Catholic Fundamentalism began with the bizarre passage from Mt 19:24: “Yes, I tell you again, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter The Kingdom of Heaven.”
The conclusion was obvious: “If a camel could not go through the eye of a needle, a rich man could not get into Heaven.” I was young. I wanted to be rich.
I realized that the eye of a needle a hundred feet long would be large enough for a camel to walk through. A nagging voice said, “You couldn’t sew a button on your shirt with that needle.”
Then, I considered cremating a camel, filling a five gallon pail with its ashes, diluting the ashes, and micro-pumping them through the eye of a needle, a fraction of a drop per second.” The same nagging voice: “That camel wouldn’t be able to walk.”
Then, this thought: “Take an egg from an ovulating camel. Put it on a microscope slide in a drop of amniotic fluid and fertilize it with sperm from a male camel. While the fertilized egg is dividing and redividing, put a needle onto the slide. Lift it so the tiny ovum will pass through its eye. It will be like a ping-pong ball going through a basketball hoop. Then, put the fertilized egg back into the womb of the mother camel. For the rest of its life, it will be a camel that has gone through the eye of a needle.”
An actual camel could go through the eye of an actual needle! The strangest passage in Scripture made perfect, literal sense! Modern science had shown Jesus’ most bizarre words were true!
Taking other passages literally inspired Catholic Fundamentalism. The six day, recent creation of Genesis? “God wrote and downloaded The Creation Program with 3-D pixels. We write our lines and direct ourselves among the stage props and set decorations of The Big Movie. When our performance is over, we meet The Critic! We find out if we followed Directions well enough to get into Heaven!”
How does Catholic Fundamentalism take computer-literate moderns on a camel-ride through the eye of a needle to The Only Church Jesus Founded?
At the moment of conception, we were the size of a grain of salt. So was the camel! Catholic minds are so open to truth that we can picture OUR tiny being atop the tiny being of a camel as it passes through the eye of the needle!
Catholic Fundamentalism is the New Road to Rome. If Jesus was right about something as utterly incredible as a camel going through a needle’s eye, all may see reasons to obey His Great Church-Founding Decree:
“I say unto you thou art Peter and on this rock I build My Church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I give you the keys to The Kingdom of Heaven.”
always more, and free books, on catholicfundamentalism.com
