Chapter 1

When a huge earthquake hit Kobe, Japan, on the morning of January 17, 1995, at 4:36 a.m, it was not long before citizens, journalists, and civic leaders on both sides of the Pacific immediately noted the coincidence between this quake and the one that had hit in Los Angeles, California, exactly one year before, beginning with the date of the quake itself, for the Los Angeles Quake had hit on January 17, 1994, at 5:32 a.m. Most prominent among these civic leaders was President Bill Clinton who had just flown in from Denver, Colorado, to give a speech at California State University, Northridge (CSUN), on the one-year anniversary of the Los Angeles Quake, when he received news of the Kobe Quake, and included a commemoration to the victims of that quake in his speech, as follows: “‘Nature has struck again here at home in California with the floods and with extraordinary fury in the earthquake in Japan.  I know all of you join with me in extending our profound condolences to the families of those in the Osaka-Kobe area of Japan who have suffered such a tremendous loss in the last day.’  Clinton asked the audience to join him in a ‘moment of silence’ for the earthquake victims.”[1] 

Among the other coincidences which would be noted by the authorities, journalists, and lay people alike over time were: 1) both quakes hit directly under major urban centers with similar populations in the two million range (Kobe and the San Fernando Valley)[2]; 2) both shallow quakes originating about 11 to 12 miles under the earth’s surface[3]; 3) both quakes had similar moment magnitudes (Northridge 6.7, Kobe 6.8); and 4) both quakes lasted about 20 seconds in duration. Furthermore, 5) both quakes had unprecedented levels of surface speed and velocity (Northridge Quake with the highest “peak ground velocity” ever recorded in the United States at 16.7 m/s and Kobe with the highest level of seismic intensity of Level 7); 6) both quakes came from previously unknown or unexpected fault lines (Northridge from a “hidden thrust fault,” not from the nearby and expected San Andreas Fault, while Kobe was an “inland shallow quake” of “strike-slip” mechanism from the Nojima Fault along Awaji Island not one of the northern faults around Kanto where everyone seemed to expect “The Big One”); 7) both quakes created the most damage from a natural disaster in their respective countries up to that time (the Los Angeles Quake causing $30 billion in property damage and the Kobe Quake causing $1 trillion of same); and 8) both quakes were felt very far away from their original source, the Northridge Quake as far away as Las Vegas, the Kobe Quake as far away as Hiroshima[4].

But I believe the most significant coincidence of all, which no one seems to have yet noted in these past 20 years,[5] is the coincidence of the names of the quakes, for “Kobe” roughly translates to “The Gate of God” while Los Angeles translates to “The Angels,” both denoting spiritual, or supernatural, things.  And if we look into these two names even more closely, we see that whereas the Virgin Mary is “The Gate of God” since it was through her body that Christ came into the world, the full name of Los Angeles is “The City of Our Lady Queen of the Angels de La Porciuncula” (from the Spanish “El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora, la Reina de Los Angeles de La Porciuncula”)—and thus both cities refer to the Blessed Virgin Mary.  Now the suffix “de la Porciuncula” appended to the name of Los Angeles refers to the “Little Portion” of a church St. Francis of Assisi (1181/2-1226) built for himself in his hometown of Assisi above the altar of which there was a painting by Giotto of the Annunciation of the Archangel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary that she would give birth to the Messiah, and Los Angeles was named for this painting[6]—and thus we can say that the names of both Kobe and Los Angeles refer to the Virgin Mary in her state of pregnancy.

Now among the many mystical phenomena noted by the Japanese media on the eve preceding the Kobe Quake were the following: 1) mysteriously bright skies above Awaji Island shortly before the pre-dawn quake; 2) male and female octopi caught in the Akashi Straits (between the epicenter of Awaji Island and the City of Kobe) entering the same traps and clenching there, as had never been known to happen in those straits in the previous fifty years according to local fisherman, Sagawa Yoshio, 69; 3) normally playful and cooperative dolphins refusing to join any activities and in fact trying to escape the pool at the Suma Aqualife Park according to trainers Takii Michhiro, 29, and Yoshida Kiyoe, 27; 4) the water turning cloudy over a large area and small fish turning up dead with gizzard shads who usually swam at the middle-depths now swimming near the surface of the straits near the Awaji epicenter, according to Iwase Sughio, 51; 5) the multitude of rats suddenly and mysteriously disappearing from the Country Mates Farm warehouse of Hokudan-cho on Awaji Island in the week preceding the quake, according to Ueno Katsuo; 6) in Osaka parks, “unprecedentedly large flocks of gray starlings shrieked in the trees, while in Kobe’s Higashinada-ku, dogs barked and cats meowed throughout the night of January 16.  The animals were desperately trying to alert us to something”; 7) a mysterious “earthquake cloud” forming a huge cross—or  inverted cross—in the sky above the Akashi Straits Bridge on January 9 [7].  And with the earthquake itself, 8) “a bluish-white flash of light streaked through the sky above the Akashi Municipal Planetarium.  It was so bright that the cables of the bridge ordinarily invisible at that hour, were silhouetted clearly in the surrounding darkness. Captain Shinmura Shigetoshi, 49, who had witnessed the flash from the ferry’s deck could scarcely believe his eyes.  What had just happened?”  Could it be that the flash of “blueish-white” was a signal indicating that we were now experiencing the second of the two quakes named for the Virgin Mary—indeed, the pregnant Virgin Mary—she who often appears in beautiful blue-and white garb?[8] And is it mere coincidence that the ferry from which Captain Shinmura saw this bluish-white flash light up in the dark night sky was called the “Queen Diamond” considering that, according to Catholic theology, Mary herself is Queen of Heaven and Earth?[9]  Finally, and perhaps most significantly, 9) there is the apparent rising of the Takatori Statue in downtown Kobe, which appeared on Japanese newspaper and magazine covers—even covers of secular newspapers and magazines—throughout Japan (see Fig. 1.3).

