@blogdiva

Pope Francis ❤️❤️❤️❤️

@blogdiva I am really curious about how we see things differently, because of our backgrounds.

Like, I am from Poland, which in my childhood/teenage era was a predominantly catholic country. However, due to involvement of catholic church - especially after selecting JPII as a pope - to get rid of Soviet umbrella, there was a continuous flirtation between the throne and the altar. With church-aligned people having more and more influence on the affairs of the state. Which is the problem we bear to this day.

I had my spiritual experience there. I guess you could call me back then a born again Christian. I had - for a brief moment - a sense of community, a sense of belonging. But I have seen how the teaching of the priest warps the biblical teaching of Jesus. I also have been working for a few years for a church non-profit, which was important enough, that my bosses had a personal audience with the pope back then. So, I had one handshake to both, JPII, then BXVI (back then, a cardinal).

And all of that has left me dry. And it has left me dry even more when the years has passed, I've discovered I am more and more queer, and the church has become one of the harbingers of hate against me.

And I am talking just about the things which has directly affected me. Because if I recall all of the misdeeds of the church from a recent century or two, it will make things even worse.

So, right now, when I see the pope doing proper things, I am like: "yeah, you are, finally, calling openly for doing good deeds, but I have exactly zero reasons to trust your motives". And that's addressed to former popes as well.

Nonetheless, the church in Poland - and I remind, the catholic church is a hierarchical organisation, with clearly established chain of command - still is a harbinger of hate, and is bedding right wingers. Because it's far beyond the flirting phase.

I will look with the interest on the current development, but I am not going to hold my breath.

FWIW, even if I am formally still a member of the catholic church, I have never went through apostasy path, I am certainly considered a heretic, as I refuse to accept Paul, and his teaching, as a part of my believes. I consider him as a false prophet, and the fruits of his teaching we are collecting to this day. Which for me, right now, has only the intellectual meaning.

My spiritual life is not existing (please mind, this is a statement of a fact, not a complaint), and if I would ever want to change that, I would rather search for a local witch coven.

@blogdiva Not an <anything> religious. Just a student of history, and interested in the different paths the early Jesus-movement could have taken.

Paul and his followers were mostly to blame for misdirecting the message; they took it out of its very Jewish origin and made it into a Hellenistic mystery religion. After the sack of Jerusalem (70 CE), there was no Jewish foundation left for the Paulinists to have to avoid. They ran with the mystery religion and turned a Jewish (not) messiah into the mythic Christ.
It was all downhill from there. You get people worshiping a quasi-deity, instead of trying to live the message he taught.

And then there were the early "heresies," some of which might have been better directions, if the early "Church" hadn't crushed them (like the Gnostics, and the Gospel of Thomas).

So, reasonably good messages, (from a poor, illiterate Jewish peasant, who had come to some understanding of his world), which were totally convoluted by the so-called Christians.