Survive: right, my source was way off. It was only something over 100K, and it was men as well. Sorry.
Blackbog: First, you have condemned Scientology as being “absolutely” incompatiable with Catholicism. I gather here that you are not using the word in its coloquial sense? It may be picky, but since Scientologists are equally a creation of God, it is difficult for me to accept that somewhere, even if it is in different language, there is not some fragment of congruency.
As to your stated incompatabilities:
#1 particular vs general: According to my understanding engrams are said to account for particular abberations. This is pertinent to the brain as a recording/control device as influenced under particular circumstances. Engrams are in the catagory of hypnotic suggestion. We know that people subject to hypnosis can behave differenty under the influence of suggestion.
As far as I can see Original sin is attributed by Catholicism as a general cause for the human condidition. What constitues this original sin has other than Catholic explanations, some of them interestingly valid, if not true according to the Church.
#2 particular vs general: Would you give two people of different needs the same advice? Would you tell a toddler the same thing you would tell a theologian or professor of physics? etc, etc. You might base your statement on a fundamental absolute principle, but if you have perceptive abilities coupled with kindness and practicality, you adapt your offering to the listener and offer it in a compatible setting according to their ability to hear.
#3 particular vs general: Control and happiness are, though related, two issues, but here you take them as one in presentation. Certainly we know that Mark 16:17-18 writes of signs following the faithfull. I guess here you are speaking of a matter of attribution of the works. As far as I can tell the ability to do works is attributed in Scientology to a higher power of consciousness. I am not sure that in the eyes of God, that He is called by a different name is necessarily condemnatory.
And your way of stating the “Catholic” viewpoint, is self contradictory. In fact, is not the goal of spiritual practice happiness with God in Heaven? A goal of spiritual practice may be purification, but it certainly does not in *any *interpretation I can conjur require suffering as a goal per se. Suffering may be a side effect of practice for valid or invalid reasons. Taking up your cross and following Him doesn’t inherently mean suffering, rather the dissolution of it through practice, I would think. Certaily service is a method, and atonement, (at-one-ment) is a goal.
As for “true” happiness, I am guessing here that you are refering to the Beatific Vision. As far as I know that has been granted to some on Earth, and in other systems than Catholicism it is in fact meant to be precipitated as a result of pracitce before death. In fact, that is the whole point of it in those sysems so that the “second death will have no sting.” Aside from that, I have seen people who were ecstatically in Love with God, and quite radically happy and yet walking around on our poor beleagured planet. Some of them are Scientologists. If you choose to make yourself miserable as a way of spiritual practice, you will reap that reward.
#4 amphigory: "Man is a purely spiritual being or “thetan” in a “meat body,” and “-Man is an embodied spirit.” are essentially identical statements semantically. We might split hairs, but those are not mentioned here. As for living many lives in many bodies, you and I are already doing that. You are no more the same person you were at birth, nor do you have any particle of your birth constituting your current body. Every time you eat or excrete you are in the process of changing your body. At the final trumpet, then, will all the atoms of all your bodies re-unite, even if they were parts of other bodies through the ages? We won’t here enter the argument about the validity of the gospels that had Jesus speaking of reincarnation and practical healing, except to say that there may be some concern in choosing only four gospels well after the fact because there are four directions, etc.
Fortunately, we do not have to go “on and on” as you are not being asked to embrace Cof S doctrine. I might, again, suggest that you obtain a copy of Gina Cerminara’s profound book on religious sanity and study it, despit its very unfortunate and misleading title. And again, in terms of practical matters, and speaking strictly of my own experience, I found the ways and mean of the courses I took from or based on Scientology to be useful and not contradictory to Catholic teaching.
