^ Did not mean to eclipse HH's more important/relevant post above with my spam.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Now you tell me how many Hindus tried to figure out what Islam was all about???
They did not!! Period.
And in it is their failure.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->While I agree with other points made, am in disagreement with the myopic view on 'Indians/Hindus alone' here. To be fair, if true, the blindness occurs not just with the Hindus.
The same is a problem of all Dharmic religions - within and without India - in fact all Natural Traditions. You can see the same fundamental inability to recognise the ideology of <i>christianism</i> itself behind all the terrorism, among Native Americans, Africans, other Asians (minus the Japanese somewhat, but they too seem to have <i>generally</i> dubbed all of christianism as little more than 'alien/western imperialism').
Each mounted a cultural/civilisational 'defence' against the outward symptoms of christianism, but never christianism itself. Even if nearing the end they were able to trace some of it to christianism, like the Native Americans at one point - going by what I think I recall having read.
Every one of them was unable to see that christianism's war is with paganism alone (and more crucially, with the most pagan elements of paganism: that which cannot be assimilated. E.g. philosophy at least can always get separated/extracted from the main body of religio-tradition and assimilated, even if christianism needs to kill the philosophers themselves to do it).
I make an exception for the (Greco)Romans because they *knew* ideological subterfuge, ideological warfare really well. Even then, they recognised it too late in the christian phenomenon,
1. since the masquerade was too different. It made itself look like religion and yet it was not. It made itself look like one of their own familiar traditions and yet it was not (even though they saw it appropriating from their religion in front of their very eyes). This facade is what threw the Romans.
But more than that, Rome's failure was because:
2. The intolerant ideology meme is something that Natural Traditionalist societies have never really encountered and hence they have no appreciation for the full impact of what it means to their lives. Natural Traditionalists <i>simply do not get it</i>. (It is a different matter that today it has become a way of life in the world.) It takes time to see through it, and frequently requires pattern recognition - and patterns require more data than one's own context.
The same is true for Hindus of the older age as they faced Islam over centuries: Dharmic Bharatam was a virgin to the experience of the intolerant meme. And even when they faced off against it in physical combat, they may never have understood what drove it because of (1) again: the masquerade of 'religion' (it is in fact a general Natural Traditionalist maxim that takes for granted that all 'religions' are religions, even 'equal' religions - you see this among older Daoists as well).
This is a problem with Natural Traditions: believing in some fundamental goodness and similarity with all other 'religions' of the world. So they take no interest in learning <i>why</i> the terrorist meme does what it does. Why the ruthlessness, why the genocide, why going out of the way to convert-or-kill people in some distant land who are minding their own business.
To the terrorist memes, territorial, monetary and other proprietary gains were always secondary. It is ideology - the drive of their non-existent gawd to deliver him the unsaved kaffirs - that is the sole cause, as Bodhi has stated. But ideology is invisible, only the symptoms (genocide) is visible and it is easy to not look beyond the horrific, eye-catching sordidness of christoislamism's actual effects.
Note that converts have even more powerful blinkers on: e.g. christian African Americans, christian Philipinos, christian S Americans. Where these finally recognise being oppressed and shortchanged by "imperialism" or "European christians", all still excuse christianism completely.
Among Natural Traditionalists, the naivete accompanying their shallow understanding of other religions is followed by christianism's PR. Then the Natural Traditionalists are christoconditioned so that christianism itself is beyond their touch (invisible) OR they even start doing christian apologetics themselves:
All modern Indian excuses such as "jesus himself was good, it is christians that have given him/christianism a bad name", "pauline christianism is where things went wrong", Radha Rajan's "church (is the problem)", blablalala - it's all the same manifestation of christianism's inbuilt protectionism. This protectionism also includes the foolish "people should not hurt minority sentiments". AKA secularism. Christianism's use of brainwashing into secularism is as nigh as old as christianism in Rome. And at least as lethal today.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Al-Biruni, the companion of Mahmood Gaznavi in 11th century wrote one whole book
about the Hindus, and covered besides other things, a very detailed
understanding on Hindus religion, culture and philosophy.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Their study of the heathen is nothing new. It is an essential operating practice of the intolerant illegitimate ideologies that they would microscopically study the natural traditions. Christianism does this all the time: in every soil where it wants to plant the cross, it first studies the native traditions, the traditional societal structure, the languages (for translation, for meddling, for appropriating). Everything is examined in detail but with christo-conditioning, to understand how it works, to understand its weaknesses, etcetera. And <i>why</i> they do it is also obvious: for replacement. Replacement theology. They learn all about the enemy in order to eradicate and replace it in the easiest and most complete manner. That is what, for example, inculturation is all about as well.
