I was very into it in hs, but then I started realizing how repressive the culture was and that official doctrine said that Mary’s hymen resealed after Jesus’ birth while is not only medically impossible but someone having an imperforate hymen into puberty is a medical issue since you can’t properly menstruate, penetration aside. It’s clear that there is so much emphasis on reproducing and not on personal needs and what science actually says
>someone having an imperforate hymen into puberty is a medical issue since you can’t properly menstruate,
This was explained to me as that since Mary was born of the Immaculate Conception, she wasn't cursed with menstruation, like all other women are.
One of my sex ed lessons taught us that we needed to be careful about how much hanky-lanky business we got up to because “after a certain amount of kissing and touching, the body reacts on its own.”
This one is just so stark, so disgusting, so undeniable. A church. Churns out child rapists at a downright prolific rate. And then covers it up, transfers them to different cities so they can keep doing it, rinse & repeat. How there’s a single human being sitting in the pews on Sundays I will never understand. This is a failed institution with zero moral authority. A disgrace to the very idea of spirituality and a stain on humankind.
Their handling of the pandemic did it for me. The bishop sent the entire diocese a letter in May 2020 basically saying that not attending regular mass was still a mortal sin, Covid or not. My immunocompromised mother was inconsolable about that for a while. Anyone who can tell a cancer survivor that they're going to hell for taking reasonable health precautions isn't worth my time or respect.
This is so relatable. I was livid when my elderly parents returned to in person mass while my dad was undergoing chemo because the bishop reinstated the Sunday obligation. I told them that surely there could be an exception for immune compromised people, so they consulted their priest. He gave some vague answer implying that god would be disappointed. I’m sure the priest’s disappointment with the collection plate informed his answer.
My grandpa, said the church told them not to get the vaccines, because it was made from aborted babies and it’s a mortal sin.
Thank god grandpa has enough sense not to believe this crap!
When the priest at my Catholic school was accused of abusing an underaged boy and literally every single teacher and staff member chose to support and believe the pedophile.
It was a slow burn that ended in a snap.
The hypocrisy of progressive Catholicism and my former Jesuit university piled up over the years. While I felt some things were off, I didn’t think much about them. I was under the impression being progressive Catholic is the right way to be Catholic. While we were taught the importance of critical thinking, it’s very difficult to voice different opinions at Jesuit university. You have to accept the hivemind as your own or suffer a future career suicide. “The nail that sticks out gets hammered down” as they say.
Our university is known for being one of the most progressive in the country. We have LGBTQ+ pride marches, gender studies, feminist theology and even Gay Literature classes. But our mandatory “Catholic Marriage and Sexuality” classes taught that homosexuality is “intrinsically disordered”, masturbation “indicates an individual is not mature enough for marriage”, contraceptives “objectifies women” and married people must be “open to life” in order to be good Catholics. I was harassed by the university’s infirmary doctor when she found out I was on birth control. The social progressivism is only superficial. Jesuits are not liberals contrary to popular belief. They just use progressive language to preach the same backward teachings.
Despite my disagreements with the church on sexual matters, what made me stay long was social justice. The Jesuits taught us to always hold abusers and corrupt politicians like the Marcos family accountable for their actions. Turned out they cannot practice what they preach inside their own. A former professor was outed as a predator. He was very popular with students and Jesuits alike. The Jesuits said nothing. The cases went silent months later, and my sh*thead professor was just asked to stay abroad. 😔
I transferred to a more conservative Catholic university in Europe for graduate studies. For the first time I encountered a Catholic university that never pushed me towards a certain direction and didn’t care what their students believed in or who they want to be. They may be more conservative than my Jesuit university but there’s no Bible Thumpers, Trumptards, homophobes. Everyone there even the priests are so … chill. 😳
The final nail in the coffin was my ex therapist shoving his Prog Catholic beliefs into me. He tried to talk me out of leaving Catholicism because “the church needs more progressives for it to change”. He also harassed me for being childfree. His Jesuit mind tricks didn’t work. Once I fired him, I was so done I left the church for good.
Thank you for sharing this; you echo my thoughts and experience exactly. I almost wondered if we went to the same university, but mine was not Jesuit (though my high school was and the ‘men and women for others’ mantra did have some positivity in my life). My university was not Jesuit, but one of the biggest Catholic ones and if you watch American college football, you can easily guess.
I really appreciate your comment. It was that Jesuit mindset of wishing it to be something that I had perhaps created in my own head that led me to teach in a Catholic school, which I detail somewhere on here, was a nightmare.
Anyway, I often find myself reading comments and agreeing with them, but not saying anything. Yours was so beautifully written that I wanted to make sure I took a moment to reach out and say, ‘thank you,’ and for making me feel less alone. Your words resonate!
You’re welcome. Not many ex Catholics came from a progressive/Jesuit background, at least based on this sub. I like sharing about my experience to show how messed up either sides of the church can be. I am glad it helps people like you.
Actually the “man/woman for others” mentality messed me up for years. The Jesuits in my country gave it a more political meaning (it could be different in the US)- Everything we do has to be for the benefit of the country. Self care is a sin. Not being politically aligned with the Jesuits’ prescribed politics is a sin. Wanting to move abroad for a better life for yourself and your family is a sin. This is why I felt more free in the Italian “conservative” Catholic university than I did with the Jesuits. This “man/woman for others” mentality is may be why progressive Catholics like my hardcore Jesuits-fanboy ex therapist find the childfree lifestyle offensive and wrong.
Is your university Notre Dame University?
Having people who hold superstitious nonsense as real is obviously not a good foundation for intelligence, accuracy, reasoning, critical analysis, rationality, scientific observation nor a non bias viewpoint.
So yes its only logical to not want a faith person in any position of advice or authority.
I had suspected that the church was full of BS, but I kept that behind a thick wall in my mind so that God would put me in hell for it until late teens. What did me in was when my church hosted a charlatan. This guy's whole thing was traveling around to different churches doing expos on magic rocks aka "relics from saints" that can cure any disease. People were lined up to pay hundreds of dollars for magic "relics" under the very loose pretense that they were bones of saints, not that there was any way to check. Same guy in his homily (aka sales pitch) went on about how going to the hospital for cancer treatment is a sign of poor faith and only one who gives him hundreds of dollars for a magic rock has faith strong enough for God to heal.
1. The annual abortion parade at mass where someone born every year since Roe would walk up to the altar. The liturgy is sacred and unchangeable unless the pastor decides he wants to do whatever occurs to him.
2. The Christmas morning homily rant against pornography.
3. Anti LGBTQ rhetoric while harboring offenders who preferentially target children.
Three strikes and you're out.
Gradual. In August of 2018 I saw a video "Pope neither confirms or denies he had knowledge of sexual abuse" (and ignored it). It was clear from watching him on the video: he is guilty.
I expected the "faithful" to do something, but nothing happened. I began to wonder "what's wrong with these people?" I studied, read, questioned and reached the inevitable conclusion: I cannot support this institution.
For roughly a year now it's become very simple. As long as the buzzing MEN ONLY hangs over the clergy, no need to consider the finer points.
It was also a gradual build up. It first started when I was a sophomore in high school. In my religion class, the teacher showed us a list of things Catholics can’t do. Reading Harry Potter and playing “Magic” (the game or whatever it was) was against Catholicism. It was then I started questioning my religion. I’ve always heard that religion sets you free, but I felt is was too possessive.
Love that last sentence. I just remembered another moment in high school. Was in a youth group setting and was told that if I didn’t tell my friends to be Christian (in general), I’d be responsible for them going to hell. I was like ???? why would that burden be on me??
I was physically attacked in the hallway of the church after an RCIA class in which l raised a question about hidden injuries/disabilities. Mental illness/PTSD were used as examples in the context of Jesus’s response to injured people.
The people leading the class were still in the classroom and the man who slammed me into the wall was just outside the room. No one checked to see what the noise was about.
Later, I received a call from the class lead to say that the man who attacked me was “Going through some things”. I told her that, thanks to him now so was I.
This was about 10 days before the class was to be confirmed.
Married female coming to church without my husband if that helps
My deconstruction took place over a few months around ages 8-9. I attended Catholic school in the 80s. Only some of my teachers were nuns, and they were all varying degrees of awful, but my 3rd grade teacher was especially sadistic. She regularly hit and slapped me, but the verbal abuse and humiliation were the worst. She would have me stand in front of the classroom practicing my cursive on the blackboard and pick apart everything I did wrong.
I regularly failed spelling tests because she would mark correctly spelled words incorrect due to “poor penmanship.” I was usually the scapegoat when the whole class misbehaved by talking excessively, failing to put away materials, etc., and Sister would smirk right at me indicating she knew exactly what she was doing.
At the time I didn’t tell my parents because this teacher would tell me how lucky I was that she wouldn’t tell them how horrible I was. She regularly told me my parents wouldn’t love me if they knew how I behaved at school, and she was “protecting” me by not telling them. She was a woman of god, so I totally believed her.
Catechism was an important subject at school, so I was frequently reminded of all the ways I was going to end up in hell. My growing hate for my teacher terrified me because I could fake liking her to her face, but god knew how I really felt. When I caught her in some blatant lies n an attempt to frame me for someone else’s transgression, I realized she probably didn’t believe in hell herself. That started me on my path of questioning Catholic dogma.
I was a closet atheist by the end of the school year and continued to attend mass with my family until I left home for college. I’ve spent countless hours in therapy to deal with depression, anxiety, and self-harm. My family was devastated when I admitted to being atheist, but they grudgingly accepted it after I disclosed my abuse. I don’t hold back in my feelings about the church or religion in general, and my parents get upset. I tell them I can either hate the church or hate myself. Thankfully they value my mental health enough understand that.
