Drowning in a Sea of Green

       When discussing which religious organizations hold the most influence and why, it is important to specify which kind of power we are talking about. While it cannot be disputed that the Catholic Church is the most powerful organized faith in the world, it likely does not have the power to inflict mass suicide among its acolytes, unlike the numerous small to medium sized cults which have done so in the past (most famously in Jonestown). But what the Catholic Church can do is provide funds as well as exoneration and indulgences for whomever they decide are useful to them. It is true of almost all large and well organized groups that they are willing to concede the moral high ground for either financial gain, or in their quest for hegemony. This was the case in Germany during the regime of the Third Reich, where the Catholic Church explicitly condoned the actions of the murderous dictatorship of Hitler so that they might gain a stranglehold on the German youth. Power in these instances usually comes in two forms, firstly the profligate use of funds to either coerce (as with the various schools packed to the brim with children of the Stolen Generation, whether in Australia, Canada, or other nations) religious and cultural conversion; the second form of power is that of the controlling of the minds of the credulous. The latter of these forms of control can often be the most damaging. It is hard to argue that, for instance, the Crusades could have gone forward if not for the variety of papal indulgences offered to ‘pilgrims’ (rapists and pillagers would be nearer the mark). These are of course not exclusive to the Catholic Church however, and have been used consistently by the leaders of Scientology (who have shown that the use of funds can only stretch so far), the leaders of the Sunni and Shi’a faiths, the Dalai Lama, and the numerous state-centered religions including Czarist Russia and Imperial Japan. It is money and credulity of the masses which allowed all of the above examples to thrive in their own ways.

Callum Dunphy