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This is the story of how I, a Roman Catholic Priest, at the age of thirty-nine, in the depths of depression, suddenly woke up to the reality that I was totally owned and controlled by the religious and social system in which I had been born and raised. I belonged to a system, imbued with all its values, historical resentments and hostilities, its belief that its divine destiny is to ‘save’ the world. All of this had been programmed into me since infancy; I had no choice in the matter. The Catholic Church is not alone in its vision of the way the world should be, or its role in achieving its vision. Today in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Taliban understand themselves to be faithful followers of Mohammed whose mission is to bring about a perfect Islamic state which would exclude all of other faiths. Like those evangelical Christians who work to bring the Gospel to everyone so the world may ‘know’ Christ in order to be ‘saved, ’ Moslem radicals believe that all nations and peoples of the world should submit to the teachings of their prophet. The zealotry of all three groups … and many others both now and throughout history … offers clear examples of what enslavement by religions with their self-justifying doctrines can do to tear apart individual lives and human communities. My own escape was like flying up through heavy cloud cover into the clear blue sky, where the entire intellectual indoctrination was now like the weather down below me. I had finally won my freedom from Christianity as an organized religion, and in the process achieved enlightenment. Freedom from any religion is a basic human right, and like other rights, this freedom has to be won.
