in Revelation 13 and 14 if indeed the True God / True Jesus says Rome is not the True Church and says Rome leads people to perdition.

This anti-cross logic of mine begins with my assertion that the cross of Christ mentioned in scripture, e.g., Galatians 6. 14 and Philippians 3. 18 is sacred – Christ's sacrifice on the cross is sacred – but this sacrifice is spiritual not a material thing. Anyway, I'm saying the sign of the cross and material crosses are not sacred, on more or less the same reasoning that God is sacred by material representation of God are sacrilegious and are unholy.

The cross, that is a material cross, either symbolizes no evil or else it symbolizes some evil. Sacrilege is the sin of saying that things which God says are sacred are evil. And it is the sin of saying that things which God says are evil are sacred. So, I'm saying that God says the spiritual cross of Chirst is sacred but material crosses are evil. I'm saying it is a sacrilege to say the cross is sacred.

We have a Case 1 and a Case 2.

Case 1 says the cross symbolizes no evil. Case 1 says that God says the cross is sacred. Case 1 says you commit sacrilege if you say the cross symbolizes some evil.

Case 2 says the cross symbolizes some evil. Case 2 says that God says the cross symbolizes some evil. Case 2 says you commit sacrilege when you say the cross is sacred.

So, if Case 1 is true, if God says the cross is sacred, then in an apocalyptic scenario – when the Antichrist and the 3 angels from heaven show up – recall 2 Thess 2, 1 John 2. 18, Revelation 19. 19, Revelation 14. 6-11 etc, - so, if Case 1 is true, if the cross reflects no evil, then in an apocalyptic scenario you want the mark of a cross on your forehead. Recall that Revelation 9 deals with a seal of God which protects one from torment. Long story short, you are saved from months of excruciating torment if you have the seal of god on your forehead. So, if Case 1 is true, if the cross is sacred to God, then perhaps the cross is this seal of God which saves one from torment, as described in Revelation 9.

But if Case 2 is true, if God says the cross reflects some evil, then you don't want the mark of a cross on your forehead. If the cross is evil then recall Revelation 14. 11, which mentions eternal torment in hellfire for those with an evil mark on their foreheads - the mark of the beast.

So, if the cross is the mark of the beast, then it stands to reason that every church under the cross leads people to perdition. If a church tells you that you have nothing to fear if you put a cross on your forehead, because the cross is sacred to God, because the cross reflects no evil, but then if you end up burning in hell forever and ever because the cross is the mark of the beast and you put a cross on your forehead, then, the church which gave you the really bad advice, the church which led you to burn in hell forever, obviously wasn't God's True Church. It was just a worthless false church. Since it was just a worthless false church, not God's True Church, not the Church which Christ founded on a rock, then it leads people to perdition not to heaven.

Now if at least one church under the cross is God's True Church, the Church which Christ founded on a rock, the Church which the gates of hell will not prevail against, if at least one church under the cross leads people to heaven, then you can trust that Church, God's True Church, when it insists the cross is pure and holy, when it says the cross reflects no evil.

But if every church under the sign of the cross leads people to perdition, if no church under the sign of the cross is God's True Church, then, while this in itself wouldn't prove that God says the cross reflects evil, nevertheless, Christians would be surprised to learn that every church under the sign of the cross is a false church which leads people to perdition.

Obviously, even if the cross is evil this doesn't prove the cross is the mark of the beast. But, nevertheless, if you start with the premise that the cross must mean something! - and if you then move on from that trivial premise to the assertion that the cross either symbolizes no evil or else the cross symbolizes some evil, then we get a Case 1 and a Case 2.

Case 1 says the cross reflects no evil. Case 2, which says the cross reflects some evil.

Case 1 has you thinking of Revelation 9, Case 1 has you thinking the cross is the seal of God which protects one from the torments described in Revelation 9.

Case 2 has you thinking the cross just might be the mark of the beast, has you thinking of eternal hellfire resulting from putting an evil mark on your forehead.

Anyway, I'm saying the evil perpetrated by people carrying crosses over the centuries is reflected in the cross, rather as the evil perpetrated by the Nazis is reflected in the Nazi swastika. I'm saying Christianity took a very bad turn in the 4th century. That's when people carrying crosses first became tyrannical. Henry Charles Lea, the pre-eminent authority on the Inquisitions, wrote in his 'A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages' (Macmillan, 1922),

`We have only to look upon the atrocities of the criminal law of the Middle Ages to see how pitiless men were in dealing with each other. The wheel, the caldron of boiling oil, burning alive, burying alive, flaying alive, tearing apart with wild horses, were the ordinary expedients by which the criminal jurist sought to deter crime by frightful examples...An Anglo-Saxon law punishes a female slave convicted of theft by making eighty other female slaves each bring three pieces of wood and burn her to death....In the Customs of Arques, granted by the Abbey of St. Bertin in 1231, there is a provision that, if a thief have a concubine who is his accomplice, she is to be buried alive...In France women were customarily burned or buried alive for simple felonies, and Jews were hung by the feet between two savage dogs, while men were boiled to death for coining. In Milan Italian ingenuity exhausted itself in devising deaths of lingering torture for criminals of all descriptions. The Carolina, or criminal code of Charles V., issued in 1530, is a hideous catalogue of blinding, mutilation, tearing with hot pincers, burning alive, and breaking on the wheel...As recently as 1706, in Hanover, a pastor named Zacharie Georg Flagge was burned alive for coining...So careless were the legislators of human suffering in general that, in England, to cut out a man's tongue, or to pluck out his eyes with malice prepence, was not made a felony until the fifteenth century, in a criminal law so severe that, even in the reign of Elizabeth, the robbing of a hawk's nest was similarly a felony; and as recently as 1833 a child of nine was sentenced to be hanged for breaking a patched pane of glass and stealing twopence worth of paint [this sentence was commuted]...It has seemed to me however, that a sensible increase in the severity of punishment is traceable after the thirteenth century, and I am inclined to attribute this to the influence exercised by the Inquisition over the criminal jurisprudence.'

Well of course not every person under the cross was a cruel noble or a vicious henchman of a tyrannical king. But the typical Christian celebrated communion for century after century with evil people, and St. Paul is quite clear in 1 Corinthians 11. 27 that it is a terrible sin to celebrate communion in an unworthy manner. Christians are commanded to generally obey the secular authorities, but Christians are to rebel and refuse to do anything anti-Christian if the secular authorities order them to do something which is anti-Christian. Recall the early Christians rebelled against the emperor when ordered to worship the image of the emperor. But from the 4th century onwards it is not pagan emperors, but Christian emperors, and Christian kings, and Christian nobles, and Christian bishops who are commanding Christians to do anti-Christian things.

Gibbon writes of the 4th century Catholic Emperor Valentinian and his judges,

`They easily discovered, that the degree of their industry and discernment was estimated, by the Imperial court, according to the number of executions that were furnished from their respective tribunals. It was not without extreme reluctance that they pronounced a sentence of acquittal; but they eagerly admitted such evidence as was stained by perjury, or procured by torture, to prove the most improbable charges against the most respectable characters. The progress of the inquiry continually opened new subjects of criminal prosecution; the audacious informer, whose falsehood was detected, retired with impunity, but the wretched victim, who discovered his real or pretended accomplices, was seldom permitted to receive the price of his infamy. From the extremity of Italy and Asia, the young, and the aged, were dragged in chains to the tribunals of Rome and Antioch. Senators, matrons, and philosophers, expired in ignominious and cruel tortures...The expressions which issued the most readily from the mouth of the emperor of the West were, `Strike off his head;' `Burn him alive;' `Let him be beaten with clubs till he expires;'....He could behold with calm satisfaction the convulsive agonies of torture and death; he reserved his friendship for those faithful servants whose temper was the most congenial to his own. The merit of Maximin, who had slaughtered the noblest families of Rome, was rewarded with the royal approbation, and the praefecture of Gaul. Two fierce and enormous bears, distinguished by the appellations of Innocence and Mica Aurea, could alone deserve to share the favor of Maximin. The cages of those trusty guards were always placed near the bed-chamber of Valentinian, who frequently amused his eyes with the grateful spectacle of seeing them tear and devour the bleeding limbs of the malefactors who were abandoned to their rage.'

We're trying to figure out if the evils perpetrated over the centuries by people carrying crosses are reflected in the sign of the cross, rather as the evils perpetrated by the Nazis are reflected in the symbol of the Nazis, the Nazi swastika, or if the sign of the cross reflects no evil, because God says it is pure and holy and sacred. If Case 1 is true, if the cross reflects no evil, if God says it is a sacrilege to say the cross symbolizes evil, or some evil, then, for me to drop these hints saying the cross is the mark of the beast, dropping these insinuations saying one will burn in hell forever if one puts the mark of a cross on one's forehead, is really quite diabolical and very satanic indeed.