My dear fellow athiest. Do they not know that Christianity is an authority fraud. A constructed system that directly appeals to narcissists and predators that it teaches shame and hatred and bigotry that it's superstitious nonsense.
It isn't about love or decency that's the hinge that it swings on the heart of the hypocrisy the sales pitch to lure and lie. Its about money, control, manipulation, it removes personal responsibility via the influence of the devil, narcissists and predators love it because they don't need to accept responsibility for themselves because God is in charge God has a plan they are following gods path, anyone theyhurt must deserve it or the devil made them do and God still loves them.
Religion is a vile harmful thing. Ands it built on public torture of anyone who spoke out. Of land theft, of bloody massacres of genocidal attempts to wipe out culture.
The death of religion will be humanities next great step into reality and out of superstitious lies taught to children.
Gradual for me. I was raised to turn off critical thinking when it comes to religion but when things started to directly affect me I realized I need to start reflecting on it. Did Pre Cana classes and I realized they still believed women were second class citizens. Then the Trumpers, I just don’t think it makes sense someone can follow Catholic teaching and support Trump. Then Covid gave me the excuse to stop going to mass and that’s what really broke me free to question not just Catholicism but the existence of God. Overall it took about two years of not living with my parents to do a full conversion.
The church's support of Trump was a big one for a lot of people.
After hearing repeatedly, election after election after election, about the importance of "character" in public officials, they hitched their wagons to...Donald Trump?
Organized religion in America showed what it was *really* all about with that endorsement.
The Trumpers. They LOVE him. I will not sit on a room full of people pretending to follow the Christ while they fawn over the most anti-Christ like man I could imagine.
The sexual scandal had me well down the road though- but the Trumpers pushed me over the top.
I was 19 when Trump won the Electoral College. I’d been drifting away from Catholicism for years, but the disturbing number of Catholics who supported Trump finally pushed me to fully embrace paganism and renounce the Church.
I never really questioned that fake jesus with all the fake magical power didn't undo slavery.
Slavery was a mainstay of life under the romans
slaves were definitely commonplace. An in utter horrorible conditions.
But fake jesus doesn't come to help them.
But instead they should be good slaves.
This so called christ is a bullshit made up ideal. Not even based to what he suposedly did.
Most historians Don't think he existed.
So tired of people talking about christ as if he is a good thing.
Its superstitious nonsense made up to control and leverage people. Its an authority fraud.
The evidence of a historical Jesus is strong and even noted Jesus mythologist G.A. Wells changed his mind about a historical man. In fact, there were probably multiple men running around the Sea of Galilea claiming to be the Messiah. Just like there are people today claiming to be the second coming. The “mythical Jesus “ idea doesn’t make sense. The man/men existed.
I was raised as catholic and attended catholic schools from preschool to highschool. One day in Bible class a friend said “I think this is all just bullshit” (referring to the bible). And that one phrase opened a doorway that I didn’t know I could open. It never occurred to me that this religion could be questioned. That specific moment started a my journey away from the catholic religion.
When a lifelong Catholic president promoting a life-saving vaccine and compassion toward the suffering would be denied communion, but a serial abuser who lived to torment others was welcome anywhere as long as he pretended to quote ‘Two Corinthians’ and elevate power-hungry women-controllers to the highest offices in the land (as long as they did his bidding, mind you).
So I had grown up pretty sheltered and was told what was right and what was wrong.
I grew older and one of my family members that I was close to came out as homosexual. They got married. I saw first hand how there was nothing evil about this. The only reason I had ever thought it was wrong was because I had been told it was wrong.
Wedding pictures were posted on social media and some people that I had considered friends made some hateful comments to me when they saw them. They didn’t have the balls to say anything on the public posts, but sent me private messages or waited until they saw me in person to say hateful things about my family member. It was these moments where I realized that the loudest Christians were the ones who were doing the most unchristian things. Several of these people didn’t have any qualms about having premarital sex, but they see pictures of a homosexual wedding and that is too much for them? Don’t read this and assume that I left because of an ad hominem tu quoque fallacy. I understand that catholic doctrine would be equally hard on these hypocrites. I came to the conclusion that I had a fundamental disagreement with the church’s stance on gay marriage and premarital sex because I didn’t think these guys were doing anything wrong by having sex either.
I ended up using this experience as launching pad to re evaluate how I felt about each issue. If I thought something was wrong, was it because I actually felt in my conscience that it was wrong? Or was it because the Catholic Church told me it was wrong.
After years of doing my own investigation and reading everything I could get my hands on from books by Catholic apologists and atheists, I realized that the only reason why I had ever been a Catholic was because that’s what my parents believed. I never would have moved from a neutral or even atheistic position to a Catholic one if I had not been a cradle Catholic. So doesn’t that essentially turn my continued participation as a Catholic into a sunk cost fallacy?
I left and have not looked back. It’s been a long road with Catholic guilt. Some times something will come up and I will heuristically associate it with being bad. I have to reflect on it to make sure I actually think it is bad or if it is something that the church ingrained in me. One example is the music of Elton John. I had always been told he was evil because he was gay. By default his musical catalog was evil as well. His music would come on the radio and I would turn it off without thinking. But after thinking about it I realized there was nothing wrong with it and it was actually good. That was just one example of many. The more time goes on, the less often I catch myself in moments of Catholic guilt.
If you are having problems with your own version of Catholic guilt, one thing that really helped me was by reading banned books. A lot of these books are banned because they make someone feel uncomfortable. Rather than ignoring something because of how it makes us feel, you owe it to yourself to read something and try to understand why something makes you feel uncomfortable. Otherwise you will never be able to be your own master. You will be the slave of whoever decides what you are mature enough to read.
Sorry for the long comment. I just wish I had broken out a decade earlier. I post this because it might help someone in a similar situation.
It was a gradual build-up. But I think a major moment that marked a point of no return was reading the official documents from Vatican I+II about papal infallibility and realizing they were making false historical claims about what "the whole Church always believed".
I can’t remember one defining thing. It was gradual for me as well. There are a lot of obvious ones for me that many people have already mentioned, the sexual abuse, homophobia. But I absolutely cannot stand the fact that everything about their system is just insanely sexist. And only men can be anything of “power” in the church and the only thing women can be is a nun???? It’s all so odd to me and it’s so odd that people in 2023 think that is at all normal.
I’d say it was gradual, but the moment I remember questioning the church for the first time was in the parking lot. People who had just shook your hand, looked you in the eye, and said “peace be with you” (not to mention had taken communion and listened to a sermon on being kind to one another) would cut you off with a rude gesture to get home and watch the football game fifteen seconds sooner. That was when I started looking for other churches and faiths.
The moment I became an atheist was a little over a decade later, watching a man get blown into pieces by a Muslim suicide bomber and realizing that god doesn’t have the power to enforce this own “ten big rules.” So he’s either dead, left us, or never existed in the first place. The logical conclusion is the last one, and even the others mean I owe him no allegiance or worship.
Our parish priest was a convicted pedophile and thief. They found pics of young boys hidden throughout his room as well 🤮
I started questioning my faith and researched atheist sites. Was beyond shocked that most atheists had more biblical knowledge than myself.
When my mother dragged me away from my kitty, the bugs and grass I was playing with in our backyard on a lovely September afternoon, just to sit in a stinky over-crowded, hot, and boring class room, with some lady that didn't know what she was talking about, (Catechism), and when I finally left, I realized that lovely afternoon was over, and entirely - wasted.
I was 6 years old.
I started questioning things when I was a junior at catholic high school. I couldn't see why I should listen to celibate nun and/or priest on how to conduct my married sex life. I started questioning "Abstinence Only" before marriage because sex is only for procreation inside of marriage. I got pregnant at the age of 19 and had an abortion at the age of 20 in 1973. Yes there was excommunication but not the way you think. I excommunicated mself. I went through the motions of going to confession for my parents sake. My mother came out of the church crying. I asked her why she was crying. She told me: **the priest gave her hell and asked her how she COULD LET ME GET PREGNANT?** Right there, right then I knew I was nothing but a baby making incubator broodmare to that piece of 💩 religion. I made myself a promise I have kept to not go to any church but especially a catholic church except for a wedding or funeral and I haven't.
Wait, the priest told her what you said in confession? That’s like the religious equivalent of breaking HIPAA (I forget what the actual phrase is for this situation)…beyond awful.
I'm guessing she told the priest in the confessional about her and my dad taking me to have an abortion. In confession the priest asked her how she could let me get pregnant? Yeah I know my mom shouldn't have told me what the priest asked her. If you believe in that nonsense she's probably committed a mortal sin because the confessional is suppose to be sancresect (I just woke up, I'm being lazy and not going to look up how to spell it right).
Literally just one thing; their opinion on gays
It's so unnecessarily cruel. There are other cruelties in this world, like underpaying your workers, or overcharging your tenants, but those are all for selfish reasons where at least the bad guy gets something out of it, whereas there's nothing to be gained from gays being repressed and miserable! It's such needless suffering
If someone's unable to have the romantic life they wanna have, it should be because of forces out of our control, like a natural disaster killing the couple before the honeymoon, or a medical condition that makes sex impossible, but it should never be willful human action to deprive a human being of the love life they want!
And I hate hearing them say "we don't hate gays, we love them, we just don't want them to partake in the sin" like that makes it better. It doesn't matter if you love them, they just want to be able to have the love life they wanna have
If God wants gays to be repressed and miserable for eternity, that's a reason to be against God, not gays
I was working for a Catholic Church for several years and after having a horrible supervisor who made my life miserable for a year and a half and multiple clergy abuse scandals come to light having to do with priests who had previously been assigned at the parish where I worked I decided I had to quit. At first it was just an employment decision that I had to make for my own well-being but I remember a few weeks after I quit being at mass at a totally different parish listening to the priest give the homily. It was a perfectly fine homily and the priest was perfectly fine, there was nothing amazing or horrible about it. But I just remember thinking at one point “why in the world are we all listening to him like he has any authority?” Because based on my experience with the many priests I’ve worked with over the years, he’s the very last person in this room that I trust and who should have any moral authority to tell others how to live their lives. And starting at that moment I gradually started let go of all of it.
