[livius]

They would have to explain why their fascination and obsession with the Cathars, Gnostics, Essenes, and Templars requires contemporary intrigues against orthodox Catholicism. It's a damn lie that nothing is going on here.

That is absolutely true. It's also, to add to your depression, worldwide. Every time I go to Spain, I find another spate of books has been published gushing about the Templars, for example.

I'm planning to do the Camino de Santiago next month, and these people are out there crawling all over the place now announcing how the Camino was really part of the Templar Magical Mystery Tour or some such thing. They have polluted absolutely everything. If I meet any of them, I may have to pop them in the chops.

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

And the other bizarre detail is this: Their grandiose cosmic struggle against "tyranny and supersition" (aka: Catholicism) is tinged with a heavily fantasy-laden, imaginary cartoon exaggeration of some sort 16th-century Spanish Inquisition theocracy which absolutely does not exist in the contemporary church. A cult baked on wild 14th-century pseudo-occult and heretical travesties rails and crusades against Robert Bellarmine, Torquemada, Ximenes, Savonarola, and Johann Tetzel as if contemporary Catholicism advocated their policies which it does not. Deranged. It would sort of be like holding all people from Massachusetts alive today responsible for the Salem Witch hunts and waging intrigues, conspiracies, and bigotry against them as if they were the witch burners. Bizarre.

Or like Shiite Moslems attacking contemporary Americans and Europeans because of the medieval crusades. Anti-Catholic secret societies are the Shiite jihadists of the secular humanist and occult underworlds. Classic "hate group." The "bubbas" who spout this stuff are usually backwoods semi-retards.