IMO, there is one man (actually his whole band) that Hindus must emulate. He understood christianism very well, and to this day Hindus do not understand the full extent of christianism - let alone the complex satellite problems it raises - the way he did. (In fact, until reading about his views on certain matters, I never even thought about these spin-offs of the terrorist memetic family of mindviruses. No Indian intellectual has ever mentioned them, nor even western intellectuals for that matter, even where they were documenting his views.)
People should *really* read up on Julian's stance on christianism. It is very hard to track all his views, because he expressly dissembled on this in public: he was absolutely dead set against christianism, but was careful not to show it in public - not by recognisable discrimination or disfavour, let alone persecution. He did not reveal the full scope of his intentions or the means by which he sought to achieve them (all the steps to checkmate). Even his works exposing christianism were only half his hand - the rest of the mindset behind it when writing or commissioning such works can only be deduced from what's set down in his works by retracing backwards from the ideas he wanted to instill in the empire's populace. This dissembling he employed is actually *christianism's* way in a pagan country of course: the pretence that it is secular while systematically destroying the local tradition. He learnt the subterfuge to apply against christianism from christianism itself: christianism had employed it before it was sufficiently in power, same as it is doing now in Bharatam.
Forget the (non)example of others. When it comes to christianism, neither Kelsos' arguments nor those of Porphyrius will help (on their own) because they are insufficient. The jeebus myth is here. To fight it, one needs to move even beyond their arguments and means.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->If you want to immitate your forefathers, you will fare no better than they did.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Am a bit confused. What religion did this other person's forefathers belong to (assuming they're not the same as Bodhi's)?
Bodhi is missing that practically all the forefathers of all pagans were equally clueless. And IMO studying Indian history (or the islamic/christian study of Hindus) is not enough. The problem to our continued non-comprehension is that, just as our religions do not compute with christoislamism, neither do theirs compute with ours.
The intolerant meme is alien to our understanding: even mere studying does not help, it takes concentration and a wallowing in the meme's mental filth to understand its workings, its motivations and to pinpoint its driving forces. (The retrovirus' strands are full of self-preservatory obfuscation "junk" sequences that throw people off the scent.)
Even then there's little hope of a full understanding among heathens. In fact, it is no longer a wonder that Hindus still have not learnt much/all of it. It takes a whole retraining of thought to be able to understand the terrorist christoclass mindvirus (its objectives, its drive and its manifestations) let alone to recognise (that it is christianism behind) its symptoms - forget coming up with a counter, which is even further beyond us.
Our understanding must come from people like Ishwar Sharan who can do the translation from what christianism believes into a manner that hopefully we may be able to digest.
If Hindus want to win, they should study in detail the level of comprehension of christianism, motives and methods of those 'pagans' that understood christianism and tried to formulate a proper response to it. To this day, Julianus' mode of counter-warfare stands uncontested (of course I mean the <i>historical</i> Julian, obviously not the trivialised and trite fiction from Gore Vidal's book of the same name). The man cannot be out-thought on this (though he credits his Helios for the brilliance, and perseverance he showed, and for his drive).
The church knew this only too well. Thought I wrote this before, but it bears repeating: the church <i>shrieked</i> (still shrieks inwardly, where it does not hide it behind strenuously pretended disinterest) on encountering the memory of Julian. IIRC, one can also read about this christian response to him at christianism.com. (I'll try to see if I can confirm this on their pages, but I'd frequently come across the same view in various places, and it is borne out by observation of Julian's efforts as well: one cannot fail to notice it for oneself.)
<i>Ideological</i> warfare with islamism is several orders of magnitude easier than the one with christianism. When Hindus devise and implement a proper solution vis-a-vis christianism, the same can be modified to attack islamism at the core. Of course there is the physical component as well, which in the case of islam certainly (and christianism probably) might not be entirely avoided.
