Characters of blood
they wrote on the way they went,
and their folly taught
that truth is proved by blood.

But blood is the very worst witness to truth;
blood taints the purest teaching,
and turns it into delusion and hatred of heart.

                              ~*~
And when a person goes through fire for his teaching
— what does that prove!
It is more, truly, when out of one’s own burning
comes one’s own teaching!

Sultry heart and cold head;
   where these meet,
      there arises the blusterer,
         the “Saviour.”

                                ~*~
The overman has never yet been…
I have seen both of them naked,
the greatest man and the smallest man:

–Still they are all-too-similar.

Truly, even the greatest I found
— all-too-human!

–Thus spoke Zarathustra.

Thus Spake Zarathustra, by Friedrich Nietzsche, trans. by Thomas Common, The Priests No. 26

I am not Catholic, that is, I am not by heritage a participant in the Catholic community. Still I was interested when by chance yesterday morning I watched the television coverage of the announcement of the next pope, the event taking place in St. Peter’s Square in Rome.

Patricia Mazzei’s report in New York Times today offered a stark, ‘black and white’ snapshot of the occasion.

The tens of thousands of faithful who were crammed into St. Peter’s Square exchanged befuddled looks when Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost was announced as pope from the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica. Who? People started searching his name on their phones.

“I think they just elected an American pope,” said Nicole Serena, 21, a student who is in Rome studying marketing.

Wait — an American?

Some faces fell.

“Maybe he’s a good guy?” said Catalina Zaza, 27, an Argentine art student in Rome. “We don’t know.”

For a few moments the new pope stood, a image of piety on the high balcony over the square. Some vacuous words calling for calls for peace, justice, dialogue and love were offered by Pope Leo XIV…

I concluded, all is “business as usual.”

Nietzsche/Zarathustra reminds us of the core teaching of Christianity. I mean that the death of one man, despite every appearance to the contrary, was a universal metaphysical transformation. The spilling of divine blood, a payment to settle the account deficit between innumerable human debtors, and the divine creditor; a “paid in full” certificate is offered by a Pope, by all the priest-salesmen of the church. To emphasize again that I am not Catholic. However this is a fair expression of core Christian doctrine held true by every follower/member.

In humanities age old search for a basis for life with others and with the earth, blood is proof of nothing, and as a matter of fact, just the same old hoary distraction from the work which we alone must do. Inject an angry deity demanding satisfaction into the human impasse, and we’ve added unnecessary complexity, a metaphysical maze to our very human need to-learn-to-get-along. Priestcraft, hocus-pocus words will get us to nowhere.

Remove the colorful vestment/costumes, and note they are no different than the smallest man, — all too human.