remarkable LOL
I don’t company…

Sounds a lot like most of the student activists that clutter up the place. I’ve known folk to protest older generations staying in their own houses when of course should be making way for the young.

Neat, Mike. You made my day with this one.

Also, the Council allowed the early Christians to have patron saints for their towns, villages and cities, and they encouraged them to fashion graven images of these many saints and to pray to them and worship them With its pagan roots, this is why Catholicism has so much statuary, so many shrines, etc., so many types of solid, earthly, tangible rituals which symbolize the beliefs. The people needed to be stay grounded in their comforting, earthly symbols or they would have rejected Christianity

For decades the Church of Scientology has been doing surveys to find out what religious buttons most resonate with the public. The infamous Flog cross that many of us were regged for is up there because of a survey, that’s all. The Church would just as easily put a Star of David, or any major religious symbol up on top of their “cathedral” if they believed it appeal to the greatest amount of people.

Mike Nimble, I agree with you but unfortunately coopting signs, symbols, etc.by a religion of other religions or beliefs to make it acceptable to the general public is nothing new. Back in the day the Council of Nicea (spelling?) conflated many pagan symbols, rituals and holidays with Christianity. Easter was a pagan holiday, even our name for it comes from a pagan goddess and the coloring of eggs was a pagan ritual also. Christ’s birth was made to coincide with the Winter Solstice. I could go on with examples but the jist is that around 350AD the world became officially Christian, Jesus was made a divinity, the Son of God, and to make it widely accepted the ongoing pagan rituals and practices were kept with their pagan names changed to reflect Christian “monotheism” in the form of the Holy Trinity, i.e. “Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost”. Even here they couldn’t just make it that there was just one God because that would have been way out-gradient for people accustomed to worshipping dozens of deities, so they created a trinity, three Gods.

(Kissing sounds as if I’m calling in my cats). C’mon little OTs. It’s time to come in now. Come out come out wherever you are. Hurry!

I keep wondering about this. But you would have thought that annual accounts have to be filed… And if the money doesn’t go to US bodies that file tax returns then surely it cannot be tax exempt?!?

oh, that’s right, thanks. I bought a copy