Evil From Within

"Be doers of the Word and not hearers only, deluding yourselves. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this:  to care for orphans and widows in their affliction and to keep oneself unstained by the world."  -[James 1: 21B - 22, 27].


Many who decry organized Religion and who call themselves "Spiritual but not religious" are critical of the outsized role of Ritual in the Church.

It is true that Jesus called out the Hypocrite above all else, the Pharisees and scribes who ritually washed their hands and sanitized their cups and vessels, all the while engaging in Sin from the heart.

In Mark 7, Jesus said, "You disregard God's commandment but cling to human tradition."

In Isaiah, it is written: "This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines human precepts."

In my family, we called ourselves "Christians" because we attended services in a Christian church.
Our names were in the roster of congregants. We decorated a Christmas tree, and wore brightly colored spring clothes for Easter. My family gave money to the church regularly. We received Communion and we had a Bible on the bookshelf at home.

But my family was Christian in demographics only. My parents disdained those without money. They disdained the poor, the immigrant, the uneducated. They were very far from loving their neighbor as themselves. They gossiped, they were jealous, bitter, superior in attitude.

They were not Christian as a matter of Heart.

Their Christian "Cover" enabled them to appear upstanding citizens in the community, all the while they were neglecting my medical needs, not feeding me, not keeping me physically safe, verbally abusing me, blackmailing me, emotionally abusing me and so forth. If I were to complain, who would have believed me?

Religion that tramples upon the widow and the orphan, that operates in name only and clings to Ritual without purity of Heart - is dangerous.

We see this thin veneer of Religion, in the allegations of priest abuse for over 70 years in Pennsylvania.  This level of abuse is not without precedent. There have been cases of Church abuse of children and the poor in Ireland, in Canada in the orphanages, and in Boston, as well.

To be fair, this kind of abuse has occurred in many Protestant churches over the years.

In PA, priests covered their victims with the Crucifix. They ordered the children to "confess their Sins." This is a perversion of holy Ritual, stemming from a misbelief that the Ritual alone will cover the Sin. But a Ritual devoid of a pure and undefiled Heart only deludes, and causes deep harm. An empty and perverse Ritual such as this is blasphemy.

The Catholic Church viewed the Sin as coming from a temptation arising within the child. The Church removed the priests from the temptation, that is from the child and from his or her location.

They face the fact that the Sin came from within the priest himself.

Jesus said in Mark 7: "Nothing that enters from the outside can defile that person; but the things that come from within are what defile. From within people, from their hearts, come evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, murder, adultery, malice, deceit, licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, folly. All these evils come from within and they defile."

From the abuse in the Church, from inside the priests involved, came evil thoughts and unchastity. What resulted was not just a physical assault on the child, but theft of the child's trust and murder of the child's Soul. From within the priest came depraved behaviors: the preying upon innocent children, the arrogance of the deceitful cover-ups, the folly of blaming the victims in requiring them to confess "their Sins". From within the Church came the malice of putting Ritual and the reputation of the priests ahead of tender care for the children.

As the Church itself went to elaborate lengths to cover up the depravity, the Church itself became defiled. Empty Rituals went on week after week during Mass at the altar, even as depravity and deceit rolled on and on. . . for 70 years.

Immoral and depraved priests must be removed, not just moved around. And the tender care of the children must begin anew and with Heart. If this does not happen, we will have no Church.

(Related Postings: "Clinging to Human Rules", 9/4/12; "The Evil Seed", 5/24/13.)

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