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The etymology for “heretic” is “choice”—a heretic is someone who thinks there should be a choice. Hence you see the connection between Christianity and Communism—the Communists said you could only drive two or three state-approved car brands, and you couldn’t start your own car brand; and the Christians said that you could only drive the Catholic Church for 1,000 years. It’s the same situation.
It’s why there’s this paradoxical element to the right, why the right, despite being for established religion and propriety, can also seem “evil”. It’s because the right asserts you should have a choice—latterly, this is mainly about free-market economics, but it could also mean the choice to segregate yourself in a suburb that is racially homogenous.
The right basically, as noted many times, defends the rituals and rites—it isn’t actually very interested in the content of the religion, so long as it doesn’t break any laws or outrage obvious social standards. It’s the left—from St. Augustine to Cromwell—that cares about the belief.
Cromwell, Augustine, Lenin—they’re all about the belief, they’re total fanatics, total black/white thinkers. It’s saved/damned, worker/capitalist, racist/anti-racist and if you’re not with us then you’re against us, as both Jesus and Lenin observed. This is fanaticism—and the implication is that everyone should be knitted into a single tribe, like the Hebrews, from whence these beliefs emerge, where nobody is allowed to be prominent and all decisions are consensus-based.
The right always inclines, ultimately, towards an aristocratic and monarchical paganism where the head of state is the head of the national religion—when Cromwell said “Christ is king”, that was a very Hebrew statement; and it’s the same as when Lenin said, in effect, “the historical process of economic development is king”. No room for individual choice there.
Hence figures like Margaret Thatcher, who was probably a literal witch, Margaret being a name associated with witchcraft, though they defend the established Church always seem somehow “anti-Christian” or demonic or Satanic—and, in a paradoxical way, are heretical even as they defend the established order.
Thatcher clashed with the Church of England hierarchy—because the Church is basically socialist, and Thatcher’s policies were harsh and “pagan” (in fairness, Christians are also harsh but in a different way, a way that self-lacerates and weakens—not in a way that builds Canary Wharf).
So the right always inclines back to paganism, and what it defends in Christianity is its established nature, its rites and rituals, and not the content—if you take the content of Christianity seriously you turn into a man like Cromwell, or like the Ranters and the Levellers, and that’s just a proto-socialist, you want to lay low the mighty and make all men equal before the LORD.
And that’s why the right often seems “Satanic”, “witchy”, “sinister”, and “anti-Christian”—because the left is not interested in the forms of Christianity or the established Church, but they are interested in the Christian ethic and the spirit of Christianity, albeit in a secularised way; and so the left is closer to what Christianity really is, in spirit, and, indeed, liberals today will even say that the right are not being “real Christians” (that is an ambiguous statement, but I understand what they mean—after all, in the final analysis, Trump and Thatcher are proud people, Luciferian).
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A while ago, I put down a few words about Santiago de Compostela in Spain. This site, a large cathedral, came about because a shepherd saw a mobile star rise up from the ground over what turned out to be an Etruscan-Roman graveyard—a mobile supernatural star-like entity, as I saw at Hartsfell. When the site under the star was dug up, it turned out there was a body there—and it was said that this was the body of St. James. The site became a major shrine, pilgrimage site, and cathedral—and, in the end, was invoked in the liberation of Spain from the Moors.
Now, if you read St. Augustine “lights in the sky” are Satanic—that is “the Devil”. He ignores the fact that the Magi followed a mobile star to find Jesus, used astrology to do so—and just condemns “lights in the sky” and astrology. In the former case, there’s no real justification—it might be due to Revelation, but knowing St. Augustine’s psychology, which was totally emotional, he probably met someone he liked who said “lights in the sky are from the Devil” and that decided it for him.
Now that shepherd who saw the light in the field (the field of the star) was damned lucky that the bishop he told that story to either hadn’t read Augustine or didn’t take Augustine very seriously—because the superficial interpretation of what he saw, based on Augustine, would be “traffic with the Devil”. He could well have been burned as a Satanist—based on the words of St. Augustine, who was an extremely ignorant man who just had total belief in what he said.
So that man was lucky, really—because the superficial read on what he saw was “evil”. Yet, apparently, the Church was fine with this particular “light in the sky”; and, in fact, decided to turn the site into a cathedral and a major patron for the warriors of Spain—and it is a major pilgrimage site down to this day (in fact, it was a major pilgrimage site in pagan times—the graveyard was Roman-Etruscan, and that light in the sky, if it was anything, was a pagan god; and perhaps nobody really understands these lights, they just clothe them differently as the generations pass).
Well, you see my point—the Church is inconsistent, but if you forge your own path, point out the obvious hypocrisy, and so exercise choice, you become a heretic; and that is so even if the Church’s own decisions don’t make sense—“the Church never errs”, official doctrine (“to err is human”—ergo, the Church isn’t human; and yet it seems to make some very human errors…).
To me, it’s obvious that the Church doesn’t really know what it’s talking about—and, being based on almost blind belief and the doctrine that you may lie to defend the faith, doesn’t care. And that might be okay, except that one man might be burned for seeing “lights in the sky” (traffic with the Devil) and another might be credited with the discovery of a saint.
In a similar vein, Augustine condemns people who see “angels of light”—which is almost always Satan in disguise. Hence poor old Joseph Smith saw Satan—that’s for sure. I’ve never seen an angel of light, which I take to mean a man-like entity with wings surrounded by supernatural light, though I have seen various supernatural globes of light, which I once suggested might be angels but are probably technically gods or intermediate spiritual entities; and so could only be seen as angels in metaphoric terms.
Anyway, the same difficulties apply—because in the history of the Church various people have claimed to see angels, or the Virgin Mary, and been extolled for it; and whether they were extolled or condemned basically depended on whether they were in good odour with the Church, an organisation based on ignorance and lies.
Perhaps a more sober and less fanatical view, one more committed to the discovery of the truth, so far as we are able to, would be better—because, as it stands, it’s based on hypocrisy.
I think, as many people do, that the Catholic Church is part of the system of the AntiChrist—and always has been. This organisation destroys truth—right back to the start when it squashed the opinion of Origen that reincarnation was how the soul progresses through the world. It’s an ignorant organisation which distorted the message of Jesus and is based on fanaticism and lies.
I’m sure there are malicious and devilish supernatural entities—and neutral ones, and beneficent ones; but the approach taken by the Church to these matters is obviously hypocritical and not actuated by a search for the truth—if the bishop is open-minded, then lights in the sky become “a credit to the faith”, but if he had read the Church fathers strictly then the whole cathedral of Santiago de Compostela is a monument to the Devil and that shepherd should have been burned (as a heretic).
I am a heretic *