Then I might think they are real Christians.

Skimming off the top was a given. The end result is the needy are given a token while the church enriches itself. It’s a concept that predates Abrahamic religions and was certainly practiced by Jesus himself who needed a banker to handle all the money they were raking in.

who can use it a la Hearst Castle.
Sotheby's would love to auction the Vatican Library - books, oil paintings, statuary.
And that's just for starters....

I believe the Pope has already taken a vow of poverty, as do all Jesuits.

in Catholic school: "For your name is Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church." Huh? Come again?

Of course back then we weren't supposed to question any of this, so it wasn't until years later that the context sorta clarified it. The guy's name was Simon (ok, ok, Simon is an anglicisation of whatever the original name was). Jesus said something about Simon's faith being strong as a rock, and upon that rock He would build His Church. So, because our word "rock" translated to "petra" or something similar in Greek, ol' Simon probably then became known as Simon the Rock or Peter.

I said "sorta" clarified it.

BTW, many years ago we bought a chink of granite to sit by a lamppost in the front yard. After much consideration and a couple of drinks, we decided to name the rock "Peter."

This happened around the time of the Council of Nicaea, which was when he cemented his control. Before that, Jesus' teachings were put forth by his descendants as the Church of the Desposyni, that is "of the family".
Constantine saw an opportunity to create a power structure that would out live the Roman Empire, and take in huge amounts of money in the process.

In the process of rebranding the teachings of Jesus as the Roman Catholic Church, several gospels were destroyed...the Gospel of Mary, the Gospel of Thomas, and the Gospel of Judas.
Please note, Jesus had a brother named Judas. He was the apostle, not Judas Iscariot.
Constantine did the switch on those two.

As part of the marginalizing of the former gospels, Mary, Jesus' wife, became a prostitute, Thomas became a doubter, and Judas became a betrayer.

I've spent decades searching for spiritual truth, and I can tell you it's out there.
You can find it for yourselves though, I'm not going to point you to any specifics.
If you're really interested, you'll do the work.
Oh! Peter was not called the rock because he was the foundation of Jesus' church. He was a bit slow witted, thus the rock...sort of like calling someone "thick as a brick".
Also, Paul was not at all important in the Church of the Desposyni. Like Peter, he was elevated to a central position by Constantine who liked Paul's angry attitude.

Thanks.
I was aware of the changes with Constantine, but not all you wrote.
Will have to read further.

there's some interesting tidbits I'm gonna go "googe," as well as dig thru my books about...

Like I said (I think); I'm a witch, so it's not really a big deal to me, except in this commercialization of religion on TV between the Catholic church and the Grahams. I still thinks it's the Dominionists at the heart of all of it.

the superficial, story line level. Truth, as is written, is in the parables, which I guarantee are not understood at all. There's a reason there's a hidden level for those who actually care about spiritual development and a superficial level for those not ready to commit. However, as Paul indicated, the purpose of the teachers was to get from point A to point B, not sit at point A forever and think that's all there is.

Constantine's convention resulted from his desire to stop the fights and bickering between the different sects. So, the different theological views were there already. This probably resulted after Rome kicked anything Jewish out of Jerusalem and those people could no longer be there to guide the movement. Actually, the weakening of the Jerusalem pillars may have begun earlier with the death of James.

Modern churches don't encourage an honest look at Christian history. They don't want people to know that there never was one main, true church which the pesky heretics polluted. They don't want people to know that paleography shows that the writings in the East were more heretical (Gnostic) whereas Western writings reflect a belief based on the outward story line. So, guess which sect must've written the gospels... cannot have been Orthodox theology since there's a hidden theology in the parables.
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But going back to Peter vs Paul. Peter was schooled in Jerusalem, not Rome, so Rome claimed to know his secret teachings. If so, those secrets have been kept hidden... provided you can't understand the hidden-in-plain-sight theology in the parables. As for Paul, his letters weren't used by the Orthodox for the first 150 years because the Gnostics claimed him as their apostle... and Paul operated under the forbearance of James and Jerusalem.

The true Christianity has been lost for about 1800 years, and we can look at the Church's 1800 years of violence, corruption, hypocrisy, bigotry, false values as evidence of a materialistic message rather than a spiritual one.

It was made up a long time after Jesus. Who, of course, was a Jew.

Fighting over were to break an egg.