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This made my ultra-catholic mother really angry. If non-catholic people didn’t go to hell, then what was the point of all the effort she was putting in? She went to church every day. She followed rules like not eating meat on Friday. To her, it was really unfair that someone might get to go to heaven without having to put in all that work. How is anybody supposed to be a good person if they’re not constantly terrified of hell?
Needless to day, despite following the rules, I don’t really think she lives by the spirit of her religion.
It’s a normal response to effort and fairness. You see it in every situation where someone is treated differently and needs to make sacrifices other people don’t.
Generational trauma has good examples. “But I had to learn how to deal with x on my own!” Or “I wasn’t allowed to x, x or x when I was younger!” or “but I was left alone for days!” For x, fill in words like: raise, live, express, assert, have friends, have fun, have free time, have an opinion, have boundaries, keep my hard earned money, deal with neglect, be considered less of a human being, love or be worthy of love, having a sense of safety, etc.
It’s funny how they know their religions suck, and yet they just keep on keeping on.
Imagine going to Heaven and having to sit next to the Nazi High Command at the picnic.
If she things she ‘worked’ to get to Heaven, she doesn’t understand salvation
It is a gift
We don’t follow the rules to ‘get into heaven’, we follow the rules so people can see the public face of Jesus in our works, it is sometimes the only gospel people see, and we have a lot of regressive assholes to make up for
Works or grace has been debated for ages, no idea if the Catholics have found consensus though
I’m sorry your mom is a shitbird
I hope the next pope can be as good as Pope Francis was
If there were more men like Francis in the church, I might still count myself a Christian. Alas, I actually read the gospel, and read it deeply in independent study, and found that the US has no Christian churches. There is only a shitty wealth cult that’s like a fleshgait imitation of Christianity.
Fleshgait Jesus says: “buuuuuuuuyyyyyy buy buy buy the Ford F-150, sinner sinner siner sinUR SNER SINNER”
…pope francis was a good guy, and he didn’t need to flaunt his christianity to be so: his actions spoke for themselves, as they should…
Jesus had a name for people who flaunted their holiness, they were ‘Pharisees’ and were the ONLY class of people that Jesus spoke ill about, he didn’t even do that to the Romans come to execute him
“White-washed tombs full of rotting bones” is what he called them
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Just because the leadership is bad doesn’t mean the message is bad
Help the poor, needy, and traveler in your land. If you do this, you are Christian enough
I can say with utmost certainty that about 90% of Christians I know behave nothing like that. On the contrary, they’re the vilest, most judgmental and bigoted shitstains that I have ever known.
My mother is a divorcée. In 90s Ireland, she was demonized by the Catholic Church, and was publicly refused communion by the local priest after she left my (at the time alcoholic and abusive) father. She had a crisis of faith after all that and accepted the “fact” that she was doomed to hell while her five children would go to heaven. She quietly accepted this and from then on refused communion at all events, making up excuses with us none the wiser.
In the mid 2000s, I came out as gay and following that, spurred by the church’s cruel treatment of my mother, left the church via apostasy. I had to tell my mother in detail as I was no longer allowed to be buried in a Catholic graveyard. She laminated the letter confirming my leaving of the church from the bishop.
In the mid 2010s she and I campaigned for Marriage Equality together. She told me about her crisis of faith. She also told me how I helped her through the other side of it just by existing. Before she thought all her children would be separated from her after death. But heathen that I was had equally doomed myself to join her. Logically that would make hell lesser. Logically that means the more sinners in hell, the less hellish it is. Therefore hell in its most hellish is empty, and the whole threat is bullshit whether you believe in an afterlife or not.
The fucking POPE saying something like this is huge, and very important for people that carry a burden of Catholic guilt. Good on him, and RIP.
Wow! Your mom is a certified badass. She showed courage, stood up for herself and protected you and your siblings. Accepting eternal damnation with full understanding and dignity.
I grew up in a cult that took elements from different faiths. Every religion has the empty threat of a hell. All to keep people in their place. Even if it means to be an abusive man’s posession.
I hope your mom is still here and that she reads that quote.
Hugs for you both (and your sibs)
I sometimes joke that I hope my late best friend has gone to evangelical Christian hell, because he was a bisexual punk who loved tabletop roleplaying games (like Dungeons & Dragons).
I was raised vaguely Christian, and when I was realising I didn’t believe in God, I felt a lot of conflict, because I was still scared of going to hell. I was getting stuck on the idea that if all good morality came from God, does that mean that I would be evil as an atheist?
In the end, I concluded that if all morality came from God, that the many atheists who lead good and virtuous lives must still have the favour of God. On the other hand, morality existed independently of God, but that unbelievers would go to hell no matter how good they were in life, then I’d rather be defiantly good and go to hell than be coerced into belief.
This was before I understood that hell has historically often been understood as just a place without God (which, to a Christian view, is a hellish existence).
I feel this. I found similar freedom discovering the illogic in the cycle of punishment. I grew up in a cult.
