LOL! I'm not making out that the church is the Illuminati. For one thing, we know who they are in the church. All I'm saying is that the church has a long history of corruption and misdoing. (laugh only at that misunderstanding Vig, not you personally.)
I would say that the Church DOES have something to hide. Don't get me wrong, I'm not taking a pop at the whole religion of Christianity with that statement, but purely the catholic entity of the church itself. What they have to hide is a whole lot of history, and a whole lot of corruption. I shant go through particular issues as they are pretty well known I should imagine.
Historically speaking though, while I see nothing wrong with anyone choosing to believe in the word of God, I can't consider the Bible to be that pure word for the obvious reasons - not least because it is only half of the story. There are and have been many other Christian gospels out there, however, what we get is the Canon as dictated by the Church many many years ago. Apart from the fact that the bible is mans interpretation of godly events written some 300 or more years after the time, after being passed down through word of mouth for centuries, it was undoubtedly tainted over the last two millenia by the needs, desires, and ideas of those in power - this is what formed the canon, and this is why the bible is so demeaning of women (Leviticus 27:1-7, for one such example). It's because the climate of the time was such that Men in society were considered to be better than women, partly because of an
general male tendancy to dominate, and partly because of prevailing economic and sociological conditions.
Religiously speaking though, even though I am not Christian I am a very spiritual person, and so I can see enormous value in the bible. The Church has reduced christianity to a simple method of living for most. A strict dogma where as long as what you're told is accepted and you live a certain way, you'll go to heaven. This has evolved because the church has gotten bigger and more powerful, and like any corporate (or otherwise) entity, absolute power corrupts absolutely. The Church prefers it this way.
I would say that in reading the bible, rather than the Holy Spirit working through the church to edit, evolve, and decide on the correct interpretation of Gods word, that in fact the Holy Spirit works through the reader to dig out and understand Gods word in the watered down writings from the pen of man.
The bible, when you really get into it, is no easy thing to understand. Sophia (as found mentioned in numerous places in the Apocrypha accepted by the Catholic Church) is a prime example. For that matter, the subject of Biblical Canon itself is a rather in-depth thing to look at... and why does the Church even have an apocrypha (not only of the old testament, but of the new also)? And is it any coincidence that some of the books in it contain witness and gospel that could potentially harm the church?
The one thing I feel about Christianity is that it should be only an intense and peersonal faith. The Church should be a unity of people with this faith under the eyes of God, rather than some kind of government that happens to own lots of impressive buildings and dictates to it's people what they should believe.
There are of course many things I could say, but I'm not trying to make a personal attack on your beliefs here, and so some of them may be better left unsaid lest they be very easily be misinterpreted as such. All I'm giving is a brief historical interpretation, and also a religious interpretation of that history from my own spiritual perspective (which were my views even before the davinci code).
(again, It's the Catholic Church itself I speak about more than anything, rather than those average people who follow it personally or Christianity itself)
