Machiavelli had nothing on the Catholic Church

Whoever the person (persons?) was (were) that came up with the idea in the Catholic Church to tie church attendance to entrance into heaven was a bloody diabolical, brilliant, manipulative, abusive son of a gun, what else can you say?

Machiavelli had nothing on that guy.

Think about it.

How perfect a manipulative set-up is that?

With that, the church had their members by their collective throats.

To my knowledge, no other religious group had ever tied heaven (or some definition of it) or hell to mandatory church attendance.

To do this, to require church attendance in order to attain "heaven", tied also to the idea that we're all born "unworthy", "unholy", indeed, "dirty" and in need of baptism, just to be accepted, if only marginally, by their "god" and then to make them repeat it, at least every time they went to church is genius.

First the followers believe themselves to be "unworthy"--make them have low self-images--then, tie heaven to church attendance and voila'! You have automatons in the pews, along with automatic contributions to the church because you're sure going to guilt them into giving money ("we'll call it 'contributions'")to the church, too.

If you see this for what it is, you see that this--the Catholic church--is a horrific, abusive set-up that preys on the people.

And they've been doing it for centuries.

And that doesn't even include the sexual abuses and physical abuses they exposed the young boys to, or the "non-believers" they tortured and killed (e.g., Spanish Inquisitions, etc.).