Padre Mellyrn wrote:
More so perhaps than some religious believers with a very uptight about good and who deserves it
The problem isn't that someone does or doesn't deserve to have good done for them. It always comes down to 'who gets to decide'. That is where the inequities creep in. Half the time the people issuing the forgivness don't deserve them, and shouldn't be qualifed or allowed to judge others.

Quite. Too many 'religious' are all too certain who does not deserve their 'caritas'. There's not much in the gospels to show Jesus discriminating who deserved or who did not because they were not Jewish or not pious enough. At the start of the novel of The Exorcist the priest is accosted by an alcoholic old tramp begging who instantly repels him and he knows given half a chance would rob him without a care in the world. Then he thinks that this is just what Catholic love of humanity is about, not loving those it's easy to sympathise with, but loving those your instinct tells you to loathe, Love thine Enemy.

I'm not at all sure that I agree with that position but I understand it. There are very few people whose life's ambition set out to be a down-&-out beggar. And if any did, I think I repect them rather more than the bankers and financial and legal swindlers list, just as I respect prostitutes more than good girls who still take the money - and then run.


God created man and man created God. So is it in the world. Men make gods and they worship their creations. It would be fitting for the gods to worship men. (Gospel of Philip: Logion 85: 1-4)