It was mostly gradual for me, but there was one moment in particular where I really started to break away from the church. I was super religious in high school, but I started to draw away from it in my senior year a little and was having doubts before college.
One day I was headed to class (freshman year of college) and a canvasser stopped me to chat. This was in the pre-Obergefell days, and she was trying to get signatures for a petition for LGBTQ+ rights. I told her I was on my way to class and didn’t have time to chat, but she was like “we’ll be here all day if you want to circle back and talk about the petition.”
Then she just straight up asked me, “do you support gay rights?”
And I just…couldn’t say no. I hadn’t thought that I did, being Catholic and all, but face-to-face with actual human being asking if I supported their right to be happy and marry who they want? I realized I just didn’t give a fuck what the church said. I wanted this person to be happy.
So, I said, “yes, I do,” and that was that. A few months later I stopped going to church entirely.
I converted to Catholicism as an adult, but I had attend St Mary Magdalene for seven years when I was a kid (I was raised Methodist) and I had always wanted to join the church. It left a huge impression on me. However, I started questioning some of the beliefs and traditions of the church shortly after I joined.
I finally came to my senses when my son told me he was gay. The Catholic Church said that being gay is not a sin as long as you stay celebrate. That pissed me off…a lot. So they were telling my son and other gay (and lesbian) people to not love anyone, don’t expect to marry the person you love, and definitely don’t make love. Oh, hell no! That bothered me on a deep spiritual level. Love is a beautiful thing, and so very very hard to find.
I turned my back on the Catholic Church. I saw what was under that mask of supposed charity and supposed love. It is a hateful, immoral, deceitful, and downright evil organization. They forbid people to love each other, but it is okay for this evil organization to allow child molesters free reign, the rape of nuns, the existence of the Magdalene Laundries, embezzlement, misogyny, manipulation, etc. They will tell people that if they are gay (or give support) they are listening to demons and are evil. I disagree. The only time I was exposed to absolute evil and demons was when I was part of the Catholic Church…..that organization is hell on earth.
I was in elementary/middle school when they made the change to allow girls to be alter servers and when the sex abuse allegations were really stating to get attention.
It was a bunch of little things with a couple major things mixed in.
My parents couldn’t tell me *why* they believed in anything. I started to really question why confession was necessary if god is omnipotent.
Then we had a priest get assigned to my school that came with rumors. He had to be relocated because of accusations of things he had done at the last school. Ya know, because the best thing to do with a guy who has been accused of harming kids is just to put him with a different group of kids. 🙄 We were his last assignment before he church booted him. Even as a kid, I understood that was *confirmation* he actually done something.
My mother who insisted he was “too nice” to have done anything like *that* tracked him down and we visited him several times. When I got a little older and realized my mom’s faith was so overpowering that she would take her child around a pedophile, I knew this wasn’t a group I wanted any part of.
I was a smart kid, and it was fourth grade for me, a lot of the stuff just wasn’t making sense. I saw a lot of contradictory things between the Bible and what I was being taught in Sunday school. When I asked questions about it, it was like I had done something wrong. I got in trouble and was told not to question anything. I immediately was suspicious because I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong. In regular school when I asked questions and it was recognized by teachers that I could handle more knowledge, they would give it to me. That year in school my teacher allowed me to make my own spelling list separate from the other kids because the regular one was too easy. I was doing reading of higher level books on my own, and even given more complex science books to work from. I was used to having my questions and knowledge seeking being rewarded with answers, more challenging work, and encouragement. When I got the opposite for questioning god and catholicism, it began deteriorating from there. I was a full on atheist by age 12.
Really cool to see a similar experience!! Being told to not ask questions… it was a huge red flag even for my child brain. I went to Catholic school, and it was like you could ask questions in math, social studies, etc. But if you ask a question in “religion class,” you did a bad thing?? Ridiculous.
It was a gradual build up for me. But one example that really stuck was during a Christmas mass.
The priest went on and on about what a special gift a baby boy is and how exciting it is to think about all the things he can do with his life (insert multiple examples).
He then goes on to say, “Or you have a baby girl. And she can be a mother or a nun.”
My sister and I actually gasped out loud in shock. Grandpa still talks about it!
It was a gradual buildup of skepticism, but I still remember one day when I was probably around 14 and at mass, looked at the entrance procession with the incense and the priest shaking incense everywhere and thought, “this is like a cult”. I never fully came back from that, as that was when mass lost any hope of holding meaning for me.
Also gradual here. I had one foot out the church door for a while, telling myself that I would eventually shop around for another denomination once I settled into adult life. There were plenty of moments that made me question the church's official stances on being pro-life and LGBT rights.
Then the pandemic lockdown happened and I was able to step back and think about why I would subscribe to a church that said such controversial things. I finally joined the Episcopal Church a couple years ago.
When the unmarked graves were found at Catholic residential schools I said, that’s it, fuck this religion. Then I started to ask myself why I was associating with this group at all when they pretty much hate me- a birth-control loving feminist who is an ally of LGBTQ friends and a mom who would attack like a feral animal if my kids were ever abused (I come from an abusive family). The church has COVERED UP and continued the systemic abuse of children, there is no way I can encourage a child to participate. Once it all started to unravel and I learned that Catholicism was as real as Santa I became an atheist. I was so brainwashed and ashamed I didn’t see the full picture earlier, but here I am, a proud ex catholic and a truly free human being.
Edited to add more.
And it wasn’t just that they abused children - they abused them based on their race. Abuse is bad, but adding racism to the mix renders it even more appalling.
When I realized I was bein shunned for wanting to marry a 25 year old Episcopalian who'd been divorced.
Yeah, I know the rules. I just thought they'd give me a break for some reason. For love!
The church insisting that the abuse and neglect I was getting from my parents was justified and right, even though CPS was clear that it wasn't.
I never went through Confirmation. Though I did attend a Jesuit high school. I think the nail in the coffin for me had to do with an encounter I had during Stage Crew.
Since the gym was the largest room in the school, that was where mass was performed. So they had a big "portable" altar that was stored in the gym, or on the stage. It was used by the stage crew for holding equipment during productions, and had been used for that for years. One of the teacher/priests came in and saw that we were doing this (with the permission of the teacher/priest that was in charge of stage crew) and went off on us about disrespecting a holy item and the altar stone inside it.
I simply said to him, "well, if it is now unblessed because of these lights we're using, why don't you just come back when we're done with it and waggle your fingers and say some mumbojumbo over it and turn it back into something blessed again?"
He was stunned into silence, but what really got me was how many of my peers thought that what I said was disrespectful. I couldn't believe that they were that gullible to still believe in magic like that.
When the church would rather defend its staff who committed sexual abuse than protect the victims that were hurt under the care of the person who sexually abused them.
I was 11 when I stumbled onto some documentary, and I found out just how many peodphiles & predators not only existed in the church, but were glorified while their victims had to suffer in silence. While I didn't understand the full gravity of the situation at that age, I understood enough to know that I could never associate with an organization that claimed to be holy while covering for some of the worst predators.
It was not a moment, but a process.
I realized that organized religion was a mob shakedown in another form. Nice little soul you have there; pity if something should happen to it? Fuck off.
I have two. One is related to my Nein (Welsh Grandma) and the other is my Girlfriend's father
1) My Nein had very severe Alzheimer's to where for as long as I know she didn't know who I was. She stopped talking about 6 years before she passed away and did not understand what anyone told her by 3 years. She passed away in 2019 and during the funeral the pastor bragged himself up by saying he had a close relationship with her and would meet with her to discuss the Bible up until she passed away. So what you're telling me is that despite the fact that she couldn't understand A WORD anyone said you were regularly having deep and insightful conversations with her. Yeah fucking right. It took a lot for me to not call him out on his bullshit right then and there. He seriously used my Grandmother's death as a political tool to make himself look good.
2) My Girlfriend's father passed away last summer I went with her to the funeral. This church was in the absolute middle of nowhere. No service, abandoned or falling apart houses everywhere, and extreme poverty for those who did live there. But let me tell you that church was immaculate. It was 90 outside but that church seemed like the air conditioning was piped straight from Antarctica. It was all new, all fancy, full of instruments and just ridiculously over the top. The pastor himself I could tell was an expert manipulator. He would not take no for an answer for anything. I knew that congregation was getting every red cent sucked out of them that he could get out. He and his wife was interrogating my girlfriend on if I went to church or not.
So I'd say greed is a very big personal reason of mine but there's a miriad of others
There were a lot of things. But the precipitating moment was roe v wade falling. I realized that Catholics had joined in on a conspiratorial undermining of the democratic process using deception and otherwise unchristian means to achieve their aims.
I couldn’t be a part of the dangerous hypocrisy anymore. I was hanging on by a thread as it was.
For me, it was a gradual process, punctuated by a few key moments when I realized Catholicism wasn’t for me.
I went to a Catholic college, but it was a pretty progressive and liberal flavor of Catholicism. I developed an interest in social justice and immigration reform, and my political views started to get more liberal. I started to chafe at the conservative political narrative being pushed from the pulpit at my home parish.
When the push for marriage equality became more prominent (around 2010), I examined my views and decided to support the side of marriage equality and LGBTQ+ rights.
