I almost said Vikings when thinking about what you said of paganism being pacifistic, but then thought you'd counter with the fact that they were defending themselves from Rome's imperialism. Great, thorough analysis. I am grateful, amazed at my sheer luck for being betwixt between the two Great Ages of Piscean and Aquarius. The Piscean Age was so varied and it seems to have given us a time capsule from which to view all of this in a wider, much greater evolutionary process, an ebb and flow. You said it perfectly: a bottle neck. Who knows how an Age starts? Does it continue rising into it's Golden Age, from the mud and mire of the one before, slowly losing its luster at a predetermined space in time? Or does everything collapse due to the accumulation of far too many bottlenecks? My prediction is a bit of both. Morally progressive is something you said towards the end and that resounds quite a bit in our contemporaneous times. The Old, lucky skin is drying up and the fractures readily allow us to peer into this new vessel being formed. Maybe towards the end of our future Golden Age, our culture will begin to look more like Frank Herbert's Dune universe, before it is then spread to the furthest corners of the Universe in one great economic and spiritual shattering, much like the Tower of Babel purportedly Sumerian. I find it more provocative if one things of the shattering of tongues to be as you have said before, a kernel of truth, which then makes this concept available to other modalities and applications. It is a plurality principle. The Catholic Church will most surely survive. It has failed in the past to live up to the name Catholic, implying Universal. It has persecuted many spiritual revivals and movements to maintain its hegemony and power. It is hard to judge any institution that has outlasted so many others before it and present. It too has its own ebbs and flows. Both Saints and Sinners can be found leaving their mark on its institutions. The Christian Church had a Shattering due to secular and provincial lords not wanting to pay taxes anymore to Rome, able to fend for themselves, rebelled, creating a great flowering of great religious and cultural idealism, invariably forced the Catholic Church to plan the assimilation of its former Churches all over again, slowly. It is far too big of an animal still and Western culture owes a great deal to the scholarship of intellectuals in Monastic orders for being so arduous and diligent in the preservation of antiquity. Also and it is only recently with the addition of new Coptic texts and other Gnostic works that we are seeing the more mystical traditions of the Christian faith, centered within the Platonism of the Hellenized world that created such fertile soil. I find people quick to forget that Christianity and the New Testament is very much hellenized, reformed judaism. A lot of the early Churches that we have writings of are out of Greece through Paul's letters and so on, but due to enforced Orthodoxy under the Roman institution of the Church of Rome it was able to solidify and monopolize dogma, divine authority, and the door to salvation... so this whole notion of Christianity as an aggressive religion is only partially accurate. It is a religion of slaves and scholars. Not all Churches follow the same creeds either, and you're right about the Unitarians and Episcopalians. These branches have inherited the Anglican heresy, which is much different than the Lutheran one (using heresy here in the jocular sense), a, and also we can't forget Scripture itself which has been jeopardized - it's an entire industry making new versions of the Bible from new translations. How its interpreted depends primarily on the level of exegesis applied and if it is thorough in examination or superficial. It almost has this terroir about it much like you'd use to discuss something like wine or coffee beans. Because the Bible was originally written in Greek and Hebrew, going to the original source material helps theological study immensely. When we consider how many different Churches there were, scattered throughout the Old World we would find them as far as the Tarim Basin to the east, and as far south as Ethiopia and Socotra in antiquity. Therefore, in reference to the Episcopalians surviving and all that, yeah. That's why Herbert Crange Catholic Bible. Orange is a favorite color of Dharmic religions. I can see readily how they would interpret Jesus' passage regarding eunuchs in order to sanction same-sex marriages.. Maybe you can share your guess? I personally thing same-sex marriage is a misnomer, because marriage is a heterosexual term in religious law and dogma. Domestic or civil partnerships are more apropos in our secular State and wish that they used these words instead of marriage when the law was passed. "For there are eunuchs who were born that way from their mother’s womb; and there are eunuchs who were made eunuchs by men; and there are also eunuchs who made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. He who is able to accept this, let him accept it," (Matthew 19:12). At that time being a “born eunuch” was a common phrase for a homosexual. Rather than condemning them, Jesus asserts they have a place. I mean isn't it illogical to think that Jesus would hate gay people when he hung around the most undesirable people in his day, people who were unclean, or despised. It has also been suggested that Mary Magdalene was actually his consort. Instead of Pretty Woman, a Lady from a Whore, we have the Whore becomes Disciple. So yeah, bogus and bogey. People forget their history these days. I thought it was the coolest thing as a kid and self-studied only to find out adults didn't have a clue what I was talking about.   There have been inquisitions over this as we know and much of the Gnostic church tradition was wiped out. It was without a doubt the more individualistic form of Christian philosophy. In the same way that Confucianism won out as a model suitable for the vast majority, it did not satisfy those who had achieved material succor, and in old age Taoism became a personal art and spiritual practice in lieu of the former. There is guidance and there is revelation. One leads you to the gate, but only a seeker walks through it. Fun Fact: Did you know King Henry upon making the Church of England lost the keys to the City of London to Venetian bankers, because he was excommunicated by the Pope? Read the paper trail, but lost my notes.