The Catholic church monopolized cultural direction with penal sanctions

Evidence

Interweaved with this phenomenon are the birth and development of Catholicism and of the ecclesiastical organisation which for many centuries absorbs the major part of intellectual activities and exercises a monopoly of cultural direction with penal sanctions against anyone who attempted to oppose or even evade the monopoly. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 301

Categorization

• XREF: Church monopoly over cultural direction parallels modern state/bureaucratic cultural hegemony key to the Islamophobia toolkit.
• ADDENDUM: Religion-backed sanctions on cultural deviance connect with ‘Complaints About Immodesty’ religious-moral-regulation thread.