It just so happens that Kobe and Los Angeles lie roughly along the same latitude line on either side of the Pacific Basin—and the epicenters of the two quakes at the tip of Awaji Island and in the city of Reseda in the San Fernando Valley lie roughly along the same latitude line as well—and the symmetry of the two quakes in both time and space cause us to see the larger areas they are part of in symmetrical fashion as well; and hence this causes us to see that Japan and California look like two doves standing on the edge of a bowl and facing each other across the Pacific Basin, which happens to be an early Christian symbol found in the ancient Italian catacombs and representing the soul’s union with God.  This can especially be seen in the 5^thcentury mosaic of two doves on a bowl across from each other in the Galla Placidia Mausoleum in Ravenna, Italy (Fig. 1.4). Coincidentally, this image was found on the cover of missals throughout Japan just four months and four days after the Kobe Quake--this particular leaflet being found at the Shukugawa Catholic Church (or "Shukugawa Kyokai") in the heart of the Hanshin Region (of which we shall hear much more in the following chapter) which had been heavily devastated in the Kobe Quake, and was still in the process of recovery. Interestingly, the City of Nishinomiya, on the opposite side of the Shukugawa River from Shukugawa Kyokai, depicts a very similar image (Fig.1.5) of two doves astride a globe evincing a nuclear-free image, a symbol drawn as part of a civic contest some years before the quake.  As for the Ravenna symbol, the reader will notice that the dove on the left, the “Japanese dove,” looks back over its shoulder, in profile exactly like the northern island of Hokkaido atop the main island of Honshu.[10] Prior to this discovery which I made in May of 1995, it seems that Japan has primarily been seen as oriented toward its fellow Asian nations like an inward-looking crescent, and the only time I have seen it oriented in the opposite direction was not as a peaceful dove looking out to California but as a great dragon spitting across the Pacific Ocean in World War II American propaganda films [11] 

As for the "California dove," it took the movement of man through the centuries, from the settlement of Asia, then the Indus Valley, then the Indo-European migration to Europe, then the European migration to America, then the American colonies, to the drive to settle the American West, to effect a descent of the California dove upon its perch on the East end of the Pacific Basin from, in order, Delaware (1787) to Pennsylvania (1787) to New Jersey (1787) to Georgia  

(1788) to Connecticut (1788) to Massachusetts (1788) to Maryland (1788) to South Carolina 

(1788) to New Hampshire (1788) to Virginia (1788) to New York (1788) to North Carolina 

(1789) to Rhode Island (1790) to Vermont (1791) to Kentucky (1791) to Tennessee (1792) to 

Ohio (1803) to Louisiana (1812) to Indiana (1817) to Mississippi (1818) to Illinois (1818) to 

Alabama (1819) to Maine (1820) to Missouri (1821) to Arkansas (1836) to Michigan (1837) to 

Florida (1845) to Texas (1845) to Iowa (1846) to Wisconsin (1848) and, finally, after long last, 

to California (1850)--all this via a process called "Manifest Destiny," mind you--to descend 

upon the lip of the Pacific Basin like the dove from heaven in the Grail legends and at 

long last reach the goal it had been unconsciously seeking all along: the creation of the 

State of California in 1850 as the other half of the two-doves-on-a-bowl symbol.  And the 

disposition of the California dove in the Galla Placidia mosaic not only reminds us of those 

frequent mentions of California as one day breaking off and falling into the Pacific Ocean due to a 

terrible, apocalyptic earthquake along the San Andreas Fault, which bisects California down its 

center, but, more importantly, of the legends of the Holy Grail, wherein a dove descends from 

heaven to the lip of the Grail, in temple of same, to deposit a wafer of the Holy Eucharist within 

the center of its waters.  This is the way it is described in the Parzival of Wolfram von 

Eschenbach in the High Middle Ages and how Richard Wagner concluded his opera on the 

same subject, the Parsifal of 1881.  (Wagner and Eschenbach being two names we will be 

hearing much more from throughout this treatise.)

In regards to "Manifest Destiny," that insidious philosophy grew out of a long-held belief of 

the "Puritans" that they were establishing a "shining city on a hill" which would leave the European Catholic past behind once and for all, and also entailed the belief that they, like the ancient Hebrews, had entered the Promised Land of Canaan as the Chosen People of God meant to dispossess the Canaanites (read American Indians) of their land and make it their own [12]. Indeed, the early American pioneers of Protestant persuasion felt a certain Manifest Destiny, in their WASPish racial/religious superiority to trample over all other races and nations [13], from the time of Luther’s “reform” in 1517 to the time of their landing at Plymouth Rock in 1620, to the time of their faux war against England in the “Revolution” [14];  to the time of their move west while rolling away anyone who stood in their way, such as the French, the Native Americans or Mexicans whom they conquered in the various French and Indian wars and the Mexican-American War, using the Blacks as slave labor and the Chinese as coolie labor to build their roads and railways west; eventually founding the state of California and unconsciously making it look exactly like a dove across from the age-old geographical dove of Japan across the wide Pacific [15]; in unconscious fulfillment of God’s plan to bring good—this great symbol of peace at the ends of the earth—out of evil; this beautiful California dove descended upon the lip of the Pacific Basin directly across from Japan, and with the exact same upper and lower latitudes, and in the exact same croissant-like shape, as Japan, 5,000 miles across the Pacific [16].

As if this were not all coincidence enough, this parallelism of Japan and California as two 

doves which we have seen grow out of the synchronicity of the quakes of Kobe and Los

Angeles; and as if these things were not already on a grand enough scale; all of these things 

have become manifested at what must objectively be seen as the biblical ends of the 

earth which we can discern from the scene of the last words of Christ to His Apostles before 

He ascended into Heaven:  "They therefore who were come together, asked him, saying: Lord, 

wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel? But he said to them: It is not for you to 

know the times or moments, which the Father hath put in his own power: But you shall receive the 

power of the Holy Ghost coming upon you, and you shall be witnesses unto me in Jerusalem, and 

in all Judea, and Samaria, and even to the uttermost part of the earth.[17] And when he had said 

these things, while they looked on, he was raised up: and a cloud received him out of their sight” 

(Acts 1:6-9)"...because from where Christ was standing when He said these words--on Mt. Tabor 

outside Jerusalem--Japan represents the easternmost end of the earth and California represents the 

westernmost end of the earth, both together being "the uttermost part of the earth" (or "the ends of 

the earth" as it appears in other translations of the Bible).  We therefore can see all of human history leading to this end, from the creation of the Japanese islands on one end of the earth at the beginning of time, to the settling of California as a state on September 9, 1850 [18].  Sacred Scripture also speaks of God's Providence reaching “from the river [Jordan] to the ends of the 

earth,” or, in speaking of Wisdom, that, “She reacheth therefore from end to end mightily, and 

ordereth all things sweetly” [Wis. 8:1] and considering that the Catholic Faith has always seen the 

Virgin Mary as the embodiment of Divine Wisdom (particularly as the Greek word for 

wisdom, “sophia,” is a feminine noun), we can say that “The Virgin Mary reacheth therefore from 

end to end mightily” in the L.A. and Kobe quakes "and ordereth all things sweetly," in the symbol of two doves on a bowl at either ends of the earth.  And we can indeed say “ordereth all things sweetly” because the end, or telos (as the ancient Greek language would have it) of an object sweeps all things along with it to that end, and ties it up in a bow, so to speak, and so any element of history, geography, and the like, from the beginning of time to the present—and indeed to the end of time—is swept up, completed, and perfected in this symbol of two doves on a bowl at the ends of the earth.  And the fact that the ends of the earth are so obviously constructed in this sublime Christian symbol, shows that the end of time cannot be far behind, for it is de fide that once the Gospel has been spread to all parts of the earth—which this symbol indubitably symbolizes—then Christ will come again.