But then, on the other hand, if Case 2 is true, if the spiritual cross of Christ is sacred, if Christ's sacrifice on the cross is sacred, but if material crosses reflect the evil perpetrated over the centuries by people carrying crosses, and if in fact one will burn in hell forever if one puts the mark of a cross on one's forehead, then it is really quite diabolical and very satanic indeed to insist that the cross is sacred to God. So this is a mystery. Does the cross symbolize no evil? Or does the cross symbolize some evil? Just look at a small fraction of all of the evil perpetrated by people carrying cross over the centuries. Even this small fraction is rather mind-boggling. Lord Acton told us in his essay `Human Sacrifice,'

`And yet, long after the last victim had fallen in honour of the sun-god of the Aztecs, the civilised nations of Christian Europe continued to wage wholesale destruction...Protestants and Catholics, clergy and laity, vied with each other for two hundred years to provide victims, and every refinement of legal ingenuity and torture was used in order to increase their number. In 1591, at Nördligen, a girl was tortured twenty-three times before she confessed...Three years later, in the same town, a woman suffered torture fifty-six times without confessing she was a witch...In the north of Italy, the great jurist Alciatus saw 100 witches burnt on one day...In England alone, under the Tudors and the Stuarts, the victims of this superstition amounted to 30,000. Yet, from the appearance of Spee's Cautio in 1631 to the burning of the last witch in 1783, all sensible men were persuaded that the victims were innocent of the crime for which they suffered intolerable torments and an agonizing death. But those who hunted them out with cunning perseverance, and the inflexible judges who never spared their lives, firmly believed that their execution was pleasing in the sight of God, and that their sin could not be forgiven by men.'

If you start with the premise which says the Roman Catholic Church is God's True Church, the Church which Christ founded on a rock, recall Matthew 16. 13-19, if Rome leads people to heaven and leads no one to perdition, then it follows from this premise that the cross is sacred to God, because God's True Church, Rome, is trustworthy, and so you can trust God's True Church, the Bride of Christ, when she says the cross is sacred to God. But if your premise is all wrong then the conclusions you draw from that false premise might be all wrong. If Rome is not God's True Church, if the gates of hell have prevailed against Rome, if Rome leads people to perdition not to heaven then Rome is untrustworthy when she says the cross is sacred to God.

Case 1 says Rome is God's True Church. Case 1 says the gates of hell have not prevailed against the Roman Catholic Church. Case 1 says Rome leads people to heaven. Case 2 says Rome is not God's True Church. Case 2 says the gates of hell have prevailed against the Roman Catholic Church. Case 2 says Rome leads people away from heaven and to perdition.

The Jewish Encyclopedia,

`CAPISTRANO, JOHN OF: Franciscan monk; born at Capistrano, Italy, 1386; died 1456. Owing to his remarkable power as a popular preacher, he was sent by Pope Nicholas V. (1447-55) as legate to Germany, Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia, with the special mission to preach against the Hussites...Knowing how easy it is to excite the masses by appealing to their prejudices, Capistrano, in his discourses, accused the Jews of killing Christian children and of desecrating the host...His admirers called him the "scourge of the Judeans"...In Silesia the Franciscan was most zealous in his work. When Capistrano arrived at Breslau, a report was circulated that one Meyer, a wealthy Jew, had bought a host from a peasant and desecrated it. Thereupon the local authorities arrested the representatives of the Breslau Jewish community and confiscated their houses and property for the benefit of the city. The investigation of the so-called blasphemy was conducted by Capistrano himself. By means of tortures he managed to wring from a few of the victims false confessions of the crimes ascribed to them. As a result, more than forty Jews were burned at the stake in Breslau June 2, 1453. Others, fearing torture, committed suicide, a rabbi, Pinheas, hanged himself. The remainder of the Jews were driven out of the city, while their children of tender age were taken from them and baptized by force. In Poland Capistrano found an ally in the archbishop Zbigniev Olesniczki, who urged Casimir IV. Jagellon to abolish the privileges which had been granted to the Jews in 1447...This led to persecutions of the Jews in many Polish towns. Capistrano was canonized in 1690.'

So, if Case 1 is true, if Rome is God's True Church, if Rome leads people to heaven and leads no one to perdition, then everyone on earth should obey Rome, God's True Church, everyone on earth should obey even her most controversial doctrines, such as the doctrine commanding people to venerate all those who have been canonized by Rome. The Dogma of Papal Infallibility specifically states that all those who reject that Dogma are damned, they are anathema. But you should embrace the Dogma of Papal Infallibility if Rome leads people to heaven and leads no one to perdition, if in fact Rome is God's True Church, if Case 1 is true.

Now if Case 1 is false and if Case 2 is true, if the Roman Catholic Church is not the Church which Christ founded on a rock, if the gates of hell have prevailed against Rome, if Rome leads people to perdition not to heaven, then of course no one on earth should be a Roman Catholic.

Chapter 9. The Inferno

Water was a precious commodity, more precious than gold or gems, as the burning sun bore down on the beleaguered posse. Noon had come and gone two hours earlier, and now, when the heat of the day was at its most hellish, when the desert had become a deadly inferno, with not a place of shade in sight across the entire desert, only Mara retained, throughout the entire day, the exuberant bounce and marvelous vigor that she exuded when she sprang out of her blankets in the morning.

`You guys really should go to the gym more often,' said Mara. `Not to be rude or anything, but you guys are pathetically out-of-shape. Madge, you look like you're about to fall over and die! And Kressida, you look about as healthy as a corpse that croaked last week.'

`She's on angel dust,' Kressida managed to croak out, twisting her parched lips and gums just enough to make herself audible. `That's what gives...gives...gives her...her...strength and enduran....'

`You guys,' said Mara, `are dying in a way that's almost as nasty as the way that Jake died. He didn't take long to die, but he died a really nasty painful death, all the same.'

`How the hell would you know if my son died quick or slow?' demanded Marybeth Westerby. `You were at a liquor store getting a bottle of Jack Daniels when my boy was breathing his last. I know yer type. You like to shoot yer mouth off. You think you know it all. But you don't know shit about how Jake died. What do you say to that, Miss Know-it-all?'

Marybeth spoke these last words just before she sank down on her hands and knees, dropping to the burning sand of the burning desert. The others stood round Marybeth in mute dejection and despair. So exhausted was Marybeth, so fatigued was she after giving Mara a piece of her mind, that it took Marybeth 5 minutes of desperate gasping for breath before she could gather the strength to rise up and begin walking again.

Mara wasn't about to tell everyone that she had led them all out into the desert in order to kill every last one of them. She didn't like Marybeth's tone one bit, no sir, but, nevertheless, Mara was in love with Madge, and she was rather fond of Kressida too. Mara had decided she would keep all of them alive, by finding food and water for them, by leading them to a shady oasis before they perished in the inferno.

`I know I got to stop being such a know-it-all,' said Mara. `But I do know, from the maps I've studied, that water and the shade of palm trees await us on the other side of that line of hills, which I estimate to be half a mile distant, from where we presently stand.'

`Why don't you tell the damned know-it-all to shut up now, ma?' said Kressida.

`Don't torment yer ma,' said Kressida's pa, Joe Westerby. `I'm sure ma feels bad enough for how she lashed out at poor Mara. Mara was flippant in her words, careless in her imaginations and her embellishments about how she thinks Jake might have died, but we're all loco from the scorching sun and the lack of water, plus the girls were already exhausted from last night, from all that sinnin' they done, so don't be too hard on Mara, ma. None of us is in our right minds right now.'

`Well, you got a point there, Joe Yarborough Westerby,' said Marybeth Higgins Westerby.

An hour later all six of them were soaking themselves in a large pond full of sweet delicious water, at the oasis Mara found for them. They were all luxuriating in the cool water under the swaying palm fronds. Mara was also tickling Madge's feet and toes. And then she was grabbing Madge's ankle and pulling her out into the deeper part of the pond. Madge screamed with delight as Mara's hands went exploring over Madge's half-naked body.

`That girl,' said Marybeth, `is just full of the dickens. She's like a big buck deer in rut, like a big stallion always trying to make love to some winsome mare. She's a queer one but you got to hand it to her for finding us this here watering hole. I'd be dead, and decaying fast in this desert's heat, if not for that sinner.'

`She's a sinner all right. At first I didn't like it when she made love to me...' said Kressida.

`Shut yer mouth, girl. Don't tell yer ma what you liked and what ya didn't like when that Mara chick got all lusty with you,' interrupted her pa.

`Ever heard of the First Amendment to the frickin' Constitution? Congress can't stop me from speakin' me mind, so why the hell can you?'

***********************

Don Jose Sanchez was reviewing matters as the posse – the posse that was hunting for the Arab terrorist who murdered Jake Westerby - sat round a table in a cantina in the Mexican town of Matamoros - which means Slayer of Moors. Editor's note - I translate this name into English because it's sort of humorous in how not- politically-correct it is. It's sort of like having a town named Killer in Minnesota, you know, there are lots of Scandinavians in Minnesota, lots of people descended from the Vikings – the Vikings went around slaughtering and plundering for century after century. Not to get all politically correct with you, but people generally don't want their town named something like Killer. People don't want to embrace our bloodthirsty pagan heritage too enthusiastically.

`First of all,' began Don Jose, `let's put this madness saying that Mara is the killer to rest once and for all. The authorities in Phoenix are now saying that that quart of hydraulic fluid found at the murder scene matches exactly the type of hydraulic fluid which has used in female cyborgs manufactured in Toledo, OH, manufactured there before the manufacturer moved its operations to China two years ago because of more attractive labor costs. Furthermore, the manufacturer claims that Mara here is one of their female cyborgs, and claims that she was manufactured in Toledo, OH, three years ago. There's been a recall on her model, because lots of dead bodies have been turning up, because that year's model has a tendency to go postal when rejected by lovers. Therefore, many are now insisting that the preponderance of the evidence suggests, tentatively at least, that our Mara might, perhaps, have had a hand in the murder of Jake. But such accusations are preposterous! We have Mara's own testimony that she is innocent. We are not naïve. We know sincerity when we see it. We know she is trustworthy when she insists she is innocent!'

`Absolutely 100%.' said Joe Westerby.

