THE POPE IS DYING
The pope is dying, and in spite of my feelings for Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular, it saddens me. This Pope was a wonderful man, one of the few, if not only, truly good men in our time. Ok, so I think his belief is based on a huge deception, but, not a bad one in and of itself. He tried to correct so many things his predecessors did, and succeeded in most areas. He was a brave man who lived his beliefs, and in my opinion possibly was as close as anyone can get to a living example of how Jesus meant for people to live. Even this close to death. There are so few truly good people on earth. He will be missed.
Thinking about him and my 'take' on the Church, brought me to the idea that most post monotheistic religions are pretty much some form of continuation of the premonotheistic *pagan* ones, with maybe one exception, but that exception pretty much depends on the whole Sumerian 'alien' issue. There have been findings by Stitchin that indicate that things might have been given push in a direction that lead to Judaism and a religion based on ethical behavior, a set of 'rules' that tell us how to live as 'good' people. I still think things got twisted through the early years of Christianity by men who were looking for a road to power and a way to control people. The independent aspects of Judaism had to be changed and a middleman inserted. People just can't be trusted to figure out for themselves what the right thing to do is. Then, there's the whole female/goddess issue. It seems there might have been a slight mistranslation and that Eve was not created from Adam's rib, but was his other side, which would make the Feminine an equal partner in everything. Premonotheistic religions had as many goddesses as they did gods. In fact it seems that goddesses dominated in areas of the world where agriculture was prevalent, and gods, where hunting was the way of life. As to the issue of human sacrifice, it is possible that there was very little of that back then, and that with a few possible exceptions, it was inserted by recorders of religion to make a point. I'm still reading and thinking, and know I will never be a theological expert, but I *do* want to learn more and come to my own conclusions. It's going to be bumpy, but interesting ride.
Thinking about him and my 'take' on the Church, brought me to the idea that most post monotheistic religions are pretty much some form of continuation of the premonotheistic *pagan* ones, with maybe one exception, but that exception pretty much depends on the whole Sumerian 'alien' issue. There have been findings by Stitchin that indicate that things might have been given push in a direction that lead to Judaism and a religion based on ethical behavior, a set of 'rules' that tell us how to live as 'good' people. I still think things got twisted through the early years of Christianity by men who were looking for a road to power and a way to control people. The independent aspects of Judaism had to be changed and a middleman inserted. People just can't be trusted to figure out for themselves what the right thing to do is. Then, there's the whole female/goddess issue. It seems there might have been a slight mistranslation and that Eve was not created from Adam's rib, but was his other side, which would make the Feminine an equal partner in everything. Premonotheistic religions had as many goddesses as they did gods. In fact it seems that goddesses dominated in areas of the world where agriculture was prevalent, and gods, where hunting was the way of life. As to the issue of human sacrifice, it is possible that there was very little of that back then, and that with a few possible exceptions, it was inserted by recorders of religion to make a point. I'm still reading and thinking, and know I will never be a theological expert, but I *do* want to learn more and come to my own conclusions. It's going to be bumpy, but interesting ride.
posted by Purplegimp @ 10:05 AM
3 Comments:
At 1:37 PM,
Anonymous said…
Franne,
Thanks for your comments about the Pope - I was brought up as a lapsed Catholic by a lapsed Catholic and a converted lapsed Catholic ( I think at times that Catholicsm is more a tribe than a religion at times!) so there are huge pulls on my emotions right now.
Anyway - have you read the 'Holy Blood and the Holy Grail' and its sequels ? They have a lot of interesting things to say. I read about the mystery of Rennes le Chateau when I was a child so when those books were published they naturally appealed to me. Think I'm going to have to buy them and the Da Vinci Code.
Anyway :-)
At 1:38 PM,
Anonymous said…
btw that was from me Fingers!
Rolls eyes at my enthusiasm to post!
At 5:22 PM,
Purplegimp said…
*Fingers! Of course I knew who posted this. I *do* have a hit counter, and check it regularly. I'm sure you've read enough of my posts to know that I only write what I think, and don't go out of my way to sound nice or P.C. I grew up in town with lots of Catholics and our next door neighbors were too. I found an interesting tidbit while tracking down something I found through my hit counter. It seems that my neighbors, the Leiths, may have had some kind of connection to the whole thing. The Professor (he was chairman of Romance Languages at Bowdoin College, and went to France all the time,(his connection to France was stronger than the one to Scotland) and The Philmore (my dad) had more discussions about religion than anyone can imagine. I can't count the times he said that Catholocism is more like Judasim than we might imagine. I usually take into account that this was the same man who watered his rose garden in the rain after his evening cocktail! I used to love sitting on the stairs listening to them go at it. The last time I went to the Old Home Town, in 1989, I spent days looking for him, calling, and going by his house. I was very sad to leave without having seen him. I flew TWA and had a plane change in Paris. As I walked past the Saudi Arabian Airlines transit area, I saw him being wheeled in a wheelchair by a flight attendant, and almost passed out. I still get teary eyed when remembering that. I found out later that after he got home all his neighbors told him I'd been by his house several times and he took great pleasure in telling them all that we met up at the airport! I guess you could say that I had a somewhat unusual early education in the Catholic religion! It certainly has produced some extraordinary men, and women!
I haven't read the books you mentioned yet, but they aer on my 'to order' list. I strongly recommend The Secrets Of The Code as a companion book when to get The da Vinci Code.
Thank you for the comment.
Franne
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