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Originally Posted by richlevy
I'm not quite ready to believe that. Like many organizations, including our own government, you can find corrupt people at the top of many organized religions. However, IMO, there are a lot of good people trying to do their jobs throughout the hierarchy.
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The people who didn't have power, money or land were most likely the ones with more actual religious faith than the ones with, like kings, emperors and popes and things. However, it's also those emperors and popes who tell the lower classes what to do and under the pretense of religious right. So, these lower classes would do X, Y and Z because Emperor PuffnStuff said so and since Emperor PuffNStuff is publicly of The True Religion™ then he must be moving with (insert Diety here)'s plan because he wouldn't have gotten to his supreme powerful position without being a chosen one of (aforementioned Diety), would he? And if they (publicly) didn't do it or (publicly) didn't follow the same religion Emperor PuffNStuff did, then they were forced to renounce, hunted, imprisoned, tortured, killed or worse... excommunicated.
All of the above can be applied to most of the major religions, not just Catholisicm or Christianity. It's kinda built in with the territory with religions that have heavy focus of having power, owning land and attaining material wealth in the name of a Diety.