`Yes, we all know Mara is innocent!' exclaimed Kressida. `I know what I feel when she holds me close! I know, deep down, she is innocent!'

`Even if she is guilty,' began Madge Undersee, `I love the way she makes love to me, I love it so much, that I would insist she is innocent even if I knew she is guilty.'

`But she is innocent, you brainless moron!' exclaimed Kressida, Madge's second best friend.

`I know! I know!' exclaimed Madge. `I'm just saying that I love Mara so very very much, OK? It's like how Sartre, the French existentialist, once said that the Soviet atrocities, all of the millions of people murdered and tortured by Lenin and Stalin, should be kept hidden from the people, even if these atrocities really did happen, because Sartre wanted Communism to triumph over Capitalism. In sort of the same way, I want the love that Mara and I have for each other to triumph. And it can't very well triumph if Mara gets the gas chamber for murdering Jake.'

As 1 gringo and 3 gringas, and 1 Hispanic gentleman, and 1 homicidal cyborg nymphomaniac, sat round a table, in a cantina, in Matamoros, Mexico, a little Mexican girl in a soiled pink dress approached their table and pleaded for a few pesos so that she might buy food for her starving family. When she didn't get any money from the strangers she turned to Mara and began shouting at her, began shouting the following words at Mara: `You vile machine! You murdering nymphomaniac machine! Go home you stingy, cheap, miserly, murdering, Yanqui slut-machine! Go Home! Go Home, I tell you!'

`Shut up you dirty little liar!' screamed Marybeth Westerby in defense of Mara. `Mara's innocent! She's innocent! So, shut up you nasty little beggar! Shut up, shut up, shut up, I tell you!'

Chapter 10. Divine Law, Temples of God, Selling the True Faith for Profits

To review some of the basics, recall Christ's words at the Last Supper - `this cup is My blood of the new covenant which is shed for many'. What is this new covenant? Turning to Jeremiah 31. 31-34 we find:

`Behold, the days come, sayeth the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers, in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of Egypt; which My covenant they broke... but this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days sayeth the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and I will be their God and they shall be My people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, sayeth the Lord: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.'

The above is also the subject of Hebrews 8. Long story short, we Christians are supposed to have this Divine Law written on our hearts. If you have the Divine Law written on your heart then you will be able to teach theology and ethical philosophy with the authority of the Creator of the Universe. Or close enough anyway. And, recalling 1 Corinthians 3. 16-17, if you have God's law written on your heart then you are a temple of God, you are rather like the Ark of the Covenant, which carried the stone tablets which Moses carried down from atop Sinai.

We are still trying to determine if the cross reflects no evil or if it reflects some evil. If God says the cross reflects some evil then one commits sacrilege if one says the cross is pure and holy and sacred. But if God says the cross is sacred, then one commits sacrilege if one says the cross reflects evil. We certainly know that a person who has the Divine Law written on his heart would not commit sacrilege. A person with the Divine Law written on his heart would certainly know whether or not the Roman Catholic Church is God's True Church. What do you think about people in the Middle Ages? Do you think most of them had the Divine Law inscribed on their hearts?

Henry Thomas Buckle wrote in History of Civilization in England,

`Now and then a great man arose [in the Middle Ages]...who thought that astrology might be a cheat, and necromancy a bubble; and who went so far as to raise a question respecting the propriety of drowning every witch and burning every heretic. A few such men there undoubtedly were; but they were despised as mere theorists, idle visionaries... until the latter part of the sixteenth century, there was no country in which a man was not in great personal peril if he expressed open doubts respecting the beliefs of his contemporaries...men who are perfectly satisfied with their own knowledge will never attempt to increase it. Men who are perfectly convinced of the accuracy of their opinions, will never take the pains of examining the basis on which they are built. They always look with wonder, and often with horror, on views contrary to those they have inherited from their fathers; and while they are in this state of mind, it is impossible that they should receive any new truth which interferes with their foregone conclusions.'

Guido Kisch writes in his The Jews in Medieval Germany (The University of Chicago Press, 1949):

`It is well known in the history of criminal law that, beginning in the late Middle Ages and up to the seventeenth century, punishments were imposed on the Jews which differed considerably from those fixed by law and applied to Christian delinquents. They intensified the medieval system of penalties, cruel enough as it was. The motives of ridicule and degradation received especial emphasis, when hanged on the gallows, for instance, a Jew was suspended by the feet, instead of the neck. It became customary to string up two vicious dogs by their hind legs beside him, to make the punishment more ignominious and painful...In some provinces a Jewish thief hanged by the neck would have a Jews' hat filled with boiling pitch placed on his head...transgressions of similar prohibitions such as that against appearance in public on Good Friday, reviling the Christian religion, or engaging in conversionist activities, besides subjecting them to the appropriate penalties, deprived them of protection under the penal law which was otherwise guaranteed. As every Christian was bound to sacrifice his life for his faith if it were dishonorably attacked, so would he be acquitted in case he slew a Jew, heretic, or heathen in active defense of his faith. The general principle is thus pointed out in the Regulae juris, J155: "No Jew shall defame our Law. If he did so and were found guilty, he should be burnt." Regulae juris, J164: No Jew shall convert a Christian if he values his life." Pope Gregory the Great (590-604) renewed for medieval Christendom the old prohibition of the Christian Roman Empire against forced baptism of Jews. Once a Jew was baptised, however, even if by force, he had to remain faithful to Christianity, according to canon law...Be it even that they have been compelled to receive baptism, yet they shall remain steadfast in their Christian faith. This is so because no one can be deprived of baptism once received...It was Pope Innocent III who, in his letter to the archbishop of Arles in 1201, clearly stated that even those who under direct or indirect compulsion had accepted baptism had become members of the church and thus were to be compelled to the observance of the Christian faith...In 1267, relapse into Judaism was, in fact, explicitly equated with heresy by Pope Clement IV...This was done only after the foundation of the Papal Inquisition which brought all violations of the faith before its tribunals.'

Peter De Rosa is the author of Vicars of Christ: The Dark Side of the Papacy. Aside from a misguided Prologue Mr. De Rosa is quite lucid and scholarly, and at one point he gives a very eloquent dissertation in favor of the pro-life philosophy. To paraphrase Mr. De Rosa: in about the year 58 AD St. Paul wrote his famous epistle to the Romans. He greeted entire households and mentioned twenty-nine individuals by name. Paul did not address or mention Peter, a curious omission indeed if Peter was Bishop of Rome. Mr. De Rosa reminds us that Eusebius of Caesaria, in History of the Church, circa 300 AD, stated: `Peter is reported to have preached to the Jews throughout Pontius, Galatia, Bithynia, Cappadocia and, about the end of his days, tarrying at Rome, was crucified.' St. Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons from 178-200, was a disciple of St. Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna. Polycarp was a disciple of John the apostle, and Polycarp enumerated all the Roman bishops up to the twelfth, Eleutherius. According to St. Irenaeus, the first bishop of Rome was neither Peter nor Paul but Linus. The Apostolic Constitution, in the year 270, also named Linus as first bishop of Rome, having been appointed by St Paul. After Linus came Clement, chosen by Peter. Eusebius never spoke of Peter as Bishop of Rome. The letters are five feet high, running round the dome of St. Peter's Basilica, the English translation being: `Thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.' None of the Early Fathers saw any connection between these words from Christ to the Bishops of Rome. Cyprian, Origen, Cyril, Hilary, Jerome, Ambrose, Augustine etc., all analysized the scripture. They all rejected the papal claim that the Bishops of Rome are the successors of St. Peter. Augustine calls on synods to settle disputes. Pope Stephen attempted to settle a baptismal controversy for the African church. Stephen's opinion was rejected. St. Augustine said it was right his opinion was rejected. St. Vincent of Lerins, in 434, laid down the canons of Catholic doctrine. He made no mention of the Bishop of Rome. Pope Honorius was condemned by a General Council for heresy. Pope Liberius (352-66) had been forced into exile. He was allowed to return on the condition that he condemn St. Athanasius. Liberius cursed Athanasius, and he cursed Athanasius' doctrine: the Son is equal to the Father. St. Hilary of Poitiers then cursed Pope Liberius. "Anathema to thee, Liberius," were Hilary's words. Every orthodox bishop repeated them. Pope St. Gregory the Great said that unbaptized babies who perish unbaptized go straight to hell and suffer there for all eternity. The Spanish Inquisition was authorized in Spain by Pope Sixtus IV., in 1480. During the reign of King Philip II. of Spain, who we recall was the husband of Queen Mary I. of England -Bloody Mary- the victims of the Inquisition may well have exceeded by many thousands all of the Christians who had suffered under the Roman emperors. Napoleon conquered Spain in 1808. A Polish officer in his army, a Colonel Lemanouski, discovered that the Dominicans had blockaded themselves in their monastery in Madrid. Lemanouski's troops forced an entry; the monks inside denied the existence of any torture-chambers. But the soldiers persisted in their search and soon discovered them beneath the floors. Crammed with naked prisoners, many of them insane, the French rescued the tortured souls and then proceed to lay charges of gunpowder about the monastery, to destroy it from the face of the earth. The Roman Inquisition was established by Pope Paul III., July 21, 1542. Carafa, later known as Paul IV., elected pope in May of 1555, is generally seen as the most ferocious of the Inquisitor-Popes. Mr. De Rosa informs us that he was an ascetic like Torquemada, and that he detested Jews. The Roman Inquisition continued well into the nineteenth century. Until 1870 political offenders were tried by the Santa Consulta. As the armies of the new Italy liberated the prisons in the Papal States, the wretchedness and misery of prisoners inside them could no longer be hidden. Mr. De Rosa concludes: for more than six centuries without an interruption the papacy was the avowed enemy of justice. Eighty straight popes, from the thirteenth century on, approved the theology and apparatus of Inquisition.

