To say that I am not religious is an understatement. As I often said, without any venom or condescension towards the faithful, I simply have no need for imaginary friends.
I was born Catholic, though in a family that never practiced religion. Despite living in a nominally atheist state, my dear Mom, who is perhaps best described at the time as agnostic, made me read up on religion at a young age, buying me books, including Sunday school catechisms. Although I didn’t quite phrase it this elegantly at the tender age of nine or ten, my reaction was simple astonishment: Adults believe this stuff? Frankly, my storybooks with heroic knights battling seven-headed fire-breathing dragons to save a princess in distress made a heck of a lot more sense than some of the stories in those unassuming little textbooks.
I wanted to add this preamble to describe where I am coming from when I contemplate the passing of Pope Francis. For all his faults which, undoubtedly, were numerous, he was by far the decentest pope in my lifetime, if not in many lifetimes. In short, he practiced what he preached. Rather than embracing papal opulence, he began his reign by walking back to his hotel room, paying his bill and grabbing his modest suitcase. Instead of occupying the lavish papal residence, he opted for a more modest guest house in the Vatican.
That already told me that hey, this Jesuit who named himself after St. Francis of Assisi, not only preaches but also practices humility.
But the decisive moment came in 2013 when he said, “If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge?”
This told me all I needed to know about the new Pope. Sure, he said and did things that I found vehemently disagreeable. Yet, by leading by example, he also demonstrated that even today, nearly 2000 years after that young man was nailed to a tree, and even at the highest level of the Catholic Church’s hierarchy, decency and humility are not completely absent.
There is something symbolic about the fact that Pope Francis passed away during the Easter holiday, when Western Christianity celebrates the resurrection of their messiah.
PS: Decent people should refrain from mocking J. D. Vance as being one of the last persons to see the Pope alive, and presumably causing his death. I have no love lost for J. D. Vance, but it demeans and insults the legacy of a Pope who uttered the words: “Who am I to judge?”
Could any modern physicist be “not religious”? :))) I once have found old astronomy schoolbook, perhaps from 1970s – and closer to the end there was a chapter about the shape and evolution of the universe, which in strongest words supported “endless and eternal” universe model and mentioned the “big-bang theory” as some frenzy proposed by incompetent pseudoscientists of capitalist countries etc, etc. Definitely “Big Bang” model looked too much religious-like to be taught in soviet school.
And let it be big-bang alone… But when I think of how extremely complicated world have evolved – from galaxies to little bacteria, from quarks to human brains. And cats… (instead of leaving only clouds of hydrogen or even neutrons for good)… Compared to this turning water into wine or splitting the sea looks like far lesser miracle. Oh, well, this takes us too far :)
Thanks for this charming quote by Pope, I missed this. Being able to refrain from judging others is a great thing, but extremely difficult to achieve. Thinking carefully, we should even somehow learn to not judge those who judges others.
But I wonder about the phrase of “the most decent pope… in your lifetime” – this means you are not as much fan of John Paul II, right?
Well, I am blatantly non-religious. I have no use for supernatural fairy tales. Period. And I have no use for hifalutin’ philosophizing either, confusing hard math concepts with nebulous pseudoscience. That said, I usually keep my mouth shut… except here, as this is my blog, my chance to yell at the world :-)
John Paul II might have been better than some of his colleagues, but no, popes generally did not impress me, and John Paul II was no exception. Francis was different. He *did* impress me because for the very first time in my life, I saw a high-ranking priest in the Catholic hierarchy who, at least some of the time, actually practiced the humility that my catechism textbooks were blabbering about, which I read around the age of 10. Again… “Who am I to judge?” Tell me, how many other popes ever uttered these words in public?
Concerning Jesus, I agree: most of what is written about him was written down a century or more after his death.
The best summary of his core message, however, I think comes from a devoted atheist, Douglas Adams (of Hitchhiker’s Guide fame): “And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change…”
Yes, I saw, and enjoyed, JC Superstar. I am also very fond of the depiction of Jesus and the devil in The Master and Margarita. It resonated with me in particular for the following reasons: a) it makes it clear that it’s not the devil that does evil; the devil tempts, it’s humans with agency who choose to be tempted; b) the devil is ultimately a servant of God, lacking independent agency. That’s what makes humans in the Abrahamic religions special: “Created in God’s image” means we are granted agency that other creatures, inanimate objects, or even angels do not have. (I think of Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit as a successful beta test: they demonstrated agency by explicitly acting against God’s command.)