THE WAGES OF SIN - A Very Wealthy Church

Wages of Sin

The UK Anglican Church earned £4.4 billion in 1999 (Daily Telegraph).



The Mormons (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), seventh largest US church, in 1997 possessed a minimum of $30 billion in assets and had an annual gross income of $6 billion(Time, July, 1997).



Between 1985 - 1998 the Mormon church spent $162.5 m on various humanitarian aid projects – around 0.21% of the Church's reported non-taxed annual revenue!! Christian charity, eh?!



The earnings and wealth of the Roman Catholic Church are notoriously difficult to estimate. A single sale of bank shares in 1971 netted the Vatican Bank $115 billion (at 1984 values). (David Yallop, In God's Name, p143)



Accumulated wealth of Christendom would be measured in thousands of $billions – most of it thoroughly hidden from public scrutiny.
In comparison, the Mafia is a local pick-pocket.

Catholic Crime Syndicate – 'Purgatory Inc.'

'As the penny in the coffer rings, the soul from Purgatory springs.'
The weak and gullible were fleeced by papal agents – such as Dominican friar Tetzel – who sold papal releases for dead loved ones 'suffering the cleansing fire'.
16th century woodcut Jan Breu the Elder

SIN

God's Work?

The Wages of Sin – A Very Wealthy Church

"The money from the guilt offerings and sin offerings was not brought into the temple of the LORD ; it belonged to the priests."

– 2 Kings 12.16.

After deliberating on sin at synods in Rome and Carthage (251/252 AD), the Church decided that no one could avoid venial sin, and therefore all needed the intercession of the Church. But it also ruled that "all sins were forgivable with sufficient penance."

“Blessed are they whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered."

– Romans 4.7

Here, potentially, was a vast business in forgiveness– But who had the right to absolve sin?
Certain sharp clerics saw the opportunity and declared themselves to be "Confessors". Filled, as they said, with the Holy Spirit, they claimed the right to absolve sins (particularly the sin of apostatising during the Decian persecution) – and just as surely availed themselves of recompense for their efforts.
The appearance of this rash of competitive charlatans set alarm bells ringing among the bishops who responded by declaring their own exclusive right to forgive sin. The lucrative sin business was being parceled out among the operatives.
Towards the end of the 4th century Augustine made clear that it was only the Catholic hierarchy that could forgive sin:

"Since the days of Adam, all have sinned; only a few with 'God's Grace' can rescue sinners."

– On Predestination.

Augustine waged a brutal campaign against the followers of Pelagius, a monk who had the temerity to believe that man hadan innate ability to live by God's commands and could thereby avoid sin.


In the late 6th century, Pope Gregory, an enthusiastic follower of Augustine, codified sins into seven types, folding "vainglory" into pride, "acedia" into sadness, and adding envy. His ranking, from most serious to least was: pride, envy, anger, sadness, avarice, gluttony, and lust. In the 17th century, the Church replaced the vague sin of "sadness" with sloth.
The list of sin crimes set the stage for centuries of ecclesiastical extortion: the sale of remissions from sin!
The Church had devised the most successful protection racket in history.

God gave the savior to the German people. We have faith, deep and unshakeable faith, that he [Hitler] was sent to us by God to save Germany." --Hermann Goering, from Louis L. Snyder, "Hitler's Elite, Shocking Profiles of the Reich's Most Notorious Henchmen", Berkley Books, 1990

"How shall we tie down this wild beast? How shall we put a bridle on it? I know none, save only the restraint of hell fire."
Saint John Chrysostom rages at sex

"To assert that the earth revolves around the sun is as erroneous as to claim that Jesus was not born of a virgin." -

--Cardinal Bellarmine, 1615, during the trial of Galileo

Fast forward to the 21^st Century



[Planned Parenthood] is teaching kids to fornicate, teaching people to have adultery, every kind of bestiality, homosexuality, lesbianism -- everything that the Bible condemns.

-- Pat Robertson, The 700 Club television program, April 9, 1991



The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians.

-- Pat Robertson, fund raising letter, 1992


Just like what Nazi Germany did to the Jews, so liberal America is now doing to the evangelical Christians. It's no different. It is the same thing. It is happening all over again. It is the Democratic Congress, the liberal-based media and the homosexuals who want to destroy the Christians. Wholesale abuse and discrimination and the worst bigotry directed toward any group in America today. More terrible than anything suffered by any minority in history.

-- Pat Robertson, interview with Molly Ivins, 1993. 

Little history lesson for Pat Robertson:

Christian Persecution in the modern USA. Little history lesson - since 323 AD it's been the Christians doing the persecuting. Being told to mind your own business is not persecution. Being persecuted is not having someone roll their eyes at you for wearing a big crucifix around your neck - it's being required to wear it so that the government knows who you are and can find you anytime it decides to get rid of you. Get over the martyrdom, and stop pining for a world where nobody can question your right to tell them what to do.

Pimping Priests

Common venial sins could be remitted by prayer, confession to the clergy, contrition, fervent communion, and other 'pious works', all of which required frequent attendance at Church and appropriate service or recompense to the officiating clergy.
Having transformed even a Christian marriage bed into "whoredom" the Church could extract its penance for every act of copulation that involved "lust". Clerical abuse of the institution of "confession", originally made at the feet of the priest, obliged the Church to introduce the confessional box for decency's sake.
The saintly Augustine had also provided the dubious theology of purgatory, a holding pen where even compliant Christians would find themselves after death, a place where 'fire might wash them free of sin'. Picking up the message, said Pope Gregory:

"As for certain lesser faults, we must believe that before the final judgement, there is a purifying fire (purgatorius ignis) ..."
 
– Dialogia !V, xli.3.

The popes were subsequently to generate a vast income by selling indulgences which would 'free souls from purgatory'. The living – filled with anxiety for their deceased relations – could offer prayer, service and payment to the Church, so that those in purgatory could move more quickly through their chastisement!
Source: