Pope Francis vs Corporations

Pope Francis Thumb's Up
Pope Francis Thumb’s Up

Pope Francis seems to be moving the Catholic Church forward into the new millennia with what some see as controversial but progressive propositions. The first of these for us to examine is the proposition that the church should not have leaders for life, as reported in a Reuter’s News Release:

The Roman Catholic Church should not have “leaders for life” in its ranks, otherwise it would risk being like a country under dictatorship, Pope Francis said on Friday.

“There should be a time limit to positions (in the Church), which in reality are positions of service,” he said in an address that was in part prepared and in part extemporaneous.

It is convenient that all (positions) in the Church should have a time limit. There are no leaders for life in the Church. This occurs in some countries where a dictatorship exists.

Elsewhere he said:

The Pope has issued a strong warning against those tempted by personal charisma to be authoritarian leaders in the Church, describing such leaders as “servants of the devil” … He warned against the temptation for leaders to believe themselves essential to all tasks and described such leaders as “peacocks”… Such people would be drawn by this temptation into considering themselves irreplaceable, and would draw power and domination over others to themselves.

He compared such abuse of leadership in the church to dictatorships.

He asked the crowd present: “Who is the only irreplaceable in the Church?” They responded en mass: “The Holy Spirit!” He repeated the chant: “And who is the one Lord?” They replied: “Jesus!”

The leader of the Roman Catholic Church has just proposed a mandate for expiration dates for those in religious power when their shelf life is exhausted.

Now this is not a problem for at least one of the Armstrongist churches which has as its charter the leader is to retire at 70 years old. The deadline is early October this year. We will have to wait and see if the charter is changed by that time to allow a convenient extension. Nevertheless, a term limit is an excellent idea for religious leaders. Unfortunately, though the Pope probably doesn’t know one thing about any of the 700+ Armstrongist churches (in spite of the claims of some of the Armstrongists), he has just made a proposition which will result in collateral damage to such people as Roderick Meredith, David Pack, Gerald Flurry and Ronald Weinland because these are the sort of people who want to retain control of the church cult corporate for their own purposes of power and money.

Pope Francis
Pope Francis

There’s more bad news for the Armstrongist leaders — Pope Francis is on the attack against corporations:

Pope Francis does not just criticize the excesses of global capitalism. He compares them to the “dung of the devil.” He does not simply argue that systemic “greed for money” is a bad thing. He calls it a “subtle dictatorship” that “condemns and enslaves men and women.”

He says that the poor have been tossed aside by a “throw away culture”:

Francis has such a strong sense of urgency “because he has been on the front lines with real people, not just numbers and abstract ideas,” Mr. Schneck said. “That real-life experience of working with the most marginalized in Argentina has been the source of his inspiration as pontiff.”

Francis made his speech on Wednesday night, in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, before nearly 2,000 social advocates, farmers, trash workers and neighborhood activists. Even as he meets regularly with heads of state, Francis has often said that change must come from the grass roots, whether from poor people or the community organizers who work with them. To Francis, the poor have earned knowledge that is useful and redeeming, even as a “throwaway culture” tosses them aside. He sees them as being at the front edge of economic and environmental crises around the world.

In Bolivia, Francis praised cooperatives and other localized organizations that he said provide productive economies for the poor. “How different this is than the situation that results when those left behind by the formal market are exploited like slaves!” he said on Wednesday night.

In a previous post, The wonderful world tomorrow — what will it be like… under…, we described the life of Benjamin Dickmann as he demonstrated just what it’s like to be in an abusive corporation run by the Armstrongist leaders. What most people absolutely do not get is that the Armstrongist churches are corporations and are the very picture of the abuse Pope Francis is talking about.

While we covered Moral Mazes in The Corporation of God™, there is so much more evil to the modern corporation, particularly the modern church cult corporation of the Cult of Herbert Armstrong Mafia. The underlying problems as touched on by Pope Francis are explored in much greater depth in The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power by Joel Bakan:

The CorporationBy exploring the material, we can see exactly what is wrong with the Armstrongist churches of God because they have chosen the worst of the Corporate Model and implemented it badly.

