Since the news is currently flooded with stories on the Pope and his visit, I figure now is a good time to air some criticisms/questions I have of Catholicism. The aspect of it that irks me the most is the worship of a man who is elected by other men to live in a palace whose artwork alone could end world hunger. And if you threw the palace into the auction, you could probably end poverty too. Yet throngs of followers line up to catch a glimpse of him like fans at a Miley Cyrus concert.
Here is a man who preaches about helping the poor, yet he wears Prada and surrounds himself with a private art collection that by all accounts is priceless.
Here is a man who is supposedly the only one who can speak with God, yet he's elected by mere men. But if those mortal men receive divine inspiration from God at election time, why then do they often disagree and require several rounds of smoke signals to get it right?
Growing up I understood the pope to be a man who was supposed to live as Jesus did, devoting his life and worldly possessions to helping those who cannot help themselves. That was when I was about 10 and didn't know any better. This institution was born out of man's greed and desire for power. No where in the Bible does it mention a leader like the Pope. Look back at all those centuries when the Vatican was amassing its wealth. How did they do it? The popes acted like ruthless, machiavellian dictators and waged war on other countries. Becoming pope was just as ruthless, eliminating rivals and bribing others for their support. And yet people still worship him like Jesus without questioning why this man lives larger than royalty but who tells those with a tiny fraction of his wealth to go without in order to serve those in need. Wake up! This is bullshit.
And all of this grandeur trickles down to the Catholic communities around the world, where lavish churches with gold-plated fixtures are erected to pray to a God who tells us to do the exact opposite and give to those less fortunate. That is what Catholicism basically boils down to. An ostentatious religion of grandeur designed for show.
Plus, the current Pope looks like pure evil. Just look at those shady, sunken eyes. Hollywood couldn't create a more sinister-looking villain.
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2 comments:
Good point. The part of Catholicism that bothers my 75 yr old Southern Baptist grandmother:
God said men and women should marry and populate the earth. Priests and nuns are celibate and therefore neither married nor populating the earth.
She's fairly anti-Catholic, but she's old so we don't try to change her. For the record, she also the same problem with me and all of my other single, childless cousins over 20.
I agree...and my MIL wondered why I didn't want to convert when I married her son (who is so disinfranchised that I refer to him as a Recovering Catholic). I wouldn't expect the leader of one of the biggest religious denominations to live in complete poverty, but if he lived in a more modest setting, that would make more sense.
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