fuck ... >I< may to heaven???

[DerGolgo]

Right.
Nearly 33 years ago, I was baptized catholic. I went through first communion, confirmation, all that lot.
But, sometime in between, I figured out that what I thought was faith just wasn't there.
So I didn't go anymore, turned slightly aggressively anti-christian in general, and anti-catholic in particular.
When I saw the church tax being deducted from my first regular wage, I did the paperwork and left the church. Before, I couldn't be bothered enough to risk causing my mother the further grief, she had already told me she hadn't slept for three days when I had told her I didn't believe (so I loves my mum, so what? Wanna fight about it?). Leaving the church means handing over a signed declaration to that effect at city hall, filling out a form, boom, done.
Back then, the rule was: You leave the church, you are excommunicated. Automatically, no two ways about it. I even got a letter to that effect from the diocese. You're out! Deal with it!

Then, this year, they suddenly announce that, no, leaving the church doesn't get you excommunicated anymore. Communion and all that is a holy sacrament, filling out a form in city hall cannot undo it! You still won't be able to get buried in consecrated ground, I think, but you're no longer damned to hell automatically.
I felt so fucking cheated. We parted ways and you guys declared I was out-out, no backsies!

Now, that damn new pope ... goes out and announces ... with the very fancy hat and all, ex-cathedra ... meaning it's quite officially an infallible announcement ... that ... you don't even have to be in the catholic church to go to heaven. You don't have to have received any sacraments to go to heaven. You can be gay and go to heaven! Worst of all ... you don't even have to believe in god to go to heaven!!!
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 10062.html

I'm not suddenly gonna start believing in some invisible tyrant in the sky because "his representative on earth" suddenly makes noises like he's not a dogmatist nutjob but a sensible human being.
But this, this is shaking my non-faith it is. Simple things are nice and comfortable. Like a blanket. The simple thing was "The catholic church isn't just a fucked up organization that thinks I'm evil and should be tortured for all eternity, they openly admit as much!"
Now, all of a sudden ... they're not suddenly nice and fluffy, far from it. But this guy, it's like he's trying to emulate Anthony Quinn in The Shoes of the Fisherman. He slips away from his handlers, he interacts with the lowly faithful, he starts turning the church in some other direction ... I'll admit, that is a good movie, and using the church's considerable wealth to do something about world hunger and whatnot, I'd applaud all the way and perhaps even sign a petition on their behalf if they did that. But now I've got to start reorganizing my world view! Damn you, my life is complicated enough already! What's next, catholic priests handing out condoms in Africa, Trappists forming human chains to protect family-planning clinics from rabid pro-lifer mobs?

When Ratzinger was convinced to retire, I had been convinced that the network of old-boy cardinals, too old for the conclave even, were getting rid of some fool who wasn't handling crises right, that they'd install some smiling puppet who'd let them bring back the good old days behind the scenes.
Now, I'm not so convinced. Could it be they realized "Unless we can figure out how to recruit more people into the faith we'll be fucked in fifty years. Someone call the tobacco industry, we wanna borrow their advertisers! We gotta go after the youth demographic, get 'em while they're young!"
Hence, pope Franky ... that's what I'm gonna call him now. Francis is a medieval christian thug in chainmail, spreading the gospel with the aid of his mace, or a an ineffectual semi-fascist who'll do whatever he's told. This guy drives himself, thinks it's cool to hang out with gays and atheists. He's Franky.
Damn him and how he fails to inspire revulsion and anger!