An example of the extreme <i>extent</i> of christianism which Hindus to this day will fail to recognise (out of disbelief). In fact, it's not actually any 'extreme' of christianism that is being described here, it is its centre of gravity:
excerpt taken from christianism.com -
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->from: The Papacy and Fascism, F.A. Ridley [1897 -], Martin Secker Warburg, <b>1937</b> (AMS Press reprint 1973).
[for the tip to F.A. Ridley and Fascism, I thank Fred Whitehead (347)].
[for F.A. Ridley, see: 100 Years of Freethought, David Tribe, 1967, 165-168].
Excursus: from: Vision and Realism, A hundred years of the Freethinker, Jim Herrick, 1982.
'Ridley was an established writer by the time he became editor of the Freethinker, having published books such as The Papacy and Fascism (1937), The Evolution of the Papacy (published by the Pioneer Press, an imprint of G.W. Foote & Co.), and Revolutionary Tradition in England. He was political and scholarly, having been expelled from the Trotskyites by Trotsky himself, and being a familiar figure in the British Museum Reading Room. His short period as editor [(after Chapman Cohen [editor 1915 -1951]) 1951-1954] and President was due to his temperamental preference for writing and research to administration and organisation.
Ridley brought to his Freethinker writing a belief that the Roman Catholic Church was the most powerful enemy of progress and reason, and that freethought should not lose sight of its essentially radical tradition. He also brought a global perspective, writing about Islam, Eastern Europe and Africa. (He was a personal friend of Jomo Kenyatta.)....
After writing of the "drift towards an atomic holocaust", he turned to the Roman Catholic Church:
<!--QuoteBegin--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>At the Vatican, they take long views. One must not confound temporary tactics of accommodation with their long term fundamental strategy. Beyond all its manoeuvres dictated by circumstances of an age of rapid change, the papacy pursues a single and constant aim with a single-minded and ruthless zeal</b>: the destruction of modern secular civilisation and the re-introduction of medieval ways of life. <b>In the new Dark Age, in which science would have committed suicide, Rome would once again reign as of old over a medieval theocracy, and heretics and Atheists would have but the choice, which was theirs for a thousand years, to obey or die.</b>
  (1 January, 1950.)' [102-103].<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->Exactly. Hindus will like to linger in disbelief. Doesn't it all seem so unreal, so unlikely. (Really, and what would Hindus know?)
But similar conclusions are presented by others who know the holy monopoly church the most intimately: such as former Franciscan monk Joseph McCabe, Italian Roman Catholic Avro Manhattan (who said something like: 'the Vatican thinks and moves in centuries. She can wait.' I believe he wrote this in an introduction to a piece on the catholic church vs orthodoxy)
"Vatican Imperialism in the 20th Century" (1965), Avro Manhattan - a (former) Roman Catholic himself:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>The Vatican against the Orthodox Church</b>
GIANTS ACT like giants, hence their undertakings are on a gigantic scale. Years are reckoned by decades, decades by centuries. Geographical areas are made to embrace nations or even continents, while the histories of institutions and of races are seen in perspectives not easily comprehended. Because of this, their actions, being in harmony with their extraordinary magnitude, will escape the notice of individuals unable to size up the vast historical panoramas which, although clearly scrutinizable by retinas of gigantic forms, yet are partly blurred and often wholly invisible to others.
<b>The Catholic Church, the greatest surviving giant in the world, is a colossus with no peer in antiquity, experience and above all, in her determination to dominate the human race.</b> To reach such a goal, she will suffer no rivals, tolerate no competitors, put up with no enemies.
Giants who, like her, were found roaming in the deep valley of history, she fought with bloody claws and a ruthlessness to shame the Attillas, the Genghis Khans and all the other scourgers of civilization. Many she led to their destruction; others she subjugated for good; some were annihilated, but some resisted and escaped all her guiles. More than one survived, and even fought relentless battles that echoed with sanguinary echoes in the corridors of the centuries and that are still being fought as ferociously as in olden times, now, in the very midst of the twentieth century.
Vatican diplomacy is the oldest diplomacy in the world. Most of those it fought were either shrunk to nothing by time or blotted out by history, and to modern ears all its multifarious intrigues would sound as hollow and as unreal as they have become strangely unrelated to the ever-bewildering events of our day.
Yet not all the ancient foes of the Vatican have been reduced to mere landmarks of the past. Some have bridged bygone centuries to the present, and one of them, the most formidable of all, the Orthodox Church, a peer to Catholicism in antiquity, is as much a reality in our time as is the Vatican itself.