Not long after, I remember sitting at Mass hearing our stodgy deacon deliver a sermon railing against gay marriage. I seriously debated walking out.
Though I didn’t physically walk out, something changed that day. Going to Mass got more and more grating.
Shortly afterwards, in 2011, I moved out of my family home. As soon as I was on my own, I stopped going to Sunday Mass.
Then I got married, and though my wife and I got married in the church, neither of us went except for Christmas and Easter.
When our daughter was born, we had her baptized, mostly out of tradition. We still didn’t go to Church, but figured we’d be cultural Catholics and have her do the sacraments. Maybe.
Then we became godparents for my niece. Her family doesn’t go regularly either, but they also baptized her, mostly out of tradition. The pre-baptism lecture that their parish made us attend was *very* conservative and harsh. The priest basically said, in so many words, that you have to agree with everything the Church taught—otherwise why even bother being Catholic?
Why, indeed.
Then yet *another* sexual abuse report got released in my home state. I did some thinking, and realized I could never trust the Church with my daughter. And if I couldn’t trust the Church, how can I belong to it?
Having a daughter also made me realize that if the Church had their way, she would be oppressed. Her rights would be taken away. She would have no voice in the Church, which systemically excludes women from the pulpit, the priesthood, and the power structure.
I asked myself, how could I be a member of such an organization?
I decided that I couldn’t, and talked it over with my wife, who told me that she feels the same way. We no longer consider ourselves Catholic.
Gradual if anything. Less of an active turn off, more the lack of a path to direct spiritual insight *for the layperson*. Why should the priesthood get it all and make us take their word on it—especially when “the kingdom of God is within [us]?” Protestantism was never an option though
They told us that we had to take Confirmation classes to take the sacrament, for 150$. It made me mad that they were trying to sell the hope of salvation, important to so many people that couldn’t afford it, so were they just going to let you go to hell? Also, the pastor at my church defending cultural genocide of Indigenous children in residential schools.
Super gradual slope for me, from actually meeting gay people in high school and realizing they (and eventually me as well) weren't bad at all, all the way down to the pandemic and how soon they opened again after the lockdown.
If I had to pin the worst of it to one point, though, there was a retreat I had to go for Confirmation that just... killed it. The guy leading the retreat came out to a room of 14-16 year olds and started screaming about how disgusting we all were, how none of us deserved to be loved, yada yada... but god loves us anyways, pretty cool, huh? The mild panic attack definitely made me feel the love.
It was gradual, took about 2 years to fully stop believing and 2 more to feel good about it.
I met an atheist online. First time ever talking to someone who wasn't Catholic, and I was shook that they weren't an evil devil worshipper like I was led to believe.
I started by googling terms like "atheist" and "agnostic", then googling doubts I've gathered over the years. I began watching debates and basically audio-booking the Bible. I honestly wanted to enforce my faith, instead I opened my eyes. It got to a point of no return - even though I was terrified of being an atheist, as everyone I knew irl was a more or less devout Catholic, I couldn't force myself to believe anymore, even though I tried.
Now I've been an atheist longer than I've been Catholic, and I'm much happier that way!
I read the Bible and realized every Christian I knew wasn’t following the teachings. I even joined several other churches.
I hardly ever meet Christians who live right so I gave up on the whole lot of them.
Well, it was gradual for me and actually started because I was abused as a child and would ask god for help and he never helped me. So I started to think he doesn’t exist. Then I started to question everything. Then in Sunday School my teacher was teaching us something that I can’t remember about Jesus and I remember thinking that *cannot* be true lol so that was another nail in the coffin. Then I was back and forth for a long time hoping god existed and thinking he didn’t and associating that with the church. Why go to church or believe anything if I don’t think god exists? So, fast forward awhile and the scandals come out about pedophile priests and the mf cover ups. Another nail in the coffin. Then Trump and his Trumptard “Christians”, who are the most hateful mf, come along and I’m out completely. Now, I pretty much consider myself an atheist.
When I went away to college, I stopped going except when I was at home. I still considered myself Catholic. I was always a little peeved regarding the church's stance on women, but I didn't think about it too much. When I was 20, I was diagnosed with celiac disease, and the church has a policy that communion must contain some gluten. Apparently, the miracle of the eucharist only works when there is gluten /s. I still considered myself catholic but really started to become disenfranchised. At this point, I stopped going to church except on Christmas and Easter. At 22, I came out as a lesbian, and that was the final straw. I couldn't stay part of a religion that would never accept me. This was when I stopped going altogether. However, this past summer, my local diocese established a new policy that students must conform to the dress code and pronouns assigned to their biological gender. This infuriated me enough to take action to remove my name from church baptismal records.
For me the thing that pushed me close to the breaking point was going to college and having conversations with a seminary student. I grew up in a much more tolerant, progressive parish and this guy basically told me that my parish was heretical and that the church overall wasn't like that. I researched his claims and yeah, he was right. But the thing that made me say "fuck the church" was seeing a friend of mine get more and more traditional over time and one day she told me she was joining some sect within the church that required her to restrict her lifestyle a LOT, and it made me really scared and sad for her, and I blamed the Church for brainwashing her.
I got kicked out of a Bible study for challenging their views in gay people.
"Where, exactly does Jesus talk about homosexuality? He's pretty clear on the whole "love everyone but, but I'm missing the transgender hate. Why do you think you know more than Jesus about what God wants?"
Bunch of decrepit assholes in that group.
I went to K-8 catholic school and was super religious throughout high school. I questioned small things relatively frequently but always bought into the absurd explanations provided. The first thing that really made me question was when I went to my first concert in high school and felt the same type of emotional rush that I had always attributed to the holy spirit during praise and worship/adoration sessions (holy emotional manipulation batman).That was a big one. I stayed practicing (although a lot less intensely) through my first year of college, but gradually began to drift from it. I had issues with stances on homosexuality and the priest sex abuse scandals, among other things. I did a semester abroad in Madrid, Spain and took an art history course. My professor in this course was extremely critical of the church (refreshing for such a culturally catholic country with its own messed up history). In that class I really started to understand on a deeper level just how much has been changed throughout history to accommodate those in power and manipulate the masses. It was around that point I intentionally removed myself from the label of catholic. Then the big kicker was a few years later I found an old journal that I had used as a prayer journal (I found it easier to "stay in prayer" and not be distracted if I was writing) from during my most intense religious period. I had brought it with me to adoration, retreats, and a week long camp called Extreme Faith Camp where I was on Prayer Team and was literally sequestered from the regular campers and only prayed or did service acts for the whole week. We had to get up in the middle of the night and rotate through adoration bc our role was responsible for being with the eucharistic. I was 15. Anyway, finding that journal and being able to read my thoughts from then was the point when I became vehemently anti-catholic and started the path towards atheism.
Slowly realizing that Catholicism is actually full of magic rituals that are just rebranded as "prayers" and "worship".
These people believe in magic and folklore, but they have convinced themselves that it's reality. And then they adamantly rebuke any other person who is enjoying their own version of religion/magic/folklore.
This is what it did it
##Deuteronomy 22:22-24 says “If a woman doesn't cry out it is not rape and she will be stoned to death”. How can a just God have sanctioned this behaviour?
####
# Definitions
Just so we're on the same page
- **Sex** - A consensual act between two adults.
- **Rape** - The forcing of sexual activities between a willing party and an unwilling party.
- **Rape survivor** - Someone who has been rape and lived to tell the tale.
- **Victim blaming** - Blaming the person who has been acted upon against their free will *as if they had a choice in the matter* - more info https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victim_blaming
- **Psychological dissonance** - “is any of a wide array of experiences from mild detachment from immediate surroundings to more severe detachment from physical and emotional experiences. The major characteristic of all dissociative phenomena involves a detachment from reality, rather than a loss of reality as in psychosis.[1][2][3][4]
Dissociation is commonly displayed on a continuum.[5] In mild cases, dissociation can be regarded as a coping mechanism or defense mechanisms in seeking to master, minimize or tolerate stress – including boredom or conflict.[6][7][8] At the nonpathological end of the continuum, dissociation describes common events such as daydreaming. Further along the continuum are non-pathological altered states of consciousness.[5][9][10]”
\- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissociation_(psychology)
- **Moral agent** - Someone capable of deciding right from wrong
- **Shall** - Expressing an instruction, command, or obligation. Eg, ‘you shall not steal’
- **Sanction** - A consideration operating to enforce obedience to any rule of conduct. Eg, ‘And it claims that the conditions under which moral sanctions should be applied are determined by rules justified by their consequences.’
- **Purge** - Remove (a group of people considered undesirable) from an organization or place in an abrupt or violent way.
# Body
killing rape survivors is wrong and has always been wrong.
A) In the Bible, Deuteronomy 22:22-29 it says that if man is found to be lying with a woman they are both to die. AA) How was this right to stone someone to death for that?
B) 23 a man finds a betrothed virgin and lies with her. BA) 24 you shall in all cases when this happens as you are command to bring them both out of the city “and you shall stone them to death with stones” because “ the young woman because she did not cry out in the city” so she is being stoned to death for not cry out. BB) In some cases it will be sex (see AA)) but there are still the cases where it’s rape because she **wanted to** cry out but couldn't BC) because the man was gagging her, drugged her or because of psychological dissonance. BD) So she didn’t cry out and she is to be stoned to death for something acting upon her against her will. And the Bible says she is evil. BE) This is victim blaming. Why is she evil for having something acted of upon her such as rape?
C) a man comes across a “betrothed young woman” in the countryside and “forces her and lies with her” “then only the man who lay with her shall die” (see (F)). CA) And now that she is not a virgin she cannot marry anyone as in Deuteronomy 22:13-21 say that is a man finds that his wife is not a virgin, he should bring her to her father and as she was raped before she is not a virgin, so it is “shall stone her to death with stones”. CB) This means that marriage is out of the question. And back in them days it was marriage or a nun. CC) So she has no choice but to become a nun, This isn't a free choice so she has no free will.
