stripping the gurus - Brahma Kumaris Info

SODOMY AND GOMORRAH 265
[B]ack in the 1950s if you ate meat on Friday, did not wear a
hat or veil to church, or ate breakfast before Communion,
you could burn in hell for these sins (in Boston Globe, 2003).
Oral sex and “eating meat,” out. Hats on, and thou shalt not
spill thy seed upon the ground. And yet—
Dr. William Masters found that ninety-eight out of the hundred
priests he surveyed were masturbating (Wills, 2000).
And you just know they’re sneaking food before Communion,
too!
[A]ll sensual indulgence was lumped together [in the Decalogue,
i.e., the Ten Commandments] under the prohibition
against “coveting thy neighbor’s wife,” an approach which
made gluttony, laziness, and drunkenness directly sexual offenses—offenses
where, according to Catholic moralists of
the old school ... all sins were automatically grave or “mortal.”
I knew a scrupulous young man who was literally driven
mad by this line of thought (Wills, 1972).
Are the lives of residents further being wholly given over to
the organization? Do they work long days with no time left over to
question the teachings or reflect on the consequences of their own
actions, having little contact with outside ideas? Evidently so:
The nuns lived minutely regulated lives, their waking hours
crammed with communal prayers, devotional exercises, care
of the convent and sacristy, a heavy teaching load, the training
of children for first communion (or May procession, or
confirmation), rehearsing of the choir and coaching of altar
boys.... They were not often allowed out of the convent—not
even to visit libraries (Wills, 1972).
Repetitive, hypnotic chanting? Yes, yes, yes:
[Church] rites have great authority; they hypnotize. Not
least by their Latinity. It is not certain, philologists say, that
“hocus-pocus” is derived from “Hoc est Corpus” in the Mass;
but the Latin phrases, often rhythmed, said in litanies and
lists of saints’ names, replicated, coming at us in antiphonies
and triple cries (Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus), had a witchery
in them, to hush or compel us as by incantation (Wills, 1972).