[...]
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Now you tell me how many Hindus tried to figure out what Islam was all about???
They did not!! Period.
And in it is their failure.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->While I agree with other points made, am in disagreement with the myopic view on 'Indians/Hindus alone' here. To be fair, if true, the blindness occurs not just with the Hindus.
The same is a problem of all Dharmic religions - within and without India - in fact all Natural Traditions. You can see the same fundamental inability to recognise the ideology of <i>christianism</i> itself behind all the terrorism, among Native Americans, Africans, other Asians (minus the Japanese somewhat, but they too seem to have <i>generally</i> dubbed all of christianism as little more than 'alien/western imperialism').
Each mounted a cultural/civilisational 'defence' against the outward symptoms of christianism, but never christianism itself. Even if nearing the end they were able to trace some of it to christianism, like the Native Americans at one point - going by what I think I recall having read.
Every one of them was unable to see that christianism's war is with paganism alone (and more crucially, with the most pagan elements of paganism: that which cannot be assimilated. E.g. philosophy at least can always get separated/extracted from the main body of religio-tradition and assimilated, even if christianism needs to kill the philosophers themselves to do it).
I make an exception for the (Greco)Romans because they *knew* ideological subterfuge, ideological warfare really well. Even then, they recognised it too late in the christian phenomenon,
1. since the masquerade was too different. It made itself look like religion and yet it was not. It made itself look like one of their own familiar traditions and yet it was not (even though they saw it appropriating from their religion in front of their very eyes). This facade is what threw the Romans.
But more than that, Rome's failure was because:
2. The intolerant ideology meme is something that Natural Traditionalist societies have never really encountered and hence they have no appreciation for the full impact of what it means to their lives. Natural Traditionalists <i>simply do not get it</i>. (It is a different matter that today it has become a way of life in the world.) It takes time to see through it, and frequently requires pattern recognition - and patterns require more data than one's own context.
The same is true for Hindus of the older age as they faced Islam over centuries: Dharmic Bharatam was a virgin to the experience of the intolerant meme. And even when they faced off against it in physical combat, they may never have understood what drove it because of (1) again: the masquerade of 'religion' (it is in fact a general Natural Traditionalist maxim that takes for granted that all 'religions' are religions, even 'equal' religions - you see this among older Daoists as well).
This is a problem with Natural Traditions: believing in some fundamental goodness and similarity with all other 'religions' of the world. So they take no interest in learning <i>why</i> the terrorist meme does what it does. Why the ruthlessness, why the genocide, why going out of the way to convert-or-kill people in some distant land who are minding their own business.
To the terrorist memes, territorial, monetary and other proprietary gains were always secondary. It is ideology - the drive of their non-existent gawd to deliver him the unsaved kaffirs - that is the sole cause, as Bodhi has stated. But ideology is invisible, only the symptoms (genocide) is visible and it is easy to not look beyond the horrific, eye-catching sordidness of christoislamism's actual effects.
Note that converts have even more powerful blinkers on: e.g. christian African Americans, christian Philipinos, christian S Americans. Where these finally recognise being oppressed and shortchanged by "imperialism" or "European christians", all still excuse christianism completely.
Among Natural Traditionalists, the naivete accompanying their shallow understanding of other religions is followed by christianism's PR. Then the Natural Traditionalists are christoconditioned so that christianism itself is beyond their touch (invisible) OR they even start doing christian apologetics themselves:
All modern Indian excuses such as "jesus himself was good, it is christians that have given him/christianism a bad name", "pauline christianism is where things went wrong", Radha Rajan's "church (is the problem)", blablalala - it's all the same manifestation of christianism's inbuilt protectionism. This protectionism also includes the foolish "people should not hurt minority sentiments". AKA secularism. Christianism's use of brainwashing into secularism is as nigh as old as christianism in Rome. And at least as lethal today.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Al-Biruni, the companion of Mahmood Gaznavi in 11th century wrote one whole book
about the Hindus, and covered besides other things, a very detailed
understanding on Hindus religion, culture and philosophy.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Their study of the heathen is nothing new. It is an essential operating practice of the intolerant illegitimate ideologies that they would microscopically study the natural traditions. Christianism does this all the time: in every soil where it wants to plant the cross, it first studies the native traditions, the traditional societal structure, the languages (for translation, for meddling, for appropriating). Everything is examined in detail but with christo-conditioning, to understand how it works, to understand its weaknesses, etcetera. And <i>why</i> they do it is also obvious: for replacement. Replacement theology. They learn all about the enemy in order to eradicate and replace it in the easiest and most complete manner. That is what, for example, inculturation is all about as well.
