RIGHTEOUS PERSECUTIONBook ReviewThe timing of the arrival of this book could hardly be more exquisite. The Roman Catholic Church has been roiled by the sex abuse scandal for a decade. On September 11, 2011, SNAP (Survivors Network of those by Abused Priests) gained instant global coverage for an historical filing in the ICC (International Court of Justice) that aims to hold the Pope and high-level Vatican officials accountable for the systematic and wide-spread cover up of clergy sex abuse. Not long after the scandal had gained a head of steam, Pope John Paul II asked, "How could this happen?"As the author of this book reveals, that same question was asked by persecuted, medieval Cathar Christians; they were baffled by the very idea that an institution--that was supposedly founded in the name of Jesus--could engage in a systematic extermination their religion . . . which ultimately meant annihilating them and destroying their sacred literature, when persuasion failed. Nevertheless, the author avers that the dialogue between the Cathars and their persecutors was a good thing because it enabled a very clear understanding of Roman Christian ethos in medieval times.This review will discuss the importance of Righteous Persecution as powerful evidence that the Roman Catholic Church was founded on the basis of fear and terror, a proposition that has seemed preposterous--for many centuries--to some observers. Still, the opening sentence is short and to the point, setting the tone for what is coming: "Christ came to persecute." Before long we will be reading that God is angry and Jesus is a killer, assisted by one of the Church's religious orders, the Dominicans.Righteous Persecution is the work of an intrepid professor who has written a brilliant account of how the Dominicans--in dialogue with the Cathar Christians they were persecuting--illuminated medieval Roman Church doctrine: how it was that Dominican inquisitors--in the name of God and Jesus--orchestrated a sustained campaign of harassment, intimidation, torture and killings to save heretics from their apostasy, thereby galvanizing a body of Christian principles.The war against the Cathars and their Christian religion--a derivative of Gnosticism, which the founders of the Roman Church crushed--began in earnest on July 22, 1209 in Beziers, Languadoc, a region that has since been annexed by France. Although Caldwell-Ames does not mention this particular event or any others that preceded the onset of the Dominica Inquisition, she does mention the Albigensian Crusade which lasted from 1209 to 1255. That is the crusade that put to the sword some twenty-thousand men, women, children and babies (residents and refugees from the oppressing Church) in Beziers, Languedoc near the Mediterranean coast. About a week later, the residents of a nearby town, Carcassonne--with about seven-thousand souls--surrendered after the crusaders cut off their water supply. All were forced to leave the fortress naked, or near-naked, leaving their possessions behind . . . many of them being shot with arrows as target practice or mutilated.However, the author does refer to events that occurred prior to the inquisition as possible motivations for the Cathars' "stubbornness" when faced with the inquisitors' efforts to convert them to Roman Catholicism. That "stubbornness" would have serious consequences during the tenure of the Dominicans persecution of the Cathars; they were harassed, intimidated, encouraged to turn against one another, inciting fear and terror of being reported to the inquisitional authorities for interrogation, imprisonment under inhumane conditions and tortured or worse . . . burned.With the onset of the Dominican-led Inquisition around 1231, complemented by the continuing Albigensian Crusade, by 1243 most of the Cathars had been eliminated. Those who felt most vulnerable sought refuge in the Chateau Montsegur, a nearly impregnable fortress not far from Carcassonne. There, in 1243 the crusaders initiated a siege at the foot of the mountain and stayed for almost a year before the inhabitants, starving and dying, surrendered in 1244. All were allowed to leave the fort. At the bottom of the mountain, inquisitors had prepared to accept anyone who would "convert" to Catholicism; their option was to be burned alive that day. Around two hundred faithful Cathars chose death over conversion, climbed to the platform ready for the mass burning that would effectively end the mass resistance of the Cathars in Languedoc.I take the time to discuss some of the horrors visited upon the Cathars that are not included in this book because the reader needs to know that what the author is relating is horrible enough--a warning she makes at the beginning of the book--but what is even more horrifying (perhaps to some of her readers) is that all of this was done in the name of the Savior that both the Roman Church goers and the Cathars' worshipped. The Cathars were fanatical pacifists . . . at least until the inquisitors' outrages drove some of the non-Perfected devotees to strike back with a vengeance, killing some of the inquisitors.As I was doing the research for my novel, The Michelangelo Deception, during the two years prior to the publication of this book, I, like the Cathars, wondered how it could be that a religion--founded in the name of Jesus--could become a religion based on fear and terror in the name of Jesus and an angry God. As I read, I became aware of the horrors associated with the doctrine and governance of the Roman Catholic Church, not the least of which is a religion that promotes fear and terror associated with--believe it or not--masturbation . . . even to this day. The fear comes when one desires masturbation or when a couple are threatened with an eternity in hell if they use contraceptives; they fear that they might make a mistake and have a seventh child when they can afford only two; and they feel terror at the prospect of spending eternity in hell if they resort to using contraceptives after the sixth child. That fear was still palpable for millions of people as late as the nineteen-sixties, but despite the prohibition, a very high percentage of Catholic couples--today--ignore what they consider to be an absurd rule.I discovered during my research that the proto-orthodox Church crushed--with the help of St. Irenaeus, their heresiologist--the Gnostic Christians with whom they were at war during the first two centuries after Jesus execution. Irenaeus wrote a five-volume book in the latter part of the second century titled "Against Heresies", in which he castigated the Gnostic Christians (the forerunners of the Cathars), for their bizarre beliefs. He based his opinions of Gnostic literature which had as its central thesis what Jesus was saying about the divine nature of man and how one could realize one's own divinity in this lifetime by "going within" to find one's salvation. That was the crux of the matter, but there were other elements in Gnostic literature that Jesus spoke of, including the journey of the soul to higher levels of consciousness following life on earth. The journey involves complex--for the unenlightened--bizarre notions that couldn't be true.Irenaeus read the Gnostic gospels and probably the other books that were found in the Nag Hammadi library which the Gnostics buried in a huge jar--near the Nile river south of Cairo--to prevent their destruction by the founders of the nascent Catholic Church. The Gnostic Gospel of Judas was also recovered from an area near the Nile River, south of Cairo. These sacred, Gnostic books reveal the truth about what Jesus said; it is that inconvenient truth that terrified the founders of the Roman Catholic Church and it is that terror which accounts for their seeking and destroying the Gnostics' sacred texts, while neutralizing Jesus' Gnostic followers.Irenaeus justified the first crusade against fellow Christians, ignoring the central idea of Gnosticism. He railed against what he considered their bizarre beliefs about the hereafter-life of the soul. He couldn't attack Jesus' teachings about "going within" to find one's salvation because that would be advertising an idea that was anathema to the proto-orthodox Church. By the middle of the third century, the Gnostics had been eliminated and their sacred texts destroyed . . . so it seemed.But remnants of their religion emerged in Western Europe about a thousand years later; they were known as Cathars, who had been deprived of the Jesus message of "going within" but had retained much of Jesus' message of love and compassion and his distaste for organized religions that were more concerned about oppressive control over their flock than they were about their spiritual well-being. About all we knew about Gnosticism--until the recent discoveries of the Gnostics sacred texts--was what could be gleaned from Irenaeus's cherry-picked view of Gnostic heresy.This is the inconvenient truth that enlightens this review: The truth is that Jesus of Nazareth did not establish the Roman Catholic Church, as the author of this book claims: "Reassuringly, humans had not been left to stumble toward that coming judgment with nothing but their imperfection in which to trust. Christ had also established a means for negotiating and reparation, founding a church as a way of conducting the running dialogue of condemnation and forgiveness that would continue to that final judgment."The establishment of the church to which the author refers is--in reality--a hoax; it has no legitimacy whatsoever in light of the "Jesus' teaching." I cite, in support of that assertion, a quote taken from my novel, The Michelangelo Deception, which illuminates what I am saying . . . from a reputable scholar's perspective. Karen L. King is a professor of ecclesiastical history at Harvard Divinity School and author of the "Gospel of Mary of Magdala."In her analysis of this gospel, Dr. King relates a dialogue which is relevant here. To put this quotation in perspective, it follows what I have just summarized in my book about Michelangelo's deceptions in the Last Judgment. Referring to the Gnostic "Gospel of Mary of Magdala," King states that Mary Magdalene has finished giving the disciples an answer to a question she asked Jesus: whether one sees a vision through the soul or through the spirit. Jesus' answer concerns the evolution of the soul toward enlightenment. Building a bridge between the great artist's deceptions in the Last Judgment and the dialogue between Peter and Mary Magdalene, I write:"Michelangelo's duplicity (creating a fresco that appears to be something it is not) communicates to us that the religion invented by the founders of the Catholic Church is a fraud. The cynicism that produced such fraudulence is unfathomable; no attempt is made to investigate it. Nevertheless, a clue exists. In the Gnostic Gospel of Mary, Mary Magdalene has just finished giving the disciples an answer to a question she asked Jesus: whether one sees a vision through the soul or through the spirit. Jesus' answer concerns the evolution of the soul toward enlightenment.Andrew speaks up and says that these ideas--that Mary claims Jesus said--are strange and he does not believe Jesus said them. Peter responds by wondering whether Jesus really spoke these words to a woman, without their knowledge, and are they to listen to her. Peter says to his fellow disciples:"Did He prefer her to us?" Then Mary wept and said to Peter, "My brother Peter, what do you think? Do you think I thought this up by myself in my heart, or that I am lying about the Savior?" Levi answered and said to Peter, "Peter, you have always been hot-tempered. Now I see you contending against the woman like the adversaries. But if the Savior made her worthy, who are you indeed to reject her? Surely the Savior knows her very well. That is why he loved her more than us. Rather let us be ashamed and put on the perfect man and acquire him for ourselves as he commanded us, and preach the gospel, not laying down any other rule or law beyond what the Savior said."King describes this story and writes that:". . . the controversy is far from resolved. Andrew and Peter at least, and likely the other fearful disciples as well, have not understood the Savior's teaching and are offended by Jesus' apparent preference of a woman over them. Their limited understanding and false pride make it impossible for them to comprehend the truth of the Savior's teaching. The reader must both wonder and worry what kind of gospel such proud and ignorant disciples will preach. (Emphasis added.) (King, p.5)To us, the wondering and worrying need not continue: We have two thousand years of testimony with which to evaluate the kind of gospel the proud and ignorant disciples preached. Almost five-hundred years have passed since Michelangelo exposed that gospel for what it is. We believe our analysis shows that the artist painted deceptions into his painting in an attempt to shock the Vatican hierarchy into doing something about their ignorant and arrogant ways.""How could it happen?" John Paul II asked, referring to the sex abuse scandal that still rocks the Church and its parishioners a decade later. The timing of the release of this book is exquisite because it comes at a time when the Roman Catholic Church is faced with a crisis as critical as the one that spawned Reformation.It seems that nothing could highlight the seriousness--of the current paroxysm afflicting the Catholic Church--more than Pope Benedict XVI and senior Vatican officials being hauled before the United Nations Court of Criminal Justice. There is uproar--amongst Catholic clerics and parishioners--which many observers (professors, clerics, religious and lay people) think is so threatening that it jeopardizes the very existence of the hierarchical structure of the institution and the Vatican State.Therefore, as stated at the outset of this review, the timing of the release of Righteous Persecution could hardly be more exquisite, because it helps clarify the principles that undergird Roman Catholicism in particular and Christianity in general, at a time when the very foundation of Christianity is being examined in light of recent Gnostic scriptures that reveal the grave injustice that was done in the years following Jesus' death on the cross.The Michelangelo Deception