Christianity is Just a Franchise/Religion to Sell Your Products – I.E. Christianity/NRA, Christianity/TVangelism, Christianity/Italian Mafia/Vatican, Christianity/Healthcare INC Etc.

Supreme "Christian" Pontiffs Joe Ratzinger of Costa Nostra Italy INC and Wayne LaPierre of (my gun is my metaphoric penis) NRA

As an Areligionist and an Agnostic, I think a great many splinter groups use the “Christian” franchise label to sell their latest self help book, or autobiography on why God has chosen them etc, to sell a lot of petty empires, radiated genetically mutated poultry and or Chik-fil-A sammiches.

Channel surfing this morning I caught wind of Joyce Meyer in her Woolworth red lipstick telling a bunch of potential Mary Kay recruits that “God wants you to be prosperous” (14 Kings, Chap 8, Verse 13,?).

I also caught a glimpse of the Mannequin messiah Joel Osteen’s 100 k worth mouthful of perfect  plastic teeth preaching the mixed God/oatmeal/send me a check, modern gospel.

It was not until I saw the below article that all my thoughts gelled and made the realization/ephiphany that Christianity (copyright expired) is for the most part just part of any new “Christian/whatever” new marketing product, safe and or untested on humans or animals.

Karen Spears Zacharias on If the NRA were a Religion:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/karenspearszacharias/2013/01/17/if-the-nra-were-a-religion/

If the NRA were a religion, its members would be stockpiling toilet paper, buying up all the granola bars, and squirreling away antibiotic as they prepare for the Armageddon to end all Armageddons. 

If the NRA were a religion, their worship music would stir the congregation into a frenzy. Their songs would instill in those worshipping a sense of righteous indignation and a determination to protect their own from demons unknown. 

If the NRA were a religion, they would be a mega-church run by a charismatic beloved pastor whose congregants cling to the outrageous things he says because there’s enough fear twisted into his lies that it passes for truth. Outlandish! declare the non-believers who always leave the mega-church shaking their heads in disbelief. 

If the NRA were a religion, they would be dogmatic about their doctrine, convinced that their way is the only right way to God.

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Chik-fil-A Sammich. Guaranteed to find a bit of god/idol and pickle in every bite.

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Joe the Pope - Unhate Yourself?

I don't know if the above advertisement is offensive?  I showed it to someone point blank without explanation and she showed no negative response. Said something like "that is the custom over there" in Muslim countries and did not understand when I gave the full skinny on what the above was all about.  That it was not Joe the Pope in the picture etc. 


It is all about the Brand these days.  The Vatican is concerned about the Brand and it is obvious that Benetton did not give a cut $ to the Brand for the supposed use of the supposed sacred image.  Whatever. 


The theme of these ads is "Unhate" meaning two enemies embrace and love. 


I feel all too certain that a self-hating gay like Joseph Ratzinger or all the other self hating gay Cardinals and Bishops of the RCC do not, cannot understand the simple or underlying meaning of the message. 


It is all about the BRAND.


Brand is the modern code word for profit/greed = irrelevant to any or all things human.


Whatever. 


Try to find a little humor in life today.  There is no little out there in the real world these days I think. 




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Joe the Pope Stumbles at Midnight Mass

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Since the beginning of the age of Darwin certain scientific methods apply to all things. Cause and effect in one such conundrum.

Joe the Pope stumbled the other night at Midnight Mass which was not at midnight. The 82 year old pontiff with a busy seasonal schedule wanted to go to bed early and get some rest for the next day. Midnight mass started at 10 pm. When you change anything around away from its norm – you have cause and effect. If you want to get to bed early, you are not staying up later than the homeless and the wandering crazy people particular to every urban center on the planet.

A young woman, 25, jumped the barricade separating the processional column of clergy including the Pope from the attending crowd. The security guards tacked the possible assassin and in the collateral damage (catalytic reaction) the would be assailant drags the pope to the floor by grabbing onto his garments.

Scuffle over. The pope is unharmed. An aged French cardinal gets a broken leg. The pope, the superstar of the evening, puts on his usual great performance.

Moral of the story. Security at the Vatican is as lax as at the White House where two publicity seeking clowns walk into Obama’s first State Dinner for the Prime Minister of India. They get photos with everyone and slip away as people are being seated for din-din and where there are no place cards for two party crashers.

The security at the midnight mass looked like they hired some husky tall moonlighting Italian policemen for the evening event. These days all corporations and all governments seem to be staffed by part time, minimum waged temporary staff and guards.

The young lady of Swiss Italian background had apparently done the same thing last year and in the same bright red clothing as at last year’s Christmas midnight mass – so much for my theory of staying up later than the crazies. The temp guards from last year who grabbed this same jumper before she touched the pope were not on duty or not looking or screening the people coming into the mass this year? People were admitted by ticket only.