IMO, there is one man (actually his whole band) that Hindus must emulate. He understood christianism very well, and to this day Hindus do not understand the full extent of christianism - let alone the complex satellite problems it raises - the way he did. (In fact, until reading about his views on certain matters, I never even thought about these spin-offs of the terrorist memetic family of mindviruses. No Indian intellectual has ever mentioned them, nor even western intellectuals for that matter, even where they were documenting his views.)
People should *really* read up on Julian's stance on christianism. It is very hard to track all his views, because he expressly dissembled on this in public: he was absolutely dead set against christianism, but was careful not to show it in public - not by recognisable discrimination or disfavour, let alone persecution. He did not reveal the full scope of his intentions or the means by which he sought to achieve them (all the steps to checkmate). Even his works exposing christianism were only half his hand - the rest of the mindset behind it when writing or commissioning such works can only be deduced from what's set down in his works by retracing backwards from the ideas he wanted to instill in the empire's populace. This dissembling he employed is actually *christianism's* way in a pagan country of course: the pretence that it is secular while systematically destroying the local tradition. He learnt the subterfuge to apply against christianism from christianism itself: christianism had employed it before it was sufficiently in power, same as it is doing now in Bharatam.
Forget the (non)example of others. When it comes to christianism, neither Kelsos' arguments nor those of Porphyrius will help (on their own) because they are insufficient. The jeebus myth is here. To fight it, one needs to move even beyond their arguments and means.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->If you want to immitate your forefathers, you will fare no better than they did.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Am a bit confused. What religion did this other person's forefathers belong to (assuming they're not the same as Bodhi's)?
Bodhi is missing that practically all the forefathers of all pagans were equally clueless. And IMO studying Indian history (or the islamic/christian study of Hindus) is not enough. The problem to our continued non-comprehension is that, just as our religions do not compute with christoislamism, neither do theirs compute with ours.
The intolerant meme is alien to our understanding: even mere studying does not help, it takes concentration and a wallowing in the meme's mental filth to understand its workings, its motivations and to pinpoint its driving forces. (The retrovirus' strands are full of self-preservatory obfuscation "junk" sequences that throw people off the scent.)
Even then there's little hope of a full understanding among heathens. In fact, it is no longer a wonder that Hindus still have not learnt much/all of it. It takes a whole retraining of thought to be able to understand the terrorist christoclass mindvirus (its objectives, its drive and its manifestations) let alone to recognise (that it is christianism behind) its symptoms - forget coming up with a counter, which is even further beyond us.
Our understanding must come from people like Ishwar Sharan who can do the translation from what christianism believes into a manner that hopefully we may be able to digest.
If Hindus want to win, they should study in detail the level of comprehension of christianism, motives and methods of those 'pagans' that understood christianism and tried to formulate a proper response to it. To this day, Julianus' mode of counter-warfare stands uncontested (of course I mean the <i>historical</i> Julian, obviously not the trivialised and trite fiction from Gore Vidal's book of the same name). The man cannot be out-thought on this (though he credits his Helios for the brilliance, and perseverance he showed, and for his drive).
The church knew this only too well. Thought I wrote this before, but it bears repeating: the church <i>shrieked</i> (still shrieks inwardly, where it does not hide it behind strenuously pretended disinterest) on encountering the memory of Julian. IIRC, one can also read about this christian response to him at christianism.com. (I'll try to see if I can confirm this on their pages, but I'd frequently come across the same view in various places, and it is borne out by observation of Julian's efforts as well: one cannot fail to notice it for oneself.)
<i>Ideological</i> warfare with islamism is several orders of magnitude easier than the one with christianism. When Hindus devise and implement a proper solution vis-a-vis christianism, the same can be modified to attack islamism at the core. Of course there is the physical component as well, which in the case of islam certainly (and christianism probably) might not be entirely avoided.
An example of the extreme <i>extent</i> of christianism which Hindus to this day will fail to recognise (out of disbelief). In fact, it's not actually any 'extreme' of christianism that is being described here, it is its centre of gravity:
excerpt taken from christianism.com -
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->from: The Papacy and Fascism, F.A. Ridley [1897 -], Martin Secker Warburg, <b>1937</b> (AMS Press reprint 1973).
