Yes, but I believe that the church does not say anything against being
a good person. It only asks in addition that their rules are kept.
Perhaps it does not say it with words, but with facts. When so much
emphasis is placed on following rituals, sacraments, ceremonies - the
more lavish, the better - and so little emphasis on helping your
neighbour, this is the example given.
So is it negative that there are rituals in religions?
It is when they are used to manipulate and to turn people away from
spiritual evolution. As they are not necessary, what sense is there in still
using them?
I suppose that it was also conceived as an attempt to remember a
spiritual message.
Yes. But experience shows that instead of being used for this, what
normally happens is that the rituals and symbols end up replacing the
actual message that they supposedly represented. And people shield
themselves with these rites and symbols in order to commit major
outrages, all of them against the beliefs that they say they follow. You
have an example of this in the Crusades and the Inquisition.
Genocides and murders committed by people who wore outfits with a
great cross on their chest, who took communion every day and signed
death sentences with the Bible in their hand. Where is the message of
love to your neighbour there?
But were there not rituals which were passed on by Jesus himself, such
as the Eucharist?
Well no. It is true that Jesus, sensing intuitively that he had little time left
before being assassinated, reunited his disciples in a farewell supper.
But he never had the intention of establishing any Eucharist ritual or
ceremony, or any other ritual, ceremony or sacrament. Besides, eating
the body and the blood of Christ, albeit symbolically, is reminiscent of
an act of cannibalism, and this has nothing to do with Jesus.
So where does the ritual of the Eucharist derive from?
It was incorporated into Christianity having derived from rituals of
previous religions. In fact, all these ceremonies, as well as the name of
Christianity to define the followers of Jesus, and the symbol of the cross
to represent them, are introduced later on.
So the symbol of the cross does not come from Jesus either?
Bear in mind that at the time of Jesus, the cross was used to execute