To be granted acceptance into heaven when u due seemed to require one live in hell while one is alive

Christianity is the foundation on which communism was later built, so this is not an issue for the Pope.
It's religious conservatives that this presents a conflict as they try to reconcile their irrational collectivism with the individualist and rational basis required to support capitalism.

The thing I've always thought is that "heaven" sounds like hell anyway to anyone who wants to think for themselves.

Many religious cultures over time picked up common sense values that had no basis in their religion. It doesn't save the religion.

Ironically, it was the Catholic Church that eventually attempted a serious, comprehensive philosophy through Aquinas, who re-introduced Aristotelianism in western civilization with the unintended consequence of undermining religion. But mixing it with church dogma also had the unfortunate effect of corrupting Aristotelianism to the point where it gave Aristotle a bad reputation.

There are some religions that have incorporatedsome reasonable tenets that are rational from the standpoint of living ones life as a human being (but of course they simply derive them incorrectly from some sort of faith in a fictional all powerful being)

An example would be some of the mormon and jewish ideas of fiscal responsibility.

..an irrational and frankly stupid religion
As an aside, perhaps as an invitation for a new thread, is it possible for a religion to not be irrational and stupid? Are there any such?

I never expected to go to heaven, whatever that was, but I didn’t want to go to “hell” after I died. Eventually I saw that obeying the rules of Catholicism definitely sentenced me to hell while I was alive. The bad thing is it took many years to shed off the emotional manipulations of religion. I should be somewhat thankful that Catholicism is such an irrational and frankly stupid religion which made it easier to discard. When people die, we cease to exist and that’s that. We don’t live on somewhere else

I didn’t get the plastic dump truck and I didn’t complain or talk about it. I stopped praying to “god” after that and concluded that if there was a real god, it was to be feared and not loved. What followed for years was attempts to just not piss off the god. What a waste of time !

I hope you eventually got your plastic dump truck. You would have had a better chance asking Santa -- he doesn't employ incompetent intermediates named Mary.

The whole affair you describe, including the toy as both a real event and symbolic of much more, shows how insidious they are, right down to crushing the spirit of children.

You didn't hear his account because it isn't true. Nor is his conspiratorial description of intellectual history.

"What 'is' is" is a meaningless, nonsensical phrase that explains nothing.

Nothing the pope is doing is individualist or in his or anyone else's self interest. He is irrational.

You have not explained what you meant by, "The question is, 'What might I do in his position?' " No rational person should be or want to be in his position at all.

My giving up the catholic church happened when I was in second grade. They promised that if you prayed to Mary, she would get you what you wanted from God. DO.... I prayed for a month for a plastic dump truck toy which was supposed to be placed in a hiding place only I knew.

Naturally, it never appeared, so I concluded that the god wasnt nice after all, but still needed to be obeyed or you would be punished in hell, The catholic church did such a bad job of marketing heaven and hell that I wasnt sure I really wanted to go to heaven, or was NOT wanting to go to their hell.

By the time I got to high school, catholicism was pretty much dead to me, and when I read AS in college- that was the definite end.

Sounds like a prehistoric marxist popope made that up just to keep us in line as if we were still pagan bicamerals with someone else's voice in our heads.

For all we know there may be such places in the quantum but we don't and we don't need some guy wearing a white dress telling us to be good or we won't get presents or virgins next year.

We should be taught to Chose to be good cause it's the right thing to do, for ourselves, for others and maybe we'll become part of the great entanglement in the sky as a result...Laughing at the latter.

Interesting. I only heard about the heaven and hell stuff to guarantee obedience

But that was not the message of the New Testament, the teachings of Jesus.
The overall message was how to conduct one's self as a Conscious Human Being and to appreciate all that is present that you've taken no part in.

Unfortunately, those that chose to organize those teachings to subjugate the population have hidden from us the history of mankind and the future of mankind so that we a doomed to continually make the same mistakes over and over again; all the while, still being ruled by the worst and least qualified among us.

"Are you supporting mysticism and the authoritarian official papal position presumed to be infallible faith?" Of course not. I'm just saying the Pope's views and actions are "individualistic and self-serving" to his personal beliefs. You seem to have a different definition of what "is" is than I do, and that's probably impossible to argue.

The pedophile corruption in the church establishment is secondary to and a consequence of much worse.

Why didn't you ask him?

Who are the cowardly, non-responsive hit and run jerks who are 'downvoting' on behalf of religious mysticism on an Ayn Rand forum? Show yourselves.

That makes no sense at all and is not responsive. Are you supporting mysticism and the authoritarian official papal position presumed to be infallible faith?

Conservative altruism is not the justification of capitalism and was not the justification for the right to one's own life, liberty, property and pursuit of one's own happiness. Trading productive values, from which all sides benefit, is not altruistic service to others.

I have a very good idea why.

But my daddy!!! That Indian did not like Catholics and I never found out why. We nearly had to restrain him when my sister married a wonderful Catholic guy and became a Catholic herself. Daddy was a Master Mason but I don't think that played into his feelings. I think it had to do with his heritage in some way. He never said.

Then I had a friend, a doctor by trade, he was a very devout Catholic and as kind as anyone I ever met. He was good to his family, his friends, and complete strangers. He didn't force his beliefs on anyone, he simply practiced his.

I have experienced Catholic belief from one end of the spectrum to the other. I once attended a funeral with my boss who nearly incited a riot by announcing, "I hate barbaric Catholic funerals'. It was a funeral for a four year old child and he was very upset. He loved children. His favorite charity was Depelchin Faith Home and the Florence Crittenden Home. He was very wealthy!