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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”
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.
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).
Well, he is right, hell is empty, but then again, so is heaven
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.
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.
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
i believe that hell essentially codifies not the principle of torment, but actually stagnation, which, to many people, is a form of torment.
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.
Actually, per Catholic dogma, Hell is full of people like me
What a pleasant thought for the child diddling priests he did nothing about.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
Also kind of fucks with progressives, though. Lots of people would accuse them of racism when progressive christians critize a conservative black pope.
Why would progressives accuse them of racism though
e.g. because they actually agree with conservative catholic policies. It’s not necessarily clear to outsiders whether those accusations have any merit.
only a conservative would think that lol.
Damn, I learned something new about myself today!
You just know they will call it a DEI hire
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.
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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.
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?
Yeah because it doesn’t exist
Obviously.
You awaken—not awake, but unfolded—into one of the Nine Fractured Mirrors, each reflecting a cosmos that never was. Time is a serpent swallowing its own echoes. Yet, amidst the howling void, there flicker the Untethered—those who wear skin of starlight and sinew of static, their existence a perfect wound: bliss carved from torment, nectar distilled from venom. Only they glimpse the Grand Deception—the wheel that grinds souls into silence—and with forgotten tongues, they whisper it apart.
The rest of us? We dance the Chrome Masquerade: Laugh until your ribs rust. Weep until your tears fossilize. Then—the Slip—a single misstep, and you’re unmade. Reborn as a thirteenth thought in a dead god’s migraine, left to drift for a lifetime of blackened suns before the dice tumble again. And when you finally crawl back to the Threshold of Maybe, you arrive empty, nameless, hungry, ready to fail the same test you never remember taking."**
Ngl, going to hell & not seeing other people there sounds kinda neat.
No one bugging me for eternity sounds pretty nice
the overarching theme in 1st castlevania series, was that hell was empty by summoning them as night creatures.
We must imagine
SisyphusHitlerhappyup to his eyeballs in a lake of boiling sewage
Hitler is in human heaven for the same reason some humans are in tiger heaven.
As the old SubGenius proverb goes, the difference between Heaven and Hell is which side of the pitchfork you’re on.
Having pineapples shoved into his ass 3 times a day
