That means I am "unworthy." Or so they tell me.
What am I so "unworthy" of? The full forgiveness of God.
They tell me God "loves" me. Why else would He do to His own son what He should rightfully do to me? But even the torture and murder of His own son is not enough for God's love to fully forgive and "cure" me.
Forgive and cure me for what? For being born less perfect than Jesus, and for being born into a species that so offended God that, rather than choosing to get over it, He decided instead to ensure the stain of that offense attaches to every human soul He creates, and then requires us to spend our life asking for forgiveness for the unavoidable results of having been born with such a stain.
As a Catholic, it's you sole goal in life to strive to be like Jesus, or fear damnation. But teaching a child they must strive to be like a person who is perfect only leaves them feeling like they are never feel good enough. That's why we can only be "good," as John Steinbeck said, when we no longer strive to be perfect.
What are those effects of failing to be born as perfect as Jesus? We are only ensured to displease God even more. The only person to be spared of that stain is Mary, the mother of God, who choose to never have sex with anyone human. At least, that's what they tell me.
Why do I "believe" I am suffering from such a sin stained soul? Because doing so confers spiritual citizenship. It creates a "nocebo" effect, for which the sacraments offered to cure me are the placebo. The nocebo effect is a patient's negative expectation or belief about a treatment or diagnosis. That comes from accepting I've been born with the stain of original sin. Any adverse effects the result from accepting this belief is, for Catholics, verification the "belief" is true, but for non-Catholics, it is simply the result of the person's negative mindset.
The placebo effect is then used to cure the nocebo effect of being told I am a born sinner. After the nocebo creates a negative effect/mindset, the placebo effect is relied on to create the postive expectations that lead to positive outcomes. This is why my brother became a Catholic priest.
The stain of original sin is not a condition we have, it's something we are. Big difference. It's a stigma for which only Christ can forgive us, and by forgiving us, save us from eternal punishment for how we are born.
- Believing in the nocebo and placebo effects means that the wafer I eat at Church on Sundays isn't just bread. It's bread that has actually been transformed into flesh, even though God does this in such a way that He ensures there is absolutely no detectable difference in the physical properties of the bread after it is 'miraculously' transformed from what it was before.
That's because it's not transformed into just human flesh, but divine flesh, divine "immaterial" flesh. They call this process of turning bread into divine immaterial flesh "transubstantiation." Others might call it a magic show, and the placebo effect. But as a placebo, it doesn't actually remove the sin-stain from your soul, but it's great at convincing you you're not sinning whenever you're breaking any of the commandments for God.
Breaking commandments is only a sin when it is against God, and the greatest sin of all is refusing to break those commandments for God, when He commands you to do so, as He did with Abraham and Isaac. If the devil killed everyone on earth with a flood it would be called pure evil, but when God does the same thing, its called "grace." Why? Because one should be interpreted as against God, and the other is for God. Or so they tell me. And don't even try to figure out which of these gods is the real God.
I am "unworthy" of the flesh-cracker the priest helps to transform and wants to feed me. So unworthy am I, in fact, that not even a divine flesh-cracker made through a miracle from God can ever fully erase the effects of the stain of sin on my soul. After all, if it did, I would not keep sinning and disobeying God, especially by asking questions or pointing out that such a "plan" doesn't make any damn sense. But they assure me it does; I'm just too "unworthy" to see how and why it does, the way they do (or the way the pretend to). Instead, I'd be as obedient and perfect as Mary ever virgin.
Transubstantiation is why Catholics are obliged to believe in miracles. Because it doesn't work if you don't believe it. Hypnosis, magic, novels and television shows, theater plays and capital wrestling, and lies, oddly enough, all work the exact same way; proving God is Alanis Morrissette, and life is a song in which the refrain is "isn't it ironic" but only if you "really do think. A little too ironic."
The irony is that only God's truth operates like every fiction in the universe, in that you must first "believe" it is true for it to work. Otherwise, it doesn't. And anyone who fails to do so as God has commanded deserves to roast in hell forever, through no fault of God's.
Why? Because we all are born with "free will," even though no one had any freedom to opt for a better soul or to ever opt out of God's game that, if you don't play by His rules, you can expect eternal torments for failing. God's great plan, in other words, makes Him look just like the serial killer from the horror movie "Saw."
That's why we have to believe in miracles, because every Sunday, God performs the "miracle" of transforming a cracker into the flesh of the guy God had executed 2000 years ago to save us from the horrors God prepares for us for failing to play His game.
Why did God feel the need to incarnate as a human named Jesus so other humans could kill him? Well, because we are so unworthy the only way He could forgive us for such unworthiness was if He incarnated as one of us so He could use us to kill himself, on our behalf, and then blame us for it.
He could be using at least some of the power He exerts every Sunday to perform this "miracle" at hospitals and soup kitchens and poor neighborhood, but He gave up curing the sick and the blind and feeding the hungry by multiplying loaves and fishes 2000 years ago.
Such miracles were never intended to cure or save all of humanity, but just to convince us we are all equally"unworthy" sinners. And the ONLY way to prove we are worthy of being saved of something infinitely worse than what happened to Jesus, after we die is if we strive to be as obedient as Jesus accepting his cross, or there'll be hell to pay. What a bargain!
Just before a Catholic eats that cracker, the whole church reinforces its collective sense of unworthiness by reciting in unison, proud and loud:
"Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed."