The above paraphrase was written several years ago – I'm writing this in August of 2018 – Smashwords lets you amend your books as much as you want. I wrote that Peter De Rosa's Preface is misguided, but judge for yourself. His contention is that if artists, over the centuries, had depicted Jesus naked on the cross then people would have seen, over the centuries, that He was circumcised, and therefore His Jewishness would be on display, and therefore the people under the sign of the cross would not have persecuted the Jews with such relentless cruelty over the centuries. So, I see two main reasons to criticize his position, 1) Christians believe Jesus is God, the Creator of the Universe, the Creator along with the Father and the Holy Spirit. We have a 2nd Commandment which says what it says, and if you take a strict construction of this 2nd Commandment – if you just read what it says and obey what it literally says - then you arrive at something close to the Islamic position: which is no images / pictures / photos graven images of anything in heaven or on earth: no paintings of flowers, no paintings of horses, no portraits in oil of people, and certainly no images of Baal or Ashtoreth or Moloch, but, also, no pictures or paintings or any sort of drawing of the Creator of the Universe. But notice how even the Muslims violate a strict construction of the 2nd Commandment, because they watch TV and films, and these give us images of things on earth and in heaven. St. Paul was very specific in saying Christians are not to keep company with sexually immoral Christians, or with covetous Christians, and though he never says in his epistles that Christians must not keep company with Christians who violate the Commandment to keep the Sabbath Day holy, we have to use some common sense, I mean if it is still wrong to covet under the New Law, and still wrong to steal, and murder, and commit adultery, then it is still wrong to violate the Sabbath, so it is crazy to think that under the New Law, Christian no longer have to keep the Sabbath day holy. Christ and the apostle did not rail against pictures of flowers and paintings of things on earth, but this doesn't mean they were saying the 2nd Commandment is no longer a Commandment under the New Law. But, nevertheless, while no Christian would condone images of Baal or Moloch, we do tend to let things slide a little, and we don't say that watching films and watching TV are violations of the 2nd Commandment, but they are most certainly violations of the 2nd Commandment if you take a strict construction of the 2nd Commandment. Christians who don't want to be attacked as uptight puritans for not wanting to see any naked pictures of the Creator of the Universe might argue that such paintings violate the 2nd Commandment. The truth might be that it's just really drives Christians crazy to say in one breath that Jesus created the Universe and then to say in the next breath that it's OK to draw naked pictures of the Creator of the Universe, so, basically, lots of Christians – I won't say all Christians – but lots of Christians don't want any naked pictures of Jesus. The second line of argument against Mr. De Rosa's Preface is that pictures of a naked Jesus on the cross are not going to make anyone less violent or ferocious. What is the fundamental cause of all this violence and ferocity toward the Jews? The Jews were in the minority and the Christians were in the majority in medieval Europe, and majorities often bully and tyrannize the minority. If the Christians were in the minority, and if the Jews were in the majority, then, should a Christian attempt to convert a Jewish child to Christianity, convert the kid to the belief that Jesus is the Creator of the Universe, then this would result in Jewish ferocity toward Christians. If you are convinced that Jesus is not the Creator of the Universe, if you are convinced Christianity is a heresy which leads souls straight to perdition, then, when a Christian tries to convert your kid to Christianity, then you will see this as an attempt to destroy the soul of your kid, and this leads to rage and ferocity and cruelty. The Christian majority in medieval Europe were enraged by the Jewish insistence that Jesus was a bogus Deity, and while the scriptures are very clear that we Christians are to love and pray for our enemies, you know how it is, sometimes our emotions get the best of us, and if you think someone is destroying the soul of your kid by leading your kid to perdition via heresy, then you tend to become ferocious, even though the scriptures say you must love and pray for your enemies.

We have these 3 angels from heaven mentioned in Revelation 14. 6-11. And we have the Antichrist of 1 John 2. 18, and the man of sin / son of perdition sitting in the holy place, and recall how St. Paul tells us the heart of a Christian is the Temple of God – so if the Antichrist attempts to write the law of the devil on the hearts of Christians, in travesty of Jeremiah 31. 31-34, then the Antichrist is sitting, so to speak, in the holy place - recall 2 Thess 2. So, Rome is either God's True Church or else Rome is not God's True Church. If the Roman Catholic Church is God's True Church, then these 3 angels mentioned in Revelation 14. 6-11 will be pushing this doctrine; but if the Roman Catholic Church is not God's True Church, if Rome has fallen into heresy, if Rome leads people to perdition, then the 3 angels of Revelation 14. 6-11 will be insisting that Rome has fallen into heresy and saying Rome leads people to perdition. Suppose 99% of what the Antichrist says is sound doctrine, but if 1% of what he pushes is diabolical heresy, and if one embraces the diabolical heresy, then one will be dragged down to perdition by the satanic heresy. Unless one has the Divine Law inscribed on ones heart, how could one have any chance of being 100% accurate in knowing what is the True Faith and what is heresy? Essentially, one can't move forward, one can't even distinguish an angel from heaven from a satanic beast from the pit of hell, if one can't decide if Rome upholds the True Faith and leads people to heaven, or if Rome has fallen into heresy and leads people to perdition.

Paragraphs 881, 882, 883, 884, 936, 937, 2034 in the Catechism don't phrase matters in quite such explicit terms, but, nevertheless, those Paragraphs essentially state that the authority of the Roman Catholic Church surpasses the authority of every other institution on earth - Republics, Kingdoms, Parliaments, Universities - rather as the luminosity of the sun surpasses the luminosity of a lump of coal - because, obviously, the True Church of the Creator of the Universe - the Bride of Christ - must far outshine all human institutions which are not the True Church, which are not the Bride of Christ.

For centuries the Roman Catholic Church has called the Inquisition the Holy Office. So, was the Inquisition holy or was the Inquisition was evil? It is sacrilege and blasphemy to say that evil things are holy, or to say that holy things are evil. Has Rome fallen away from the True Faith? Is Rome a false church, a church which leads people to perdition? Consider the mystery of Fatima. 3 Portuguese children claimed the Virgin Mary appeared to them on a few occasions in 1917. In Ephesians 6. 12 St. Paul writes:

`For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against rulers of darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.'

And then in 1 Timothy 4. 1-3,

`Now the spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons, speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron, forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from foods which god created to be received with thanksgiving...'

We're interested in various possibilities with these alleged appearances from Mary: 1) nothing supernatural occurred, 2) the real Virgin Mary appeared, 3) a deceiving malevolent spirit masquerading as Mary appeared.

Christ says in Matthew 7. 21-3,

"Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, "Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in your name, and done many wonders in Your name? "And then I will declare to them, `I never knew you..."

Christ says in Matthew 7. 15:

`Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits...'

So let's consider some people by their fruits. Let's look at St. Charles Borromeo. Rome insists that all True Christians must venerate Borromeo as a saint. Apropos of the former Archbishop of Milan, Mrs. H. M. Vernon informed us in her book `Italy From 1494 to 1790' (Cambridge at the University Press, 1909):

`Carlo Borromeo conducted a campaign against witchcraft no less terrible than his campaign against heresy, and hundreds of wretched women were burned...The horrors of the Plague were doubled by the persecution of the `Untori'...who were supposed to spread it.'

In `Renaissance in Italy: The Catholic Reaction,' J. A. Symonds reported:

`The pestilences of the Middle Ages, notably the Black Death of 1348...exceeded in virulence those which depopulated Italian cities during the period of my history...At Venice in 1575-77, a total of about 50,000 persons perished...in 1630-31, 46,490 were carried off...Milan was devastated at the same periods by plagues...At Naples, in the year 1656, more than 50,000 perished...Savoy was scourged by a fearful pestilence...In Val Moriana, forty thousand expired...In May 1599, the inhabitants of Turin were reduced by flight and death to four thousand...The streets were encumbered with unburied corpses, the houses infested by robbers and marauders...The infected were treated with inhuman barbarity, and retorted with savage fury...To miseries of pestilence and its attendant famine were added lawlessness and license, raging fires, and, what was worst of all, the dark suspicion that the sickness had been introduced by malefactors...The name given to the unfortunate creatures accused of this diabolical conspiracy was Untori, or the Smearers...They were popularly supposed to go about the city daubing walls, doors, furniture, choir-stalls, flowers, and articles of food with plague stuff...Hundreds of such Untori were condemned to the most cruel deaths by justice firmly persuaded of their criminality. Exposed to prolonged tortures, the majority confessed palpable absurdities. One woman at Milan said she had killed four thousand people. But, says Pier Antonio Marioni, the Venetian envoy, although tormented to the utmost, none of them were capable of revealing the prime instigators of the plot...The rack-stretched wretches could not reveal their instigators, because there were none...As in cases of witchcraft, the first accusation was founded upon gossip and delation. The judicial proceedings were ruled by prejudice and cruelty. Fear and physical pain extorted confessions and complicated accusations of their neighbors from multitudes of innocent people."

David Christie-Murray told us in `A History of Heresy' (Oxford, 1976) that Charles Borromeo burned at least eleven elderly women at the stake.