*****

Now, to elaborate a bit more on the idea that the symbol of two doves on a bowl symbolizes the soul’s union with God.[19]  Indeed, the soul is often symbolized by a dove, just as the Holy Spirit is symbolized by a dove, (a la the story of St. Scholastica dying and her brother, St. Benedict of Nursia, seeing her soul ascend to Heaven in the form of a dove).  In the case of the geography of the earth, seen clearly on any world map, we would say that the Japanese dove represents God while the California dove represents the Soul of Man.  Why?  Well, because Japan is an island that has existed since the beginning of time, created by God and left there for six millennia waiting for its partner dove on the opposite end of the earth across the Pacific Ocean, in order to complete itself in the two doves on a bowl symbol.  In fact, all of Japanese culture and history unconsciously has been yearning for this completion in all the two-doves-on-a-bowl symbolism, along with the component parts of this symbol, prevalent in Japanese society since the beginning of their history, as we have seen.  It has been created by God and has sat there completely independent of anything man has done.  This is especially spectacular when we realize that the Japanese Islands were formed not by Izanagi and Izanami--as the ancient Japanese books of the Kojiki (or Record of Ancient Matters) and the Nihon-gi (or The Story of Japan) tell us--but by gigantic eruptions from the bottom of the Pacific seafloor (which dramatically opens the book called A Song for Nagasaki by Paul Glynn, regarding the life of the blessed Catholic, Takashi Nagai, who came to world attention as saintly victim of the Nagasaki nuclear bomb)—as if God were preparing things that long in advance.  Certainly man has lived upon this "dove" in the form of the Japanese people, ever since the first few millenia of the Christian Era (and the indigenous Ainu before that) but the island itself would have existed in its dove-like shape, completely indifferent to the inhabitants on that island, whether anyone lived there or not.  Not true of California.  The California dove represents man in all his heavy labor and sweat throughout the ages, toiling, and working and moving—especially moving westward—to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield (as the poet Tennyson tells us in Ulysses) until finally establishing a man-made dove across from the God-made dove on the other end of the Pacific, thus completing the symbol that had been waiting since the beginning of time to be created. As the devout Catholic prayer says (as remember that the dove is the symbol of the Holy Spirit):

        Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful, and kindle in them the fire of your love.

        Send forth your spirit and they shall be created.  and you shall renew the face of the earth

The remarkable thing is that man did not know he was creating a man-made dove across 

from the God-made dove on the other side of the Pacific, nor did he know that this represented 

the literal ends of the earth, thus fulfilling all the eschatological prophecies of Holy Scripture.  In 

other words, it has all been an unconscious process on man’s part.  And since man fulfilled 

this incredible, immense, unfathomable plan of God without even knowing it, we can say with 

certainty that he did so by a kind of Divine Grace, i.e., by some kind of unseen Divine 

Assistance, even in spite of himself (as we have seen in the Protestant-Masonic origins of the 

United States and the very racist-supremacist ideas behind the concept of “Manifest Destiny”). 

And thus we have the classic Catholic teaching on free will and grace: ergo, that man does not l

live by his own will alone or by the grace of God alone, but by a combination of the two.  Put 

another way, man did the labor of bringing himself to the westernmost end of the earth and 

establishing the State of California there on September 9, 1850, in the shape and form that he 

did, but this was in union with God’s grace, particularly as it was the Franciscan friars under 

Fray Junipero Serra who originally did so as the George Washington of California.   As the 

expression goes, “Man proposes, God disposes.”  And thus, like so much else in this book, and as 

can be found around the Pacific Rim, the symbol of two doves on a bowl at the ends of the earth is 

not only a great symbol of God’s Divine Providence, but a great and unassailable proof of the 

Catholic Faith as the One True Faith outside of which no one at all can be saved. 

In psychological terms we see in this great symbol of Japan and California as two doves on 

a bowl at the ends of the earth "the union of opposites," for there can be no greater opposites than 

Japan and California in their religion, custom, racial make-up, history, etc.  Japan represents the 

East and California the West, in fact, the Far East and Far West; Japan values that which is

small, California (along with the rest of the U.S.) that which is big; Japanese are Asian and 

Californians largely Caucasian (until recently with more of a blend of races, as in the time of 

California's founding); Japan is the only country in the world with an Emperor while California 

officially eschews monarchy as part of the Monroe Doctrine; Japan is primarily a Shinto-

Buddhist culture while California is primarily a Christian-based culture, etc. etc.  All these 

differences came to a head on December 7, 1941 when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor (and which 

we shall read much more about in the next chapter).  Now this "union of opposites is meant to 

bring wholeness to the psyche, in this case, wholeness to the world's psyche.  The renowned 

psychoanalyst Carl Jung speaks of the unconscious confronting the ego through psychotherapy, 

and here we might call Japan the "ego" to the "unconscious" of California (for, as we have seen, 

California definitely came about as the eastern dove--"eastern" at least as viewed from the point-

of-view of the Pacific Basin, and this being a further union of opposites, that the East becomes the 

West and the West the East, at least in regards to this symbol--through a wholly unconscious 

process).  And in the tension of opposites, a "transcendent function" arises.  As Jung tells us in the

Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche:

"The shuttling to and fro of arguments and affects represents the transcendent function of

opposites.  The confrontation of the two positions generates a tension charged with energy and creates a living, a third thing--not a logical stillbirth in accordance with the principle tertium non datur but a movement out of  the suspension between opposites, a living birth that leads to a new level of being, a new situation.  The transcendent function manifests itself as a quality of conjoined opposites.  so long as these are kept apart--naturally for the purpose of avoiding conflict--they do not function and remain inert.[20]

