Instead of cowering centrism by adapting the rightwing Prosperity Doctrines of his critics, Pope Francis is going the other way towards Gnosticism, which holds truths unflattering to ego and thus is fundamentally ego-less as the teachings of their Christ. A just world is intrinsically not about what you or I may want, as neither you or I are the world.
Self-interest serves neither the populace or any higher truth. It rejects them, forbids them. As the self is neither the populace or any deeper truth.
Pope Francis, on recent holiday.
I’ve written at length on the leftism vs Capitalism civil warring Holy See, how critics of this pope ultimately want Positive Christianity, the denomination begat by the Nazis believing millions of sadistic European Christians could be appeased instead of confronted directly. They sought to downplay precepts of divinity and the miraculous to portray Jesus as a leader of men sacrificing for worldly achievements. Very appealing to the modern Christians insistent on driving BMWs through the eye of a needle. I mean for fucksakes Jesus as an immortal king here on Earth is what the Jehovah’s Witnesses believe. Orthodox religions are defined by belief in life after death, the punishments or rewards to come from our actions in this brief existence. It’s the greedy who refuse to let go.
And all those wishing to escape any accountability, denying responsibilities for their own actions, their own inactions. As a Roman-Catholic long ago turned nontheist, I feel we can make heaven on Earth for those we love, hell on Earth for those we do not love, but it requires vigilant responsibility of us. Ourselves ever knowing heaven or hell is really not our decision to make. We do that for each other, whether we mean to or not, because it is our design.
The unfortunate reality is the flip-side, with most persons demanding to be accepted as their D&D characters, castigating all critique or judgment altogether. Like perpetual teenagers. Self-perception is not the universe however, just graffiti on the walls of the prison cells of our minds. We cannot expect that graffiti to make a lick of sense to anyone who has never been in that same cell, as they’ve their own to fret. And, the larger the ego, the less willing or able one is of glancing inside the cells of others. Insisting that others share in your own self-perception, regarding you in the same exact manner as how you yourself view yourself or how you merely wish to be viewed, is the very core to supremacy. But everyone seems to prefer circulating golden showers over the golden rule. Ego misconstrues domination as self-preservation. Making decisions for one another is the undoing of any collective, but offering ramifications for the decisions of others for good or ill is why we are on this orb together to begin with. No intermediary will ever suffice in alleviating the obligation, for hierarchies to any church, the government and its law enforcement, and whichever latest trends in tech are usurpers entitling themselves to that power we all have to take matters into our own hands, dishing enlightenment or damnation ourselves so that what we actually do may decide our own ultimate fate as opposed to anyone or anything else, as naturally as cause and effect. No protections from consequences, not for you, not for me and not for anybody.
This is real personal responsibility and this is real independence, merits rather than prayers or wishes or votes. The visceral impact we leave for good or evil. How we elect to define ourselves has no bearing on the world no matter how much we might think we have it coming, but how we make the world defined has every bearing on who we genuinely are. There can be costly rewards and there can be rewarding costs, all at once for the fullest experience with what little time we have. Choosing wisely would improve life for all but the egocentric, while choosing unwisely will leave the world unchanged. Omitting exceptions to virtue and what’s wrong or not reveals itself to be uncomplicated, and as clear as crystalline.
Ideas of sacrifice and salvation are much older than all religion, just as blood rites predate language itself, and any pathology advancing the one without the other misses entirely how they are in fact one and the same. It’s common selfishness to say otherwise.