The hypocrisy of the Catholic Church and its leaders is surpassed only by the ignorance and stupidity of its adherents. To say that the Church contributed to education, literature and the arts couldn’t be further from the truth. The Catholic Church contributed only to enhance its influence over the people of Europe by pushing its agenda and crushing all opposition.
The Catholic Church enslaved people such as Galileo for correctly discovering and documenting that the Earth was not the center of our solar system; ordering the destruction of all his publications on the subject and placing him on house arrest for life. It burned Giordano Bruno at the stake because he correctly presented a model of the modern universe, including the fact that our Sun is just one of many such stars in the cosmos. It also burned tens of thousand of women at the stake believed to be witches who fornicated with the Devil. In short, the Catholic Church boiled, sawed, crucified, dismembered and disemboweled countless thousands of innocent people throughout all of Europe during its almost 800-year reign on the continent. And those incredibly gifted artists that the Church commissioned, they were mostly instructed on what was acceptable art and what wasn’t, in other words, they were not allowed to create their artistry freely.
To summarize, the Roman Catholic Church is not this holy and pristine institution that many people believe it to be. Again, this is a sign of the gullibility of the masses. It is nothing more than a corrupt organization which has used God and religious faith in general to achieve and maintain immense wealth, political influence and power. TGO
Refer to brief story below. Source: Associated Press
ROME – Pope Benedict XVI says Italian Catholics made a fundamental contribution to creating a united Italy and a national identity, in a message marking the country’s 150th birthday.
Benedict says Christianity helped forge a national identity that resisted political fragmentation on the Italian peninsula and foreign domination.
He says the church’s contribution came through education, literature and the arts in general, listing such personalities as Michelangelo, Caravaggio and Bernini, whose works were often commissioned for religious purposes.
Benedict’s message was delivered Wednesday by his No. 2., Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, to the Italian president during a meeting at the presidential palace, once a papal residence.
Italy marks the anniversary Thursday.
Oh Great One, how right you are! I have studied the Unification of Italy extensively; the pope is talking not just BS but absolute BS! Garibaldi, who led the final fight for the unification of Italy hated the Catholic Church, because he and his men were often betrayed by Catholic clergy, (just like the Jews were) including nuns.The Pope of the time, did not want unification because it would mean the papal states would shrink down to the city of Rome and then to the Vatican. In the 1860s that is exactly what happened after Risorgimento. Finally those papal sycophants, Austria, and France were booted out of the Boot of Italy. Don’t get me started!