Who does religion care?

[Anomalocaris]

@Chuck, ....., that would not be in accordance with Christian values, nor does it mean ignoring the bad. It simply means the methodology best suited is kindness and compassion, which also exemplifies a good Christian understanding.

When "Vicar of Christ" Joseph Ratzinger choose to put one Cardinal John Henry Newmen on the path to sainthood just 2 weeks ago, he presumably has a favorable opinion of Newman's Christian values, Christian understanding, kindness and compassion.

Newman had a reasonably high opinion of his own Christian values as well. Enough so that he wrote them down, lest there be any confusion at a later date, such as when a Pope might wish to study his thoughts for evidence of exceptional Christian understanding. What he wrote down was this:

"The Catholic Church holds it better for the Sun and Moon to drop from Heaven, for the earth to fail, and for all the many millions on it to die from starvation in extremest agony, as far as temporal understanding goes, than that one soul, I will not say, should be lost, but should commit one single venial sin, should tell one wilful untruth, or should steal one poor farthing without excuse".

Maximally invasive overreach without inhibition sounds more secular than religious, unless you cont the Holy crusade

No need to go back so far. We can compare present theology, partially expressed as by Cardinal Newman, with the most formidable modern secular examples. On the secular side I'll put up NAZI Germany, Stalinist Soviet Union, Maoist China, and Dynastic North Korea. Here, in an errie analogue, if not equivalent, of Cardinal Newman's understanding of proper Christian kindness, many millions are indeed allowed to starve to death in extremest agony while not one, Herr leader, comrade Secretary, Chairman or Dear Leader willing, should be allowed to overtly sin against the correct ideology.

If we overlook the distinction between overt sin and covert sin, then up to here the secular and the divine are competitive at least in spirit. Admittedly the inquisition didn't quite rack up the body count of Auschwitz, but then the divine didn't want for effort when it had the influence and the means several centuries ago. Whose fault is it if, despite access to omniscience, the divine missed the scientific, technological and organizational boat and as a result possessed neither the authority nor the means in the 20th century. As to what the Christ's Vicar thinks of Auschwitz and its sister camps, how many nominally Catholic NAZI executioners did the Pope Pious, in his Christian understanding, excommunicate or threaten with excommunication? Silly question. Answer is Zero. Has the current or last Pope excommunicated the Rowandan priest who participated in modern day genocide? No. One has to be a physician aborting a barely differentiated blob of "unborn" cells, conceived of rape or incest and hasn't yet developed any conceivable mechanism for consciousness, to run the risk of excommunication.

But beyond this the secular definitely falls short both materially and spiritually. When the grave close over you even the Gestapo, the NKVD, the red guards and its North Korean equivalent, is done with you. When you think contrary to the ideology but don't actually sin against it, the state more or less admit it wouldn't know the difference. If death does not daunt you from your beliefs, then state admits it can't do more, unless it remembers to put your relatives in the concentration camp or Gulag, which it does not always do.

But not so limited is the putatively divine. Here not even death is left as your private preserve, even inaction is not an sactuary. The omniscient trinity of infinite kindness will smite you with its omnipotence unless you gravel before the graven image of an instrument of barbaric Etruscan torture. Even if you restrict your freedom to disobey purely to thought, or are so firm in your belief that you are willing to die, the dominion of Christ will still try to convince you that you are subject to infinite retaliation in the great beyond.

In one case you are allowed at least in principle an opportunity to weigh all you have versus all you believe in. In another even that choice is attempted to be wrestled from you.