ECCLESIASTICAL DOMINATION: THE USE OF FEAR AS A TOOL FOR CONTROL AND EXPANSION.

 Preamble:

Ecclesiastical domination through fear of heaven, hell, purgatory, and limbo. Religious terror as a tool for Christian control and expansion.

Monopoly Over Life and Death

These beautiful and attractive places were created at different times and with different penalties, with ignoble purposes of domination and control of human beings, imposing these four divine creations as unquestionable dogmas that, of course, are horrendous and terrifying.

Christianity and Catholicism imposed themselves and maintained for centuries a spiritual and material monopoly, with power over life and death of millions of human beings, without anyone being able to interfere in the omnipotent power of the Church. It was the only one that had the keys to the eternal destiny of humans; that is, after death, they were the ones who could control eternal life, and the only ones who could offer the salvation of souls. This could only be achieved by following the precepts established by them, and whoever rejected, doubted, or did not accept them became a heretic, was excommunicated, and was already beforehand condemned to spend eternity in the horrible and immense fire of hell.

Absolute Certainties Attributed to God

The existence of heaven, hell, purgatory, and limbo were imposed as absolute certainties, not to be discussed or questioned, because, according to the Church fathers, they were the creation of God to punish after death those who, in life, violated His norms by entering the world of mortal sin.

As the Church was the only one authorized by divine powers to dictate the norms regarding the destiny of souls, there was no choice but to passively accept the barbaric, just or unjust dictates of Christianity.

Imagine the terror it meant to die and have to spend an eternity in a bed of fire in hell, or hundreds of years with the living praying and paying to get out of purgatory, receiving, moreover, the most horrible punishments; or the fear that the newborn child would die without having cleansed through baptism the sin of being born, and that they would spend eternity in the silence and darkness of limbo.

Persuasive Methods for Expansion

It is evident that the terror, fear, threat, and dread caused by such terrifying places where the persuasion that Christianity and Catholicism used and continue to use to propagate themselves. Imposed norms that allowed them to dictate human conduct, "moral" behaviors, and reactions among human beings; and among many, the gravest was the hatred between one another, and especially against women. All of this, besides the terror of their creations, was imposed by force with the Crusades, the persecution and death of the Cathars, and the Inquisition, which with the unlimited power of the Church, and in the name of God, to impose their doctrines, destroyed entire towns full of hundreds of thousands of innocent human beings, and built their temples on heaps of corpses of beings who neither understood nor accepted that imposed barbarism. Assertions sufficiently debated and historically proven.

Persistence of Terror in the 21st Century

Two thousand years have passed, and still, millions of fanaticized people remain under the fear of those four creations: under the terror of hell, purgatory, and limbo, and with the hope of heaven. All places that neither science, theology, nor philosophy have proven to exist, attributing their creation to the imagination of many Church sages and “saints.”

The threat has always been there, and to this date in the 21st century, it continues with the same intensity, in all places where religion is practiced. Heaven and hell are our daily bread, in catechism, in Catholic schools, in religious services, in funeral services, in baptism, in marriage, and in all acts involving a cleric, there is no lack of a reminder of heaven or hell. Purgatory is no longer mentioned because it stopped being a business, no one buys indulgences anymore; and limbo fell into disuse because a Pope recently declared that it did not exist.