Really good post on religion (huffington post comment).

[Rageaholic]

One really good friend of mine was Brother Jeff. He was my preceptor when I started working for hospice, and we had a lot of discussions on theology that (much later) helped me decide to finally finish a process of conversion to the Catholic Church I'd started many years before. He was a fun guy and never talked about sin or being miserable.

The church my mom and dad has been going to has started to go down the sin/damnation route as well. In the past, the priest was a pretty cool old guy. He talked mostly about "do unto others" and rarely (if ever) talked about sin and damnation. Then he left and a new guy came in. He wasn't too bad, but the guy who came after him started talking about the seven deadly sins ans spiritual warfare. Not surprising since he was a former Baptist converted to Catholicism.

[Panacea]

The church my mom and dad has been going to has started to go down the sin/damnation route as well. In the past, the priest was a pretty cool old guy. He talked mostly about "do unto others" and rarely (if ever) talked about sin and damnation. Then he left and a new guy came in. He wasn't too bad, but the guy who came after him started talking about the seven deadly sins ans spiritual warfare. Not surprising since he was a former Baptist converted to Catholicism.

Well, the great thing about being Catholic is if you don't like your parish priest you can just start going to another parish.

And sometimes parishes will complain to the Bishop to get rid of priests they don't like. The laity has a bit more power in the parish post Vatican II.