There is a simple truth here that needs to be brought out for anyone that feels that their goodness or lack of it is a direct product of their religious affiliation.
What is truly good in life doesn’t really come from and gilded house of worship or sacred place presided over by an official of the institution that seeks to win over your “Belief” of their system and support of it. The mere sound of this conjures up someone with something to sell (gee, I wonder why?).
Likewise, it doesn’t come from a book, a document, a collection of letters, uplifting songs, poems, parables or an ancient scroll of dubious origin or authenticity. A codex that professes to be the un-contestable word of an unknowable presence, that others who are convinced of its reality regardless of the absence of any relevant substantive evidence and wish you to “Believe” the same. A text recognized by its own scholars to contain so many inconsistencies, contradictions, affronts to common reason and decency and outright bizarre proclamations as to render it all but irrelevant to anything of practical value in our present era. There’s nothing in this book you couldn’t find in a compact pocket edition of contemporary wisdom or even something anyone with a basic sense of right and wrong could put down on paper in 10 minutes or less.
Why so many chose to accept this “Dummies Guide to the Do’s and Don’ts of Good and Bad Behavior” is a profound statement of how little we have advanced over the ancient mindset of life, reality and our ability to develop a reasonable understanding of how to truly see and know what good is.
Good isn’t the exclusive domain of any particular institution or group of people religious or otherwise who insist their’s is the only true path for good. There are just too many contradictory claims of the true “Faith” to lend any plausible credence to any one of them.
And while sharing good thoughts and emotions and doing noble acts of kindness which are most often claimed to be the sole product of gatherings at the church, temple, mosque or the many other places of “Worship” are of obvious great merit and even necessary for any decent, well adjusted successful grouping of people, the true roots of goodness must be felt and understood in a clear, concise and unambiguous light that it is conceived in.
Good in fact, as most of us can feel, comes from within, without either constant repetitious proselytizing or under the conundrum of the old carrot and stick system of behavior modification. Do you really need the reward of a wonderful after life before you can be good in this one? If your answer is no, then your (pardon the pun): “Good to go”!
What better reward can you receive in life than the joy and satisfaction of someone’s reaction to your spontaneous acts of kindness and compassion where none was expected? Or even the same joy for anonymous acts where no thought of compensation is at issue?
Do these modes of life require lofty sanctions from religious institutions? Yes, that is a rhetorical question and no, it doesn’t require much thought. But if you decide in any but the negative, you may still have a long journey seeking out the meaning of life.
So here’s the bottom line…Heaven and Hell are what you make them out to be…here on earth. If you as an adult with or without “Higher Education” cannot distinguish the difference between what feel’s right or wrong, good or bad without someone shoving it down your throat on a regular basis and having the specter of big religion staring over your shoulder…all the religion in the world isn’t going to help your cause.
My last shot here and I’m off the box. Try doing some more spontaneous good with your time left in this life without regard for any big reward in the next world. You may find yourself amazed how much better you feel about the here and now.

Peace!

Let’s ban together to stop these predators.  Maybe the pope was a direct offender and that is why he looked the other way when he learned of the offenses over the years.  Yes, all of the offenders should be arrested and the Pope is an offender by endorsing the behavior and just transferring the predator to another loction where he could continue the crimes.

Let’s bring back the Inquisition, the Catholic Church would enjoy it so much, it
give them something to do besides abusing Children.

The fact that there’s no outrage among the effected parishioners suggests that Catholics are today’s good Germans - “What did I know and even if I had, what could I have done about it?”  Like, jump up and say “What the hell’s going on here”, and demand that the scumbag be turned over to the police, that’s what. “Even if that jeopardizes my chances of making it to the pie-in-the-sky?”  Hey, new rule - earthly matters first and foremost.  This will take some de-brainwashing, of course, so best cut way down on the mumbo-jumbo stuff, spending time, instead, with atheists, agnostics or just old fashioned free-thinkers.  What’s most important is that you no longer let some frocked pedophile or pedophile-enabler decide for you what’s right or wrong.  After all you conscience resides in your brain, not in the Vatican.  Doesn’t it?

Why should Francois Truffaut be in jail and not the rotten, miserable priests that raped kids. Kids, for Zeus’s sake. This man is a criminal, treat him as such. He was an accomplice and an accessory to a terrible crime. Arrest the creep just as you do any other pedophile and their facilitators.