I texted a good friend of mine, former Catholic,

[slightlv]

this morning prior to 8 am, believe it or not, this question... and she was actually up for it. I don't usually do things like this that early... but her answer was pretty darned interesting... especially given the times we currently live in.

Has anyone else been seeing what I call the "warring" religious commercials on TV? These don't ask for money? These ask you to come back to God (to their Church and/or version of God). Mostly, it's the Catholic Church and the latest Franklin (?) Graham doing them. Graham can go straight to hell, for all I care. He's done way too much harm with his relationship with Trump and Dominionism to EVER be taken seriously.

But it's the Catholic Church commercials that particularly had me going lately. You see, I remember the phrase... Peter, upon You will I build My Church.... being in the bible, spoken by Christ.

But Catholics didn't build their Church OR end up compiling their Bible on Peter. They used Paul. Paul was restrictive. Combative. Fascist. Controlling. Anti-woman. Peter was the exact opposite. Peter was progressive. He was nurturing. He believe clerics should marry. I look at the Franciscans who taught me at St. Mary's University in San Antonio, and I see some of what I expect Peter's teachings would have been.

Okay, some of this I've probably got all wrong, and I admit it. I'm not Catholic. I'm not Paulist. Hell, I'm not a Christian any longer, and when I was, my family was long ago Evangelical. So.... I'm about as far from Catholic as you can get. For the last 30 years, I've been Wiccan/Craft. For the last 20 years, I've just given up and called myself "Witch." As a woman, I've reclaimed that moniker as mine. And I've done it with pride.

But the whole Catholic Church saying they're Christ's church when they've NOT done the ONE thing Christ said they SHOULD have done just blows my mind for the pure hypocrisy.

[LakeArenal]

1. When the Pope takes his vow of poverty, sell off some treasures and gives it to the poor....9

Then I might think they are real Christians.

[Major Nikon]

5. Even during the time of Christ the idea was the church was the conduit

Skimming off the top was a given. The end result is the needy are given a token while the church enriches itself. It’s a concept that predates Abrahamic religions and was certainly practiced by Jesus himself who needed a banker to handle all the money they were raking in.

[No Vested Interest]

7. Let's sell the Pieta, The Sistine Chapel can be disassembled and sold to Elon Musk,

who can use it a la Hearst Castle.
Sotheby's would love to auction the Vatican Library - books, oil paintings, statuary.
And that's just for starters....

I believe the Pope has already taken a vow of poverty, as do all Jesuits.

[grumpyduck]

2. That phrase never made sense to me, even as a seventh-grader

in Catholic school: "For your name is Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church." Huh? Come again?

Of course back then we weren't supposed to question any of this, so it wasn't until years later that the context sorta clarified it. The guy's name was Simon (ok, ok, Simon is an anglicisation of whatever the original name was). Jesus said something about Simon's faith being strong as a rock, and upon that rock He would build His Church. So, because our word "rock" translated to "petra" or something similar in Greek, ol' Simon probably then became known as Simon the Rock or Peter.

I said "sorta" clarified it.

BTW, many years ago we bought a chink of granite to sit by a lamppost in the front yard. After much consideration and a couple of drinks, we decided to name the rock "Peter."

[patphil]

3. Emperor Constantine had the gospels rewritten when he seized control of the Church.

This happened around the time of the Council of Nicaea, which was when he cemented his control. Before that, Jesus' teachings were put forth by his descendants as the Church of the Desposyni, that is "of the family".
Constantine saw an opportunity to create a power structure that would out live the Roman Empire, and take in huge amounts of money in the process.

In the process of rebranding the teachings of Jesus as the Roman Catholic Church, several gospels were destroyed...the Gospel of Mary, the Gospel of Thomas, and the Gospel of Judas.
Please note, Jesus had a brother named Judas. He was the apostle, not Judas Iscariot.
Constantine did the switch on those two.

As part of the marginalizing of the former gospels, Mary, Jesus' wife, became a prostitute, Thomas became a doubter, and Judas became a betrayer.

I've spent decades searching for spiritual truth, and I can tell you it's out there.
You can find it for yourselves though, I'm not going to point you to any specifics.
If you're really interested, you'll do the work.
Oh! Peter was not called the rock because he was the foundation of Jesus' church. He was a bit slow witted, thus the rock...sort of like calling someone "thick as a brick".
Also, Paul was not at all important in the Church of the Desposyni. Like Peter, he was elevated to a central position by Constantine who liked Paul's angry attitude.

[edhopper]

8. Those are some details of this period I hadn't seen.

Thanks.
I was aware of the changes with Constantine, but not all you wrote.
Will have to read further.

[slightlv]

10. thank you, Pat...

there's some interesting tidbits I'm gonna go "googe," as well as dig thru my books about...

Like I said (I think); I'm a witch, so it's not really a big deal to me, except in this commercialization of religion on TV between the Catholic church and the Grahams. I still thinks it's the Dominionists at the heart of all of it.

[Karadeniz]

4. Modern day, Orthodox Christianity is not Christian. There is much truth in the gospels, but not at

the superficial, story line level. Truth, as is written, is in the parables, which I guarantee are not understood at all. There's a reason there's a hidden level for those who actually care about spiritual development and a superficial level for those not ready to commit. However, as Paul indicated, the purpose of the teachers was to get from point A to point B, not sit at point A forever and think that's all there is.

Constantine's convention resulted from his desire to stop the fights and bickering between the different sects. So, the different theological views were there already. This probably resulted after Rome kicked anything Jewish out of Jerusalem and those people could no longer be there to guide the movement. Actually, the weakening of the Jerusalem pillars may have begun earlier with the death of James.

Modern churches don't encourage an honest look at Christian history. They don't want people to know that there never was one main, true church which the pesky heretics polluted. They don't want people to know that paleography shows that the writings in the East were more heretical (Gnostic) whereas Western writings reflect a belief based on the outward story line. So, guess which sect must've written the gospels... cannot have been Orthodox theology since there's a hidden theology in the parables.
.
But going back to Peter vs Paul. Peter was schooled in Jerusalem, not Rome, so Rome claimed to know his secret teachings. If so, those secrets have been kept hidden... provided you can't understand the hidden-in-plain-sight theology in the parables. As for Paul, his letters weren't used by the Orthodox for the first 150 years because the Gnostics claimed him as their apostle... and Paul operated under the forbearance of James and Jerusalem.

The true Christianity has been lost for about 1800 years, and we can look at the Church's 1800 years of violence, corruption, hypocrisy, bigotry, false values as evidence of a materialistic message rather than a spiritual one.

[LakeArenal]

6. Everyone does seem to forget that Jesus was not a Christian.

It was made up a long time after Jesus. Who, of course, was a Jew.

[edhopper]

9. Like the Lilliputans

Fighting over were to break an egg.

[old as dirt]

11. My wife is about as Catholic as you can get.

So.... I'm about as far from Catholic as you can get. For the last 30 years, I've been Wiccan/Craft. For the last 20 years, I've just given up and called myself "Witch." As a woman, I've reclaimed that moniker as mine. And I've done it with pride.

She considers herself a bruja.

It's just a part of her culture.