Why I am not a Friend (Christian, Buddhist, Atheist...)

[Terrance]

Judy Panetta wrote:
> 
> Thank you Otto.
> 
> But...as for the role Quakers played in the abolition of
> slavery - it was not as prominent as some would like. The
> popular image of the kindly bonneted Quaker offering shelter
> to the poor pitiful slave is a community history propagated
> by a racial majority. Economics played a greater part in
> eradication rather than any efforts of the spirit. As for
> the Underground Railroad...9if we can avoid the argument
> tween the folklorists and the historians, for now) it was
> largely an African American organization (with some help by
> the Friends, reformed Jews, and others).  I did note in my
> research a conspicuous absence of Catholic participation.
> Evidence to the contrary would be greatly appreciated.

Tons of evidence, so much I don't know where to begin. 


I'll just give a quick connection thing here: 


Catholics have been, are, and pretty much always were under fierce
attack in America. They too were often on the run. And so, given that
paranoids kept constructing and inventing  tales about Jesuits sneaking
around in parsonical disguises (do wonder how RC knows so damned much
about machines and the physics and geometry of their construction, reads
a lot I guess)  the Jesuits, being smart guys, constructed tunnels to
sneak away. These same tunnels built by those ingenious Jesuits,  built
to escape persecution, as we see in the Jesuit machine that RC rides in
there is a very serious hatred of the English "Catholic" clergy and most
things English, a suspicion of magic and mystery and the like that is
directed at the RC Church and most things Roman and particularly and it
has never really ceased (even here on this list) a hatred of Jesuits and
Catholics, but anyway... the tunnels built by the Jesuits were used by
Catholics to escape persecution (I'll get back to the Charles II
connection here and how England won the right to trade in slaves at a
peace treaty and the Irish Catholic troubles Pynchon is so very
interested in) and to conduct masses (outlawed) and to rescue Slaves. Of
course Quakers and Catholics worked together to rescue slaves. Ah! Yes
they did. And this one reason Quakers (Dixon is Pynchon's example in
M&D) were accused of being the instruments of the Jesuits. 

I'll say more on this when we get to chapter 72. 

"An intellectual hatred is the worst..." 

	--W.B. Yeats