In my younger years I was quite active in the parish but know this has changed. I was brought up as a catholic but have distant myself from the church due to its often doubtful statements and positions. This doesn't mean that I am an atheist, on the contrary I am now more spiritual than ever, however I don't believe in a church.
For me the catholic church in particular is a bit like the children's game "telephone", where you line up and whisper a sentence in the first person's ear and he whispers it to the next person's ear etc. Until the last person has to say it out loud. In most cases the sentence has been distorted so much that it doesn't even resemble the initial one. In a way I believe that with many religious texts the same thing has happened. It has been many years, since the stories happened and many people have retold the stories and translated them from different languages. It is more than logical to assume that to some degree the original meaning have been distorted.
However for family reasons I go to a service every now and then. For me this is less of a religious act then an act of supporting my famil, so happened recently.
So I started looking around during the prayers and for the first time I realised that almost nobody was paying attention to what they were actually saying. It was more as if they were humming along some song on the radio. This made me wonder, if religion had lost its function in society.
Before you start slashing out at me let me explain. In past times religion fullfilled various purposes in society. Priests would provide the sort counseling we nowadays get from psychotherapists, prayers would give people the hope they get nowadays from playing the lottery and although the churches still provide certain social services a lot of non religious groups have surfaced that provide these just as good.
It makes you why some people still hold on so tight to religion considering, that if it hits the news it is usually for negative, not to say horrible reasons. So why this need for religion?
I think this is due to the nature of humans. People say we are different from animals because we have concious thoughts and those lead always to questioning our existence: Where do we come from, where do we go? We humans have tried to answer this question in many ways, no matter if it is philosophy, science or religion they all have the same goal.
So maybe religion doesn't fullfill a need in society anymore, but for many people is has an important emotional function. Although they don't live a particular religious life most people believe in the idea or life after death because it is comforting to believe that death is not the end. I am not an expert, but isn't this concept something all religions have in common in one way or another? To know that something follows, to know that there is still something humanity has not yet dissected into its atoms.
Im my opionion this is the essence of any believe. It is not about random rules, duties and certainly not about judging others. Believe is something from within you and doesn't need buildings of stone. Maybe it is time to pull away the layers of the church that have build up over 2000 years and return to its core.
For those conservative catholics out there, I have a request: Show me, where in the bible it says: Hate the one who is different from you, as I don't recall any such frase and trust me that I read the bible.
