Pope: Who am I to judge gay people?

[Peace Patriot]

64. Why should there be "doctrine"? Jesus never said, "Believe this or be damned."

The Church has gone way, way, WAY off the path that Jesus laid out and lived. This wrong turn goes back to the 5th Century, at least, and has never been corrected. It was a wrongful association of religion with STATE POWER. And the Boys' Club in the Vatican still thinks that way and clings to that distorted, harmful, un-Christian path, for it has become part of their self-indentity to dictate to others. It is self-worship, as is so very obvious in their contempt for women.

In this respect, I do sympathize with any pope who tries to change such an entrenched, ego-centric culture, and also for others within the Church who are trying to do so. It is like subjecting the CIA to the open air, only worse. The Church as been stuck in this grave error for almost two millennia. The CIA would be 'easy' to change by comparison, for all their grave damage to our democracy. The Vatican's damage to the concept of "love thy neighbor" and its war on the simple, highly tolerant, communal life of the earliest Christians, for the sake of POWER--a quite literal war at some points, with tens of thousands of murders--and, at other times, an intellectual/political/spiritual war to displace "love thy neighbor" with MONARCHY and TYRANNY--will be very difficult to undo.

If Francis is on the "love thy neighbor" path, I applaud him. What courage! But his statement about gays reflects a slavery to DOCTRINE. Doctrine is one of the tools of this oppression--this imprisonment of the human soul--that took off in the 5th Century and has never been questioned. Jesus did NOT create "doctrines."