It reminds us of Rudyard Kipling's poem "The Ballad of East and West," in which the poet declaims, "Oh, East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet, / 'Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat, / But there is neither East not West, Border, nor Breed nor Birth, / When two strong man stand face to face, / Though they come from the ends of the earth!"--only in the symbol I have found at the ends of the earth we see the two "strong men" not only meeting but transcending their mutual differences in a Divine Symbol of Universal Love. And this is all completely in line with the utmost Catholic orthodoxy, for, as the great English Catholic writer and convert G.K. Chesterton has stated (in his book called Orthodoxy), orthodoxy is when two opposites are held in balance; hence, not just Jesus, or not just Mary, but Jesus and Mary; not just Heaven, or not just Hell, but Heaven and Hell; not just faith, or not just works, but faith and works; not just Scripture or not just Tradition, but Scripture and Tradition; and I would submit, not just Japan or not just California, but Japan and California, not just Asia or not just North America, but Asia and North America; not just the Eastern Hemisphere and not just the Western Hemisphere, but the Eastern and Western hemispheres; all bound by this beautiful symbol of two doves on a bowl at the ends of the earth, with the Pacific Basin and Ocean in-between.[21]

Now this symbol and component parts of this symbol of two doves on a bowl, are quite popular in Japan, evincing an unconscious predilection for and foreshadowing of same.  A similar symbol is seen in at least four other Eastern religious traditions, namely Jainism, Buddhism, Judaism, and Islam.  One of the earliest symbols of Indian Buddhism (and Jainism) is the Dharmchakra, the "Wheel of Dharma" or "Wheel of the Law," which represents the Buddha's path to enlightenment. The Dharmachakra is a stylized chariot wheel which has eight spokes representing "The Noble Eightfold Path," while its circular shape represents "the perfection of the dharma teaching."  Its center represents "discipline," considered essential in meditation practice, while its rim represents "samadhi," which is said to hold everything together.   There is also a corresponding symbolic hand gesture called the "mudra," and, according to the Mahayana school, each phase of Buddhist teaching is called a "turning" of the Dharmachakra wheel; although all the Buddhist schools agree that the first turning of this wheel was done in the presence of the five ascetics taught by the Buddha in a deer park in Sarnath; and hence, this wheel is often shown with two deer, one on each side, facing each other[22].  In the Islamic tradition, we see two peacocks around the central disc of the "man-in-the-sun" (reflecting aspects of Zoroastrianism?) on the facade over the entrance to the Nadir-Divan-Beg Medrese in Bukhara, Kyzyl Kum Steppes.  Similarly, the Jewish Ark of the Covenant features two winged seraphs facing each other atop the narrow, gold lid holding the Ten Commandments. Do not all these examples evince an unconscious yearning for, affinity for, and predilection for this symbol of two doves on a bowl and all it represents?  Interestingly, the gate in front of a Shinto temple with a vertical bar atop two posts is called  a “torii” gate, meaning a “bird 

perch” gate.  These gates not only dot Japan in metal or wood, but find their compliment 

throughout the American West where we see the same kind of metal and wood gates at the 

entrance of many ranches (often with the name of a "circle ranch").  And we shall soon see how the 

ancient Shinto-oriented sport of sumo wrestling—and its more religious offshoot “karasu zumo” 

(bird sumo)—relate to this same symbol of two doves on a bowl in very elaborate fashion.

Of further interest in the case of the Jewish Ark of the Covenant and the Muslim Nadir-Divan Beg Medrese--both of which show striking variations of the Circle of Peace symbol at the ends of the earth-- is that neither religion, in their more fundamental forms, ordinarily allows imagery of humans or beasts of any sort in their iconography, as such images are seen as a form of idolatry. And thus the sole exceptions that exist in these religions to this hard-and-fast rule about images are those which both point to this early Christian symbol of two doves on either side of a bowl; of Japan and California on either side of the Pacific Rim.   To show the seriousness of such proscriptions, Rabbi Hyim Shafner writes: "We are in the midst of reading about the crafting, and erection of, and the services within, the mishkan, the Tabernacle.  The Ark served as the hidden power center of the Tabernacle.  It contained the tablets of the law and was flanked on top by two golden keruvim (cherubs).  We understand the need for an ark to honor and hold the tablets; it is something we ourselves have in our synagogues.  But why golden cherubs?  Indeed, their idol-like appearance seems like a dangerous risk.  In fact, there are those who say the heads of the cherubim were, like in the vision of Ezekiel, the heads of a shor, a cow, forming a sort of golden calf."[23]  We might finally mention, then, that although we have seen Japan and California as two winged creatures, namely "doves," descended to the lip of the Pacific Grail, as in the Grail legends, but we might also see them as two angels preparing to lift the Pacific Grail up to heaven, as is done in the Catholic Mass, with the whole Pacific Basin between.

Birds in the individual sense are found everywhere in Japan in: 1) their many ink prints, 2) on patterns of kimonos, often as flocks in flight, 3) in the various Shinto festivals with devotees dressed in elaborate bird costumes,  4) in strings of 10,000 cranes made popular by Sadako Sasaki as a memorial of peace after the Nagasaki nuclear bomb [24].  Indeed, the symbol of birds is often found in the wake of disasters in Japan—as we have already seen in the above explication in regards to both Hiroshima and Nagasaki—and thus it is only appropriate that we now see Japan and California as two birds oriented toward one another in the wake of the devastating Kobe Quake. Bowls themselves are quite ubiquitous in Japan, for they are used to hold rice at every meal, and, perhaps more elegantly, in the Japanese tea ceremony, lovingly turned in the hands before raised to the lips for a sip.  The tea ceremony was created in its modern form by Sen no-Rikyu, a highly-placed servant of Shogun Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who was believed to have been a kakure kirishitan, or “hidden Christian” and to have based the slow, solemn ritual of tea on the Catholic mass of the time with its all-important central cup.  And as for these bowls of the tea ceremony, the favored ones are the older, rugged ones, imperfect in shape and design, reflecting the Japanese aesthetic of wabi-sabi (or sense of impoverishment).  And indeed, this rugged quality of the traditional tea ceremony bowls reflects the rugged, imperfect rim of the Pacific Basin along with all the massive escarpments and trenches lining its submerged surface.  

