Not long ago Mr David Hofman, former member of the Universal House of Justice was visiting Paraguay. In the course of meeting with the Bahá'ís he was asked, "What is the House of Justice's thinking regarding training institutes; what is their motivation?" Mr. Hofman's answered the question by posing his own question: ‘What was the single most catastrophic event in the history of Christianity?’ He got various replies including the splitting of the Catholic church, the crucifixion, the Crusades, etc. But no one cited the answer Mr. Hofman was looking for:
‘The conversion of the Roman Emperor Constantine was the most catastrophic event in the history of Christianity. Recall that he converted and pronounced everyone in his domain was now Christian. Literally, in one day, hundreds of thousands of pagans became. There was no way to train them, no way to ensure they were grounded in the fundamentals of the Faith of Christ. As a consequence, they brought with them all their pagan beliefs and practices into the Holy Religion of Christ and polluted it forever. Friends, the Universal House of Justice believes it would at best be irresponsible to allow the same thing to happen to the Faith of Bahá'u'lláh’.
BACK TO CONTENTS PAGE