stripping the gurus - Brahma Kumaris Info

SODOMY AND GOMORRAH 259
singled out and favored by the Almighty.... Higher authority
figures are regarded with a mixture of fear and awe by all
below them. The circles of power are closed, the tightest being
among those existing among bishops.... Secrecy provides
a layer of insulation between the one in authority and anyone
who might be tempted to question its exercise (Doyle,
2003).
Freedom to question the teachings? Please.
The French Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was so reviled
by the Holy Office for his vision of a spirituality in harmony
with human evolution that his major works, which have
reached millions of readers, were suppressed in his lifetime.
Karl Rahner, who argued that theology should develop in the
spirit of a time, and Yves Congar, who emphasized the role of
laypeople in an evolving church, were marginalized in the
1950s by Pius XII, who had no use for their views (Berry and
Renner, 2004).
Under the same intellectual oppression, de Chardin was actually
given the choice of either being exiled to the United States, or
living under surveillance in a retreat house; he chose the former.
One American Jesuit compared that treatment of Teilhard, and of
others who had been influenced by his work, to a “Stalinist purge”
(Cornwell, 1999).
By doctrine, it was still [in the 1950s and early ’60s, prior to
the Vatican II council] a sin to read any book on the [Index
Librorum Prohibitorum] list, including Voltaire, Rousseau,
Kant, and especially Darwin (Sennott, 1992).
[T]he Anti-Modernist Oath, [enacted by Pope Pius X in 1910
and] sworn to this day in modified form by Catholic ordinands
... required acceptance of all papal teaching, and acquiescence
at all times to the meaning and sense of such
teaching as dictated by the pope.... There was no possibility
of any form of dissent, even interior. The conscience of the
person taking the oath was forced to accept not only what
Rome proposed, but even the sense in which Rome interpreted
it. Not only was this contrary to the traditional Catholic
understanding of the role of conscience, but it was a form of
thought control that was unrivalled even under fascist and
communist regimes (Cornwell, 1999; italics added).