Criticism is the inevitable karma of superstitious credulity as hatred is the inevitable karma of unjust persecution. We heard much of the persecutions of the Russian Orthodox Church by the Bolsheviks after their revolution but little of the persecutions by the same Church before the revolution. Those who understand how karmic retribution works unerringly will find the following little paragraph, taken from a leading St. Petersburg newspaper, Novoye Vremya, during the year 1892, very significant. Dealing with accounts given by Prince Mestcherski of certain suffering endured by the Christian sect called "Old Believers" at the hands of the Orthodox State Church, in Siberia, the paper writes: "The treatment of the Buddhists is still harsher. Says the Prince, `They are literally forced by the police, at the instance of the local clergy, to embrace Christianity. All kinds of means are resorted to; they are captured in the woods, hunted like beasts and beaten, force even being employed with pregnant women.'"
-- Notebooks Category 17: The Religious Urge > Chapter 4 : Problems of Organized Religion > # 117
