I have been reading the bible

Specifically Gospel of Luke, for class.
and I am slowly getting the feeling that not only is the Catholic Church a mess but it's wrong about Jesus said.
because at some point it must have forgotten that Jesus is all about the poor and being wealthy for the sake of wealth devalues you in His eyes.
am I misinterpreting somEthing?
This isn't a lead up to a generalization- most catholics I know do not agree with their church 100%.
I'm still mildly uncomfortable though.

 

The Catholic Church is a political institution, and it unfortunately has a habit in several instances (though not all, thank God) of twisting its ideals in order to grasp political power and money. Turns out following the opinions of a guy who said you must be humble and share all you have doesn't make you rich or famous, go fucking figure.
ETA: In Brazil at least, the protestants tend to be a lot more of the nutty WBC-style variety than the Catholics though. The Catholics are generally chill people, but many of our protestant churches are downright scary - and the Evangelical ones especially are cults which build multimillion dollar temples and demand outrageous amounts of money from their usually miserably poor followers.

 

Jesus was a seriously cool guy who said some really worthwhile things. I have been tempted to christian multiple times because of him. Then i talk to christians and it is amazing what percentage of them are not just not acting like jesus but actively malicious. V frustrating.

 

@Lissiel this is why I call myself a non-congreagating Christian (and also I'm a bot of a synchretist and do occasional whichcraft and christians kinda frown on that...)

 

A lot of Christian institutions also focus a lot more on the Gospel of John, which is... Still not as 'JESUS IS GOD AND A BADASS' as the oral tradition usually gets, but quite a bit farther in that direction.

Honestly, some Christian institutions have been more involved with yelling at each other over minor points of orthodoxy than doing what Jesus said for a long time. =_= Researching early heresies can be kind of fascinating but also oh my god guys, you're ridiculous. Like, there were wars fought over whether Jesus was THE SAME as God, or just LIKE God.

 

And deciding those questions based on who had the better army sounds like not the best decision-making mechanism.

 

Little bit, yeah. I mean, the Eastern Roman Empire was kind of a mess in the fourth/fifth century anyway, but... sigh. At least it's not the Albigensian Crusade, where instead of attacking the Muslim Empire, the Catholic Church murdered thousands of pacifist religious reformers. =__=

I, uh... went to Catholic school. I know WAY too much about this nonsense.

 

@albedo Not gonna lie, my favourite bit of church history is the part where Santa Claus punches Arius in the face at the Council of Nicea in 325 A.D. over that very issue. I mean, maybe it's a myth, and violence is ... rarely the answer, but I still think it's hilarious. Fandom wars are p. much always hilarious to me.

(I'm a Christian, for the record, but am unlikely to be offended by anyone suggesting that Jesus-followers ought to follow Jesus little more closely.)

 

Plus, so much of the development of the early Christian church was because of Paul, and Paul's letters are a lot more focused on Jesus' divinity than his teachings (although I've heard a possible explanation for that is that the intended audience of the letters would 1) already be semi-familiar with his teachings and 2) have better ways to find out more than through Paul.)
I wonder if the problem of ignoring certain teachings could be explained away by considering the Catholic church as an organisation that worships Christ as God, rather than following his teachings as a rabbi. But I think that seems like an unlikely position for anyone to hold.

Tangentially:
I work part-time in two different churches: one of them is pretty standard Anglican and the other is...well, technically still Anglican, but much more formal about it. Roman Catholic in all but name. So the second of these had a feast day a couple of weeks ago and honestly, I found it pretty bizarre. So much Mariolatry. So many clergymen (and they were all men), all using the title "father".

 

@Elaienar Even if it's a myth, it's an awesome myth. I've always been fond of poor, poor Constantine. CAN'T WE ALL JUST GET ALONG, GUYS? No. No, you apparently can not.

(I was raised agnostic, but I know the most about Catholicism for obvious reasons. No mockery intended of Christianity itself, just... ... history is hilarious.)

@EulersBidentity Definitely, that too.

Semi-relatedly, my favorite word: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisegesis

 

Strangely fascinating.
I am an atheist who attends catholic church because parents (and make a point of not judging people's religions unless it like, declares MURDER ALL [PEOPLE GROUP] or something)
And like.
What I hear at church sounds like the words of jesus but what I see doesn't really follow it...

 

So that's what it's called

 

It always depresses me that it's such an uncommon word, because it's so useful.

 

NB I have no idea how to pronounce it. Stress on the antepenultimate syllable, or am I just being too English?

 

Eye-sih-JEE-suhs, stress on the penultimate, at least in American English.

Sounds like icy Jesus. Which amuses me even further.

 

...new thought.

I just realised that no, that would still be pretty explicit hypocrisy.

(ETA and now this is in my head. Anyone guessed my job yet? :L )

 

@EulersBidentity Huh, Anglican Churches that are actually trying-to-be-Roman-Catholic Churches must be more of a thing than I knew? I and my family recently departed en masse (except for one brother who'd skipped a couple of years before) from a church like that. Priest was raised Roman Catholic but couldn't be ordained in the RCC because he'd been divorced (I think). We had a crucifix and he opened every service with a prayer to St Michael the Archangel, which was a bit weird for my spent-formative-years-in-a-Reformed-Presbyterian-Church self.

(We didn't leave over the Roman Catholic stuff, though, we left over a multitude of issues with the priest that basically boiled down to a) we don't agree with everything he's saying and b) he keeps saying that anyone who doesn't agree with everything he's saying should leave, so we might as well. The guy had a lot of good points and I respected him for his work ethic and dedication, but he basically wanted a congregation and vestry composed entirely of yes-men. It's like he was playing house, but with a church, and real people.)

Addendum: I've always really liked that verse 'cause I could read it as an if-then statement rather than an exhortation. I'm not very emotional about my religion and so I basically judge my investment in it by how much I attempt to live the way I think God wants me to. (That is probably pretty eisegesist of me, though. :P)

 

@Elaienar (heh, "en masse".)
I honestly don't know how common it is. Though I think it can get a bit weird...I mean, the Catholics already know they're Catholic, so they don't have to try so hard. But the Anglicans have something to prove.

I've sung for one whole RC service in my life, and I nearly walked out at surprise!transphobia during the homily. Fortunately I'm not obliged to go back, and I've turned down every invitation to since then.