>I suspect that the catholic church was created as a power grab & the gated teachings (aka the old & new testaments) were aligned with securing this power. Power grab isnt the right framing - source of legitimation is more accurate. The Catholic Church’s creation and spread was more about the clerical caste inverting the warrior caste in the Western power structure and changing the source of legitimacy for the ruling class, giving the clergy a veto over political power they never had previously. Difficult to separate the good from the bad in this because it wasn’t “all bad”, the gating is what every ruling class does so is to be expected but from a civilisation perspective it was a degeneration. Julius Evola might be of interest for you on this topic.