Despite the impossibility of making everyone happy, you consistently deny reality and stress out over your decision. You can see their angry faces now — all in your head.
Author: Kin Easter
The masses determine the papacy’s value
We have institutions. Supposedly, they are real because physical infrastructure is the outgrowth from these institutions . But the engine behind the physical, man-made realities we see is what lies in our collective conscious. Once the multitude holds an idea in common, it becomes an institution.
A major anniversary for Christianity
Nicaea was the first of the ecumenical church councils that would articulate more clearly over time the nature of the Trinity. This is important because it allowed Christianity to assert the divinity of Jesus while seemingly escaping accusations of polytheism.
The cult Opus Dei and its sappy founder
“Oh, Lord! If only I was there! I would have offered you my cigarrillo! But maybe that cigarrillo would have given you pleasure, alleviating your pain, the only pain that could save the world from its sin! If you had found relief from that one cigarrillo, maybe even the smallest hit, even without inhaling, the world would have been lost! All for one puff!”
Habent papam
They have a pope, another papa … again. He calls himself Leo. That’s an interesting name for an American pope, but the choice shouldn’t come as a surprise. After all, the last pope named Leo complained about “Americanism” to Cardinal Gibbons, archbishop of Baltimore. Granted, Leo was critical of the ideals of the Age of…
‘Convicted’? So what?
“He is convicted.” No, that’s not a reference to someone found guilty of a crime. Rather, it’s a statement I’ve often heard about a Gospel preacher or a believer giving testimony. It’s what a church pastor wants to hear when he listens to a prospective member giving his testimony on “how he came to Christ,”…
Leaving the commune (aka seminary)
This month it’s been 14 years since I left the Roman commune known as seminary. You could say I lost my faith in Rome during my final semester, the spring of 2011, having been in Roman communes for a total of four years. Those final two years were in Rome itself. I returned stateside and…
The next pope? Wait, I’m not supposed to care
Who will be the next pope? A good Catholic would avoid asking such a question. In the recent past, if he had heard someone observe a drastic difference between Francis and Pius XII, the last pre-Vatican II pope, he would have performed mental gymnastics to say, “Despite the difference between those two men, the papal…
Illiterates in Hell
If reading the Bible is a necessary means toward faithful discipleship, then Christians of the modern fundamentalist persuasion can only conclude that Hell is very likely full of most of their Christian ancestors since they were illiterate. Too bad they lived in the wrong century, right? This brings to mind Augustine of Hippo asserting that…