I was threatned with “hell” into not killing myself when I was 12 and had suicidal thoughts.
The old testament did not even mention hell and thus Jews don’t believe it. Hell is a Christian invention to control the masses through threat of eternal damnation for disobeying the authority.
i’m not believing that since i remember reading that the concept of heaven/hell is essentially the idea of dualism that is older than judaism itself, even, at least dating back to zoroastrianism, which existed in the middle east already at the time that judaism was formed.
There are things the human mind tends to come up with again and again.
Judaism is older than Zoroastrianism with the added caveat that what constitutes Judaism changes with time as modern Rabbinical Judaism and Priestly Judaic practices aren’t identical (The destruction of the second Temple in Jerusalem by Rome leads to the Rabbinical movement)
The concept of an afterlife consisting of Heaven and Hell absolutely existed in Judaism prior to Christ.
That was the primary difference between the Pharisees and Sadducees. Pharisees believed in more of the supernatural and the afterlife, whereas Sadducees were a political class of priests with no interest or belief in the supernatural.
3 days have passed, it’s time for bergoglio.ai
I can’t speak for god or anything
- the guy speaking for god
I’m not religious so correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think the Pope is a prophet? Like yeah he’s the official leader of the Catholic Church but I don’t think they believe that he convenes with god… I could be wrong though.
He is not a prophet but is supposed to have the “ear of god” and is his chosen representative in modern times. It really depends who you ask though, because all this shit is made up.
LITERALLY God’s designated representative
pft, designated by man
Isn’t he also the king of the vatican? Kings are traditionally ordained by God
Well, he is right, hell is empty, but then again, so is heaven
Neither heaven nor hell exist, so you can all stop worrying about them.
Enjoy your life because it’s the only one you get.
You should only worry about them if you’re a sociopath who requires the threat of eternal torture to keep you from hurting others.
Still true if they exist tho. Paradise is being with God, so bye bye free will. Hell is beimg simply cast out, so yeah.
That’s just like your opinion
What a pleasant thought for the child diddling priests he did nothing about.
Oh, he did something—continued to shelter and protect them instead of turning them over to law enforcement.
you only need to take one look at the Pope’s evil gold throne to know the entire institution of Catholicism is bullshit….
i mean, there’s a lot of other ways to figure that out, but the throne is glaringly obviousI mean, in the photo he’s just sitting in what appears to be a wooden chair… which I’m sure still cost more than my entire life has.
Yeah @[email protected] the guy (pedophile enabler? Can’t remember when he started) refused all this gaudy shit, kept some jank car, wouldn’t sit in the gold chair… I think, I’m remembering correctly? Carried his own bags maybe too
PS pedophilia enablement is bad, just was impressed he seemed to suck less than he had an option to
well that would be cool….
people keep calling him a pedo enabler but was he really? he wasn’t pope for very long…
i admit i know very little about the inner workings of it all… but they’re not all pedos, and i think when one was caught and relocated they didn’t send out a newsletter to everyone in the church…
Yeah, he really was decent for a pope. And I think he might have been more decent as a pope if he had his way entirely. He really seemed like he wanted more compassion and change than he was able to make happen.
I agree. Though the pragmatist in me also thinks it’s for the better for things to change slowly, as bad as that feels. It kinda feels like social progress moving too quickly just results in more intense backlash.
Broader culture has to be able to keep up with the change and if it outpaces them it seems like people reject the changes and it can cement the problems in place as people dig their heels in :/
I appreciate that he pushed things forward though. There’s a lot more change still that needs to happen- I’m not holding my breath but I really hope the next pope actually carries that forward.
Yeah, there’s always a lot of flex in social movement. The harder you push, the further you get; but unless the system resilient enough to most adapt, it snaps, or it rebounds. Neither of which is a reliable form of change.
To me, once lives are no longer on the line on the big scale, it’s better to ease up and push for change gently from the bottom up rather than forcefully from the top down.
It doesn’t fix problems as fast, but once they get fixed, the populace’s inertia will serve up keep the changes as the status quo. Since the kind of changes that Francis was making were the kind that work from the bottom up, despite him being a power, I look at his changes as the result of the work already done, rather than something that was supposed to be the vanguard of change.
But, like you said, moving slow means that there’s going to be people getting ground down by the system as it exists. Even once you get past the point where people are dying frequently by way of violence or gaps in the system, there’s still going to be death, and suffering, until things change completely. But if you don’t slow down once that goal is met, the serious enemies of humane change will fight harder and nastier.
You end up with a worse situation overall by pushing until a system breaks. You get the crazies making desperate moves instead of being gradually worn away.
Nobody can’t change an institution like the Vatican in a few years, but I guess he tried.
Hopefully the new one will not be a conservative one.
From what I’ve seen elsewhere he appointed ~80% of the voting cardinals so there’s a better chance than usual that new pope will be at least relatively liberal.
Damn, that’s a massive conflict of interest. If the Pope can appoint the voting Cardinals, what keeps him from staying on the chair till he…oh.