[for the tip to F.A. Ridley and Fascism, I thank Fred Whitehead (347)].
[for F.A. Ridley, see: 100 Years of Freethought, David Tribe, 1967, 165-168].
Excursus: from: Vision and Realism, A hundred years of the Freethinker, Jim Herrick, 1982.
'Ridley was an established writer by the time he became editor of the Freethinker, having published books such as The Papacy and Fascism (1937), The Evolution of the Papacy (published by the Pioneer Press, an imprint of G.W. Foote & Co.), and Revolutionary Tradition in England. He was political and scholarly, having been expelled from the Trotskyites by Trotsky himself, and being a familiar figure in the British Museum Reading Room. His short period as editor [(after Chapman Cohen [editor 1915 -1951]) 1951-1954] and President was due to his temperamental preference for writing and research to administration and organisation.
Ridley brought to his Freethinker writing a belief that the Roman Catholic Church was the most powerful enemy of progress and reason, and that freethought should not lose sight of its essentially radical tradition. He also brought a global perspective, writing about Islam, Eastern Europe and Africa. (He was a personal friend of Jomo Kenyatta.)....
After writing of the "drift towards an atomic holocaust", he turned to the Roman Catholic Church:
<!--QuoteBegin--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>At the Vatican, they take long views. One must not confound temporary tactics of accommodation with their long term fundamental strategy. Beyond all its manoeuvres dictated by circumstances of an age of rapid change, the papacy pursues a single and constant aim with a single-minded and ruthless zeal</b>: the destruction of modern secular civilisation and the re-introduction of medieval ways of life. <b>In the new Dark Age, in which science would have committed suicide, Rome would once again reign as of old over a medieval theocracy, and heretics and Atheists would have but the choice, which was theirs for a thousand years, to obey or die.</b>
  (1 January, 1950.)' [102-103].<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->Exactly. Hindus will like to linger in disbelief. Doesn't it all seem so unreal, so unlikely. (Really, and what would Hindus know?)
But similar conclusions are presented by others who know the holy monopoly church the most intimately: such as former Franciscan monk Joseph McCabe, Italian Roman Catholic Avro Manhattan (who said something like: 'the Vatican thinks and moves in centuries. She can wait.' I believe he wrote this in an introduction to a piece on the catholic church vs orthodoxy)
"Vatican Imperialism in the 20th Century" (1965), Avro Manhattan - a (former) Roman Catholic himself:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>The Vatican against the Orthodox Church</b>
GIANTS ACT like giants, hence their undertakings are on a gigantic scale. Years are reckoned by decades, decades by centuries. Geographical areas are made to embrace nations or even continents, while the histories of institutions and of races are seen in perspectives not easily comprehended. Because of this, their actions, being in harmony with their extraordinary magnitude, will escape the notice of individuals unable to size up the vast historical panoramas which, although clearly scrutinizable by retinas of gigantic forms, yet are partly blurred and often wholly invisible to others.
<b>The Catholic Church, the greatest surviving giant in the world, is a colossus with no peer in antiquity, experience and above all, in her determination to dominate the human race.</b> To reach such a goal, she will suffer no rivals, tolerate no competitors, put up with no enemies.
Giants who, like her, were found roaming in the deep valley of history, she fought with bloody claws and a ruthlessness to shame the Attillas, the Genghis Khans and all the other scourgers of civilization. Many she led to their destruction; others she subjugated for good; some were annihilated, but some resisted and escaped all her guiles. More than one survived, and even fought relentless battles that echoed with sanguinary echoes in the corridors of the centuries and that are still being fought as ferociously as in olden times, now, in the very midst of the twentieth century.
Vatican diplomacy is the oldest diplomacy in the world. Most of those it fought were either shrunk to nothing by time or blotted out by history, and to modern ears all its multifarious intrigues would sound as hollow and as unreal as they have become strangely unrelated to the ever-bewildering events of our day.
Yet not all the ancient foes of the Vatican have been reduced to mere landmarks of the past. Some have bridged bygone centuries to the present, and one of them, the most formidable of all, the Orthodox Church, a peer to Catholicism in antiquity, is as much a reality in our time as is the Vatican itself.
[...]
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->