 The first thing we learn is that the Corporation exists solely to make a profit. There is no social responsibility attached. There is no conscience attached. There is no empathy. The Corporation, though it is fictionalized as being ‘a person’, the Corporation is an ‘it’ — a ‘thing’. The Corporation is positioned to break the law, pollute the world, even kill people (as was the case with the Ethyl Corporation) as long as the maximized profit is more than any penalties. In an ideal world, the Corporation is beholden to no one. There is no real accountability and limited liability for the stakeholders. The Corporation as a ‘legal person’ is a psychopath with all that is attached to that appellation. Moreover, the Corporation externalizes costs to maximize profits, which means that the Corporation does as it can to make others pay for its operations. In many cases, this externalization pushes costs outward to tax payers. For the church cult corporate, the externalization of the costs of Herbert Armstrong’s divorce from Ramona in the amount of $5 million (and court fees) was laid upon the rank and file tithe payer.

People don’t get this is ugly stuff. People don’t want to get that this is ugly stuff. They want to believe that the leadership of their cult is the hero of a spiritual organization. This is sadly evident in the annals of the PKG as Ronald Weinland continues to con them from prison where he is incarcerated as a felon who committed felony Income Tax Evasion. Roderick Meredith externalized the expenses (both monetary and emotional) by wrecking the Global Church of God, yet people continue to follow him as their spiritual guide because he has the best (false) prophecy. We’ve already seen how callous David Pack was in his treatment of low level employees in the Restored Church of God. Gerald Flurry is a malevolent force creating havoc for members, particularly for single young women. There’s no accountability. The Corporate executives shrug off detractors because as far as they are concerned it just doesn’t affect their bottom line of profit and power. In that, there is little difference between their innate behavior and that of Enron.

Returning to Pope Francis, it is likely that the Pope is especially sensitive to insensitive corporations because of the incident in Bolivia:

It all began when the Bolivian government, under pressure from the World Bank to privatize water utilities, contracted with Aguas del Tunarim, the major shareholder of which is Bechtel subsidiary International Water Ltd., to run the water system of Chchabamba, a water starved region in central Bolivia. At the time, Chochabamba, was served by an old and decaying system that did not reach areas of the countryside where many peasants lived. Aguas del Tunari, when it took over the system, raised rates, to up the three times what they had been, and began charging peasants for water they drew from their own wells. The government, in compliance with its contract with the company, passed a law that prohibited people from collecting water from local lagoons, rivers, and deltas, and even rainwater. the company confiscated people’s alternative water systems, without compensation, and placed them under its control. All of these actions, including the rate increases — which imposed sever hardships on many people, according to Oivera — were justified by the company as necessary to meet contractually mandated profit levels.

People organized in the city and in the countryside, with the help of Olivera and others, and demanded that the compoany leave, which it did, eventually, byut only after bloody confrontations between citizens and the police and military. “We started to see many injured youths, young people at sixteen or seventeen years old who lost arms, legs, were left paralyzed, had brain and nervous system injuries, had one young man, Victor Hugo Daza, Killed … there had been five people killed in the countryside,” recalls Olivera. “It was a victory at a real great cost.

The Cult of Herbert Armstrong Mafia is a corporate entity, split between the two factions of the hierarchical patronage of the bureaucracy: The headquarters elite, represented by Roderick Meredith and the Regional Pastors, represented (originally) by Dennis Luker. If one understands the church cult corporate bureaucracy, the governance of the original WCG was irrational and chaotic at the regional level and above with contentious competition among and between the various centers of power and authority. The two major divisions left with the worst of the corporate model representing the preponderance of the philosophies of each of the entities respectively. This left each faction with severe problems with the ethics, morals and legality of its own.

Why should any of this be a surprise? It’s the Cult of Herbert Armstrong Mafia after all.

The CoHAM has always attracted the evil, vile, the psychopath, the sociopath. Why wouldn’t it? It is the hotbed of all sorts of scams; an opportunity that is irresistible.

This should all so very clear after reading “Snakes in Suits” by Dr. Robert Hare and Dr. Babiak, “Moral Mazes” by Robert Jackall (read the twentieth anniversary edition) and “The Corporation” by Joel Bakan.

Why should any of this be a surprise? It’s the Cult of Herbert Armstrong Mafia after all.

The CoHAM has always attracted the evil, vile, the psychopath, the sociopath. Why wouldn’t it? It is the hotbed of all sorts of scams; an opportunity that is irresistible.

This should all so very clear after reading “Snakes in Suits” by Dr. Robert Hare and Dr. Babiak, “Moral Mazes” by Robert Jackall (read the twentieth anniversary edition) and “The Corporation” by Joel Bakan.

