Keith Cleversley and His Pea Brain

It’s a hefty charge, but there is no argument that the Roman Catholic Church has killed more people and consciously destroyed more cultures than any of the most heinous villains in all of history.  And perhaps most amazing is that the Church makes no attempt to deny it; they simply state that they are “acting on God’s behalf” and that we, as mere sinning humans, couldn’t possibly fathom the great wisdom of the Christian God. As a result they say they’re justified in every killing, in every destruction of entire cultures and civilizations such as the Mayans.

So, instead of making an attempt to argue the validity of such universally agreed despondent acts; I instead point some of them out every once in a while, allowing readers to arrive at their own conclusions.  This vivid example of the Early Church’s attempt to wipe an entire civilization from the face of the Earth comes to us courtesy of a Spanish Roman Bishop and inquisitor by the name of Diego de Landa.

Who Was Diego de Landa?

Diego de Landa despised idolatry and what he called witchcraft.  When he encountered the Mayans; they were the worst of offenders in his eyes, and was convinced that their stunning  and sophisticated accomplishments with mathematics, written language, spirituality, city-building, and astronomy were nothing more than the works of the devil.  So, in July of 1562, Diego de Landa destroyed thousands of pages of Mayan history contained in hand-written codexes; pages that held the knowledge and technology that had been developed for well over 2,000 years, as well as thousands of pieces of art (which he called “idols”) that were the very identity of this incredible people.

That, of course wasn’t enough, though.

Bishop Diego de Landa also tortured and killed thousands of Mayans and Mayan nobility, which included burning them alive, mutilating them to death, drowning them, hanging them from trees, and any other method that the “God of the Bible” had apparently instructed him to use.  His justification was not only that it was “God’s will,” but he believed in grand displays that would serve as an example for any other indigenous populations who thought they might defy the Roman Catholic Church.

What was the Mayan’s crime?  Living in harmony with the planet.

And this is where a critical points comes in:  The Catholic Church would like us all to believe that they marched in on their golden steeds, saving countless savages from their primitive ways, from their idol worship, from their path of ignorance and devil worship.  They further have force fed us with the belief that most converted to Christianity willingly, especially once they knew how backward and wrong their primitive ways were.

But these are the facts:  The Mayans were a culture that were far from the savages we’ve been brainwashed into believing they were.  They were accomplished architects with a sophisticated written language.  They were astronomers who created incredibly accurate calendars.  They were artists and mathematicians.  They were skilled farmers who were able to feed thousands of people.  They had a couple thousand years of evolution under their belts before the Spanish came along and destroyed, in a small amount of time, all that this civilization had amassed and accomplished over all that time.

Sadly enough, Diego de Landa was simply doing what the Roman Catholic Church has done throughout history (and continues to try to do today):  Wipe out any evidence of past or different belief systems, especially those that existed before Christianity and Jesus Christ came along.

I can never figure out why, if they’re so convinced that their religion is the “true” religion, why would it be necessary to go to such inhuman, vicious lengths to wipe out any other evidence of past religious systems.  In fact, some have argued that since religious systems like Buddhism still exist, it proves that the Catholic Church didn’t wipe out every other religious system.  Have no doubt, though; if the Early Church had the power to wipe the memory of Buddhism from the face of the Earth, they would have.  (In fact, the Chinese have been trying to do that for many, many years, but they have been unsuccessful as well.)

But what’s even more interesting to me, is that the religious systems that the Catholic Church can’t stomp out or propaganda into oblivion, they have an official name for those religious systems that still exist today; it’s called “Diabolical Mimicry.”  Translated, this means simply; any religious system that existed before Christianity (such as Buddhism) was nothing more than a system put in place by the devil in an attempt to confuse us humans, forcing us to question whether the one true god of the Christian faith actually IS the one true god.

And, this becomes incredibly interesting when one looks to the texts of Buddhism and compare it, side by side with some of the text of the Bible.  In fact, there are several interesting books that cover this exact topic.  There’s “Jesus and Buddha: The Parallel Sayings” by Marcus Borg, and “Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, and Lao Tzu: The Parallel Sayings” by Richard Hooper.  But, I digress, so back to the point.

The Bigger Picture of the Destruction

What Diego de Landa was hoping to do went far beyond stopping the Mayans from continuing their “devil worshiping” ways.  He was so threatened by any religious system other than his own, that he was determined to wipe any memory that an entire culture and civilization ever existed on planet Earth.

Stop and think about that for just a second:  He, and others before and after him and in the name of the Catholic Church, have attempted to wipe entire cultures and civilizations from the Earth.  He had his critics, and was sometimes considered an extremist by some of those in the Church, but he wasn’t doing anything any differently then what the Early Church had done throughout its existence:  the sacrementalization of indigenous culture.

And regardless of how the Church has trued to re-write history to justify the heinous acts of Diego de Landa and others of his kind, this simple fact can never be erased from the history books: He was named a bishop by the Church soon after his civilization, culture, human, and book-burning rampage, making it clear that the Church not only supported his efforts, but that he should be rewarded for them as well.

The Mayans didn’t convert because they saw the “light of god;” they converted as a way to protect their very lives.  Mayan beliefs thankfully, although highly abridged, moved underground and not only still exist today; but there’s a resurgence of interest in Mayan culture, coinciding, quite non-coincidentally with the Catholic Church continuing to lose its stranglehold on history and those who are truly responsible for our mutual human evolution on this planet.  The Mayans have contributed more to our mutual human evolution than we may ever know, especially in relation to their spiritual beliefs; beliefs that were rooted in Shamanism and knowledge of direct experience with the divine.

If the Church was truly interested in educating, enlightening, and converting, there would be no need to murder so many, to destroy sacred sites, temples, and churches of other religious and spiritual systems only to build their own churches over the top of them.  There would be no need to wipe all evidence of past cultures from the Earth, to offer a choice of conversion or death, or to rewrite history, repeatedly, in order to “prove” that their cause and efforts are just, or worse; that they were foretold by the God of the Bible.

And Diego de Landa is but one of countless examples of the oppression of the Church and the accompanying crimes it’s committed throughout history.  I hope that the Mayan people take back their culture, that the rebirth continues, partly thanks to the 2012 hype, the internet, the recent remaining translations of the remaining codexes, and the further exploration into the true meaning of the artifacts and art that still remain, including the key pieces that I have in my personal collection.

- Keith Cleversley

NOTE: Please be respectful of the immense effort and research that goes into writing my articles.  Do not re-print or re-post any of my work without receiving explicit and express permission from me first. Feel free to link to my articles whenever you wish, though, and I am always available for interviews or comments.