A
Aurelio
Guest
Hola!Or is she - he simply “overmedicated,” someone who has long since developed what is politely called these days a “chemical dependency” – on so-called “legally prescribed” psycho-active, psycho-tropic, or who knows? Maybe even nuero-leptic drugs? Masquerading as “medications?”
Because, if it IS not drugs, or not drugs 100%, there may be something else at work here!
As silly as this sounds, if we put things in the form used by German antropoligist Andreas Glasser in his article Monolithic Intentionality, Belonging, and State Paranoia: A View Through STASI onto the Late GDR (2004?), we may be surprised to find that there is, here in the American Catholic Church, elements in the Religious Educational field with just such an ideological “paranoia.” As Glaesar’s lengthy article defines what we might call here “Institutional Paranoia,” as well as “State Paranoia,” I think it is well worth a quick peek.
He tells us, for example in footnote one: “The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: Fourth Edition, better known as DSM-IV, defines paranoid personality disorder as ‘a pervasive distrust and suspiciousness of others such that their motives are interpreted as malevolent’ (American Psychiatric Association 1994:637). Diagnostic criteria include, for example, the assumption of ill-intention even where there is no indication of it; unfounded doubts about the loyalty of friends or associates; unwillingness to confide in others; reading hidden meanings into benign remarks. All of these, as will become apparent throughout the paper, are characteristic of state paranoia as well.”
In this case the “state paranoia” was East Germany and its chief practioners were the dreaded STASI, or secret police.
Based on even a casual reading of these forums, I personally am left with the feeling that many of the problems encountered by many of us in RCIA, or Bible Studies, or Religion Studies arise from the perhaps quite likely conditioning of the instructors themselves in variations of old time Marxist-Leninist methods of psychological domination, intimidation, classroom manipulation and total control.
I recently experienced this myself in Bible Studies Class.
Yet, at the same time it IS almost funny as these unhappy an often pathetic personality types who are really in tune with promoting their Gospel of Marxist-Socialist Reductionists Revolutionary Good News have their comical side.
And that comical side, at least so far as those Dy-no-mite Marx Brothers are concerned, is that these really far out RCIA-Religion-Bible Studies teachers can’t help coming across to a lot us as folks preaching some sort of really weird baloney – and thus less in accord with good 'ole St. Karl Marx – and more in accord with the “Revolutionary School” of St. Groucho!
Perhaps most pathetic of all? Many I’ve come in contact with over the years are otherwise nice, albiet over-medicated ladies stuck in some time warp from long, long ago.
That long ago “Golden Age.” when places as distinct as North Korea, Cuba and the Soviet Union were being touted as the real-life living, breathing personification of You-Know-Whos “Sermon on the Mount,” Eight Beatitudes and All!
Thus, any RCIA, Religion Studies, or Bible Studies student who has the effrontery to insist, no matter how matter of factly, that there is no way to “mix hell with Holy Water” in a hopelessly bizarre text is automatically classified as the “enemy.”
The student is often warned, maybe once or twice, and then simply attacked. How? By the instructor, over-medicated or otherwise, going off in his (or her) face. In the short term this “works.”
Even as someone who was on the receiving end of such an attack Thursday, a week ago yesterday, yours truly had enough sense “to keep my cool as I ain’t no fool,” and quietly begin tabulating impressions and then putting such impressions into what many of us have long since recognized as standard albiet “last ditch” forms of Marxist control techniques, to check for fit. In this case, at least, there was a very good fit!
See you…
Aurelio