  1. Each of the sects of the CoHAM are corporations with the “middle management” (read regional pastor and above) living the lies of situational ethics, abstract morality, patronage bureaucracy, networked authority, self-promotion and abject compromise;
  1. Each of the sects of the CoHAM is a cult replete with distorted perceptions and outrageous beliefs, not to mention the bootlicking devotion to “authority” where people are comfortable with letting others do their thinking for them;
  1. Each of the sects of the CoHAM is high maintenance demanding an excess of resources from the ‘membership’ through great sacrifice;
  1. Each of the sects of the CoHAM require absolute loyalty, no matter how immoral, illegal or unethical the leadership may be;
  1. Absolute secrecy is required to cover up misdeeds;
  1. There is constant internal chaos as various parties of the upper echelons of the bureaucracy vie for ascendancy — it is this instability that provides vast opportunities to the narcissist, sociopath and psychopath to scam and manipulate those in the CoHAM;
  1. It is a dysfunctional environment of insanity where fantasy is sold as reality: Anyone remaining in the venue will not be able to be rational for very long;
  1. The CoHAM screws with your priorities so that you do all the wrong things for the wrong reasons while causing you to believe that you are ‘holy’, ‘righteous’ and ‘doing a great work’;
  1. The CoHAM fosters divisions, pitting members against members, often manifesting itself in spying (such as the recent revelations about “The Amazon.com Way” of management.

The structure is highly efficient to induce people to compromise their morals and ethics while making them believe that they are just fine.

It’s disgusting and repulsive.

Just ask yourself (seriously, in those rare moments of honest insight): “Do I really want to associate with members of a cult”?

And the answer to that is extremely telling by revealing what sort of person you are and how much crap you will tolerate to prevent the discomfort of perceived loss in terms of dysfunctional relationships.

 It is also how attractive Armstrongism is to the marginal. Denis Michael Rohan was only one of many. David Ben Arial (Chuck Hoover) springs to mind: Apparently he didn’t cause the same damage as Rohan, but he was ejected from Israel and permanently banned.

It should give people pause to realize that by making the utterly ridiculous seem plausible, the stage is set to attract all sorts of darkly insane people.

And so it is, Pope Francis has declared corporations as “dung of the Devil” with a “subtle dictatorship”, decrying their enslavement of people for profit.

It should be clear that the Armstrongist churches of God fit this profile, and, what’s more, each of the fiefdoms have their very own dictator for life.

It isn’t just the doctrines that are worthless, it’s the social order.

Award

I hate science
I hate science

John G. Cramer presented “The Retarding of Science” in The Alternate View in the October 2015 edition of Analog Science Fiction and Fact:

The Mark Gable Foundation achieved this goal by creating, for each major field of scientific investigation, a panel of distinguished scientists that would meet monthly to award prizes and grants for the best recent scientific work. (The Foundation, as Szilard pointed out, bears some resemblance to the U.S. National Science Foundation.) This plan , it was explained, would keep the best of the older scientists away from their laboratories and busy with unproductive travel, meetings, and report writing and would cause the younger scientists in need of funds to go for the “sure thing” that would be certain to lead to publishable results, thereby filling the scientific journals with trivial results and channeling research in the direction of the safe, the fashionable, and the obvious, and away from the more risky innovations and break-throughs at the frontiers of knowledge.

Inspired by this concept, in 1984, I announced the creation of the American Association for the Retardation of Science and Engineering (acronym: AARSE), dedicated to the retardation of scientific progress wherever it may occur, in whatever field, in whatever place. AARSE is created for the specific purpose of encouraging the retardation of scientific progress and giving appropriate recognition to those who have done the most in recent times to further this goal.

All of this because Science, Engineering and Technology are advancing too fast for everyone to keep up. Training is obsolete by the time the courses are completed. There’s no way to keep up.

In the first incarnation of AARSE, the 1984 Gold-Plated AARSE AWards went to Senator William Proxmire, to the administrators of Columbia University and Catholic University, to the Institute for Creation Research of El Cajon, California and to the State Legislatures of Arkansas and Louisiana. However, many other awards were presented privately by active AARSE members.

However, there was a lapse in the awards for reasons Dr. Cramer elaborated in the article, but now they have resumed:

The first 2015 Gold-Plated AARSE Award goes to the Boston Patriots Coach Bill Belchick for the press conference in which he provided a “scientific explanation” of how 11 out of 12 Patriot footballs and zero out of 12 Colts footballs became deflated during their playoff game. Belichick set a new standard for “baffle ’em with BS” in his pseudo-scientific explanation of the deflate gate phenomenon, which should strongly promote the retardation of science. The “scientific experts” quoted by the media, and reaching a variety of conflicting conclusions, did not do much better and also deserve Gold-Plated AARSE Awards.