Pope St. Pius V., a great champion of the Inquisition, is another man that the Church of Rome orders people to venerate as a saint. Dr. Lea wrote in his `A History of the Inquisition in Spain' (Macmillan, 1906):

`The Inquisition, however, regarded the conviction of a heretic as only the preliminary to forcing him to denounce his associates; the earliest papal utterance, in 1252, authorizing its use of torture, prescribed the employment of this means to discover accomplices and finally Paul IV and Pius V decreed that all who were convicted and confessed should, at the discretion of the inquisitors, be tortured for this purpose...It was, in reality, the torture of witnesses, for the criminal's fate had been decided, and he was thus used only to give testimony against others. The Spanish Inquisition was, therefore, only following a general practice when it tortured in capu alienum, those who had confessed their guilt. No confession was accepted as complete unless it revealed the names of those whom the penitent knew to be guilty of heretical acts, if there was reason to suspect that he was not fully discharging his conscience in this respect, torture was the natural resort. Even the impenitent or the relapsed, who was doomed to relaxation, was thus to be tortured and was to be given clearly to understand that it was as a witness and not as a party, and that his endurance of torture would not save him from the stake. The Instructions of 1561, however warn inquisitors that in these cases much consideration should be exercised and torture in caput alienum was rather the exception in Spain, than the rule as in Rome. In the case of the negativo, against whom conclusive evidence was had, and who thus was to be condemned without torture, the device of torturing him against his presumable accomplices afforded an opportunity of endeavoring to secure his own confession and conversion. We have seen this fail, in 1596, in the Mexican case of Manuel Diaz, nor was it more successful in Lima, in 1639, with Enrique de Paz y Mello, although the final outcome was different...He was sentenced to relaxation and torture in caput alienum; it was administered with great severity without overcoming his fortitude, and he persisted through five other publications as fresh evidence was gathered. Yet at midnight before the auto da fe, in which he was to be burnt, he weakened. He confessed as to himself and others and his sentence was modified to reconciliation and the galleys, while good use was made of his revelations against thirty of his accomplices...At a Toledo auto de fe we find Isabel Canese, aged seventy-eight, who promptly confessed before the torture had proceeded very far, and Isabel de Jaen, aged eighty who, at the fifth turn of the cords fainted and was revived with difficulty. In 1607 at Valencia, Jaime Chuleyla, aged seventy-six, after confessing certain matters, was accused by a new witness of being an alfaqui; this he denied and was duly tortured...Isabel Madalena, a girl of thirteen, who was vaguely accused of Moorish practices, was tortured, overcame the torture and was penanced with a hundred lashes.'

Pope Sixtus IV., for whom the Sixtine Chapel is named, gave the Papal blessing to the Spanish sovereigns to establish the Inquisition in Spain. J. A. Symonds writes in `Renaissance in Italy: The Catholic Reaction' (Smith, Elder & Co, London):

"If he escaped burning or perpetual incarceration, he was almost certainly exposed to the public ceremony of penitence...dressed up in a San Benito...This costume was a sort of sack, travestying a monk's frock, made of coarse yellow stuff, and worked over with crosses, flames, and devils, in glaring red It differed in details according to the destination of the victim: for some ornaments symbolized eternal hell, and others the milder fires of purgatory...To make these holocausts of human beings more ghastly, the pageant was enhanced by processions of exhumed corpses and heretics in effigy. Artificial dolls and decomposed bodies, with grinning lips and mouldy foreheads, were hauled to the huge bonfire, side by side with living men, women and children. All of them alike - fantoccini, skeletons, and quick folk \- were enveloped in the same grotesquely ghastly San Benito, with the same hideous yellow mitres on their paste-board, worm-eaten, or palpitating foreheads. The procession presented an ingeniously picturesque discord of ugly shapes, an artistically loathsome dissonance of red and yellow hues, as it defiled, to the infernal music of growled psalms and screams and moanings, beneath the torrid blaze of Spanish sunlight...Spaniards - such is the barbarism of the Latinised Iberian nature - delighted in these shows as they did and do in bull-fights. Butcheries of heretics formed the choicest spectacles at royal christenings and bridals....The Holy Office grew every year in pride, pretensions and exactions...It depopulated Spain by the extermination and banishment of at least three million industrious subjects during the first 139 years of its existence...It filled every city in the kingdom, the convents of the religions, and the palaces of the nobility, with spies...Ignorant and bloodthirsty monks composed its provincial tribunals, who, like the horrible Lucero el Tenebroso, at Cordova, paralysed whole provinces with a veritable reign of terror. Hated and worshipped its officers swept through the realm in the guise of powerful condottieri. The Grand Inquisitor maintained a bodyguard of fifty mounted Familiars and two hundred infantry...Spain gradually fell beneath the charm of their dark fascination. A brave though cruel nation drank delirium from the poison-cup of these vile medicine-men, whose Moloch-worship would have disgusted cannibals. Torquemada was the genius of evil who presided over this foul instrument of human crime and folly...Sometimes, while reading the history of the Holy Office in Spain, we are tempted to imagine that the whole is but a grim unwholesome nightmare, or the fable of malignant calumny. That such is not the case, however, is proved by a jubilant inscription on the palace of the Holy Office at Seville, which records the triumphs of Torquemada. Of late years, too, the earth herself has disgorged some secrets of the Inquisition. `A most curious discovery,' writes Lord Malmesbury in his Memoirs, `has been made at Madrid. Just at the time when the question of religious liberty was being discussed in the Cortes, Serrano had ordered a piece of ground to be levelled, in order to build on it, and the workmen came upon large quantities of human bones, skulls, lumps of blackening flesh, pieces of chains, and braids of hair. It was recollected that the autos da fe used to take place at the spot in former days. Crowds of people rushed to the place, and the investigation was continued. They found layer upon layer of human remains, showing that hundreds had been inhumanely sacrificed. The excitement and indignation this produced among the people was tremendous, and the party for religious freedom taking advantage of it, a Bill on the subject was passed by an enormous majority. Let modern Spain remember that a similar Aceldama lies hidden in the precincts of each of her chief towns.'

Charles Mackay wrote in Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (London, 1841),

`John Baptist Cibo, elected to the papacy in 1485, under the designation Innocent VIII., was sincerely alarmed at the number of witches, and launched forth his terrible manifesto against them. In his celebrated bull of 1488, he called the nations of Europe to the rescue of the Church of Christ upon earth, imperilled by the arts of Satan, and set forth the horrors that had reached his ears; how that numbers of both sexes had intercourse with the infernal fiends; how by their sorceries they afflicted both man and beast; how they blighted the marriage-bed, destroyed the births of women and the increase of cattle: and how they blasted the corn on the ground, the grapes of the vineyard, the fruits of the trees, and the herbs of the field. In order that criminals so atrocious might no longer pollute the earth, he appointed inquisitors in every country, armed with apostolic power to convict and punish. It was now that the Witch Mania properly so called, may be said to have commenced. Immediately a class of men sprang up in Europe, who made it the sole business of their lives to discover and burn witches. Sprenger, in Germany, was the most celebrated of these national scourges. In his notorious work, the Malleus Maleficarum, he laid down a regular form of trial, and appointed a course of examination by which the inquisitors in other countries might best discover the guilty. The questions, which were always enforced by torture, were of the most absurd and disgusting nature...Cumanus, in Italy, burned forty-one poor women in one province alone; and Sprenger, in Germany, burned a number which can never be ascertained correctly, but which, it is agreed on all hands, amounted to more than five hundred in a year...For fear the zeal of the enemies of Satan should cool, successive popes appointed new commissions. One was appointed by Alexander VI. in 1494, another by Leo X. in 1521, and a third by Adrian VI. in 1522. They were all armed with the same powers to hunt out and destroy, and executed their fearful functions but too rigidly. In Geneva alone five hundred persons were burned in the years 1515 and 1516, under the title of Protestant witches...in the year 1524 no less than a thousand persons suffered death for witchcraft in the district of Como...Henri Boguet, a witch-finder, who styled himself "The Grand Judge of Witches for the Territory of St. Claude," drew up a code for the guidance of all persons engaged in the witch-trials, consisting of seventy articles, quite as cruel as the code of Bodinus. In this document he affirms, that a mere suspicion of witchcraft justifies the immediate arrest and torture of the suspected person...Who, when he hears that this diabolical doctrine was the universally received opinion of the ecclesiastical and civil authorities can wonder that thousands upon thousands of unhappy persons should be brought to the stake? that Cologne should for many years burn its three hundred witches annually? district of Bamberg its four hundred? Nuremberg, Geneva, Paris, Toulouse, Lyons, and other cities, their two hundred?...In 1595, an old woman residing in a village near Constance, angry at not being invited to share the sports of the country people on a day of public rejoicing, was heard to mutter something to herself, and was afterwards seen to proceed through the fields toward a hill, where she was lost sight of. A violent thunder-storm arose about two hours afterwards, which wet the dancers to the skin, and did considerable damage to the plantations. This woman, suspected before of witchcraft, was seized and imprisoned, and accused of having raised the storm, by filling a hole with wine, and stirring it about with a stick. She was tortured till she confessed, and was burned alive the next evening...They never burned anybody till he confessed; and if one course of torture would not suffice, their patience was not exhausted, and they tried him again and again, even to the twentieth time.'

