Thursday, August 11, 2005
FUNGIBLE HONESTY
In the occult world of Alice Bailey and the Lucis Trust, honesty would appear to be interpreted in a way that encompasses adding to her books to suit the occasion. All of Bailey's books are channeled through the entity Djwhal Khul. Bailey died in 1949.
In PROBLEMS OF HUMANITY, there is a passage cited in the Alice Bailey data base (quoted below) as appearing in "Chapter V - The Problem of the Churches."
According to the data base index, this book was published in 1947, and one would assume that it is the 1947 edition that is being quoted in the data base. The book was republished in 1964 according to the Lucis Trust website, at which time it was "revised and edited to eliminate all out-of-date facts and information." Elimination is one thing. Addition is another.
Here is the passage:
The Roman Catholic Church stands entrenched and unified against any new and evolutionary presentation of truth to the people; its roots are in the past but it is not growing into the light; its vast financial resources enable it to menace the future enlightenment of mankind under the cloak of paternalism and a colorful outer appearance which hides a crystallization and an intellectual stupidity which must inevitably spell its eventual doom, unless the faint stirrings of new life following the advent of Pope John XXIII can be nourished and developed.
Notice that in the data base that passage is cited as appearing on page 131.
How did Pope John XXIII get into a channeled book which was channeled prior to 1949?
Through interlibrary loan, I have been able to obtain a first edition copy of the book. In the first edition, the passage appears on page 198, "Chapter VI - The Problem of the Churches," and reads as follows:
The Roman Catholic Church stands entrenched and univied against any new and evolutionary presentation of truth to the people; its roots are in the past but it is not growing into the light; its vast financial resources enable it to menace the future enlightenment of mankind under the cloak of a paternalism and a colorful outer appearance which hides a crystallization and intellectual stupidity which must inevitably spell its eventual doom.(p. 198)
The reference to Pope John XXIII is missing. It has been added to the later edition, and the data base is passing it off as though it had been in the earlier edition.
One wonders why it was added.
Bailey's animus toward the Roman Catholic Church is blatant in the passage just preceding that one:
I. The Roman Catholic Church is distinguished by three things which are all contrary to the spirit of Christ:--
a. An intensely materialistic attitude. The Church of Rome stands for great stone structures--cathedrals, churches, institutions, convents, monasteries. In order to build them, the policy down the centuries has been to drain the money out of the pockets of rich and poor alike. The God of the Roman Catholic Church is money. It is a strictly capitalistic church and is potent in the more Fascist countries. The money gathered into its coffers supports a powerful ecclesiastical hierarchy and provides for its many institutions and schools.
b. A far-reaching and far-sighted political program in which temporal power is the goal and not the welfare of the little people. The present program of the Catholic Church has definite political implications; their attitude to communism has in it the seeds of another world war. The political activities of the Catholic Church at this time do not build for peace, no matter under what guise they are presented.
c. A planned policy whereby the mass of the people are kept in intellectual ignorance and, through this ignorance, are naturally to be found among the reactionary and conservative forces which are so powerfully at work resisting the new age with its new civilization and more enlightened culture. Blind faith and complete confidence in the priest and in the Vatican are regarded as spiritual duties.
