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Authors: Daniele Bolelli

50 Things You're Not Supposed To Know: Religion (10 page)

BOOK: 50 Things You're Not Supposed To Know: Religion
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The Church's public relations department certainly botched their damage control operation. Instead of taking responsibility and trying to figure out concrete ways to prevent further abuses, the Church responded by blaming the media coverage that—according to them—had focused excessively on the issue. “
Protestants rape kids too
”
—they screamed loudly—
“
but
the big
,
bad media only focuses on the kids raped by us poor Catholics …
” Not exactly a sympathy-inducing argument. And just to add farce to tragedy, Catholic politicians like the former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum also blamed cultural relativism and sexual permissiveness for these events. The Church itself concluded that the 1960s’ liberal standards, feminism and a growing acceptance of homosexuality went hand in hand with a spike in priestly child abuse cases. The rapist priests—in other words—were just victims of the liberal culture that had caused people to question the Church and its sexual rules. Damned hippies… it was really all their fault.
 
Sinéad's critics, despite all their smug self-righteousness, were eventually silenced by the mountains of evidence indicating she had been right all along. But clearly they forgot to apologize with the same loudness with which they had attacked her. Not only had they been wrong about her being crazy, but they were also wrong about their portrayal of her as an anti-Catholic zealot. What everybody forgot in the midst of all the confusion was that Sinéad was herself Catholic. To be sure, she disagreed with much of what the Catholic Church had done, but she also believed Catholicism should be rescued by the hands of those who had hijacked it, and should be restored to its rightful glory. This is why she decided to be ordained by a dissident Catholic group that had broken away from the Church. Her mission—she said—was nothing less than rescuing God from religion.
 
Precisely because she loved what Catholicism could be, she could not tolerate what Catholicism had become. In a 2010 open letter to the pope, Sinéad was as unrepentant as ever. Without missing a beat from her picture-tearing days, she flat out told the pope he was a liar for pretending to be shocked by the scandal, when he had penned a letter to all Catholic bishops in the world reminding them that anyone refusing to take an oath of silence on the matter should be excommunicated. Boycotting the Church—she continued—would be the only way to force it to take responsibility, so that real healing could begin.
 
Speaking of one of her favorite heroines, Joan of Arc, Sinéad once said, “How you get to be a saint is you speak out against the Church, they murder you, and then a century later they make you a saint.” So, maybe there is still time for a Saint Sinéad. If not, she has my vote to become the next pope.
25 THE TRIAL OF THE ZOMBIE POPE
 
Nobody likes ending up in front of judge and jury being charged with serious crimes. The hero of our story, however, handled it like a pro. He didn't even move a muscle as the prosecution vilified him in every way. He didn't break a sweat, didn't tense up, and his heart rate didn't climb up at all. Few people in history ever maintained such emotional composure during a trial. The fact that he was already a corpse probably helped.
 
In case I forgot to mention it, he also happened to be the pope (or at least, he was when he still had a pulse). How did Pope Formosus (I swear I didn't make up the name) end up as a dead body on trial?
 
The year was 897 CE, and these were the days when powerful rival families battled each other to have one of their own elected as pope. Think of it as a Catholic version of
The Godfather
movies: intrigues, alliances, murder and dirty tricks were all fair game in this quest for the papacy. Apparently, these rivalries were so intense that they didn't end with death. So, when a certain Stephen VI became the new pope, he promptly had the body of his predecessor dug up and put on trial at the Basilica of St. John Lateran in Rome. After propping Formosus in a chair, Stephen read the charges against him: perjury, serving as bishop while a layman, and trying to usurp the papacy.
 
Ok, now, let's take a timeout. How does a dead man defend himself from the charges? A deacon was appointed to speak at the trial for the zombie pope, but he clearly didn't do such a good job since (surprise, surprise!) Formosus was found guilty—an outcome which only raises more questions. How exactly do you punish a corpse? What kind of sentence could you possibly impose? Sentencing him to death, in fact, may be a little redundant (I was about to say “overkill” but … ).
 
Stephen VI was a creative kind of guy so he had the corpse stripped of his papal clothes, had the three fingers he had used for blessings cut off, and declared all his acts invalid. As an added insult, the body was buried in a cemetery for foreigners.
 
But Pope Stephen quickly changed his mind. Since this episode was not quite macabre enough, Stephen ordered the body to be dug up again, tied with weights and thrown into the river.
 
And the story doesn't end here. Popular legends began to crop up all over Rome. The word on the streets was that the corpse of the zombie pope had emerged from the river and had begun performing miracles. Perhaps in an
effort to appease the apostolic living dead, the populace staged an uprising against Stephen, who was quickly imprisoned and strangled.
 
