2/11/05
    In writing this commentary, I am certain that it will not sit well with some of our 
Armenian religious stalwarts who are threading their way to salvation between fantasy and 
reality.  Be that as it may, I would caution the reader that my intentions do not stem as 
much from my lack of faith as they do in the way that many of today's organized religions 
have been reinterpreting their sacred scriptures.

    My Armenian Apostolic faith, for instance, was established in 301 A.D. as a State 
religion,.while the Catholic faith, on the other hand, was established some twenty-five to 
fifty years later as a universal Christian faith.  And even though both are Christian, and 
though both pay homage to the same Jesus Christ while following the same liturgy, both have 
remained adversarial toward each other from the first day that they were born.  Not only 
that but within my Apostolic faith, we have two separate hierarchies with two Catholici, 
separate churches, and again with the very same exact liturgy.   Yet, judging from the way 
they jealously try to convince their separated following of their motives for remaining 
separate, I can not help but look on them as separate corporations that have more belief 
in their separate budgets and bottom lines than they do in the Christan God they represent   

Fact is that all of our Christian faiths have committed atrocities along the way.  
And speaking of rituals, it's been said that much of the pageantry in these traditional 
Christian faiths were copied from the Zoriastrian faith, which later drove many of them 
into Islam.

    More recently, we saw H. H. Pope John Paul II of the Roman Catholic faith officiating at 
the bestowing of sainthood on St. Gregory, along with the inauguration of a nineteen-foot 
statue of St. Gregory at the Vatican.  This spiritual bridge has been 1,700 years in the 
making.

    In today's world, we have many religions with each of them driving home their own 
existence over all the rest.  Meantime they continue their separate journeys to salvation even though none among them have returned to verify the salvation they speak of.  Today's religions
and their lust for power arre starting to threaten the shrinking world we live in.

    Needless to say, I am almost at the very end of my rope when it comes to organized 
religions. And for all heads of state or religions who say they speak to God, including 
our own president, evangelists, clerics or what have you, all I can say is: Give them all 
lie detector tests.

                        Joseph Vosbikian