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The reality of the Catholic Church and its history is far and away divorced from the teachings of Jesus. Like the OP, I was also raised in a devout Catholic household, and while, yes, there is plenty of talk of love, there is, and traditionally has been plenty of fear-mongering.

You need to constantly be on the look out for Satan and his temptations. There's a laundry list of things you shouldn't do or think about. If you do, you should feel guilty and repent. God is always watching, so be good.

Every individual church is different, and your mileage will vary, but I found them to be similar to office spaces in the level of bickering and gossip as their best, and deeply dysfunctional institutions at worse.

I would also disagree that Christianity was the first major religion of purely love when Buddhism had been around for centuries and had the practice of forsaking one's own enlightenment in order to save all being from suffering.

I am not Catholic, but I have studied the history of various religions, and it's pretty clear that the RC Church definitely deviated from the teachings it claimed to follow, for literally centuries. In fact, for centuries it was actually illegal for lay people (people who weren't priests/clergy) to read the Bible, and it was forbidden to translate it into other languages. There are many such examples, such as the selling of indulgences (buy salvation instead of it being free).

But: just because that Catholic Church deviated from its own teachings doesn't mean that at least some of those teachings weren't correct. Teachings like "love one another" resonate in any language.

> there is plenty of talk of love, there is, and traditionally has been plenty of fear-mongering.

Which is perfectly consistent. The idea is that love is better than fear, but fear is still better than lack of contrition. Accepting this fear as an intermediate step, instead of immediately expecting perfection, is an important psychological step.

> You've misunderstood Catholicism

To be fair, Catholics at even rather high ranks in the heirarchy have fairly radically divergent views of Catholicism.

Yes, but the things he's discussing are rather fundamental and core, not anachronisms of thousand-year-old interpretations

> first major religion of purely love.

Hinduism is much older than Christianity. Specifically the Shiva sects. Shiva means compassionate one. God is seen as immanent love and transcendent reality.

This is a bit of stretch. Shiva is the god of destruction and is frequently avatared carrying weapons. While the scriptures may preach compassion, this is not what the majority of adherents see and observe.

There are many scriptures related to shiva, you are just picking one aspect to suit your agenda.

so you know about Noah's arc and sodom and gemorra, right?

And do you? Do you actually understand what and why it happened?

You are grossly misinformed about the history and practice of Hinduism and Saivism. You're repeating stereotypes.

Please cite your sources. Tell this to the South Indian Tamil who say Anbe Sivamayam, Satyame Parasivam (God is immanent love and transcendent reality).

The "Siva as destroyer" is imagery is perpetuated by firstly Hindus who don't worship God as Siva (e.g. Vaishnava, who worship God as Kristna), secondly by the "spiritual but non religious" people of both Hindu heritage and not, and finally by e.g. Christians.

In Saivism there is one aspect of Siva that is "destruction" but it is a synonym for "dissolution" and is not a scary aspect.

> ...you get infinite forgiveness, so long as you truly repent...

Thinking back to an earlier comment up the chain (from someone else) about how being nonreligious doesn't offer enough moral guidance, and I kinda think the "infinite forgiveness" thing is exponentially more fraught than even the most detached "nothing really matters" atheist.

Being able to do literally anything and not face cosmic consequences so long as you say you're sorry is mind-boggling to me. I wonder if it's partly why so many convicted murderers get born-again when they're in prison.

It's pragmatic. Being religious checks a box when they want to apply for parole.

In many stripes of Christianity, Divine forgiveness is given freely in response to repentance.

Genuine repentance is marked by sorrow over the harms and wrongs you have done, and sincere efforts to make amends where you can.

It's also marked by an understanding that your actions may have ramifications here and now and a willingness to bear the consequences of what you have wrought, insofar as you are able - "Take up your cross and follow Me," in the vernacular of the religion.

Forgiveness is freely given, in the sense that you cannot earn it and God extends it to you, but it's recognized that even accepting forgiveness requires admission of wrong and actively renouncing your pattern of wrongdoing.

You can't accept forgivenwas for something you think was just fine.

shrug I'm not sure how widely this perspective inn it is shared in modern Christianity.

It's where I wound up when I experienced Jesus' love and kindness firmly dragging my besetting sins in front of me to be dealt with, but since that day I've certainly noticed Christians who don't seem to share this perspective.

> In many stripes of Christianity, Divine forgiveness is given freely in response to repentance.

Many? I would say it was the central message of Christianity.