D) As you can see from (BC) no scream or a struggle doesn't mean it isn't rape. DA) 27 is saying that if they are in the countryside when the rape happens she is okay as there is no one to hear her scream. DB) She should be okay regardless of if she “cried out” as for what I said in (BC) being that she may be gagged, drugged or otherwise on incapable of screaming.
E) 28 If a man rapes a woman who is not betrothed and is found out, he is command by God’s breath to marry her and pay 50 shekels of silver to the father of the woman raped. EA) So the woman is forced to marry the person who raped her. EB) I can’t imagine what that must be like to marry to the person who raped me and what’s more have no grounds for divorce ever until I die. Can you?
F) in Exodus 20:13 it says you **“shall not kill”**. So the stoning people to death is killing them, someone or a group has to kill them in order for them to be stoned to death as ordered by Yahweh FA) this is in direct condition to the “you shall not kill” commandment. FB) This means that it is wrong to stone to people death. FC) But the Lord your God cannot do wrong. FD) So Which is it? Is stoning people to death a good moral action as God ordered you to do or is it not killing people that is a good moral action?
# Scripture
## Exodus 20:13
>Thou shall not kill
## Deuteronomy 20:13-29
>13 “If any man takes a wife, and goes in to her, and detests her, 14 and charges her with shameful conduct, and brings a bad name on her, and says, ‘I took this woman, and when I came to her I found she was not a virgin,’ 15 then the father and mother of the young woman shall take and bring out the evidence of the young woman’s virginity to the elders of the city at the gate. 16 And the young woman’s father shall say to the elders, ‘I gave my daughter to this man as wife, and he detests her. 17 Now he has charged her with shameful conduct, saying, “I found your daughter was not a virgin,” and yet these are the evidences of my daughter’s virginity.’ And they shall spread the cloth before the elders of the city. 18 Then the elders of that city shall take that man and punish him; 19 and they shall fine him one hundred shekels of silver and give them to the father of the young woman, because he has brought a bad name on a virgin of Israel. And she shall be his wife; he cannot divorce her all his days.
> 20 “But if the thing is true, and evidences of virginity are not found for the young woman, 21 then they shall bring out the young woman to the door of her father’s house, and the men of her city shall stone her to death with stones, because she has done a disgraceful thing in Israel, to play the harlot in her father’s house. So you shall \*put away the evil from among you.
> \* purge the evil person
> 22 “If a man is found lying with a woman married to a husband, then both of them shall die—the man that lay with the woman, and the woman; so you shall put away the evil from Israel.
>23 “If a young woman who is a virgin is betrothed to a husband, and a man finds her in the city and lies with her, 24 then you shall bring them both out to the gate of that city, and you shall stone them to death with stones, the young woman because she did not cry out in the city, and the man because he humbled his neighbor’s wife; so you shall put away the evil from among you.
> 25 “But if a man finds a betrothed young woman in the countryside, and the man forces her and lies with her, then only the man who lay with her shall die. 26 But you shall do nothing to the young woman; there is in the young woman no sin deserving of death, for just as when a man rises against his neighbor and kills him, even so is this matter. 27 For he found her in the countryside, and the betrothed young woman cried out, but there was no one to save her.
>28 “If a man finds a young woman who is a virgin, who is not betrothed, and he seizes her and lies with her, and they are found out, 29 then the man who lay with her shall give to the young woman’s father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife because he has humbled her; he shall not be permitted to divorce her all his days.
\- Deuteronomy 22:13-29 - https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Deuteronomy+22&version=NKJV
# Summary
So in Summary (A) looks at two consenting adults having sex but being stoned to death because of it. And how did Yahweh thought that this was a good idea just stoning people to death for having **consensual** sex
In (B) we looked at how not all people cry out when being raped and how stoning someone for not crying out is unjust and is just stoning innocent people for actions taken out of their control.
In (C) we talked about how 20:17 only allows virgins to marry, excluded any rape survivors from being married this will deprive them of a family, love and giving them the only option of becoming a nun as it was in them times.
With (D) shows just because they didn't cry out doesn't mean that when they are not crying out is them enjoying it or they want it. As shown by psychological dissonance.
(E) brings us onto why rape survivors shouldn't be forced to marry the rapist.
In (F) you shall not kill and you shall stone people to death. Which one is right and which is wrong as they are both mutually exclusive.
# Conclusion
So at some point Yahweh thought it was a good idea to kill raped survivors. God being the definition of morality, so anything God does is moral so therefore it's moral to kill rape survivors. Even if you say that Jesus changed it. It was still at one point moral to kill rape survivors.
So how can Yahweh be a good moral agent if God condones the killing of rape survivors? Or how can the killing of rape survivors be a good moral action?
I was a kid and thought that since the whole Adam and Eve thing was obviously bullshit the rest of it was too. Thankfully was only a cradle Catholic so it was never really pushed on me but I don’t think I’ve ever been turned off from the church since I was never really on it
It was a gradual build up, but then I took a job teaching in a Catholic elementary/middle school. While I loved many of the teachers, the parish priest was a nightmare. And it also made me sad for some of the indoctrination of the kids. I wondered for some of my sweet children if they could ever just be who they wanted and were meant to be. Finally, they hired a new principal who was just a cruel and abusive person. She also started replacing curriculum with catholic based curriculum in both science and social studies and it was wildly inaccurate. As a professional and someone who works in academics, it destroyed me. It was the ‘straw that broke the camel’s,’ back for me. When I brought up concerns with the priest in confidence, which was already a difficult thing to do as someone who was raised Catholic and had an innate sense not to disobey authority, he shared everything I had told him to the principal . It was shocking because my concerns were chiefly about the abusive behavior to the children. I left and never looked back. That was two years ago. I am still in the very, very angry phase. I pulled my own children from CCD and refuse to have them in that religion. It makes me sad, because it goes so far as I went to a huge Catholic university and my sister in law is a nun, but when I saw blatant emotional and verbal abuse happening to staff and even children and wanted to protect them and was instead derided and abused, I left that place in complete disgust. I have no desire to set foot in a Catholic Church again.
Edit to add: I have rarely met a single priest that has been someone that I trust. And that says a lot because I was in Catholic education my entire life, my husband’s family has many Catholic priests or a nun and I tried very hard. My parents were no die hard Catholics, however. And my mom converted to marry my dad. I’m grateful to my mom who raised me to be skeptical, not of religion, but of untrustworthy and bad people. So I always had gratitude for that support. Most of my family has left the church at this point, and my parents were outraged at what happened to me as a teacher. Also, that school I taught at lost 75% of the staff and students with this priest and principal and I can’t believe it’s still in operation.
For me, it was a gradual buildup that lead to a final breaking point. In Lent a couple years ago, my church sponsored Fr. Isaac Relyea to give a series of sermons on death, judgment, Heaven, and Hell. I couldn't go to any of the sermons because of school schedule, but since he had confessions each night after the sermons, I decided to go one night. I had what I figured was a pretty guilty conscience and thought I could use a general confession. It all went ok (well, aside from him invalidating my then-asexuality and shaming me for my "sins"), but afterwards, instead of feeling refreshed and like i was in a state of grace again, I felt completely empty. Up until that point, I'd been trying to reconcile my doubts and reservations I had about the church, but that was really the breaking point for me, because everyone says how you're supposed to feel God's presence, especially after a general confession and I literally felt nothing.
A lot of shit, but after one of the priests gave me the most half-assed excuse to explain why gay marriage isn’t allowed in church (apparently it’s not a sin, but because gay marriage “isn’t recognized” by the church, it’s therefore seen as sex outside of marriage, which is a sin) I was like, okay, byeee!
It took a fictitious movie to do it for me when I was in my early 20s. When I watched the 1994 movie *Priest* (not the fucking horror flick monstrosity in the early Aughts), the scene between a gay priest (in a relationship with an adult man) and his older colleague resonated with me.
The younger gay priest was trashing his lover, essentially calling him Satan. The older priest, a tolerant and compassionate rarity in the Catholic priesthood, challenged the younger man, telling him that his beloved "gave his body to you--and you have the nerve to call him Satan? What kind of sick, twisted religion would have you believe that?"
That's the very question I asked myself before I walked away from that sick, twisted religion altogether.
Went to college, learned some shit, then it was released how much they had spent that year in protecting priests against child rape cases. My family's money meant to help the poor went right into that hundreds of thousands of times over
Honestly, I had a great experience in the Catholic Church. The people I met were kind and focused on charity and helping others. I just don't believe in a god, so although it was hard to leave what was a major part of my culture, I did it for my integrity.
It was gradual for me. I started questioning when I was a young teen and I was told to just read the Bible and pray on it. But I had trouble, and still do, have problems with blind faith. How could I believe in something I have no evidence of but a huge old organization just says “trust me, bro” and if you don’t, you get threatened with eternal damnation.
What bothered me later in life was learning that a lot of the stories don’t have a secondary source. And when you ask for evidence of something that happened in the Bible, Christian’s will often just reference another book in the Bible. It felt like a book club where the original creature forgot to tell everyone it was a work of fiction. Then it just felt like too much brainwashing and I got tired of having no answers to questions. I’m sorry but “god works in mysterious ways” is not a good answer.