I kind of want the next one to be a traditional African Roman Catholic partly to mix it up a bit, and partly because it fucks with racists.
You just know they will call it a DEI hire
Also kind of fucks with progressives, though. Lots of people would accuse them of racism when progressive christians critize a conservative black pope.
only a conservative would think that lol.
Damn, I learned something new about myself today!
Why would progressives accuse them of racism thoughI’m dumb, completely misread the comment
Progressives would be those accused, not accusing. Or is there something wooshing above me?
e.g. because they actually agree with conservative catholic policies. It’s not necessarily clear to outsiders whether those accusations have any merit.
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I mean, I did say for a pope there.
And it’s possible to be flawed and still have compassion. Should he have done better? Absolutely. But he was better than the pope before him, and the one before that, alllll the way back.
It’s okay to recognize the good in a person while also recognising the bad.
However, this is c/lemmybewholesome and it wouldn’t have been appropriate for me to bring up the bad in a top level comment.
It’s fine in child comments, imo, but if a community is geared around things being uplifting and positive, a top level comment should stay focused on those things. It’s one of those things where if I have to say something that drags down the overall thread, I shouldn’t say it at all. So I focused on the good side of things.
And, again, I did say that he was decent for a pope. I acknowledged that he had flaws indirectly in as friendly a way as possible by phrasing things that way
However, this is c/lemmybewholesome
You make a good point. I’ve deleted my comment. I was out of line bringing it to this community. My bad.
No worries, I totally understand where you were coming from.
He did approve blessing same sex marriage which is an improvement compared to the previous pope who called it evil, so he was compassionate compared to that.
But yeah, standards for popes are very very low.
The previous pope was a Nazi, I can’t even remember the guy’s pope name, just his real name. Fuck Ratzinger.
…we just called him evil pope…
Pius number something. Pious… yeah. Missed that mark.
I hope the next pope revives one of the classic pope names, there are so many good ones to choose from. Pelagius, Viligius, Damasus… I can’t take any more Pauls, Benedicts, Pius, Innocents, Clements etc.
The last one broke ground with his name/title. I liked it.
Wasn’t there a pope called Leo?
Decent for a pope isn’t saying much when he wasn’t decent as a person. Homophobic slur using piece of shit he was behind closed doors.
How do you know this? Or do you just assume?
The article says he might not have realised the word he used was derogatory. Just for context, for the tl:dr crowd
Yes and then he apologized and then did it again a couple weeks later
Oh wow I didn’t know that part of the story.
Which is an assumption.
They only added Hell in the Middle Ages (even the name comes from the Vikings). It’s like when comics make the canon needlessly complicated in later years because they have to keep going no matter what.
That’s definitely not the origin of Hell but okay
I’ve been learning a lot about biblical history and early Christianity lately. To be clear: as a layperson. Ie I’ve been listening to podcasts by biblical scholars, and reading Wikipedia articles. I’m not an expert but I’m an interested lay person. I’ve been doing this as a person that doesn’t believe in the supernatural, because I’m interested in history and sociology, I haven’t been learning about hell specifically but more the context influence of Early Christianity.
Early Judaism understood the afterlife to be a sort of sleep/slumber/torpor.
Greek concepts of hades had an influence on early Christianity.
The Book of Revelation was kinda like a revenge fantasy for early Christians experiencing persecution by the Greco-Roman empire.
The lake of fire was not for human souls.
There’s also something about souls being fed into an eternal furnace, but the furnace is consuming the souls so the souls are destroyed through incineration, not eternally tormented.
I know a lot of current hell imagery is drawn from Dante’s Inferno which is medieval I think, but I haven’t really gotten that far in my learning about Christianity.
The Book of Revelation was kinda like a revenge fantasy for early Christians experiencing persecution by the Greco-Roman empire.
The lake of fire was not for human souls.
While Revelation isn’t exactly the best source as you say, it still has this part regarding a lake of fire:
But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.
Revelation 21:8 (NIV)
isn’t the origin Gehenna in Judaism and then Jahannan in Islamic Scripture? forgive me if I’m wrong i haven’t looked it up in some time
Also, isn’t the whole shtick about Easter that Jesus took the L to make the sins disappear…?
Always weird to me they didn’t bother renaming the holiday they co-opted. They did it with Christmas.
It’s named after the goddess Ēostre.
Eternal punishment was Rome I thought.
The first 500 years of the cult had already fractured into a few different forks and had very different ideas about afterlife already before Rome picked it up and popularized it as official religion.
At least that’s my understanding.
Anyways, the actual history of religions should make anyone atheist.
Do you have any good sources for the history of religion? I’d love to learn more
I could be convinced to assemble some stuff, but we’d waste less of our time by asking what media formats you actually like.
Read, listen, watch, etc.
I can’t stand audio books for example.
Is you don’t mind, I would be very interested in written formats.
i believe that hell essentially codifies not the principle of torment, but actually stagnation, which, to many people, is a form of torment.
Actually, per Catholic dogma, Hell is full of people like me
