Religion Wars Episode IV: A New Pope

As many of you know, Pope Benedict XVI has announced that he is quitting his divinely ordained job. When asked why, he stated he wanted to spend more time at home with the kids. *badumptss*

All kidding aside I think it’s time for the Church to do some soul searching, pardon the pun. Now, we all know that when I come to power, the Church will be dismantled, it’s assets sold and given to the poor, and pedophile priests (and their protectors) will be publicly executed.

Until then, the new pope could still make the world a better place. Simply by getting Catholics to be more Christlike. At some point, probably when Catholics were commanded to conquer the planet, they (and to an extent all Christians) got this attitude that they were better than everyone else. Slowly, FOLLOWING the teachings of Christ became less important than SAYING they followed the teachings of Christ.

Loving thy neighbor was replaced by bigotry. Compassion was replaced by hatred. Freedom was replaced by tyranny. As these good traits diminished, the strength and reach of the Church expanded. Religion infects so much of our lives now. Most Americans will not elect a politician if he doesn’t have “strong religious beliefs”, even if they disagree with those beliefs. Many Christians would rather vote for Mitt Romney in the last election than Obama, even though, Mormonology negates many of the stories in the Bible.

Perhaps one of the reasons I despise religion (besides the whole “made up nonsense” part) is that so called religious people ignore the tenants of their own religion. Jesus’ message was one of love. Love your oppressors  Love those who hate you. Love your neighbors. Love prostitutes. And above all else, love fish. Seriously. Jesus loved halibut. Why do you think Peter was the rock? He had halibut.

At what point or with what interpretation of the bible, could you condone child molestation? Yet, not one, but THOUSANDS of children were molested in the last 50 years. Imagine what’s happened in the last 2000 years? Any right thinking person feels disgusted when they think of that. Then again, right thinking people wouldn’t be religious. What did the church do? They hid it. They paid people off. They “disciplined” the priests by moving them to different churches where no one knew what they had done. Seriously. One of the priests when I was growing up was one of those priests. He was sent to Hawaii. This is not how Jesus would have loved children. I hope.

Christ said to “Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s”. This was said due to the question of paying taxes. Jesus specifically said to pay taxes. The Catholic Church does not. All those donations you give to the Church? Tax free. All the property that the Church owns? Tax free. The IRS had a rule with the religious, that said tax free groups, like the Church, could not encourage their minions to vote for particular candidates or initiatives. Separation of Church and State and all that. Recently, a group of priests have purposefully ignored this rule and told their congregants for whom “god” wanted them to vote. This is the exact opposite of what Jesus said. In the Bible.

This is the world we have allowed. It’s time for the Church to go back to it’s roots. And by that, I mean, back to the Middle East. But until then, get back to the  teachings of their messiah. Acts of kindness, especially to those that hate them. Loving gays who are made in their god’s image. Allowing children to be children without being fondled. If the new pope could do this, maybe I could tolerate these hypocritical nutjobs.