And speaking of wabi-sabi, it was precisely two doves that Joseph and Mary brought to the temple of Jerusalem as sacrifice, in lieu of the more expensive lamb, during Mary’s sanctification and Jesus’ circumcision eight days after his birth, due to their poverty. "And after eight days were 

accomplished, that the child should be circumcised, his name was called Jesus, which was called 

by the angel, before he was conceived in the womb. And after the days of her purification, 

according to the law of Moses, were accomplished, they carried him to Jerusalem, to present him 

to the Lord: As it is written in the law of the Lord: Every male opening the womb shall be called 

holy to the Lord: And to offer a sacrifice, according as it is written in the law of the Lord, a pair of 

turtledoves, or two young pigeons (Luke 2:21-25)."  For a Catholic, this is the "Eightfold Noble Path," the noble path St. Joseph and the Blessed Virgin Mary took to the Temple eight days after Jesus' birth to have the fold of his foreskin cut according to Jewish tradition, commemorated as the Feast of the Circumcision every January 1st (appropriately, eight days after the birth of Jesus on Christmas Day), which is a Holy Day of Obligation (i.e, a day we must attend Mass), since it represented the first day that Jesus shed His Most Precious Blood for us.  A "noble path" indeed--and a path of enlightenment.  And just as Mary and Joseph brought two turtle doves to this ceremony in sacrifice, denoting their poverty, this gives rise to the following question: Have the turtledoves of Japan and California likewise been intended as some kind of sacrifice, sitting as they do on the volatile and oft-destructive Ring of Fire, and experiencing so many natural disasters over the years, decades, and centuries, such as the earthquakes of January 17, 1994 and January 17, 1995? 

*****

The symbol of two doves (or other birds) on a bowl itself is ubiquitous in Japan, finding variation: 1) on the backs of Japanese 1,000 and 10,000 yen notes; 2) in Japanese sumo wrestling (where the rikishi replicate the flapping of bird wings on either side of a bowl); 3) in Japanese Shinto ritual (i.e., at the Kamo Shrine in Kyoto where priests “koo” and “kaaa” at each other around a central pillar); 4) on the Grecian and Roman urns and sarcophagi seen at the Kurashiki Museum; 5) and even in the ruins of the Kobe Quake (in the famous photo of the toppled and tattered bank building from the Kobe Quake, where two doves in fact can be seen flying away (and the two birds on the back of the Japanese 1000 and 10,0000 yen notes as if preparing us for this scene, for many were housed there); 6) in the Nagasaki Nuclear Bomb memorial festivities (which show two doves on either side the base of huge pagan statue pointing to the sky).  And the nearby museum gives us the name of this symbol of California and Japan as two doves on a bowl.......for a t-shirt in the Nakasaki Nuclear Bomb Museum depicts a dove with olive-branch in its beak and a circle of words around it stating “May the Circle of Peace Grow!” [Italics mine.]  

Indeed, the more fundamental symbol of a circle which undergirds the whole of what we are now calling “The Circle of Peace,” is also a ubiquitous symbol in Japan  which can easily be recognized in: 1) all their ships being named with the suffix “maru” (Yamato-Maru, Nihon-Maru, etc.); 2) the popular children’s animated character Chibi Maru-ko-chan (Little Circle Girl) having a “circle” name; 3) the a tradition among Zen monks of painting a solitary inkbrush circle as their final “death poem”; 4) the famous Kansai Department store Daimaru (“Big Circle”) with its solitary art-deco circle logo, being named not only for a circle, but a big one at that; 5) the famous Japanese food company Marunaka (lit. “In the Center of the Circle”); 6) a well-behaved young man being called a “maru-no-hito” (lit. a “circle boy”); 7) the white, luminescent circle (or oval) which appears in the center of all their yen notes; and lat but not least 8) the pure, round, red disk of the sun that emblazons their otherwise pure white flag (known as the hi-no-maru, or "disc-of-the-sun" flag) of which we will hear much more in ensuing chapters.  The list could go on. And due to the ubiquity of the circle in Japanese life and culture since time immemorial, we might dub the whole of Japanese civilization “The Circle Civilization.” 

We also see the symbol of two doves on either side of a bowl in great clusters in the various neighborhoods around the epicenter of the Reseda Quake, in many fence designs featuring two doves on either side of a bowl full of fruit, just as the Grail was depicted in the earliest Celtic legends, as a bowl of plenty providing abundant food for all who gathered around it.  These pagan legends of the Grail mixed with the medieval Christian legends of France and Germany—particularly through the writings of Chretien de Troyes and the aforementioned Wolfram von Eschenbach--to depict the Grail as part of a mysterious royal ceremony.  Indeed, the aforementioned fences of Reseda (with one or two exceptions), all have numerous fleur-de-lis woven into their fence pattern, which strongly reinforces royalty (and in this case, French royalty, reminding us of the prophecy of a Great Monarch who will arise one day in France to restore the Catholic Faith in that country known as "First Daughter of the Catholic Faith") as a key motif of the area of the Reseda Quake.  

The name "Reseda" itself denotes royalty, for "Reseda" is the name of one of the first Carnaval "ranchos" (samba dance groups) from the early 1900s in Rio de Janeiro--namely "Rancho Ameno Reseda"--wherein the members depicted the King and Queen of Brazil in their pageantry and costumes.  Therefore, the name "Reseda" refers to Brazilian royalty (about which much more later) and names like "Victoria," "Lisa," or "Dennis" refer to British and french royals.  And thus going north up Reseda Boulevard from the presumed epicenter of Strathern Street and Reseda Blvd. we have the following (with addresses in parentheses): Royal Villa Apartments (8040), Camelot Apartments (8151), Donut King (closed), Roy Legal Group (8345), Royal Plaza (8363—featuring crown atop signboard that lights up at night), King’s Carpet Warehouse (?), Burger King (8500), Pollo del Rey (8510), Majestic Auto (8700 #202), The Kingdom Tattoo and Body Piercing (8821), Kingdom Sewing and Vacuum (8923), and King’s Burgers (9345); and going south from that same epicenter, Monarch Apartments (7918), Lisa Reseda Apartments (7909—wherein “Lisa” can be said to refer to the great Catholic saint-queen Elizabeth of Hungary), Reseda 

Apartments (7850),Victoria Apartments (7817—a la Queen Victoria of England), Reseda Royal 

Garden (7805), Reseda Manor (7725), Royal Pines (7711), Reseda Boulevard Apartments 

(7701), Park Reseda Condominiums (7631/41/51), Reseda Apartments (7650), Denny’s 

Restaurant (7600—for the Cathedral of St. Denis in Paris was used to crown the kings of 

France).  

As if in unconscious recognition of all  these royal addresses clustered around Reseda (and 

there are many more I haven't mentioned outside that one mile radius, including in the whole of the 

San Fernando Valley, itself named for a great Catholic king of Spain, King Ferdinand I, of happy 

memory; and in the whole of Los Angeles, whose full name refers to the "Queen of the Angels"), 

the Reseda city council decided in 2009 to create a new community called--what else?--

"Rancho Reseda." (unconsciously reflecting the royal Brazilian "Rancho Ameno Reseda"); and 

finally there are the many 7-11 stores, a company begun in Japan and with the 

word "eleven" written through the bottom of a large "7," reminding us of the two earthquakes that 

began this all on the date of 1-17.  Indeed, their company slogan says--and many company 

employees wear proudly emblazoned on a badge pinned to their shirt pocket--"Oh thank 

heaven for 7-11!"

