Hello and welcome back to another expand podcast with yours truly Elizabeth April.

Today I want to rant and rave, but really talk about the dynamics, the implications, the energies of religion.

Now, specifically, I will be focusing on mostly Catholicism.

That is the one that I grew up in.

That is the one that I know the most because I did grow up in the system.

Now, I did take a couple of university classes

that was more geared towards world religion. And so I'm very, you know, aware of Taoism,

Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, and so on. But the one by far, without a doubt, in my own mind, in my

own perspective, that is the worst of them all, is Catholicism. And one thing that kind of came up

just the other day, I don't know if I was listening to a podcast

or watching TV or something, but it came up twice in one day where people were calling other

people a God-fearing Christian or a God-fearing Catholic. And the way that they referred to these people as God-fearing,

the implication was actually really positive. The implication, as a matter of fact, was that this person

is a good person because they are God-fearing. And that kind of blew my mind. And, you know, I kind of just wondered,

does anyone else ever question, I mean, of course, you guys are questioning, you're here,

but does anyone in the religion ever question, why is it that I'm a good Christian? Why is it that I'm a good

Catholic if I'm God fearing? And this is really what I find about Catholicism that is really

terrible for the individual. And then there's a ton of other circumstances where Catholicism has been really terrible for the collective.

And I don't even know if I want to go into those collective things today.

But specifically the impact that religion has on the individual.

And yeah, I do want to talk about the power around religion as well.

So religion, but especially Catholicism, has this embedded matrix of fear within it.

...