Suppose Rome and Eastern Orthodoxy have fallen away from the True Faith. This doesn't mean the Protestants must therefore uphold the True Faith. Look at Grand Rapids, Michigan. That's the home of some huge Protestant publishing houses. Kregel, Eerdmanns, Zondervan, Baker etc. These are very prestigious names in the Protestant world. But how can they be prestigious when they are publishing houses which seek to profit off of Christianity? Selling Christianity for profit? That's evil, right? I'm not aware of any church under the sign of the cross that makes a big issue of this issue. On the one hand you might say a Christian would have to be a brain dead slave of the devil to not understand that it is evil to put a price tag on a Bible or on any book which explains Christianity. But then a lot of people in a lot of churches might accuse you of being a brain dead slave of the devil if you accuse them of being brain dead slaves of the devil. What a vicious circle! Is it all that unthinkable to think that corrupt traditions over the centuries might have corrupted the Christians? Be honest now! Don't you think a person would have to be crazed, lost and deluded, whacked out of his mind, divorced from God and God's True Church, fallen from the True Faith, a true slave of the devil, if he believes Peter and Paul and Matthew and Mark and Luke and John put price tags on their gospels and epistles and sold these documents to make $$$? These documents contain words inspired by the Holy Spirit. Don't you think a Christian ought to know that it's a big sin to sell the words of the Holy Spirit for $$$. If there is no big painful punishment for simony, then simony is no big deal. But if the punishment for selling Christianity is eternal perdition, then it's a big sin to sell Christianity.

A person has no reason to change if he is on the road to heaven. But if a person is lost in heresy and is on the road to perdition, then he has a reason to change.

Getting back to the posse that's hunting for the murderer of Jake Leroy Westerby - Kressida Westerby, Mara Fairchild, Madge Undersee, Joe Westerby, Marybeth Westerby and Don Jose Sanchez – let's rejoin that scandalous yet tireless party, having one deputized lawman in their midst - that would be Don Jose \- along with that violent and depraved cyborg nymphomaniac - that would be Mara Fairchild.

Chapter 11. Mara's Confession

The six members of the posse still sat in their chairs round the table in the cantina in Matamoros. The little beggar girl shoved off after she made her big hysterical scene, her big denunciation of Mara. Mara felt only heartfelt gratitude at the way Marybeth came to her defense that ragged little urchin's accusations. But, nevertheless, Mara had to admit the evidence against her was beginning to look a little damning.

`Sometimes I just wish it was all over,' began Mara, wondering how she would explain that quart of her hydraulic fluid that she left behind at Jake's place.'

`It will never ever really be over,' began Joe Westerby. `The best we can do is make that Arab terrorist pay for what he done to Jake. Bring him to trial. See that he gets the punishment he deserves.'

`Sometimes', said Mara, `though I'm innocent, I almost want to confess to murdering Jake. It's like a huge weight would be lifted off of my shoulders.'

`That's a common condition,' said Kressida. `I studied the phenomenon in college, in my psychology classes. Look at Patty Hearst. She was kidnapped, held in a small closet, subjected to incessant indoctrination. Before you could say `Marxist-Leninism' she was convinced she came from the oppressor class, she was convinced she was one of those rich folks who trampled upon the poor folks. One thing led to another. Pretty soon she wants to join the cause of the Revolutionaries. Pretty soon she's carrying a machine gun and robbing banks. What else would you expect after they laid such a huge guilt trip on her head? Look at the pressure you're under, Mara. People are saying all sorts of nasty stuff about you. They say you're a slut-machine. They say you're a murdering nympho. They say you're a homicidal machine that goes postal whenever you get rejected by a lover. Though you are innocent, though you had nothing to do with the murder of Jake, you had some hostile feelings toward him, perhaps even some brief fleeting emotions involving homicide – you know - because of how he cheated on you, and then, you know, because of how he dumped you...'

`But I actually did kill Jake!' Mara blurted out.

`I don't doubt you truly believe you did,' said Kressida. But that's just a mirage. That's like being out in the burning desert and seeing a cool lake in the distance. Our minds play tricks on us. You're under such intense pressure, you see, because you did have some intense hostility toward Jake, and perhaps you blame yourself for not being able to rescue Jake when he needed you most; your guilt-ridden subconscious mind wants to agree with the accusations of your accusers, you want to punish yourself on the one hand, and, you also want to give relief to yourself, on the other hand. I mean it would end your ordeal, it would put an end to the witch-hunt, it would stifle the jackals in the media that pursue you. You're just not able at the moment to navigate the labyrinths of the Guilt Complex because the conflict of emotions raging in your psyche is so tumultuous, so cataclysmic.'

`No, No, No. I'm quite calm and rational and emotionless. I'm not crazy. I just got so enraged at Jake when he said he wanted to be free to date other women. I just flew into a jealous rage, and, with my cyborg strength, I tore him limb from limb, ripped him to pieces,' explained Mara.

`That's just taking the easy way out,' said Don Jose Sanchez. `You're not seeing clearly. Why the myopia? You're not seeing what is sitting in plain view right in front of your face, because you have so much emotional energy invested in Jake. And this emotional energy drives you to confess to something you didn't do! You want to punish yourself for something you didn't do and never would do! I don't doubt that you had some homicidal impulses when he dumped you. But don't beat yourself up. Don't throw your life away. Mara, darling, can't you see that it is unthinkable that you could murder Jake, hence it is impossible, hence, we know, fundamentally and absolutely, positively and categorically, indisputably, irrefutably, manifestly and undeniably, that you are innocent: you did not murder Jake, you did not rip him limb from limb! OK? It's all a mirage. It's all an illusion.'

`You guys are crazy,' explained Mara. `You're the ones suffering from the Stockholm Syndrome, not me. You're the ones who need to see a psychiatrist, not me.'

`Just drink your beer, honey,' said Madge Undersee. `You'll feel better in a few days. The line between Guilt and Innocence is clouded and confused for you. Just trust us when we tell you you're innocent.'

Chapter 12. More Religion

Let's review French New Wave film director Claude Chabrol's Les Biches. English translation The Does, as in doe a deer a female deer. Stephanie Audran plays the role of Frederique, a bisexual young lady who goes on the prowl in Paris in wintertime looking for some lesbian action. Soon enough she meets, on the Pont des Arts, an artist, one who draws chalk outlines of deer, on the sidewalk, on the bridge over the Seine. Frederique / Stephane Audran throws down a big note of French currency to the artist. That was a pretty impressive gesture from the rich young pretty woman in the fancy fur coat. The artist's name is Why and Why is played by Jacqueline Sassard. She looks cute, clean, not super down-and-out, but, still, she looks sort of poor. So, Frederique and Why start talking and soon enough they go back to Frederique's place, and soon enough Why is in the bathtub, and Frederique is trying hard to seduce Why, while Why is in the bathtub. Later, Frederique takes Why down to Saint Tropez where Frederique keeps a home, sort of modest, I suppose upper-middle-class might adequately describe her place in Saint Tropez. She has lots of African art hanging on the walls. There's a sign by an African knife. The English meaning of the French words on the sign tell us: Danger! Poison! Then Frederique throws a party at her place and Why gets to meets Paul. Paul's a handsome architect played by Jean-Louis Trintignant. He was great in Sergio Corbucci's The Great Silence and lots of other films. Paul is determined to seduce Why, which he does by lots of persistence. Then Frederique becomes jealous, so she seduces Paul to steal him away from Why. And now Why is hurt and angry that these rich people are kicking her heart around. Paul and Frederique go back to Paris leaving Why all alone in Saint Tropez. Soon enough the loneliness and the anger over her treatment become so powerful in her that she takes the poisoned African knife off the wall in Frederique's home, and then she returns to Paris with it, and then she kills Frederique in her upscale apartment, stabs Frederique with the poisoned knife.

I saw that movie before I wrote this little novella, Guilty Pleasures. I wasn't thinking of that movie when I wrote this story, but then one day I was thinking, hmmmm, Guilty Pleasures is sort of like Les biches...One can use Les biches as material for a parable. If one is in God's True Church, but if one is eventually damned to eternal perdition for rebelling against God's True Church, such as by rejecting various official doctrines of God's True Church, then one would want to stab oneself with a poisoned knife for being so stupid. Of course, if someone gave you some devil's logic which led you to renounce the True Church, if someone convinced you with devil logic to renounce God's True Church and join some fallen devil church which led you straight to perdition, then, right after you got the news that you're damned, you would want to stab the person who led you astray with the devil logic...But, still, if you are already in a church which will deliver your soul to heaven, then it makes no sense, it is stupid, it is insane to rebel against that church in any way. Why risk hell by rebelling against God and God's True Church? Now you might be in a church which has fallen away from the True Faith, fallen into heresy, or you might be in a church which has not fallen away from the True Faith, has not fallen into heresy. The only options which have any chance of making sense are: obey the church you are in, or renounce the church you are in. Remaining in a church while rebelling against one or more of its official teachings - which is what Cafeteria Catholics and Cafeteria Protestants do - makes no sense, it's madness, it's insanity....

Well what have we covered? There's the selling of Christianity for profit: that's simony: it's a sin to put a price tag on a bible and on books which teach Christianity. If has the Divine Law written on his heart then you would think he would know what simony is! But if the Popes have the power to bind and loose, and if the Popes say it is not sinful to put price tags on Bibles....The apostles didn't put price tags on their Gospels. Was Matthew out on the street peddling his Gospel of St. Matthew? Maybe St. Mark was forced to slash prices on his work 75% just to make a profit? No, no. The early Church didn't charge people money for a copy of the Gospels, or for St. Paul's 1st and 2nd Epistles to the Corinthians. All this is modern corruption. There's the issue of churches which refuse to excommunicate Sabbath violators; there's the issue of churches which refuse to excommunicate adulterers. 1 Corinthians 11. 27. There's the issue of when art and music and film cross over a line and become anti-Christian; there's the issue of when dancing and dress becomes so immodest they become anti-Christian; there's the issue of excommunicating pro-choicers, the issue of the sign of the cross: are the evils perpetrated by the people under cross reflected in the cross, or is the cross sacred and holy?