The next pope, Theodore II, had a plan to fix the situation. The corpse, which presumably had stopped performing miracles and was again behaving as corpses are legitimately supposed to behave, was to be reburied with honors in St. Peter's Basilica. And so it was. A couple of different later popes annulled the verdict of the trial (and one of them in his infinite wisdom prohibited further trials of corpses … just in case someone felt compelled to try this experiment again). But since any good story needs a sequel, another pope yet (Sergius III) reaffirmed the legitimacy of the zombie trial and, according to at least one source, had Formosus dug up and put on trial again, only to finish the job by chopping his head off and giving him a second dive into the river. Apparently, Pope Sergius III knew what all good zombie killers need to know: the only sure proof way to kill a zombie is decapitation.
26 KILL THE BUDDHA
 
Most religions are not too keen about people comparing their sacred literature to toilet paper or inviting us to murder their founders. Just consider how the Iranian religious authority sentenced Salman Rushdie to death because of a “blasphemous” novel, or how violence and hatred immediately followed the
publication of cartoons making fun of Muhammad, or how many people throughout history have been burned at the stake for not showing the proper respect to religious authorities. Examples of this kind abound enough as to easily convince us that most religions are a tad sensitive about criticisms.
 
In light of all this, let's take a look at this statement, “There are neither Buddhas nor Patriarchs; Bodhidharma [a legendary leader of Buddhism in China] was only an old bearded barbarian. Sakyamuni and Kasyapa, Manjusri and Samantabhadra [Buddha and some of his main disciples] are only dung-heap coolies … Nirvana and bodhi are dead stumps to tie your donkeys. The twelve divisions of the sacred teachings are only lists of ghosts, sheets of paper fit only for wiping the pus from your boils.”
 
Or let's try another one. “If you encounter anywhere anyone who impedes your vision, quickly get rid of them.
 
When you encounter a Buddha, kill the Buddha. When you encounter a Patriarch, kill the Patriarch.”
 
Or yet again, “Do not take the Buddha for the Ultimate … As I look at him, he is still like the hole in the privy. As to the Bodhisattvas and Arhats, they are all … chains to keep you in bondage.”
 
If these types of statements don't raise the blood pressure of Buddhists across the globe, I don't know what would. It seems very logical that the Buddhist world would explode in anger and quickly raise a call for the heads of those who dared to speak so disrespectfully. But this is where the story gets complicated. The author of the first quote, in fact, was Hsuan Chien, a famous Buddhist teacher from the 9th century, whereas the author of the second and third quotes was Lin Chi, one of the most influential Buddhist masters in the history of Zen in China.
 
If you are confused, you are probably not alone. People of different religions regularly talk trash about each other's beliefs, but why would a Buddhist say such things? In the face of so many of their contemporaries turning Buddha into an object of worship, Hsuan Chien and Lin Chi were simply reminding their audience that the goal of Buddhism is not to pray to Buddha, but to become a Buddha yourself. You don't honor Buddha—these guys reasoned—by
turning his teachings into a stiff dogma. You honor him by following in his footsteps, developing your own insight and becoming enlightened through your own efforts. Buddhist teachings are but maps to guide you on your journey. Worshipping the map or its author never helped any traveler find her destination.
 
Buddha's own teachings, after all, emphasized independent inquiry and personal experience over doctrine and strict rules. So, in an odd kind of way, Lin Chi and Hsuan Chien's words were paying homage to Buddha. Their quarrel was not with Buddha himself, but with those Buddhists who were missing the point. Their words were a shock tactic to shake people. Excessive devotion—they believed—is an obstacle to the freedom needed to find yourself, which is the true heart of Buddhism. It's too easy to deify someone else, build altars and drop on your knees praying Buddha for salvation. Get off your ass instead—Lin Chi and Hsuan Chien argued—and work for your own salvation, since neither gods nor buddhas can do it for you.
 
For the sake of honesty, it's worth mentioning that Lin Chi and Hsuan Chien's radical views scandalized many Buddhists. Already back in the 9th century, other Chinese Buddhist masters were horrified by what they perceived as heresy. But whereas within many other religions this conflict would have sparked holy wars, here it was simply dismissed as a difference of opinions.
And so we are left with a religion in which those inviting people to metaphorically kill their founder are as famous and respected as those who spent their lives devoutly praying to his statues.
27 HOW TO GET MONEY AND SEX BY STARTING A RELIGIOUS CULT
 
Ok, girls and boys, today we'll study the blueprint to get mountains of sex and money by starting a religious cult.
 
Just to make sure you are suited for the job, let's go through some of the prerequisites: first, you need to be an awful human being who doesn't have the tiniest scruple about preying on the weak. In case you find this first step difficult, at the very least you need to be narcissistic and self-delusional enough as to overcome any moral restraint you may have by convincing yourself that you are not really exploiting your followers, but acting for their own good: turning them into your sex slaves is just a way to help them get over their hang ups; pushing them to donate all their wealth to you is a way to teach them to overcome attachments to the material world so they can become more spiritual …
 
If you can get through this, you need to have an intense personality and a commanding presence. In the cult game, personal charisma is half the battle.
 
No one will give you the keys to their lives if you sound like a monotone version of their third grade math teacher.
BOOK: 50 Things You're Not Supposed To Know: Religion
8.16Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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