Screwtape expands on developing church participation for evil ends

[soso]

Screwtape expands on developing church participation for evil ends:

Surely you know that if a man can’t be cured of churchgoing, 

the next best thing is to send him all over the neighbourhood /looking for the church //that ‘suits’ him

/until he becomes a taster or connoisseur of churches.

The reasons are obvious.

 In the first place the parochial organisation should always be attacked, 

because, being a unity of place and not of likings, it brings [people of different classes and psychology] together

/in the kind of unity () the Enemy desires. 

* the Enemy = God

[The congregational principle], on the other hand, makes each church /into a kind of club,

and finally, if all goes well, into a coterie or faction.

* (makes each church) into a coterie or faction.

In the second place, the search for a ‘suitable’ church makes [the man] [a critic] /where the Enemy wants him to be a pupil. 

[What He wants of the layman in church] is an attitude //which may, indeed, be critical

in the sense of rejecting what is false or unhelpful,

but which is wholly uncritical in the sense that it does not appraise

—does not waste time /in thinking about what it rejects, 

but lays itself open in uncommenting, humble receptivity to any nourishment //that is going. 

(You see how grovelling, how unspiritual, how irredeemably vulgar He is!)

* Appraise ; to estimate the monetary value of; determine the worth of; assess:

 This attitude, especially during sermons, creates the condition (most hostile to our whole policy)

//in which platitudes can become really audible to a human soul. 

* platitude ;  a statement that has been repeated so often that it is meaningless: 

There is hardly any sermon, or any book, which may not be dangerous to us /if it is received in this temper.
* us = demons

From The Screwtape Letters
Compiled in A Year with C.S. Lewis