When we speak of Byzantine Civilization from the 4th century to the mid 11th we mean that part of Catholic civilization, that part of both Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic civilization which was centered in Constantinople, the seat of the Eastern Roman Empire founded by Constantine in the 4th century. William Lecky, who wrote in his `History of European Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne',

`Of that Byzantine empire the universal verdict of history is that it constitutes, with scarcely an exception, the most thoroughly base and despicable form that civilisation has yet assumed. Though very cruel and very sensual, there have been times where cruelty assumed more ruthless, and sensuality more extravagant, aspects; but there has been no enduring civilisation so absolutely destitute of all the forms and elements of greatness...The Byzantine empire was pre-eminently the age of treachery...The history of the Empire is a monotonous story of the intrigues of priests, eunuchs, and women, of poisonings, of conspiracies, of uniform ingratitude, of perpetual fratricides...'

If the Emperor Valentinian didn't fall away from the True Faith, then I guess I don't understand the True Faith. Gibbon writes of the 4th century Emperor Valentinian and his judges,

`They easily discovered, that the degree of their industry and discernment was estimated, by the Imperial court, according to the number of executions that were furnished from their respective tribunals. It was not without extreme reluctance that they pronounced a sentence of acquittal; but they eagerly admitted such evidence as was stained by perjury, or procured by torture, to prove the most improbable charges against the most respectable characters. The progress of the inquiry continually opened new subjects of criminal prosecution; the audacious informer, whose falsehood was detected, retired with impunity, but the wretched victim, who discovered his real or pretended accomplices, was seldom permitted to receive the price of his infamy. From the extremity of Italy and Asia, the young, and the aged, were dragged in chains to the tribunals of Rome and Antioch. Senators, matrons, and philosophers, expired in ignominious and cruel tortures...The expressions which issued the most readily from the mouth of the emperor of the West were, `Strike off his head;' `Burn him alive;' `Let him be beaten with clubs till he expires;'....He could behold with calm satisfaction the convulsive agonies of torture and death; he reserved his friendship for those faithful servants whose temper was the most congenial to his own. The merit of Maximin, who had slaughtered the noblest families of Rome, was rewarded with the royal approbation, and the praefecture of Gaul. Two fierce and enormous bears, distinguished by the appellations of Innocence and Mica Aurea, could alone deserve to share the favor of Maximin. The cages of those trusty guards were always placed near the bed-chamber of Valentinian, who frequently amused his eyes with the grateful spectacle of seeing them tear and devour the bleeding limbs of the malefactors who were abandoned to their rage.'

Paul Johnson writes in `A History of Christianity', p. 273,

`In the West, the clergy had begun to assert an exclusive interpretive, indeed custodial, right to the Bible as early as the ninth century; and from about 1080 there had been frequent instances of the Pope, councils and bishops forbidding not only vernacular translations but any reading at all, by laymen, of the Bible taken as a whole...attempts to scrutinize the Bible became proof presumptive of heresy - a man or woman might burn [at the stake] for it alone.'

Apropos of various reasons why popes might be hesitant to excommunicate people who need to be excommunicated, Sismondi writes in `History of the Italian Republics',

Urban V., on his arrival in Italy, endeavoured also to oppose the usurpations of the Viscontis...Urban had recourse to a bull of excommunication, and sent two legates to bear it to him [Barnabas Visconti]; but Barnabas forced these two legates to eat, in his presence, the parchment on which the bull was written, together with the leaden seals and silken strings. The pope, frightened at the thought of combating men who seemed to hold religion in no respect...was glad to return to the repose of Avignon, where he arrived in the month of September, 1370; and died the November following. Gregory XI., who succeeded him, was ambitious, covetous and false...He signed a truce with Barnabas Visconti...and, before the Florentines could recall their soldiers, sent John Hawkwood with a formidable army to surprise Florence. The Florentines, indignant at such shameless want of good faith on the part of the church, whose most faithful allies they had always been, vowed vengeance on the see of Rome...John Hawkwood, the 29th of March, 1376, delivered up Faenza to a frightful military execution: 4,000 persons were put to death, property pillaged, women violated. The pope, not satisfied with such rigour, sent Robert of Geneva, another cardinal legate, into Italy, with a Breton company of adventurers, considered as the most ferocious of all those trained to plunder by the wars of France. The new legate treated Cesena, on the 1st of February, 1377, with still greater barbarity. He was heard to call out, during the massacre, "I will have more blood! - Kill all! - blood, blood!" Gregory XI. at last felt the necessity of returning to Italy, to appease the universal revolt...Barnabas Visconti carried on with the holy see secret negotiations, in which he offered to sacrifice to the church his ally, the republic of Florence...the unexpected news arrived of the death of Gregory XI., on the 27th of March, 1378...The pontifical chair had been transferred to France since the year 1305. Its exile from Italy lasted seventy-three years. The Christian world, France excepted, had considered it a scandal; but the French kings hoped by it to retain the popes in their dependence; and the French cardinals, who formed three fourths of the sacred college, seemed determined to preserve the pontifical power in their nation. They were, however, thwarted in this intention by the death of Gregory XI. at Rome; - for the conclave must always assemble where the last pope dies...the conclave...elected...an Italian, - Bartolomeo Prignani...He was considered learned and pious. The cardinals had not, however, calculated on the development of the passions which a sudden elevation sometimes gives; or the degree of impatience, arrogance, and irritability of which man is capable, in his unexpected capacity of master, though in an inferior situation he had appeared gentle and modest. The new pope, who took the name of Urban VI., became so violent and despotic, so confident in himself, and so contemptuous of others, that he soon quarreled with all of his cardinals. They left him; assembled again at Fondi; and on the 9th of August, declared the holy see vacant; asserting that their previous election was null...they elected another pope. Their choice, no better than the former, fell on Robert, cardinal of Geneva, who had presided at the massacre of Cesena: he took the name of Clement VII...Urban VI., meanwhile, deposed, as schismatics, all cardinals who had elected Clement, and replaced them by a new and more numerous college; but he agreed no better with these than with their predecessors. He accused them of conspiracy against him; he caused many to be put to the torture in his presence, and while he recited his breviary; he ordered others to be thrown into the sea in sacks, and drowned...he paraded his incapacity and rage through all Italy; and finally took refuge at Genoa, where he died, on the 9th of November, 1389. The cardinals who acknowledged him named a successor on his death, as the French cardinals did afterwards on the death of Clement VII...The church thus found itself divided between two popes and two colleges of cardinals, who reciprocally anathematized each other.'

Chapter 13. Why Did Kressida Have to Die?

Kressida's dead and mangled corpse was found by Madge Undersee in the bed that Kressida had shared the night before with Mara Fairchild. `You and Kressida had one huge nasty vicious argument last night. Don't deny it because I head it!' said Madge Undersee, speaking to Mara while the others stood round listening to Madge's impassioned insinuations.

`No, I don't deny it. There was violent, ugly, vicious, brutal shouting. But then we kissed and made-up,' said Mara.

`This isn't getting us anywhere,' said Don Jose.

`I agree,' said Marybeth Westerby. `Mara says she's innocent and that's good enough for me. Hell, she's never lied to us before. Don't see no reason why she should start tellin' lies and inventin' fabrications now.'

`Mara,' began Joe Westerby, `you say the killer sort of looked like Caitlyn Jenner. It wasn't Caitlyn, but it was definitely a tranny with masculine features. Are you sure now?'

`That's my story and I'm sticking to it,' said Mara.

Chapter 14. Even More Religion

One should understand that the early medieval popes were hostile to the ideology of the Inquisition – torture baptized Christians to force them if necessary to obey the Roman Catholic Church. William Stearns Davis, in his `Life on a Mediaeval Barony' (Harper & Brothers, 1923) told us that the great ninth century champion of the pontifical monarchy, Pope Nicholas I., was also a great enemy of the use of torture in judicial proceedings.

In the pontificate of Gregory VII., in the middle of 11th century, the Catholic Church pledged itself finally and completely to a priesthood of unmarried men. Lecky tells us the wives of priests were sold into slavery at this time. Dr. Lea begins his `History of Sacerdotal Celibacy in the Christian Church' with,

`THE Latin Church is the great fact which dominates the history of modern civilization. All other agencies which molded the destines of mediaeval Europe were comparatively isolated or sporadic in their manifestations...Far above all, the successor of St. Peter from his pontifical throne claims the whole of Europe as his empire, and dictates terms to kings...It was by no means the least of the factors in the conquering career of the Church that it required of all to whom it granted the supernatural powers conferred in holy orders that they should surrender themselves unreservedly and irrevocably, that they should sunder all human ties, should have no aspirations beyond its service, no family affections to distract their loyalty, no family duties to waste its substance, and no ambitions save for the rewards which it alone could bestow.'

