CHRISTIANITY
569. The most significant feature of the modern theological standpoint is its overt or covert anti-clericalism.
570. Less and less can we speak about the confrontation, but the more so about the adaptation - in terms of an essential assimilation - of the Church to the modern world today. The Church is no longer the opponent of the modern world but a part of it.
571. The gradual loss of tradition of the Church, unfortunately, has reached the point where the Church not only openly stands out against metaphysical traditionality, provided it is familiar with it at all; also it has become, although not explicitly, the opponent of its own tradition.
572. Christianity ab ovo included all the heresies which otherwise could not have come into existence. Christian Satanism is really Christian in the sense that it is an antithetical religion that operates with Christian terms. If the worship of Mara had been developed in Buddhism, it would have been completely different from Christian Satanism, indeed, it would have specifically been a Buddhist Satanism.
[Māra denotes Satan in Buddhism.]
573. Though the idea, according to which »To repent of one’s sin is much more essential than not to commit it«, has never been formulated explicitly by the main doctrines of Christianity, it has always been present in them, even if only implicitly.
[The idea that repenting of one’s sin is more important than not committing it at all has even explicitly been taught by certain Russian sects.]
574. The reason that the early missionaries in America could not boast about great achievements lay in the fact that, though the Amerindians considered almost all Christian teachings quite appealing to them, they could not come to terms with the idea of their being sinners. And there was certainly an attitude in Christianity, according to which the less one found oneself to be sinful, the more sinful one was.
575. If we would like to get to the core of the matter, we might rather call reformation »deformation« instead.
576. Christianity which has incorporated tradition is reconcilable with tradition, but Christianity without this incorporation is not.