In 2009, Doda said in an interview that she did not believe in the biblical stories, written by a “drunk on wine and smoking some herbs” individual. In 2012, she received a verdict: she was convicted of offending religious feelings. The singer did not give up, challenged the ruling at the Court in Strasbourg and, after 10 years, will receive €10,000 from Poland. Those who have religious feelings will pay, and unfortunately so will those who do not have such feelings.
Reading this story and, of course, being pleased with Doda’s victory, because I never take the side of religious fanaticism or cultural and ideological backwardness, I remembered the lectures of Father Krzysztof Grzywocz. He was an academic staff member at the Faculty of Theology of the University of Opole, where he taught the theology of spirituality. I greatly appreciate Father Grzywocz’s way of thinking about human spirituality. I often draw on his understanding of feelings when discussing them in workshops or lectures devoted to them, and I quote him frequently. Because the people who listen to me are most often believers.
And I thought that if Father Krzysztof Grzywocz were talking to people endowed with hypersensitivity regarding religious feelings, he would tell them what they would not want to hear. Exactly what he already said in his lectures about unloved feelings, specifically about aggression. I encourage believers and non-believers to read Father Krzysztof Grzywocz’s lectures:
“Suppressing aggression prevents other subtle feelings from entering consciousness. Spiritual experiences. It is like a cap that inhibits other subtle realities within us from revealing themselves. A person who does not allow aggression is cold and absent. (...) People who suppress aggression enter an artificial spiritual life (...) they are fanatical and cold, they evoke aggression in society rather than attracting people. They speak about God, but people feel anger. Because in reality they are speaking about their own fantasies. It is humiliating and moralizing. Everyone feels guilty after his sermon. What does that mean? He speaks about love, yet everyone feels guilty, accused and humiliated? If someone cannot express aggression and has it blocked, there is no point in going further unless they learn to love expressing aggression. Great, suppressed aggression obscures everything else. Spiritual life as well.”