How is a priest, who is nothing but a servant, going to mediate between you and existence, or God, or nature, or truth? In the pope's message to the world this is counted as a sin, to try to have any direct contact with God -- a sin!
You have to contact God through a properly initiated Catholic priest; everything should go through proper channels. There is a certain hierarchy, a bureaucracy; you cannot just bypass the bishop, the pope, the priest. If you simply bypass them, you are directly entering into God's house. This is not allowed, this is sin.
I was really surprised that this pope the polack has the nerve to call this a sin, to say that man has not the birthright to be in contact with existence or truth itself; for that too, he needs a proper agency! And who is to decide the proper agency? There are three hundred religions and all have their bureaucracies, their proper channels; and they all say the remaining two hundred and ninety-nine are all bogus!
But the priesthood can exist only if it makes itself absolutely necessary. It is absolutely unnecessary, but it has to force itself upon you as something unavoidable.
Years ago the polack pope was again on tour. He was kissing the earth. He was asked by the news media,
"What do you think of the welcome?"
He said, "It was warm but not overwhelming."
Now this man must have been expecting; he was not satisfied with the warm, he must have been expecting an overwhelming reception, welcome. And when he said "warm" you can be absolutely certain it must have been lukewarm -- he was trying to exaggerate it as much as he could. Otherwise a warm reception is overwhelming -- what more do you want? Hot dogs? Then it will be overwhelming? A warm reception is enough. But I know what the problem is; it must have been lukewarm or perhaps even cold.
That same year this man was going to call a synod -- that is the Catholic senate -- in which all the bishops and cardinals of the whole Catholic world meet to decide certain urgent matters. And you can be sure what those urgent matters were: Birth control is a sin, abortion is a sin; and this new sin which has never been mentioned before -- to make an effort to be in direct contact with God is a sin.
Now the thesis that he has propounded he was going to put before the synod to get their agreement; then it became an appendix, almost as holy as THE BIBLE. If it is unanimously accepted by the synod, then it has the same status. And it was accepted because no priest will say that this is wrong, no cardinal will say that this is wrong. They were immensely happy that he has a really original mind -- even Jesus was not aware!
When I received the message that any effort to make direct contact with God is sin, I wondered what Moses was doing. It was a direct contact: there was no mediator, there was no one present. There was no eyewitness when Moses met God in the burning bush. He was committing a great sin according to pope the polack.
Who was Jesus' agent? Some agency was needed. He was also trying to contact God directly, praying. And he was not paying somebody else to pray for him, he was praying himself And he was not a bishop, not a cardinal, not a pope; neither was Moses a bishop, nor a cardinal, nor a pope.
These are all sinners according to pope the polack. And the synod did sign it, because all over the world the priesthood is in a shaky condition.
And the truth is that it is your birthright to inquire into existence, into life, what it is all about.