There were two other awards.

The second 2015 Gold-Plated AARSE Award goes to the 56% of Congressional Republicans who deny the existence of climate change of human origin. This group has done an outstanding job of ignoring the views of the roughly 98% of climate scientists who have a consensus agreement that anthropogenic warming is real and serious, while quoting profusely from fringe sources and the 1-2% of climate scientists that have expressed other opinions.

The next award of the year has particular relevance to Armstrongists.

The third 2015 Gold-lated AARSE Award goes to the many anti-vax parents of children in the U.S.A. and U.K. who have wisely protected their children from autism by preventing their vaccinations for measles and other childhood diseases. They have bravely resisted the heavy handed prompting and requirements of government agencies and health authorities, who think that just because a link between vaccination and autism has been overwhelmingly rejected by a long series of scientific studies, all children should be vaccinated. These parents instead prefer to be “on the safe side” by accepting the validity of an autism-vaccination link originally suggested in 1998 in a paper by British gastroenerologist Andrew Wakefield. Wakefield’s publication has since been discredited and retracted by the publishing journal, and he has lost his medical license. These thoughtful parents cover a broad range of ideologies from Oklahoma redneck libertarians to California alternative medicine liberals, and they have done an outstanding job in confusing the distinction between medical science and uniformed opinion.

Now it is true that Herbert Armstrong often made it seem that he supported science, engineering and technology, but he made it clear that he only supported them under the condition that they be used for his religion. If they were not, they were “bad” and of the “Devil”, destroying not just faith, but the world at large which was going to hell in a handbasket because of them. Of course, it was obvious in retrospect that the real reason the Herbert Armstrong rejected science, engineering and technology is that he lacked structural visualization which would have given him the ability to understand them. As it was, his father was a craftsman and inventor in the structural field which created a huge rift between them, possibly resulting in Herbert Armstrong’s narcissism. It also didn’t help that Herbert Armstrong never finished high school and did not value education because he lacked the inherited aptitude of foresight.

Herbert Armstrong established any number of antiscientific stances now embraced by his hireling successors who have established a few of their own. He didn’t let members go to doctors for treatment, opposed vaccines and held other views which retarded science, engineering and technology, particularly when they interfered in the advertising efforts to draw more people to his cult. Actually, it was not a bad strategy because 75% of those in the United States don’t really understand science anyway (the statistics of scientific ignorance is appalling). His world was filled with religious magic rather than rational observation and process.

Folks like Robert Thiel have helped advance the antiscience nonsense by proposing that sin — particularly homosexuality — causes earthquakes, natural disasters and drought.

Armstrongists live in a world they cannot possibly understand and science, engineering and technology are unfathomable mysteries for which they create creative explanations, such as gap theory with Intelligent Design not far behind.

This doesn’t even begin to address the issues of British Israelism.

And so it is that we here at The Painful Truth now issue our very own 2015 Gold-Plated AARSE to honor the Armstrongists:

The 2015 Gold-Plated AARSE Certificate of Meritorious Effort
The 2015 Gold-Plated AARSE Certificate of Meritorious Effort

Anger

The JournalGetting The Best Of Your AngerArmstrongists are the masters of standing on other people’s work to make themselves look impressive and wise. This is especially true of the splinter ministers, particularly those who have a ready made forum provided by their very own church cult corporate patron hero worshippers. Even the most well-crafted puff piece that is a mere book review of someone else’s work oft has gaping holes: After all, you are at the mercy of the original author of such articles of worldly wisdom. You can just cross your fingers and hope — nay, wish — that everyone will be impressed by your selection of cut and paste and that everyone will give you credit for finding such helpful material.

Our outing today is found on page 3 of the June 30, 2015 The Journal by the wily columnist and minister of the Church of God, Big Sandy, David Havir, in an article entitled, “Do you suppress, express or release anger?” He starts out:

BIG SANDY, Texas—Recently I posted a series of articles about anger on our congregational website (under the “Among Friends” section at churchofgodbigsandy.com). The series of articles was based on a book titled Getting the Best of Your Anger Before It Gets the Best of You. The book was written in 2007 by Dr. Les Carter. I thought I would share some excerpts from the book here in THE JOURNAL.

