Sure sure, but in the meantime Pope Summerfall Winterspring would have us all reenact the mountaintop scene from Sound of Music, while smoking doobies and praising Marx.
Not interested, except for the doobie part.
Look, the point ought to be not to follow some mortal religious figure. That’s always going to fail. We can see multiple ways for it to fail. Just like you could die jumping off a bridge or grabbing a high voltage electric wire or running into traffic, all of which we avoid, of course.
The actual Jesus is almost scarily powerful. If He pushed any further into my life, I’d be alarmed. He knows how much I can take at one time, though.
But hey if it is just a worldly thing, then I really wouldn’t have any reason to choose prepping over being ultra hippie. If it’s all vain in the end with respect to the transcendent, and sometimes the hippies do chance upon Jesus, then pick your vanity. It’s all the same.
And... maybe the Catholics do need to loosen up a bit. Even if Pope Francis is taking it to absurd lengths right now. All love of any kind! Anywhere! Well, we need to be purer than that in order to please the Lord. And yet —
Some folks can’t have their cup filled by the Lord because they have crushed it into a tight wad. The free love folks might end up being in better shape than the strait laced ones in the very end, with the Lord addressing them equally. I don’t know how Francis’ life is going to end up. Maybe he will be visibly born again, and this Francis, now orthodox in outline, will also end up making most of Catholicism look like fools.