LORENZAGO DI CADORE, Italy (AP) -- Pope Benedict XVI reasserted the primacy of the Roman Catholic Church, approving a document released Tuesday that says other Christian communities are either defective or not true churches and Catholicism provides the only true path to salvation.

link to article by Nicole Winfield

I cannot believe that God is exclusive. And thank you, Pope Benedict XVI, for helping to prove what I have written here before: Religion = bad, Spirituality = good.

When you step back and look at the evolution of religion, note that at the beginning of Christianity the world was flat. Indeed, a millennium and more would pass before the first men would think different. Hundreds of years after the acceptance of a round planet, we are now awakening to the interconnectedness of it all, how my driving a car in California can actually impact the quality of life for someone in Thailand, half a world away. And as I have posited before, I submit that on the deepest levels, we are all part of the One, just another manifestation of the Universal All, connected and part of the same Spirit that you may choose to call God. That being the case, and that being the ultimate reality, how can you defend the separation the Church demands? How can you say, I win and get to go to Heaven, you lose and go to Hellfire and Brimstone for eternity? How can you say that only 144,000 will be redeemed? How can you call yourself the Chosen People? How can you kill another because they aren’t of your village/nation/religion? It makes no sense, people, and it feels wrong. Do unto others, if for no other reason than this: you are truly doing unto yourself. We are One.

Grow beyond your petty religion, embrace what you feel to be true.