> It's where I wound up when I experienced Jesus' love and kindness firmly dragging my besetting sins in front of me to be dealt with, but since that day I've certainly noticed Christians who don't seem to share this perspective.

Sadly that happens.

> Many? I would say it was the central message of Christianity.

I would agree, but I don't see it treated or discussed that way in practice by plenty of self-identified Christians.

I think you laid a very good explanation of one of the essences of the Gospel here, the forgiveness from God, so essentially the true message of Christianity.

Real repentance only comes through God:

John 14:6 Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

Sadly you are right, for many reasons this is not necessarily widely understood by everyone that nominally identifies as a Christian.

I think the other essential part of Christianity is then extending that same forgiveness and mercy to those around us. Even our enemies. This is the especially unpopular aspect of Christianity, even within Christianity.

agreed.

Though with the important caveats that _forgiveness_ is not identical to _reconciliation_, and that extending mercy to the unrepentant is dangerous and borderline incoherent ("I assure you, he will by no means get out of there before he has paid the last penny").

I've seen those concepts misunderstood, missed, or forgotten far too often in Christian circles.

The alternative is never being able to be forgiven.

In the real world we see the consequences of feeling like you can't be forgiven with kids and teens who get labeled as "trouble makers". As soon as that label starts to become permanent and precede them, they live down to other people's expectations of them. When they start feeling like nothing they do will ever be good enough, and that no matter what they do they will be in trouble or someone will find fault with them, they stop trying to improve or stay out of trouble. See also the concept of stereotype threat.

It's not (as I understand it) about "not facing consequences" so much as it is about being possible to be forgiven at all and therefore there is a reason to try to change and to try and make amends and to try to seek forgiveness.

It also isn't enough in any interpretation I've seen to just "say you're sorry". You have to repent, and even secular definitions, let alone religious ones don't seem to interpret "repenting" as simply saying you're sorry.

> The alternative is never being able to be forgiven.

No it isn't, there is a whole spectrum between "forgiving everything" and "forgiving nothing".

Yes, obviously there's a spectrum between those points. That's not what I'm talking about though. I'm talking about the consequences of being unforgivable, no matter where the line is. If something is unforgivable, you're setting a line in the sand beyond which a person has no reason or incentive to not continue behaving in that way because it doesn't matter, they're going to continue being punished.

Oh, I personally know one.

He murdered an assistant professor because she had second thoughts about divorcing her husband when she was going to get a fat divorce check and it ruined his (the murderer's) dreams of training to become a pro golfer. He shot her, threw her body in a hole at a wildlife management area (they found her body after the police interviewed his father and discovered he had a life-long fascination with said hole), drove her car back to her apartment, and then took her credit card and ordered thousands of dollars worth of golf gear before driving to his parents' house 7 hours away.

This was a Catholic altar boy growing up. But Catholicism doesn't like mortal sins too much, so low and behold, his redemption streak began by becoming magically "born again" so that it would be rude for people to ask him questions about his obvious guilt. He's now a luthier and prayer leader at Angola State Penn in Louisiana... and as I've known the guy since I was in diapers, I know that he is categorically full of shit from the interviews I've seen.

I am friends with his sisters and didn't even realize he had a daughter who must have been a toddler at the time that he murdered that woman until I saw her in some of her LSU graduation photos. Didn't look like her aunts, and then I realized the child was the spitting image of her daddy. Sad that he robbed her of a dad over some childish bullshit.

> Being able to do literally anything and not face cosmic consequences so long as you say you're sorry is mind-boggling to me.

If it truly was like that, wouldn't everyone be doing it? There is, however, a bit more to it:

Acts 3:19 - Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord,

Turn to God.

> I wonder if it's partly why so many convicted murderers get born-again when they're in prison.

Convicted murderers get a very real chance to see just how evil people can be.

The worse the symptoms you have, the easier it is to find out you have an illness.

Sadly not everyone wants to acknowledge the illness and accept the remedy.

Turn to God.

Introspection can be hard. It's worthwhile to spend time understanding and even incorporating external critique for improvement of self and community.

The catholic church sure seems to love little kids and the protecting the priests from the consequences of loving those kids.

Yeah, at their worst, they were slightly worse than teachers at one point. Thankfully, the Catholic church has been working on massive reforms and almost all of these issues are from 50+ years ago. Now, they're significantly safer than any random adult.

You need to read your catechism.

Catholicism absolutely has sins that are unforgivable.

This is incorrect. The only "unforgivable" sin is one you carry to your death.

Unfortunately sometimes the "love" in Catholicism is excessive and we see it in all these sad stories of pedophilia.