I just happened across this fabulously biased passage on the Catholic Encyclopedia’s entry about Gnosticism.

The attempt to picture Gnosticism as a mighty movement of the human mind towards the noblest and highest truth, a movement in some way parallel to that of Christianity, has completely failed. […] Gnosticism was not an advance, it was a retrogression. […] Gnosticism died not by chance, but because it lacked vital power within itself; and no amount of theosophistic literature, flooding English and German markets, can give life to that which perished from intrinsic and essential defects.

Haha haha haha ha. That’s the funniest thing I’ve read in a long time. “Gnosticism died not by chance…” hehe. What a load. Of course it didn’t die by chance! They waged war against it actively for centuries (and still do) because it overthrows the unnatural un-Christian institution which the Catholics have built up around Christ’s original message. This is practically tantamount to the Nazis saying:

The Jews died not by chance, but according to inherent weakness in their characters and constitutions. For whatever reason, these people decided they would be better off if they left their homes and created “collective work facilities” to aid the war effort. Unfortunately, by some strange stroke of biology, their poorly designed bodies were unable to withstand perfectly safe and ordinary lethal dosages of poison gas. Go figure!

Fucking preposterous when you look at it like that, is it not?