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Interfaith Marches in Bethlehem Deliver Message of Peace

A movement to end the violence in Palestine and Israel is spearheaded by an author with rare insight into religious extremism.

(SALEM, Ore.) - A strong message embraced in peaceful solidarity was shared with people in the Middle East during an interfaith peace march in Bethlehem, for the future of the West Bank and Israel.

Dr. Frank Romano is the author of a fascinating book called STORM OVER MOROCCO that retells the story of his captivity among religious zealots in the middle east.

Christian Metaphors

If we believe what is written in the Bible, we ought also to believe the sacrifice of the “essential man,” Jesus, was merely the first of three steps by which the Christian concept became the Catholic Church.

(PASO ROBLES, Calif.) - The creation of the Christian Church by the Coterie took planning and ingenuity beyond the range of usual competency that involved not only Jesus, but his disciples, and a cast of characters who played important roles in the success of the scheme.

After the crucifixion of Jesus, the next step was to use his disciples, especially Peter, as interim players in the creation of a viable Church. Peter was the only disciple to say of Jesus - the Son of Man - “you are the Christ,” [Mark: 8; 29] and because of it, his apparent faith became the symbolic rock on which the Coterie founded the Church and assumed Peter’s authority as the Passive Voice of the See of St. Peter, the actual authority of Roman Catholicism; popes are chosen to be Active Voices.

Symbols of Our Givens

The more is known of The Evangelical Movement, the more it resembles Rome’s quest for Ultimate Authority.

(PASO ROBLES, Calif.) - Understanding ourselves and others requires an appreciation of symbols that need to be defined if their meaning are to be known. Some definitions derive from sources that can cause confusion, especially as they relate to religions generally and to Christianity in particular.

Enlightening sources of information relating to Christianity are as near as a good Dictionary or Encyclopedia. Under BIBLE, for example, the Encyclopedia states that the Gospels were written between sixty and one-hundred-years after the advent - the arrival of something important or awaited - presumably of Jesus - and as many as three to five generations after the fact, enough reasonably to suggest that much, if not all, of what the Gospels say is hearsay or based on imagination.

How Witches Evolved

Trials of persons who claimed to be witches simply confirmed that they possessed what they always claimed they had, power.

(PASO ROBLES, Calif.) - Rev. Montague Summers who wrote the Introductions to the MALLEUS MALEFICARUM, spoke of witches as late as the 1920s as if they truly existed, nor have I read anywhere that the Church has reversed its position on the matter. Summers also defended the Inquisition's methods as necessary to keep the Catholic flock under control.

Many Evangelists claim their followers alone are real-Christians, and that “intelligent people” who question what they say is the word of God, “are evil." They use politics to achieve their end by appealing to the Religious Right of the Republican Party’s base composed of Conservative die-hard traditionalists.

Introduction to Witches

Real? Not real? At the common level, even today, the elements of presumed witchcraft are fear of the unknown, belief in supernatural powers, and a tendency to symbolize so as to give substance and identity to intangibles.

(PASO ROBLES, Calif.) - Belief in mysterious forces is not uniquely a Christian phenomenon. Witches and witchcraft fall into the mysterious category that was, and is, common to ancient, isolated or primitive societies, and continues to be a relevant part of cult-belief in many parts of the world, including the U.S. Southwest.

Psychic excitement may actually produce physical manifestations, as in the Easter phenomenon of bloody palms, etc. - suggestive of the wounds caused by the crucifixion of Jesus - a demon-stration [metaphorically speaking] of faith that approaches the level of witchcraft.

Julio Caro Baroja, author of THE WORLD OF THE WITCHES - published in Spain - says there are two sides to the question, what are witches?

Logical Thinking

I do not doubt God has a plan, but I believe, on the basis of what we know from History and Science, not excluding common-sense, that His plan is concerned more with the large than small details.

(PASO ROBLES, Calif.) - Bibles differ, a reasonable truth considering how many versions have been published over time for various denominations

At a concert performed in a Lutheran Church I perused the Book of Isaiah and was surprised that some words were missing in its Bible compared to the one I researched I checked my Bible when I got home and there it was; . If something is not mentioned in the Bible it doesn’t mean God is unaware of it. But if a thing is in the Bible, and is changed or eliminated, what of God; is the Bible the work of man after all? As for the missing passage, the so-called miracle of turning water into wine is explained by replacing a watered-down bottle with an undiluted bottle of wine; simple enough.

The Gospels of Matthew and Mark [Matthew: 21; 1-11 and Mark: 11; 1-10]. tell of Jesus who, to fulfill prophecy, asked for and rode into Jerusalem on the back of an untamed ass, an event celebrated today by Christians as Good Friday.

The Appeal of Mystery

The Conservative base of the Republican Party holds true to Christian givens passed down through centuries, and dutifully accepts as Gospel what it is told by Priests or Evangelists without question. Democrats tend more toward the Age of Enlightenment that began in the Middle Age but came to fruition near its end.

(PASO ROBLES, Calif.) - I love a mystery as much as anyone does; they are weird and wonderful, but I also enjoy the thrill of discovering that what I once believed to be mysterious truly isn't. For there are mysteries we believe to be, only because we have been told they are.

There was a time when it was dangerous to question religion , and the punishment was so severe it was safer to accept our givens [that which by habit and tradition has passed from one generation to the next as undeniable truth] than to be exposed to the consequence of non-belief.

It is now safer for individuals to distinguish between the opinion of others and what each independently determines to be true, but not entirely.

Historical Truths

The danger to America is not from without, but from Evangelists from within who would return us, and the world, to The Middle Age when Religion reigned supreme.

(PASO ROBLES, Calif.) - Protestants believe that because Catholicism is more Institutional it is a less Godly instrument of Truth than is Protestantism that relies more on the Bible as the Word of God, and less upon ceremony.

Mother was raised Protestant and when we attended a funeral Service in a Catholic Church and I knelt in unison with Catholics, mother ordered that I not do so. I rejected her scolding because I saw nothing wrong in doing in Rome what Romans do.

My personal beliefs were not affected, and eventually mother came around to my point of view.