{"id":249989,"date":"2026-11-15T14:03:28","date_gmt":"2026-11-15T08:33:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=249989"},"modified":"2026-11-15T14:03:28","modified_gmt":"2026-11-15T08:33:28","slug":"the-revolt-in-the-sinhala-buddhist-temple","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/the-revolt-in-the-sinhala-buddhist-temple\/","title":{"rendered":"The Revolt In The (Sinhala-Buddhist) Temple"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Tisaranee Gunasekara<\/a> –<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMendicants, what\u2019s with that colossal racket?\u201d ~ <\/i>The Buddha (C\u0101tumasutta)<\/p>\n

Pope Julius II died in February 1513. Called the Warrior Pope, he waged a series of wars to unite the Papal States and evict the French from Italy. Like many of his predecessors, he had lovers and fathered children (three daughters). A noted patron of arts, he built up the Papal treasury and his own.<\/p>\n

The satirical dialogue Julius Excluded from Heaven<\/i><\/a><\/span> was published a year after the pope\u2019s death. Attributed to the great Dutch humanist and theologian Desiderius Erasmus, it imagines the late pope arriving at the gate of Heaven in a state of inebriation followed by a cohort of holy warriors, the soldiers who died in his many military campaigns, trusting in his promise of heaven. St Peter refuses admission to the late Pope. \u201cYou have almost twenty thousand at your back and in this entire crowd I can\u2019t find one single individual who has so much as the face of a Christian,\u201d says the saint. \u201cAs for yourself, the more I look at you, the fewer traces do I see of any apostolic character.\u201d Julius threatens St Peter with excommunication (banishment from the Church), calling it a thunderbolt \u201cI used to terrify great kings on earth and their kingdoms too.\u201d A confused Peter wants to know what he\u2019s talking about \u201cI never heard from Christ a single one of these words.\u201d.<\/span> Refused admission, Julius plans to create his own heaven and storm the real one.<\/p>\n

The purpose of the dialogue was to draw attention to the parlous state of the Catholic church in the early 15th<\/sup><\/span> century, the vast gulf between its practices and the Christ\u2019s teachings. \u201cMy kingdom is not of this world,\u201d Jesus tells Pontius Pilate during his trial (John 18:36<\/i>). Yet, by the Middle Ages, popes had become kings in all but name. With power and wealth, corruption spread across the entire body of the Church. Clerics lived in open contravention of the Gospels. In The Canterbury Tales<\/i>, Jeffrey Chaucer introduces clerical characters who practice every imaginable vice from stealing and selling fake relics to debauchery and drunkenness. Dante, in Inferno<\/i>, consigns corrupt popes to the Eighth Circle of Hell.<\/p>\n

Three years after Erasmus wrote his warning tract about ecclesiastical degeneration, Martin Luther\u2019s seminal work Ninety-Five Theses<\/i> came out. These one-to-two sentence propositions for debate focused on church practices which violated the teaching of the Christ. Had the church allowed a free debate, the history of Christianity might have turned out differently. Instead, the Church tried to silence Luther by excommunicating him. Luther couldn\u2019t be silenced. The loss of the Catholic Church\u2019s dominium over Europe had begun.<\/p>\n

The state of Sinhala-Buddhism today is not dissimilar to the state of the Church in 15th<\/sup><\/span> Century. Clerical misconduct has become the norm rather than the exception as monks break Vinaya rules (including the four P\u0101r\u0101jikas) shamelessly, in plain sight. This week\u2019s ignominious spectacle at Anuradhapura is only a single expression of how far Sinhala-Buddhist s\u0101sana has moved away from the Buddha\u2019s core teaching.<\/p>\n

In the aftermath of the 2019 Easter Sunday Massacre, the Mahanayake of the Asgiriya chapter Warakagoda Sri Gnanaratana said at a religious function, \u201cMuslim people don\u2019t love us… It is clear that they are a group who gave poison to our people, who tried to destroy our people… These traitors should not be allowed to live free. Some upasakammas said they must be stoned to death (gal gahala maranna ona). I don\u2019t say that. But that is what should be done<\/b>…\u201d\u00a0– Translation and emphasis mine<\/i><\/span>).<\/p>\n