Which goes to my previously stated assumption, of the fact that only tourists fill in the gaps of the big events like midnight mass – staged for the cameras. So easy to get tickets like at your hotel front desk. No real Roman would go out on a cold winter’s night for midnight mass at St. Peter’s. Romans may show up on a warm spring day for Easter in the plaza but other than that, few if any of the native population participate in the ancient rituals of the church.

Which brings me to my previously stated position, that only a few hundred or a few thousand Romans go to church on a regular basis. Which puts the Bishop of Rome as supposed premier moral leader of the Christian world as a shepherd to an active flock as large (or as small) as any Jesus got in his barnstorming days of preaching.

In any case, the pope is a symbol of Christiandom. I personally do not want to see him harmed. He and his office are deserving of global respect.

Besides, who would I have to call Joe the Pope? Better the pope you know than the pope (next pope) you don’t know. But then again I have already named him Pius XIII and Joe the Pope has yet to give him a red hat. (cause and effect).

If and when the rabble and crazies do storm the Vatican with torches and pitchforks, it won’t be with Joe Ratzinger, the current German pope in residence.

In the meantime, the Vatican better spend a few more lira on competent full time security staff.

Pax

Cultural Sensitivity Issues 101 - Vatican

There are articles about how Benedict XVI dropped the ball recently with the lifting of excommunication of the Holocaust denying “bishop" Williamson along with other suspect anti-Semite “bishops" from the rogue catholic SSPX (Society of Saint Pius X) cult.

With a big chunk of cult followers, close to five hundred priests and close to three hundred seminarians worldwide, the Vatican did a power grab and would not let viable economic assets (priests/foot soldiers) slip out of its grasps.

With the finesse of elephants in tutus doing a ballet, the Vatican bureaucrats lifted the excommunication of these rogue “bishops” after doing little more than a Google search as a background check before their readmission to holy mother church. (Parents, hide your children!)

The facts of Williamson’s vehement anti-Semitism were evident for anybody who wanted to research the matter.

No doubt Cardinal Giovanni Re signed off on this lifting of the ban as a favor to retiring Cardinal Hoyos, 79, and the big guy Joe Ratzinger, 81. Cardinal Hoyos was cleaning the paperwork off his desk and Cardinal Re’s conscience conveniently slipped into the closet again.

This recent body slap to the face of worldwide Jewry and the human race as inheritors of the legacy of the crimes of WWII was in my opinion done by these two sometimes unrelated, disconnected bodies of power - the papacy and the Vatican bureauacracy.

The general corporate culture of the Vatican seems to be anti-female, anti-sexual, anti-Semitic, anti-Islamic, anti anything that has to deal with cultural diversity or the diversity of individuals in life.

The topic of Cultural Sensitivity Issues comes clumsily to the forefront of the present Vatican Bureaucratic corporate culture so comfortably rooted in the nineteenth and or the ninth century of the common era.

The bureaucracy, the Vatican, is a bunch of religious clerics who have spent their life in the Catholics bubble - family, catholic school, seminary, parish duties, bureaucratic duties and have not necessarily had any real life experience, say as in openly practiced sexual matters like the laity. If they have a problem they consult canon law or Playboy. It is all somehow in a book.

The pope, who in his youth as a Hitler Youth, (forced to do that against his will) and as a member of the Wehrmacht (also forced to do that against his will) has had pretty much the same rule book life as the rest of the Vatican, no life, bureaucracy.

The problem here I think is that the Vatican Bureaucracy has had a free ride for decades on the back of John Paul the Great who was a conscripted laborer in Poland (forced to do that against his will) who also gave occasional but dangerous consent to underground activities in his district.

Other than that, John Paul the Great had a little more street experience in his youth. As a pope, he did a lot of cross reference checking before anything with his signature hit the street.

There is this rule book mentality in Benedict’s background. The German people in their language, civil attitude and civil obedience do not use the subjunctive tense much in their language. You will do this. You are the Catholic. Words like would, could, should, and might only rarely soften the German language.

So too the whole Victorian age, so uptight about everything especially sex, was a rule book society. Prince Albert brought that rule book mentality with him from Germany to his new bride and adopted country. He, and or the literate upper crust of society, wrote, rewrote the rule book(s) for Victoria’s country and worldwide realm.

Aside from that, the lack of individual empathy, insight, touching, or feeling of other cultures and religions is evident as an inept pope passes the paperwork through lazy bureaucratic shits like Cardinal Hoyos and Cardinal Re.

What can I say? The Vatican seems at times to be a failed corporate culture with a failed CEO residing over an inept bureaucracy. And these guys in power are all over seventy. Shuffleboard anyone?

Cultural Sensitivity Issues 101 is yet to be taught in Catholic seminaries?

One can hope. Maybe after Vatican III.