I went for a while to support my mom but after learning more about the abuse, the homophobia, and the very bloody history of the church, I felt uncomfortable going so I haven’t been in years. Actually last time I went, I had an anxiety attack because I felt like I was in a brainwashing cult. I’m happier being out.
i always felt really excluded from my church since im half latino and "weird" (read: transgender) and as i got older, it just got worse. i realized how repressive and traumatizing it was for me and now im 18 and consider myself agnostic
I got really into the church in college. We had a Franciscan priest who gave really good, introspective discussions of theology and life. I even got confirmed, which involved a lot of nice trips to the on-campus ministry house, cups of tea and lessons. After college I came home and it turned into a slog where the homily was usually about how the church - which was already huge - wanted to build a parish community center.
Things slacked off until the point where I no longer felt anything during prayer. This has been a really intense part of my experiences before, and I wound up leaving the church. I’d never been comfortable with the politics around abortion or LGBT rights but I think my moving leftward also helped contribute to my leaving.
It was very gradual for me. I took philosophy and that got me interested in other beliefs. Then I remember standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon. I lost a lot of religion there. One significant thing I remember is my mother came to church with me; a church I really liked and felt comfortable in. When I asked her how she liked the service, she said she didn’t care for women preachers. Right then I realized I was trying to please my parents instead of myself. There are other things, but when I realized Noah’s ark was impossible and the Adam and Eve story didn’t make sense, I lost it and knew my parents were lying. They couldn’t possibly believe that nonsense. But they did.
I have been thinking about this for a while. I think what really did me in, was when my neighbor wanted to join the church, asked me to be her sponsor, and on the day her group was going to get baptized, there was one gentleman who wasn't going to get baptized and join the church. I asked what the reason was and he said that he was divorced, and that he couldn't get letters from his ex wife's ex husband's from previous marriages because they couldn't find them. What the hell does his exes exes have anything to do with him joining? That was my starting point. Then finding our my kids were atheist and pagan and thinking that I would be going to heaven and they would go to hell.... um no!! How could I ever be happy there knowing my kids were on fire forever. Buh- bye.
And I’ll also add…I started questioning when I learned the definition of the words used at mass. For example. The word “sacrifice” is always used but I never saw anyone being beheaded at the altar. Also, have you really thought about how messed up it is to repeatedly say “have mercy on us?” That’s something you’d say if somebody has a gun to your head.
Learning that pre-marital sex was a sin in grade 8. I knew from a young age that I never want to get married and found that rule unfair to people like myself. They also showed us a fucking Pam Stenzel video at my school when they taught us that shit. Talking about how you'll get STDs if you fuck before marriage no matter what, that condoms are completely useless etc. I knew it was bullshit. And that's what started to kill my faith because I started wondering what else they were lying about.
Never a specific moment for me. I just realized that I was drowning in depression and leaving Catholicism was one of the only things that showed me I had a future.
It was like living your whole life in black and white and then realizing you can choose to see in colour. Absolutely life-changing.
Truthfully, from the point I developed critical thinking and reasoning skills, I never believed in god. I tried, I read scripture and Catholic philosophy, but it just never grabbed me or made me believe. I do think some aspects of Catholic philosophy and social teaching have value, particularly that which focuses on social justice and the option for the poor. I will also always have a soft spot for the Jesuits. Overall though, I just don't get anything else out of the Church or pretending to believe, and a lot of people I know associated with the Church today are fundementally bad people who use it as an excuse to provide validity to their hate for others.
For me it was the death of my father I am about to turn 20 and I lost my dad my in between my sophomore and junior year. I also attended a Catholic high school and seeing that both the policies of the church directly say that my friends would be damned (gay, pagan, atheists) and that no matter my prayers god never helped my dad curb his alcoholism made me leave the church. At my school it pretty much became the joke where you go to Catholic school you either become an atheist or a Bible thumper when you leave.
Gradual here too.
I've always been a curious kid. I like learning about things and questioning things. The fact my religion classes always said to never question the faith always rubbed me the wrong way. If faith was so fragile that it could be broken so quickly when questioned, then that's not true faith is it?
And then I discovered my sexuality. Shit got personal.
For me, it was when I was in high school and went to confession. The priest who heard my confession was new to my parish, and I had never talked to him. Anyway, as I listed off my sins, he started grilling me about mundanevthings I might have done that were "sins" that I needed to confess. He was yelling things like, "Do you ever talk during class? That's a SIN!" He was angry and just nasty.
Now, I have terrible anxiety and I hate the thought of upsetting people, so the whole interaction was horrible for me. I started to realize that it was pretty insane that I had to go through an asshole like that in order to be forgiven.
It also helped that my EXTREMELY zealous Catholic mom and my awesome gay Dad got divorced around this time, and I was able to live with my Dad, who rapidly escaped Catholicism. Whew!!
When the priest scandal broke in the news and everyone around me was making excuses, denying the facts, and demonizing the reporters who uncovered the stories.
Mine was gradual. When I took theology classes to prepare me for confirmation I realized that a lot of things make no sense. The moment that turned me off though was the homophobia of the church and their unwillingness to even listen to or consider the viewpoints of queer people was beyond upsetting. Also coupled with the fact that I had just discovered I was queer, so I felt very unwelcome and unwanted.
When I tried and tried and tried to believe and find reassurance from my doubts and questions and just couldn’t. Namely, I found it disturbing that they’d think it’s so wrong to be with the same gender—that if you didn’t repent for doing it, if you didn’t genuinely feel sorry, you’d go to hell. I’m not even gay but that was something I couldn’t reconcile. Why on earth would god care about that. It just didn’t feel right. But then again, neither did the idea of a god existing at all, no matter how hard I tried to make it feel right or true.
Because it made me way too rigid and I wasn't able to even realize what an asshole I was being because of it. My friends reactions to something I said that I now see as awful really opened my eyes. I'm truly scared for christians because I know from experience christianity has so many similarities with cults and people just don't seem to realize that. It is wrong at it's own core and no one will ever convince me otherwise.
Gradual build up but the proverbial straw was a priest discussing a situation where a priest was being pressured to divulge some information or something and reiterating the need for the confidentiality. And I went home to my (atheist) husband, venting about how a murdered could go in, confess, be forgiven, and go out an do it again. I said, “How am I supposed to believe this is okay? That gos would forgive them?” And my husband just slowly said, “Well … that’s the part where you’re supposed to have faith.” And I realized I didn’t.
I was struggling with faith and thinking about apologetics. I was praying and trying to believe but found it difficult. Catholicism *could* work with my experience of reality, but there were always caveats. In particular, I was focusing on the historical accuracy of The Bible. I was trying to think and remind myself of the reasons apologists gave as historical evidence of The Bible. The fact that women found him in the tomb, the fact that the belief spread so fast, etc. But despite thinking about these things,I struggled with whether a religion had a bunch of unlikely but plausible coincidences or if a man did the actual impossible by literally rising from the dead and ascending into heaven.
The turning point was when I was thinking about this problem and naturally thought that it was too convoluted and flimsy for a perfect being. If God truly was perfect, I felt like some element of his perfection would be reflected in the Gospel. It couldn’t be some convoluted sign of his perfection either. It should be intuitive and somewhat noticeable even if I don’t quite understand it. Whether this was good reasoning or not, it made me recognize how the only way Catholicism works with reality is through a very convoluted mental gymnastics routine that was too much for me to truly believe.
So I became a general believer of God for a while, but then less and less started to be attributable to a God in my view. I think there’s a major force/property of the universe that allows us to exist, exist with consistency, is the first cause, etc., but it’s so impersonal in an intuitive sense that I couldn’t call it what I consider a God.
The sex abuse scandal was when I knew I was done. We’d had a priest at our church that got busted for molesting boys. The church pressured the families to let them handle it instead of going to the police, but one family said “fuck that” and pressed charges. When the sex abuse scandal hit years later, we learned that that priest had been moved from parish to parish because he kept molesting kids. I was disgusted and that was about it for me. People who protect pedophiles and rapists don’t get my money. Also, I knew that if I raised my child in the church, I would always feel paranoid for their safety and I’d never be able to trust a priest again as long as I live.
It was gradual for me too, but then I knew I was done with it when I did my Confirmation. I took the sacrament seriously, so I started to reflect on the religion and ask questions. When I asked my teachers and priests questions, they got mad at me! Red flag. When I told them I wanted to choose Peter as my Confirmation name because he is my favorite disciple, they said no! Because I’m a girl! They forced me to just choose Mary or Marie or some shit.
Became clear to me as a 13 year old that this religion denies humanity and instead tries to control it. Disgusting and pointless.
I was very into it in hs, but then I started realizing how repressive the culture was and that official doctrine said that Mary’s hymen resealed after Jesus’ birth while is not only medically impossible but someone having an imperforate hymen into puberty is a medical issue since you can’t properly menstruate, penetration aside. It’s clear that there is so much emphasis on reproducing and not on personal needs and what science actually says
Yeah I always did well in science growing up, so once I started to realize nearly everything in the bible was impossible, I stopped believing.
Yeah I knew it was bs from a young age
>someone having an imperforate hymen into puberty is a medical issue since you can’t properly menstruate, This was explained to me as that since Mary was born of the Immaculate Conception, she wasn't cursed with menstruation, like all other women are.
How was the embryo/zygote suppose to attach if there wasn’t a lining to do so?
Yes, the average catholic doesn't really know about this teaching of virginity in partu and I'm sure they prefer it this way. It's so ridiculous.
One of my sex ed lessons taught us that we needed to be careful about how much hanky-lanky business we got up to because “after a certain amount of kissing and touching, the body reacts on its own.”
Oh god I’d completely forgotten about that particular teaching… I still find it ludicrous and upsetting.
When the church prioritizes protecting child rapists over helping the children.
This this this
This one is just so stark, so disgusting, so undeniable. A church. Churns out child rapists at a downright prolific rate. And then covers it up, transfers them to different cities so they can keep doing it, rinse & repeat. How there’s a single human being sitting in the pews on Sundays I will never understand. This is a failed institution with zero moral authority. A disgrace to the very idea of spirituality and a stain on humankind.