During the first 1,000 years of Christianity there was a great deal of bloodshed and tyranny from the Second Estate - the emperors, kings and nobles - but perhaps not tons and tons of torture and murder from the First Estate - the priests. But in the 2nd millennium of Christendom, after the establishment of a celibate priesthood in the Roman Catholic Church, everything changed. If we can take an educated guess which says that men are more well-balanced when they are not ordered to forsake the love of wives and children, more well-balanced at least in most, if not all instances, then one has to expect that dire consequences might arise from this wife-abnegating, pope-imposed rejection of St. Paul's clear teaching - Celibacy is Not Mandatory. Urban II. launched the First Crusade at the end of the 11th century, with the first victims being the Jews living near the Rhine. The Episcopal Inquisition was begun in the 12th century. In the 13th century Innocent III. began the slaughter of Cathars in the South of France and the extermination of Lithuanian peasants. `Ad extirpanda', from Innocent IV., in the middle of the 13th century, gave the Inquisition the papal blessing to use of torture in the hunt to exterminate all dissent against Rome from baptized Catholics; this included Jews who had been forcibly baptized. Pope Nicholas V. authorized the African slave trade in the 15th century. Pope Sixtus IV. authorized the Spanish Inquisition in the same century. Pope Innocent VIII., still in the 15th century, gave papal sanction to the witch-craze in which many thousands of women were tortured and burned. Pope Paul III. re-organized the Roman Inquisition in the 16th century.

If Roman Catholic priests had had wives and children to impart a softening influence them, to make them less isolated and alienated, less monkish and fanatical, perhaps much of this fanatical evil would not have been inflicted upon the world. St. Paul never required priests to remain celibate but St. Paul does say in Galatians 1. 8 that even an angel from heaven is accursed if he alters the gospel St. Paul is preaching. The Roman Catholic Church rejects what Paul wrote in I Timothy 3. 2 - a bishop must be a man of one wife.

H. R. Trevor-Roper told us in 'The European Witch-Craze of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries' (Harper & Row) that in 1468 Pope Innocent VIII. declared witchcraft to be a crimen exceptum. This removed, in effect, all legal limits on the application of torture. Therefore, in the absence of a `grave indicium', such as a pot full of human limbs or a written pact with the Devil etc., circumstantial evidence was sufficient to subject the accused to torment. And the circumstantial evidence needn't be very persuasive - a wart was sufficient evidence to begin the interrogation, helped along with torture. The lighter indicia, such as a tendency for a woman to look down when she was accused, or showing signs of fear, trembling, was enough. Any of these indicia \- `evidence' - could establish a prima facie case which justified the use of torture to obtain a confession. The refusal to confess, which was seen as even stronger proof of guilt, justified the application of more ferocious tortures and a crueler death. Fingers and toes were crushed in a vice. The Spanish boot, much used in Germany and Scotland, squeezed the calf and broke the shin-bone. There was the `ram' or `witch-chair,' which was a chair of iron spikes, heated from below. There was the `Bed of Nails.' In Scotland women were grilled on the caschielawis. Once a woman confessed her own guilt, the next stage was to secure from her, again under torture, the names of all her associates at the witches' sabbat. Thus a new set of indicia was supplied, and more torture was applied.

J. C. L. de Sismondi writes of Guelphs and Ghibelines and 13th century Italy in History of the Italian Republics,

`In 1215, a Guelph noble of the upper Vale of the Arno, named Buondelmonte, who had been made a citizen of Florence, demanded in marriage a young person of the Ghibeline house of Amidei, and was accepted. While the nuptials were in preparation, a noble lady of the family Donati stopped Buondelmonte as he passed her door, and, bringing him into the room where her women were at work, raised the veil of her daughter, whose beauty was exquisite. "Here," said she, "is the wife I have reserved for thee. Like thee she is Guelph; whilst thou takest one from the enemies of thy church and race?" Buondelmonte, dazzled and enamoured, instantly accepted the proffered hand. The Amidei looked upon this inconstancy as a deep affront. All the noble Ghibeline families of Florence, about twenty-four in number, met, and agreed that he should atone with his life for the offense. Buondelmonte was attacked on the morning of Easter Sunday, just as he passed the Ponte Vecchio, on horseback, and killed at the foot of the statue of Mars, which still stood there. Forty-two families of the Guelph party met and swore to avenge him; and blood did indeed atone for blood. Every day some new murder, some new battle, alarmed Florence during the space of thirty-three years. These two parties stood opposed to each other within the walls of the same city; and though often reconciled, every little accident renewed their animosity, and they again flew to arms to avenge ancient wrongs.'

I've never come across any evidence saying women and girls in the early Christian Church, in the first three centuries, were bought and sold into marriage. Wasn't there a falling away, a falling away into the old Pagan ways, when people under the sign of the cross began selling their daughters to the highest bidders?

G. G. Coulton's article on Knighthood in the Encyclopedia Britannica (1963) includes:

`In its own age chivalry rested practically, like the highest civilization of ancient Greece and Rome, on slave labour;...Far too much has been made of the extent to which the knightly code, and the reverence paid to the Virgin Mary, raised the position of women. As Gautier himself admits, the feudal system made it difficult to separate the woman's person from her fief: lands and women were handed over together, as a business bargain, by parents or guardians. In theory, the knight was the defender of widows and orphans; but in practice wardships and marriages were bought and sold as a matter of everyday routine like stocks and shares in the modern market.'

Jules Michelet writes in 'The Witch' (translated from the French by A. R. Allinson),

`The Church always granted the judge and the accuser a right to the confiscated property of those condemned for Sorcery. Wherever the Canon Law remains powerful, trials for Witchcraft multiply, and enrich the clergy...A first gleam of light is visible as early as the middle of the fifteenth century, and it emanates from France. The revision of the case against Jeanne d'Arc...A vile Sorceress in the eyes of the English and in those of the wisest Doctors of the council of Bâle, for the French she is a Saint and a divine Sibyl. The rehabilitation of the Maid of Orleans inaugurates in France an era of toleration. The Parlement of Paris likewise rehabilitates the so-called Vauclois of Arras...Not a single condemnation for Sorcery was registered under Charles VIII., Louis XII., or Francies I. Just the opposite in Spain; here under the pious Queen Isabella (1506), under Cardinal Ximenes, they begin burning Witches. Geneva, then governed by its Bishop (1515) burned five hundred in three months...[the Emperor Charles V. attempts to ban confiscation of property] The smaller Prince Bishops, of whose revenues Sorcery supplied a principal source, go on savagely burning all the same. The microscopic Bishop of Bamburg sends six hundred individuals to the stake in one batch, and that of Wurzburg nine hundred! The procedure is of the simplest. To begin with, apply torture to the witnesses, and build up a travesty, a caricature of evidence, by dint of pain and terror. Then drag a confession from the accused by excruciating agonies, and believe this confession against the direct evidence of facts. For instance, a Sorceress confesses she had recently dug up a child's dead body from the churchyard, to use it in her magic compounds. Her husband says, "Go to the churchyard and look; the child is there now." The grave is opened, and the body found intact in its coffin. Yet the judge decides, against the testimony of his own eyes, that it is only an appearance, an illusion of Satan. He credits the woman's confession in preference to the actual fact, - and the poor creature is burned...In the region of the great forests, Lorraine and the Jura, women readily became wolves and devoured travelers, if we are to believe their own accounts...Anyway they were burned. Young girls would solemnly declare that they had sacrificed their maidenhood to the Devil, and on examination be found virgins still. They were burned likewise...The first avowed plea for toleration against the dull-witted Sprenger, his horrible Manual and his persecuting Dominicans, was advanced by a lawyer of Constance, Molitor by name...The gloomy reign of Henry II. and Diane de Poitiers ended the days of toleration...The magistracy, which for nearly a whole century had shown itself just and enlightened, now largely involved in the Catholic Bond of Spain and the fiercely bigoted Ligue, prove themselves more priestly than the priests. While driving the Inquisition out of France, they match it and would fain eclipse it with their own severities. Indeed, they went so far that on a single occasion and single-handed the Parlement of Toulouse burned four hundred human bodies at the stake. Imagine the horror of it; think of the thick, black smoke from all this burning flesh, picture the masses of fat that amid yells and howls melt in horrid deliquescence and pour boiling down the gutters! A vile and sickening sight such as had not been since the broiling and roastings of the Albigensians!...Lorraine was swept by a dreadful contagion, as it were, of Sorcerers and Visionaries. The populace, driven to despair by the everlasting depredations of marching armies and marauding bands, had long ceased to pray to any deity but the Devil. Many villages, in their terror, distracted between two horrors, the Sorcerers on the one side and the judges on the other, longed, if Remy, Judge of Nancy, speaks truth, to quit their lands and all they possessed and fly to another country. In his book dedicated to the Cardinal de Lorraine (1596), he claims positively to have burned within sixteen years eight hundred Sorceresses. "So good is my justice," he says, "that last year there were no less than sixteen killed themselves rather than pass through my hinds."'

Lord Acton told us in his essay `Human Sacrifice',

`And yet, long after the last victim had fallen in honour of the sun-god of the Aztecs, the civilised nations of Christian Europe continued to wage wholesale destruction...Protestants and Catholics, clergy and laity, vied with each other for two hundred years to provide victims, and every refinement of legal ingenuity and torture was used in order to increase their number. In 1591, at Nördligen, a girl was tortured twenty-three times before she confessed...Three years later, in the same town, a woman suffered torture fifty-six times without confessing she was a witch...In the north of Italy, the great jurist Alciatus saw 100 witches burnt on one day...In England alone, under the Tudors and the Stuarts, the victims of this superstition amounted to 30,000. Yet, from the appearance of Spee's Cautio in 1631 to the burning of the last witch in 1783, all sensible men were persuaded that the victims were innocent of the crime for which they suffered intolerable torments and an agonizing death. But those who hunted them out with cunning perseverance, and the inflexible judges who never spared their lives, firmly believed that their execution was pleasing in the sight of God, and that their sin could not be forgiven by men.'

The End