As for sumo wrestling, the national sport of Japan [24],  it is not only prophetic of Japan and California as two birds on a bowl (as we have seen), but, in addition, of the two coincidental quakes of Kobe and Northridge (in the stamping of feet), and of the beginning and end of World War II: to wit, the two rikishi (wrestlers) flap their wings like birds and squat on either end of a ring (similar to the appearance of Japan and California on either end of the Basin of Peace); they rinse their mouths with water and fling salt into the center of the ring (water and salt being the two ingredients of the Pacific Ocean); they then commence fighting in the center of the ring (similar to the commencement of hostilities between Japan and California in World War II); when one sumo is felled the two return to both ends of the ring (just as, after the surrender by Japan on the deck of the USS Missouri, both Japan and California returned to their respective perches on either side of the Pacific Basin); the referee, called a gyoji, points his closed wooden fan, called a gunbai (lit. a "war fan," such as the samurai once used to point in giving orders to their troops)[25] to either "winner "east" or "winner west" in declaring a winner[26].  Considering the past rivalry, animosity, war, and even nuclear bombing of one by the other, not to mention the various economic rivalries between not only Japan and California, but of the US and China, or North America and Asia, of Western Civilization and Eastern Civilization, embodied by these two doves, this powerful archetypal symbol of Japan and California at the ends of the earth can been seen (as mentioned earlier) as representing psychic wholeness for the whole of the earth, (just as Carl Jung postulated the Eastern tradition of drawing mandalas as a sign of wholeness for the individual psyche). 

As for the more religious aspects of sumo, "From ancient times salt has been believed to own purifying powers. Both wrestlers throw salt in the air as they prepare for their bout (round), clearing things as a sacred place. They also stamp the ring to squash the bad spirits and they sip water to clear their bodies.  Each movement is a religious ritual."[27] From ancient times in the Catholic Faith, salt has also been "believed to own purifying powers," and is used in the Baptism ritual.  As for the other aspects of the sumo ritual, they,--along with the salt--seem to point to the Pacific Basin as a "sacred place."  Witness the simultaneous stamping of the ring by both rikishi on either side of the ring--called "East and West" by the official---like the coincidental quakes of Los Angeles and Kobe on either side of the Pacific Basin, ostensibly to "squash the bad spirits," considering that both quakes were named for the pregnant Virgin Mary, who brought forth the Redemmer who once and for all would squash the bad spirits, as manifested in the "resurrected" statue of Christ at Takatori Church via that same earthquake (of which we will learn much more in the following chapter).  The rikishi also squat and spread out their arms (palms upward), like birds demonstrating their wingspan--and like birds squatting on either side of the Pacific Basin; the purpose of this aspect of the ritual being to show that they carry no weapons on their persons, leading to the concept of the rim they stand upon as a pacific rim.  This aspect of the rikishi as the "sacred birds" of Japan and California being reinforced in the "karasu zumo" (crow sumo) of kamo jinja (Seagull Shrine) in Kyoto where the Shinto priests dress in elaborate costume as they "koo" and "kaa" at each other on opposite sides of a ring while circling a tall central cone, reminiscent of the Japanese founding myth of Izanagi and Izanami, which we will explore in depth in the next chapter, and also representing the tall conic shape of the Hawaiian Islands as they rise dramatically from the Pacific Seabed.  

Now if Japan and California look like two doves on a bowl, then the Pacific Basin itself must be this bowl, and since doves traditionally represent peace—ever since Noah sent a dove from the ark which returned with an olive branch, and ever since a dove descended upon Christ at His Baptism as a symbol of the Holy Ghost—it makes sense that this bowl is called the Pacific Basin (or “basin of peace”).  Now “basin of peace” is another way of describing a “cup of peace,” which is exactly what Christ had at the Last Supper and exactly what a Catholic priest consecrates at every True Sacrifice of the Mass. This cup has entered Western tradition and mythology as the Holy Grail of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, and thus we may say that the Pacific Basin is a symbol of the Holy Grail.  And if the Pacific Basin is a symbol of the Holy Grail, then this means that all the cities named for saints in California and Latin America—not to mention in the Philippines on the other side of the Pacific, and some of the islands in the South Pacific—represent the Knights of the Round Table seated at Holy Grail.  Indeed, the cities in California include names like San Diego, San Francisco, San Andreas, San Anselmo, San Bernadino, San Bruno, San Carlos, San Clemente, San Dimas, San Fernando, San Gabriel, San Jacinto, San Jose, San Juan Capistrano, San Leandro, San Lorenzo, San Luis Obispo, San Marcos, San Marino, San Mateo, San Pablo, San Pedro, San Rafael, and San Ramon, Santa Ana, Santa Barbara, Santa Clara, and Santa Clarita, Santa Cruz, Santa Fe Springs, Santa Maria, Santa Monica, Santa Paula, Santa Rosa—not to mention many more lakes, rivers, islands, reservoirs, and mountain ranges with similar saints names—and considering this is all within the dove of California looking across the Basin of Peace to the dove of Japan and thereby forming the eastern past of the Circle of Peace, and all this at the proverbial ends of the earth spoken of by Christ; it would seem that the State of California represents (along with Kobe and Japan): 1) the fulfillment of Christ’s eschatological prophecy that the gospel would be spread to the ends of the earth; and 2) some of the holiest land on the face of the earth.

Now if the Pacific Basin represents the Holy Grail and the city-saints in California and 

Latin America represent the King Arthur’s Knights of the Round Table, then this means that the 

seven continents of North America,  South America, Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa, and 

Antarctica must represent the Seven Tables of the Grail. And Thus we can say 

that if the Pacific Basin represents the Grail, and the saint-cities in all the continents 

equal the Knights of the Round Table, and if the seven continents equal the Seven Tables of the 

Grail, then that means that the mountains of the earth must be walls holding up the dome of the 

firmament (just as we read in Holy Scripture), and the universe itself must be a Great Grail 

Cathedral which we might refer to as “The Great Grail Cathedral of the Universe.”  We see this 

idea already in the great cathedrals of Europe and Latin America (including The Philippines), as 

many of their inner domes depict the sun, the moon, the sky, and/or the stars; and we also see this 

idea in much of the great Western Literature as in that of Milton, Shelley, and Wordsworth 

which describes the “vault of the heavens” and the "cathedral of nature" in such picturesque terms.  

