Vipers and cherries

I found myself washing in the Vatican showers, probably not all that far away from the pope, and thought how hard it had been to arrive even here. I wasn't sure if it was the Italians or the church that were bloody useless.

And I thought — why in any city do banks and churches often have the most beautiful buildings? Who decided that the house of God needed fine marble? Who decided that the head of the church needed gold gilding whilst just outside in the square, men and women looked for bread?

Parasites... hold with me a second. I'm a big believer that parasites have their time and place in society but I think the point is the church is supposed to bleed. Like their central prophet on the cross. Generous, detached, and devoted. You can't serve God and Money.

But instead, I find the church says: "Money is evil… give it to us."

And the church takes a lot of money. The Holy See oversaw around 1.23 billion last year. Up from the previous year. Turns out business is good.

The church stopped selling tickets to heaven formally about 460 years ago when some German bloke nailed a thesis to a door, but the system surrounding 'give to me and I'll pass the message on and God will forgive you' has never truly stopped. You've been scammed.

Newsflash: you don't need a mediator.

Parasites. That's why the church is full of them. The church attracts free money.

Except it's not free money, is it? Somewhere there is a widow and her mite. Somewhere there is a man who cannot afford his bread and drops his coin in the collection plate because he was told to. Because God requires it. Because the beautiful building needs a new roof.

They forgot the word is "charity."

Maybe that's why so many leeches find themselves in the church. There's nothing like a healthy dose of Catholic guilt to keep you in check. Keep you giving. Bleed out your pockets for the walls and the fancy art and the chandelier and the gold chalice. Bleed for us until you're modest. Stay poor. Keep quiet. Keep coming back next Sunday to hear about the meek inheriting the earth whilst the institution inherits your estate.

The moment religion became political it lost the thread entirely. Politics is how you conduct yourself in the company of others. Religion is how you conduct yourself alone. And there is the problem in a single sentence.

Anything but total obedience was denied the householder.

And obedience to what, exactly? To God or to institution?

Different faiths are like figure drawings. Each is as one artist's interpretation — no faith has the definitive view, all partial points of view. The model stands in the centre of the room and twenty students draw twenty different figures. Not one of them is wrong. Not one of them is complete. Another way to see it is that organised religion is like a finger pointing at the divine. Except the heirs of these institutions made it all about the finger doing the pointing.

Most Christians don't know this. The watchful Muslim already does. Some Sikhs and Hindus have an idea. And the Buddhists are probably too busy with their dolce far niente to even notice what's going on.

I say this not to mock but to observe. Because the one who is most certain they have the whole picture is always, always the one holding the smallest fragment of it.

Ignorance is bliss because we feel no guilt, and if you are in ignorance of vice when you're living, you will receive punishment for it in your grave.

What I'd like to say to the "pious" is this: you cannot hide in the house of God. You can only buy time.

The single thing that enrages me most is the hypocrisy of politics within the church at the moment. It doesn't speak for all but it speaks to a grand majority — they do not love their neighbour if they're not white nationalists.

So many bands of vipers, quick to spit venom on anybody who disagrees, or anybody who's different, and exclude them from the title that is inalienable — the title of calling yourself a follower of Christ. The irony being these vipers committing the same sin as the Pharisees.

The Pharisees, you'll recall, were not the pagans. They were not the Romans. They were the devout. The ones who knew every letter of the law and followed none of its spirit. The ones Christ reserved his sharpest words for. Not the sinners — the self-righteous. The ones who were so busy being right that they forgot entirely to be good.

I loathe the fact that inside the church, where they think about God once a week, sing praise with their whole lungs, and listen feigning attention to a sermon on humility, charity, and love for the neighbour — on blessed are the meek, and blessed are the peacemakers — they will leave church and turn a blind eye to those who need food and clothing. They'll not even see the splinter in their brother's eye because they have two planks in their own.

The sermon ends. The doors open. And out they file into the light of their one and only holy day. Then go home and find themselves on spaces like TikTok, where certain "devout Christians" in one breath say "amen, amen" and in the next call to throw "bougnoules in the Seine."

And yes. I quote word for word.

They claim their faith is at risk while spreading hate and lies about others they have no knowledge of. Their faith. At risk. From the people they are trying to drown.

The thing I hate about hypocritical Christians is their intolerance — not just for Muslims but for anybody who isn't white, a nationalist, and the same Christian sect as themselves.

I have met plenty. I've sat with them, broken bread with them, prayed in their company. I'd rather eat with an intolerant atheist any day of the week.

Every single one. The altar man included.

The altar man. The one who stands closest to the mystery. The one whose hands touch the chalice. Who believed — or performed believing — more visibly than anyone else in the room.

Exclusion. You don't belong. You don't see faith the same way I do therefore you're invalid. Your experience is invalid. And your faith is invalid.

That was his gospel. Delivered not from the pulpit but quietly, in the way he looked at me. Or didn't.

So. To you.

You viper. Poisoned to the core. A splinter in my eye, and two planks in yours. I'd go as far as to argue you inserted the second yourself to blind yourself to the first.

May you weep when you have evolved enough in spirit, purified your heart, and grown to understand your transgressions. I pray you find even the gate to your narrow path. And that one day you might have the courage to walk it prudently.

May you read your holy book for once and be transformed into the pious you claim to be — a practitioner of the words you are so quick to spew — instead of remaining what you currently are: a picker of cherries. Cherries of hate, loathing, and exclusion, plucked carefully from the vine whilst the rest of the fruit rots on the ground.

I pray you will wrestle with yourselves, and be honest with God and with others, for once, in the house you claim as his.

Because if I pity you for anything, it is this: that in all your fury to guard the door, in all your certainty that you alone hold the right to stand at its threshold and decide who is worthy — you may have excluded yourselves entirely from ever walking through it.