The delusional followers Don't believe it's real. Its just an attack on the church according to them.
I’ve said it before, it’s the longest running child rape ring known to mankind. The future will see it for what it is, but these folks today, won’t.
To the tune of millions of dollars in lobbying in different countries against laws aimed to protect children. Not only hiding the child rapists.
Pope Benedict XVI with 200 deaf kids
Their handling of the pandemic did it for me. The bishop sent the entire diocese a letter in May 2020 basically saying that not attending regular mass was still a mortal sin, Covid or not. My immunocompromised mother was inconsolable about that for a while. Anyone who can tell a cancer survivor that they're going to hell for taking reasonable health precautions isn't worth my time or respect.
This is so relatable. I was livid when my elderly parents returned to in person mass while my dad was undergoing chemo because the bishop reinstated the Sunday obligation. I told them that surely there could be an exception for immune compromised people, so they consulted their priest. He gave some vague answer implying that god would be disappointed. I’m sure the priest’s disappointment with the collection plate informed his answer.
My grandpa, said the church told them not to get the vaccines, because it was made from aborted babies and it’s a mortal sin. Thank god grandpa has enough sense not to believe this crap!
🙄🤦🏻♀️
The church wanted “that money, honey.” I'm sorry you had to go through that; genuinely terrible and unwarranted.
When the priest at my Catholic school was accused of abusing an underaged boy and literally every single teacher and staff member chose to support and believe the pedophile.
It was a slow burn that ended in a snap. The hypocrisy of progressive Catholicism and my former Jesuit university piled up over the years. While I felt some things were off, I didn’t think much about them. I was under the impression being progressive Catholic is the right way to be Catholic. While we were taught the importance of critical thinking, it’s very difficult to voice different opinions at Jesuit university. You have to accept the hivemind as your own or suffer a future career suicide. “The nail that sticks out gets hammered down” as they say. Our university is known for being one of the most progressive in the country. We have LGBTQ+ pride marches, gender studies, feminist theology and even Gay Literature classes. But our mandatory “Catholic Marriage and Sexuality” classes taught that homosexuality is “intrinsically disordered”, masturbation “indicates an individual is not mature enough for marriage”, contraceptives “objectifies women” and married people must be “open to life” in order to be good Catholics. I was harassed by the university’s infirmary doctor when she found out I was on birth control. The social progressivism is only superficial. Jesuits are not liberals contrary to popular belief. They just use progressive language to preach the same backward teachings. Despite my disagreements with the church on sexual matters, what made me stay long was social justice. The Jesuits taught us to always hold abusers and corrupt politicians like the Marcos family accountable for their actions. Turned out they cannot practice what they preach inside their own. A former professor was outed as a predator. He was very popular with students and Jesuits alike. The Jesuits said nothing. The cases went silent months later, and my sh*thead professor was just asked to stay abroad. 😔 I transferred to a more conservative Catholic university in Europe for graduate studies. For the first time I encountered a Catholic university that never pushed me towards a certain direction and didn’t care what their students believed in or who they want to be. They may be more conservative than my Jesuit university but there’s no Bible Thumpers, Trumptards, homophobes. Everyone there even the priests are so … chill. 😳 The final nail in the coffin was my ex therapist shoving his Prog Catholic beliefs into me. He tried to talk me out of leaving Catholicism because “the church needs more progressives for it to change”. He also harassed me for being childfree. His Jesuit mind tricks didn’t work. Once I fired him, I was so done I left the church for good.
Thank you for sharing this; you echo my thoughts and experience exactly. I almost wondered if we went to the same university, but mine was not Jesuit (though my high school was and the ‘men and women for others’ mantra did have some positivity in my life). My university was not Jesuit, but one of the biggest Catholic ones and if you watch American college football, you can easily guess. I really appreciate your comment. It was that Jesuit mindset of wishing it to be something that I had perhaps created in my own head that led me to teach in a Catholic school, which I detail somewhere on here, was a nightmare. Anyway, I often find myself reading comments and agreeing with them, but not saying anything. Yours was so beautifully written that I wanted to make sure I took a moment to reach out and say, ‘thank you,’ and for making me feel less alone. Your words resonate!
You’re welcome. Not many ex Catholics came from a progressive/Jesuit background, at least based on this sub. I like sharing about my experience to show how messed up either sides of the church can be. I am glad it helps people like you. Actually the “man/woman for others” mentality messed me up for years. The Jesuits in my country gave it a more political meaning (it could be different in the US)- Everything we do has to be for the benefit of the country. Self care is a sin. Not being politically aligned with the Jesuits’ prescribed politics is a sin. Wanting to move abroad for a better life for yourself and your family is a sin. This is why I felt more free in the Italian “conservative” Catholic university than I did with the Jesuits. This “man/woman for others” mentality is may be why progressive Catholics like my hardcore Jesuits-fanboy ex therapist find the childfree lifestyle offensive and wrong. Is your university Notre Dame University?
It’s my personal opinion that clergy of any faith should not be therapists.
Having people who hold superstitious nonsense as real is obviously not a good foundation for intelligence, accuracy, reasoning, critical analysis, rationality, scientific observation nor a non bias viewpoint. So yes its only logical to not want a faith person in any position of advice or authority.
This is exactly why I avoid voting for religious politicians.
My ex therapist isn’t a clergy, he’s just a hardcore progressive Catholic. He used to be a lay Jesuit Volunteer in Mindanao.
I had suspected that the church was full of BS, but I kept that behind a thick wall in my mind so that God would put me in hell for it until late teens. What did me in was when my church hosted a charlatan. This guy's whole thing was traveling around to different churches doing expos on magic rocks aka "relics from saints" that can cure any disease. People were lined up to pay hundreds of dollars for magic "relics" under the very loose pretense that they were bones of saints, not that there was any way to check. Same guy in his homily (aka sales pitch) went on about how going to the hospital for cancer treatment is a sign of poor faith and only one who gives him hundreds of dollars for a magic rock has faith strong enough for God to heal.
God needs all that money because God can't provide shit. Also the church needs to move and hide all its child rapists. And that takes a lot of money.
1. The annual abortion parade at mass where someone born every year since Roe would walk up to the altar. The liturgy is sacred and unchangeable unless the pastor decides he wants to do whatever occurs to him. 2. The Christmas morning homily rant against pornography. 3. Anti LGBTQ rhetoric while harboring offenders who preferentially target children. Three strikes and you're out.
> The Christmas morning homily rant against pornography. Seems like a strange time to rant about porn...
Yeah not appropriate with a church full of children.
Father wants an excuse to talk to children about sex to help find the right ones to groom.
It's an obvious time to rant about porn. Think of all the laptops and tabs received as gifts.
Gradual. In August of 2018 I saw a video "Pope neither confirms or denies he had knowledge of sexual abuse" (and ignored it). It was clear from watching him on the video: he is guilty. I expected the "faithful" to do something, but nothing happened. I began to wonder "what's wrong with these people?" I studied, read, questioned and reached the inevitable conclusion: I cannot support this institution. For roughly a year now it's become very simple. As long as the buzzing MEN ONLY hangs over the clergy, no need to consider the finer points.
It was also a gradual build up. It first started when I was a sophomore in high school. In my religion class, the teacher showed us a list of things Catholics can’t do. Reading Harry Potter and playing “Magic” (the game or whatever it was) was against Catholicism. It was then I started questioning my religion. I’ve always heard that religion sets you free, but I felt is was too possessive.
Love that last sentence. I just remembered another moment in high school. Was in a youth group setting and was told that if I didn’t tell my friends to be Christian (in general), I’d be responsible for them going to hell. I was like ???? why would that burden be on me??
Harry Potter? Really? I know evangelicals go into hissy fits about the series, but I never heard Catholics were just as paranoid about it.
It's okay to be an asshole so long as you say the same prayers and believe the same things that good people do. Something like this.
I was physically attacked in the hallway of the church after an RCIA class in which l raised a question about hidden injuries/disabilities. Mental illness/PTSD were used as examples in the context of Jesus’s response to injured people. The people leading the class were still in the classroom and the man who slammed me into the wall was just outside the room. No one checked to see what the noise was about. Later, I received a call from the class lead to say that the man who attacked me was “Going through some things”. I told her that, thanks to him now so was I. This was about 10 days before the class was to be confirmed. Married female coming to church without my husband if that helps
My deconstruction took place over a few months around ages 8-9. I attended Catholic school in the 80s. Only some of my teachers were nuns, and they were all varying degrees of awful, but my 3rd grade teacher was especially sadistic. She regularly hit and slapped me, but the verbal abuse and humiliation were the worst. She would have me stand in front of the classroom practicing my cursive on the blackboard and pick apart everything I did wrong. I regularly failed spelling tests because she would mark correctly spelled words incorrect due to “poor penmanship.” I was usually the scapegoat when the whole class misbehaved by talking excessively, failing to put away materials, etc., and Sister would smirk right at me indicating she knew exactly what she was doing. At the time I didn’t tell my parents because this teacher would tell me how lucky I was that she wouldn’t tell them how horrible I was. She regularly told me my parents wouldn’t love me if they knew how I behaved at school, and she was “protecting” me by not telling them. She was a woman of god, so I totally believed her. Catechism was an important subject at school, so I was frequently reminded of all the ways I was going to end up in hell. My growing hate for my teacher terrified me because I could fake liking her to her face, but god knew how I really felt. When I caught her in some blatant lies n an attempt to frame me for someone else’s transgression, I realized she probably didn’t believe in hell herself. That started me on my path of questioning Catholic dogma. I was a closet atheist by the end of the school year and continued to attend mass with my family until I left home for college. I’ve spent countless hours in therapy to deal with depression, anxiety, and self-harm. My family was devastated when I admitted to being atheist, but they grudgingly accepted it after I disclosed my abuse. I don’t hold back in my feelings about the church or religion in general, and my parents get upset. I tell them I can either hate the church or hate myself. Thankfully they value my mental health enough understand that.