The great American poet, Robert Frost, in fact, writes most picturesquely of all, "Such heaps of 

broken glass to sweep away / You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen."  The only 

thing missing in this Great Grail Cathedral of the Universe is a large cross in the sky, such 

as can be seen high up above Catholic altars—but that, my friends, will be supplied by Christ on 

the Last Day when it is prophesied that a Great Cross will appear in the sky, thus providing the 

final furnishing of this Great Grail Cathedral that has heretofore been known as simply “the 

universe.”  And, in a very felicitous way, this Cross is already seen in the night sky of the inner 

dome of the Galla Placidia Masoleum above those two doves on the bowl we spoke of earlier 

and as we saw in Fig. 1.2.  (And, even more felicitously, it is seen in the proper perspective!)[28].

(And it seems appropriate to mention here that there is a phony debate that has been set up in society over the last 400 or so years between Religion and Science, particularly as regards the creation of the world (i.e., The Biblical Creator vs. The Big Bang).  The reason there can be no debate between Religion and Science, at least on this point, is that the word “religion” is from the Latin infinitive “religare,” which means “to bind,” in obvious reference to a rational creature implanted with a soul who can be “bound” to his or her Creator via “religion.” Now according to the account in Genesis, man was not created until the Sixth Day and therefore Religion could not have existed for the first Five Days; the first Five days which in fact can better be categorized as days of pure artistic creation than of religion.  (And, if we take the biblical non-literalists at their word, each “day” would represent something more akin to a millennium or an eon, and thus we are talking about Six Millenia or Six Eons that God was active in the world of plants, animals, moon, sun, sky, and nature before the idea of Religion even entered the picture!)  And thus the proper debate as regards the Creation of the world is between Science and Art, not Science and Religion; and scientists deny Art, not Religion, when they debate the Creation of the World.)

                                                    *****

Now just as there are Seven Tables of the Grail according to space, called the Seven Geographical Tables of the Grail, so too have I discovered Seven Tables of the Grail according to time--what we might call the Temporal Tables of the Grail.  According to legend, there are three Temporal Tables of the Grail: first, The Last Supper with Christ and his Apostles in 33 A.D.; the table of Joseph of Arimathea, who had taken the Grail out of the Holy Land and brought it to southern France some 40 years later; and third, the Grail then finding its way across the English Channel to King Arthur in Briton in the 6^th century where he established his Knights of the Round Table, a legend which lasted throughout the Middle Ages.  Now to these three Tables of the Grail, I have discovered four more: the Fourth began at the end of the Middle Ages with Columbus’ discovery of America in 1492 and the colonization by Spain and The Philippines of the Pacific Rim of the New World and filling this Rim with cities named for saints, as if they were the new Knights of the Holy (Pacific Basin) Grail.  Now the Fifth Table of the Grail was a false, heretical table (like that of Mordred who usurped Arthur’s kingdom), when Japan began to set-up its euphemistically-named “Greater East-Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere” with the defeat of the Russians in 1905 at—where else?—Port Arthur.  This was a very significant transition from one Table of the Grail to another because it marked the first time that a Western Power (Russia) had been defeated by an eastern Power (Japan) in war, and thus seems to have been very providentially ordained in its Arthurian surrender  The Sixth Table of the Grail was also a false heretical one and began when the Japanese formally surrendered on board the USS Missouri on August 15, 1945, passing custody of the Pacific Grail over to—who else?—a man named “MacArthur” (meaning “son of Arthur”).  General Douglas A. MacArthur had a grandfather, father, brother and son all named “Arthur MacArthur” and his family believed themselves descendants of the legendary King Arthur [29].  It is interesting this emphasizing of the name “Arthur” and “Son of Arthur” in the MacArthur family, as if to emphasize the Arthurian aspect of the beginning of the Sixth Table of the Grail.  Coupled with the remarkable first defeat of a Western Power by an Eastern Power at a place named Port Arthur to begin the Fifth Table of the Grail, it would seem that fate wanted to keep the Arthurian ball “in the air” during this time of the transition from the Fourth to the ultimate Seventh Table of the Grail so it would be clear that the temporal chain of Arthurian Tables wouldn’t be lost, and would be open to discernment at some later point in time.  And in the context of the coincidental quakes of Kobe and Los Angeles which led to all these discoveries, one of the most famous landmarks of Los Angeles is MacArthur Park.[28]

Like the Fifth Table of the Grail before it, this Sixth Table of the Grail too was a false, heretical table since the two main victors, Truman and MacArthur, were members of the Masonic fraternity and since their creed was not that of the Catholic Faith but of the heresy known as “Americanism.”  Indeed, MacArthur immediately proved his non-Catholic, if not anti-Catholic, credentials by implementing the “Eugenic Protection Law of 1948”[30] a law that legalized abortion-on-demand throughout Japan, while Truman had already proved those same credentials by dropping the two nuclear bombs over the largest Catholic populations in Japan, and, in the case of Nagasaki, almost directly over the largest Catholic cathedral in all of Asia.  Needless to say, The Table of the Pacific Grail would only return to true, authentically Catholic hands at 5:46 a.m. on January 17, 1995, with the advent of the Kobe Quake and the setting up of the Seventh Table of the Grail beneath the dome of the Great Grail Cathedral of the Universe. 

Now according to Dom Prosper Gueranger in The Liturgical Year, Volume 4, entitled “Septuagesima”[31]

 

The duration of the world itself, according to the ancient Christian tradition is divided into seven ages.  The human race must pass through seven ages before the dawning of the day of eternal life.  The first age included the time from the creation  of Adam to Noah; the second begins with Noah and the renovation of the earth by the deluge, and ends with the vocation of Abraham; the third opens with this first formation of God’s chosen people, and continues as far as Moses, through whom God gave the Law; the fourth consists of the period between Moses and David, in whom the house of Juda received the kingly power; the fifth is formed of the years which passed between David’s reign and the captivity of Babylon, inclusively; the sixth dates from the return of the Jews to Jerusalem, and takes us on as far as the birth of our Saviour.  Then, finally, comes the seventh age; it starts with the rising of this merciful Redeemer, the Sun of justice, and is to continue till the dread coming of the Judge of the living and the dead.  These are the seven great divisions of time; after which, eternity.[32]

 