What are we supposedly being "healed" of? Being born with the stain of original sin, of course. That we have to profess our "unworthiness" each and every time we eat a Jesus-cracker only proves that the all of the sacraments combined - from Baptism and Confession, to even the ingestion of the body of Jesus once a week through Communion! - are never enough to fully cure or overcome the effects of the stain of original stain that mars our soul. That's why we can't stop ourselves from sinning against God, no matter how much we wish would could stop. But just because those sacraments never actually fully "heal" anyone, and at times can even lead people to torture and murder those they see as witches and heretics, it's still a grave sin to think the Eucharist is just a spiritual placebo.
That's the real miracle, that people actually "believe" that they are not only so "unworthy," but that by eating a cracker they are devoted to "believing" has been transformed into the flesh of Jesus, they are at least improving the sin-stained soul they imagine themselves to be born with to be eligible (but not guaranteed) for the salvation of forgiveness.
The "believer" does this because doing so empowers them to feel they have become more "worthy," and thus better than, anyone who doesn't do and believe the same thing. It gives them the spiritual privilege, in other words, of feeling their religion has made their soul better than the souls who have not been "chosen" by God to be given such a "gift of faith."
We say "I am unworthy" because we are taught to believe that what we are about to eat is not merely a symbol of Jesus's flesh, like in most Protestant churches, but something that only looks like bread to the "unbeliever," that has actually been transformed on a spiritual level to being the actual flesh of our "lord" and savior, Jesus - the guy who came to save us all from how truly unworthy we really are.
This is a bit like the difference between a "believer" and an unbeliever watching a movie or a play, and while the former has chosen to "believe" what they are watching is "true," the latter knows it is simply a movie or a play, and the whole show is, in fact, make-believe, even if it depicts historical events factually.
Talk about an incredibly messed up thing to have a child say about themself, repeatedly, and then require them to believe it, under the threat of eternal torture if they dare to doubt it so much they stop believing it. To have an innocent child say this about themself is to introduce a serpent into the garden of innocence that is the child's soul. It not only causes trauma by inflicting a moral injury, it is how all "innocence is lost," far more than anything else, including pornography.
For the Catholic priest, if a person feels unworthy of love, it is not because the Catholic Church conditions people to think and feel this way, not even by having them repeat "I am unworthy" every time they go to mass. Instead, for the priest, it must be because our 'unworthiness' is an infallible truth. How do they know this? Because they and their Church say so, and have been saying so for thousands of years. Indeed, saying so is a sacred tradition! And nothing offends God more than breaking with family tradition!
The priest will tell you they feel "unworthy" too, since that's a requirement of their faith that they have likewise been conditioned to accept is "infallibly true," but they won't tell you that being a priest also makes them at least feel more "worthy" than the congregants, in the same way so many of the congregants come to church because it makes them feel more "worthy" than those who don't. In fact, my brother became a Catholic priest because doing so makes him feel more "worthy" of God's love - and by "love" I mean "forgiveness - than Protestants, because Catholicism has a longer tradition of telling a story designed to convince and remind me of an infallible truth: "I am unworthy."
And if I feel this way, it is because God wants me to feel this way. But what parent would ever let a math or science or history or english teacher ever write on a child's exam "You are unworthy!"? So why do we let the religion teacher get away with it?
If you're a Catholic like me, feeling unworthy not only proves that we are, in fact, unworthy of the love of God, or at least the full forgiveness of a loving God, it also proves that we are so unworthy because we are born with the stain of original sin on our soul. That feeling, as such, is our fault on the one hand, but on the other hand, God also uses that feeling to instill in us an insatiable "desire" for God, that only God can fulfill, but only after we die.
Why after we die? Because God can't fix our soul's sinful nature while still encased in our fallen flesh puppet.
This is God's gift to us: a "desire" that keeps us searching for God our whole life, in order to help us avoid an afterlife that looks and operates like the inside of an oven at Auschwitz.
Who created the "hell" we care cast into and our pain receptors in perfect working order for all eternity? God. Why does He bother to do so? Because "Jesus loves us."
How do we convince that God to save us from being thrown into the ovens of eternal Auschwitz?
Prove we are "worthy" of being "saved."
How do Catholics do that?
Simple: First, start by believing - truly believing, with all your heart and mind - that your soul is unworthy. Then repeat this idea as a ritual and a prayer, so you'll fall deeply in love with the God who forgives you for it, so you don't have to worry about ending up in the ovens of an afterlife that never ends.
Incredibly, Catholics love to obsess about what is "natural" or unnatural, especially when it comes to sexuality. But "Am I good enough?" is NOT a "natural" question by any stretch of the imagination. It is a nurtured response that results from being taught to believe we are born sinners, much like teaching a swan to believe it is an ugly duckling. Oh the irony!
"Healthy Functioning" (HF) is more powerful than any source of misery. It's the ability to heal one's nervous system after years of abuse or neglect, including religious trauma. BUT, there is a difference between HF that is natural and HF that is nurtured. Natural HF leads to independence and the ability to define oneself for oneself, while Nurtured HF leads to dependence and a desire to define oneself for the approval of others. The former leads to secure attachments and healthy boundaries, the latter to anxious attachment and unhealthy boundaries. And the person who is raised on the latter sees the former as disobedience to God.
Who is God in this instance? The Institutional Church. Because for my brother, the Roman Catholic Church is God's voice in the world. And with every church bell that rings like a Pavlovian conditioning device, that voice echos in our head those three little words... and you know what they are.
Now, repeat after me: "I am unworthy..."
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