From there, he quotes passages of the book by Dr. Les Carter without adding any material or ideas of his own. It’s a straight cut and paste with headings. Furthermore, even though there is  chapter 14 in the book, “The Bible and Anger”, there is not one single Scripture quoted in the Havir article, which you would think rather odd for an Armstrongist minister until you realize that just maybe Dave does not really put much stock in the Bible but uses it “inspiration“, not unlike the discussions we’ve had with the Editor of the Journal here and over at Otagosh, a brilliant blog with the byline, “Raking through the Ashes of Christendom”. Gavin Rumney has done a stellar job of not just raking through the ashes, but lighting the match to produce them. Articles like the one by David Havir makes the Cult of Herbert Armstrong Mafia ministry look to be more useful than they really are.

Now it really isn’t that mystifying that an Armstrongist minister would refrain from quoting Scripture given the opportunity to do so. After all, the sects of the Cult of Herbert Armstrong Mafia are secular corporations and more often than not don’t have that much to do with religion but do have everything to do with providing profits for the shareholders, and, in the case of the Church of God, Big Sandy, to hold a society of people together by making them think they all have so very much in common (which, if you think about it, will just generate more profit for the shareholders). For those who have read Moral Mazes and The Corporation, the corporate posturing using the ‘magic lantern’ is very clear. Taking every advantage of every PR opportunity is good for the corporation.

To fill the void left by this article, we provide two Scriptures:

Make no friendship with an angry man; and with a furious man thou shalt not go: Lest thou learn his ways, and get a snare to thy soul.

Proverbs 22:24-25

This caused no small discomfort for many of us when Joseph Tkach, Senior took over the helm of the Worldwide Church of God Corporation. In retrospect, we should have applied the passage to Herbert Armstrong for his legendary temper alone. Today, no one should follow any of the majority of the Armstrongist Churches of God because of their anger. As the Apostle Paul commanded, “from such turn away”.

Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath

Ephesians 4:26

We’ll just skip over all those places where God exercises His wrath.

There’s something else the article did not address and it is extremely important: Anger is biology. You can read about it in this article in The Daily Mail. Specifically, those with the ‘TT’ and ‘TC’ allele variants of the DARPP-32 gene are going to have grave difficulties with anger: It is a genetic property which must be managed. If you watch Dr. Phil, you would know this. There are tests for it. That being the case, one would think that instead of reading Dr. Les Carter, one would do better to follow Dr. Phil for solutions to the problem. The point is, the article by Dave Havir neither mentions Scripture nor does it mention the anger / warrior genes. It would seem that to really help your congregation, you should give full disclosure because it’s important and incomplete disclosure puts those with the problem at risk. Or so it would seem. Actually, anger provides an evolutionary advantage which makes it possible to overcome seemingly impossible odds, like the dog chasing off the bear or the hero cat that chases off a dog attacking a child in the family.

Anger does have its uses.

The article represents one of the three main aspects of typical Armstrongist presentations:

1. Material is plagiarized from somewhere else without attribution and then modified to suit the needs of the Armstrongist;

2. Material is summarized and presented as if the Armstrongist’s wisdom found and validated the material to benefit the Armstrongist;

3. Scraps of pieces of this and that are scrounged and the Armstrongist creates an entire presentation that has been fabricated out of whole cloth by just making stuff up.

The article by Havir is of the second type.

There is quite a downside to the article. It is intended to help you deal with your own anger. The question is, just how helpful is this when you have to deal with the anger of other people? What if you have to face down a Terry Ratzman in your congregation? A Chuck Harris? How do you deal with the temper of your Apostle / Evangelist / Prophet? We aren’t given a clue. What if you don’t have the anger / warrior gene but have to deal with people who do? How do you do it? What steps can you take to defuse a potentially threatening situation fueled by the anger of others?

You know, Armstrongist articles are generally self-serving. They are designed to keep the Proles docile. This particular article is very useful to keep people from erupting with anger from frustration — those who are suffering injustices which really should be fixed. You are oppressed? Your money is being drained for the benefit of the minister? Your freedoms are being taken away? Your privacy is being violated? The best advice (for those in authority over you) is that you suppress and channel your anger in a direction which will not affect them, so no change will ever occur (like we’ve never seen that before).

Could the article (basically written by a Christian psychologist) be useful? Perhaps. Is it going to improve your life? Maybe… maybe not. In any event, if you want the real information, go get the book because anything less and you will be deprived of the full experience. Go to the source. Prove all things. Hold fast to that which is scientific.

There is one thing we know about anger: You can make people angry by lying to them. When they find out you lied to them, they will be angry.

But there is something else we know: If you want to make people really angry, tell them the truth.