            This passage of the great liturgical and monastic reformer of the 19th century, Gueranger, is notable for a number of reasons.  First of all we notice that just as I have found Seven Tables of the Grail in time (the Seven Temporal Tables of the Grail),[33] so too are there Seven Ages of the Church, and the First Temporal Table of the Grail (The Last Supper) begins contemporaneously with the Seventh Age of the Church (Christ’s Resurrection).  And just as I have discerned that the Seventh Table of the Grail will be the last Table before Christ’s coming in judgment, so too does Gueranger—speaking for the Church Universal—claim that the Seventh Age of the Church will be the last age before “the dread coming of the Judge of the living and the dead.” Indeed, it seems that the Seven Temporal Tables of the Grail have been given as a way of dividing the time within the Seventh Age of the Church.  And the Seven Temporal Tables of the Grail beginning at the end of the Seven Ages of the Church fittingly parallels the seven glorious weeks that come after Easter with the seven weeks of Septuagesima prior to Easter.  In the words of Gueranger, “In order to console us in the midst of the combats, which so thickly beset our path, the Church, like a beacon shining amidst the darkness of this our earthly abode, shows us another seven, which is to succeed the one we are now passing through.”  Finally, the Seventh Age of the Church “starts with the rising of this merciful Redeemer, the Sun of justice,” just as I have a priori discerned that the Seventh Temporal Table of the Grail started with the rising of the Takatori Statue in downtown Kobe at 5:46 a.m. on January 17, 1995[34].  And isn’t it interesting that Dom Gueranger should use the term “Sun of justice” in this context when Japan is known as “The Land of the Rising Sun?”

Gueranger also writes in The Liturgical Year: Christmas--Book II, in reference to the wedding feast of Cana, when Christ performed his first miracle, ordering the waiters to fill six empty stone pots with water, which He would turn into wine,

Now there were six large waterpots of stone there and they were empty.  The world was then in its Sixth Age, as St. Augustine and other Holy Doctors tell us.  During these six ages, the earth had been awaiting its Saviour, who was to instruct and redeem it.   Jesus commands these waterpots to be filled with water; and yet water does not suit the feast of the Spouse.  The figures and the prophecies of the ancient world were this water, and until the opening of the Seventh Age, when Christ, who is the Vine, was to be given to the world, no man had contracted an alliance with the Divine Word.

Is it not interesting that these six stone pots represent the Six Ages prior to the Seventh Age 

(according to many Holy Doctors), and I have now seen the "stone pot" of the Pacific Basin 

manifesting itself at the culmination of what is called the Seventh Age beginning with The First 

Table of the Grail according to time (viz. The Last Supper in the Upper Room)? And so we see 

Christ's first miracle at Cana being a prophecy of the Last Supper, when the Seventh Pot (The 

Holy Grail and its symbol, the Pacific Basin) would begin to become manifest. And just as Christ 

told the waiters to fill the six empty pots with water at Cana, so too is the "Seventh Pot" of the 

Pacific Basin filled with water; and just as Christ miraculously turned the water filling those six 

stone pots into wine (and that wine into His Blood in The Last Supper) so too has the water of the 

Pacific Basin been turned into the wine-like "Blood of Christ" in these latter days, as we shall 

amply see in the following chapters.  Finally, we have also seen above that the Cup of the Last 

Supper itself was also probably made of stone, according to Jewish ritual and according to the 

"Santo Calix" of Valencia, Spain; this microcosmic stone Cup preparing us for the vision of the 

macrocosmic stone Pacific Basin many centuries later. And the fact that this "grail" of the Pacific 

Basin is a stone grail may explain why Wolfram von Eschenbach describes the Grail as a "stone" in 

the 12th century and why, "[f]or the seder meal on Pesach (Passover),traditional 

Jews preferred stone vessels, since only stone was considered 'kosher' or ritually pure" and 

thus, a stone cup (like the agate "Santo Calix" in Valencia, Spain, thought by many to be the actual 

Cup of the Last Supper) was probably what Jesus used at the Last Supper[35] in anticipation of 

what we would later find as the Pacific Basin of the Fourth Temporal Table of the Grail. 

Now according to Plato the objects of this earth are mere imperfect copies of ideal forms that exist somewhere in the universe, perhaps in a zone beyond the stratosphere he called the “ether,” and thus we can say that all the great cathedrals of Europe built in the Middle Ages are imperfect copies (though perfect in their own right, of course) of this great, over-arching Cathedral of the Universe.  And if, according to the philosopher, Baruch Spinoza, “the infinite mind of God….broods, as it were, over the extended universe as its expression in terms of thought”[36] then we may say that It “broods” over the Great Grail Cathedral of the Universe as Its expression in terms of thought.   Now according to St. Thomas Aquinas, the laws of the Catholic Church are mere imitations of laws that already exist in nature, a.k.a., “The Natural Law,” and which can be known by reason alone.  We therefore have no excuse for not following these laws, no matter who we are or what culture or religious tradition we come from.  These laws include absolute proscriptions against divorce, adultery, pornography, immodesty in dress[37], fornication, self-abuse[38], sodomy[39], contraception, abortion, usury, excessive taxation, oppression of the poor, etc., and all people have the responsibility to convert to the Catholic Faith in order to better follow these laws and save their souls[40].

Indeed, the 13^thcentury in Europe has rightly been described as “the greatest in history.”[41] Now if, in the Middle Ages, the laws of the Catholic Church, practically speaking, may have seemed to apply only to those living in Europe in the shadow of the great cathedrals such as Notre Dame de Paris, Il Duomo in Milan, the Cologne Cathedral of Germany, Santiago de Compostela in Spain, or Westminster Cathedral in England, the case has now been made more clear (obviously in God’s great mercy) that all men everywhere now live under the dome of a Great Grail Cathedral of the Universe, and therefore all live under the whole menu of Catholic laws, disciplines, dogmas and morals that applied in the Middle Ages, and must abide by these same laws, disciplines, dogmas and morals if they hope to be saved.  In other words, the morals and dogmas of the Middle Ages are still in effect.  Man may have “progressed” beyond them, but he is deluding himself, for he still lives under them because God cannot change and neither can His Laws.  What applied to our ancestors in the Middle Ages, applies to us today.  The “Reformation” may have tried to obscure that fact; the “Renaissance” may have tried to obscure that fact; the “Enlightenment” may have tried to obscure the fact; the French and American and Russian and Chinese and Cuban and Vietnamese revolutions may have tried to obscure that fact; but the fact remains: we all live under the dome of a great cathedral such as was built in the 12^thcentury, thought by some to be the greatest century in history.  Let us be worthy of such a dwelling in our behavior and our laws!