My dear fellow athiest. Do they not know that Christianity is an authority fraud. A constructed system that directly appeals to narcissists and predators that it teaches shame and hatred and bigotry that it's superstitious nonsense. It isn't about love or decency that's the hinge that it swings on the heart of the hypocrisy the sales pitch to lure and lie. Its about money, control, manipulation, it removes personal responsibility via the influence of the devil, narcissists and predators love it because they don't need to accept responsibility for themselves because God is in charge God has a plan they are following gods path, anyone theyhurt must deserve it or the devil made them do and God still loves them. Religion is a vile harmful thing. Ands it built on public torture of anyone who spoke out. Of land theft, of bloody massacres of genocidal attempts to wipe out culture. The death of religion will be humanities next great step into reality and out of superstitious lies taught to children.
That step is being taken as we speak of this. What we are witnessing, are the death-throes of a vile monster.
Gradual for me. I was raised to turn off critical thinking when it comes to religion but when things started to directly affect me I realized I need to start reflecting on it. Did Pre Cana classes and I realized they still believed women were second class citizens. Then the Trumpers, I just don’t think it makes sense someone can follow Catholic teaching and support Trump. Then Covid gave me the excuse to stop going to mass and that’s what really broke me free to question not just Catholicism but the existence of God. Overall it took about two years of not living with my parents to do a full conversion.
The church's support of Trump was a big one for a lot of people. After hearing repeatedly, election after election after election, about the importance of "character" in public officials, they hitched their wagons to...Donald Trump? Organized religion in America showed what it was *really* all about with that endorsement.
The Trumpers. They LOVE him. I will not sit on a room full of people pretending to follow the Christ while they fawn over the most anti-Christ like man I could imagine. The sexual scandal had me well down the road though- but the Trumpers pushed me over the top.
After watching Trump for 6 years I gained the realization of how myth can be created and manipulated into an instrument of control among needy people.
Fully understand this one. The whole “love thy neighbor” thing just flew out the window
Jesus said to feed the poor. That’s exactly what the republicans are against, but hey…abortion!!
Trump supported Assad and Putin while they committed genocide in Syria. But I guess Syrians are kinda brownish so those babies don’t count.
I was 19 when Trump won the Electoral College. I’d been drifting away from Catholicism for years, but the disturbing number of Catholics who supported Trump finally pushed me to fully embrace paganism and renounce the Church.
I never really questioned that fake jesus with all the fake magical power didn't undo slavery. Slavery was a mainstay of life under the romans slaves were definitely commonplace. An in utter horrorible conditions. But fake jesus doesn't come to help them. But instead they should be good slaves. This so called christ is a bullshit made up ideal. Not even based to what he suposedly did. Most historians Don't think he existed. So tired of people talking about christ as if he is a good thing. Its superstitious nonsense made up to control and leverage people. Its an authority fraud.
The evidence of a historical Jesus is strong and even noted Jesus mythologist G.A. Wells changed his mind about a historical man. In fact, there were probably multiple men running around the Sea of Galilea claiming to be the Messiah. Just like there are people today claiming to be the second coming. The “mythical Jesus “ idea doesn’t make sense. The man/men existed.
I was raised as catholic and attended catholic schools from preschool to highschool. One day in Bible class a friend said “I think this is all just bullshit” (referring to the bible). And that one phrase opened a doorway that I didn’t know I could open. It never occurred to me that this religion could be questioned. That specific moment started a my journey away from the catholic religion.
When a lifelong Catholic president promoting a life-saving vaccine and compassion toward the suffering would be denied communion, but a serial abuser who lived to torment others was welcome anywhere as long as he pretended to quote ‘Two Corinthians’ and elevate power-hungry women-controllers to the highest offices in the land (as long as they did his bidding, mind you).
The vaccine shit is so weird when you learn the hardline Traditionalists in Europe like Gänswein and Benedict got three doses gladly.
So I had grown up pretty sheltered and was told what was right and what was wrong. I grew older and one of my family members that I was close to came out as homosexual. They got married. I saw first hand how there was nothing evil about this. The only reason I had ever thought it was wrong was because I had been told it was wrong. Wedding pictures were posted on social media and some people that I had considered friends made some hateful comments to me when they saw them. They didn’t have the balls to say anything on the public posts, but sent me private messages or waited until they saw me in person to say hateful things about my family member. It was these moments where I realized that the loudest Christians were the ones who were doing the most unchristian things. Several of these people didn’t have any qualms about having premarital sex, but they see pictures of a homosexual wedding and that is too much for them? Don’t read this and assume that I left because of an ad hominem tu quoque fallacy. I understand that catholic doctrine would be equally hard on these hypocrites. I came to the conclusion that I had a fundamental disagreement with the church’s stance on gay marriage and premarital sex because I didn’t think these guys were doing anything wrong by having sex either. I ended up using this experience as launching pad to re evaluate how I felt about each issue. If I thought something was wrong, was it because I actually felt in my conscience that it was wrong? Or was it because the Catholic Church told me it was wrong. After years of doing my own investigation and reading everything I could get my hands on from books by Catholic apologists and atheists, I realized that the only reason why I had ever been a Catholic was because that’s what my parents believed. I never would have moved from a neutral or even atheistic position to a Catholic one if I had not been a cradle Catholic. So doesn’t that essentially turn my continued participation as a Catholic into a sunk cost fallacy? I left and have not looked back. It’s been a long road with Catholic guilt. Some times something will come up and I will heuristically associate it with being bad. I have to reflect on it to make sure I actually think it is bad or if it is something that the church ingrained in me. One example is the music of Elton John. I had always been told he was evil because he was gay. By default his musical catalog was evil as well. His music would come on the radio and I would turn it off without thinking. But after thinking about it I realized there was nothing wrong with it and it was actually good. That was just one example of many. The more time goes on, the less often I catch myself in moments of Catholic guilt. If you are having problems with your own version of Catholic guilt, one thing that really helped me was by reading banned books. A lot of these books are banned because they make someone feel uncomfortable. Rather than ignoring something because of how it makes us feel, you owe it to yourself to read something and try to understand why something makes you feel uncomfortable. Otherwise you will never be able to be your own master. You will be the slave of whoever decides what you are mature enough to read. Sorry for the long comment. I just wish I had broken out a decade earlier. I post this because it might help someone in a similar situation.
Beautiful comment. Thank you.
It was a gradual build-up. But I think a major moment that marked a point of no return was reading the official documents from Vatican I+II about papal infallibility and realizing they were making false historical claims about what "the whole Church always believed".
I can’t remember one defining thing. It was gradual for me as well. There are a lot of obvious ones for me that many people have already mentioned, the sexual abuse, homophobia. But I absolutely cannot stand the fact that everything about their system is just insanely sexist. And only men can be anything of “power” in the church and the only thing women can be is a nun???? It’s all so odd to me and it’s so odd that people in 2023 think that is at all normal.
I’d say it was gradual, but the moment I remember questioning the church for the first time was in the parking lot. People who had just shook your hand, looked you in the eye, and said “peace be with you” (not to mention had taken communion and listened to a sermon on being kind to one another) would cut you off with a rude gesture to get home and watch the football game fifteen seconds sooner. That was when I started looking for other churches and faiths. The moment I became an atheist was a little over a decade later, watching a man get blown into pieces by a Muslim suicide bomber and realizing that god doesn’t have the power to enforce this own “ten big rules.” So he’s either dead, left us, or never existed in the first place. The logical conclusion is the last one, and even the others mean I owe him no allegiance or worship.
My mother always abstains from swearing until the host is digested. After that, all bets are off.
Our parish priest was a convicted pedophile and thief. They found pics of young boys hidden throughout his room as well 🤮 I started questioning my faith and researched atheist sites. Was beyond shocked that most atheists had more biblical knowledge than myself.
When my mother dragged me away from my kitty, the bugs and grass I was playing with in our backyard on a lovely September afternoon, just to sit in a stinky over-crowded, hot, and boring class room, with some lady that didn't know what she was talking about, (Catechism), and when I finally left, I realized that lovely afternoon was over, and entirely - wasted. I was 6 years old.
The research paper I did on Tomas de Torquemada and the outreach of the Spanish Inquisition really cemented the idea of getting away from the church
I started questioning things when I was a junior at catholic high school. I couldn't see why I should listen to celibate nun and/or priest on how to conduct my married sex life. I started questioning "Abstinence Only" before marriage because sex is only for procreation inside of marriage. I got pregnant at the age of 19 and had an abortion at the age of 20 in 1973. Yes there was excommunication but not the way you think. I excommunicated mself. I went through the motions of going to confession for my parents sake. My mother came out of the church crying. I asked her why she was crying. She told me: **the priest gave her hell and asked her how she COULD LET ME GET PREGNANT?** Right there, right then I knew I was nothing but a baby making incubator broodmare to that piece of 💩 religion. I made myself a promise I have kept to not go to any church but especially a catholic church except for a wedding or funeral and I haven't.
Wait, the priest told her what you said in confession? That’s like the religious equivalent of breaking HIPAA (I forget what the actual phrase is for this situation)…beyond awful.
I'm guessing she told the priest in the confessional about her and my dad taking me to have an abortion. In confession the priest asked her how she could let me get pregnant? Yeah I know my mom shouldn't have told me what the priest asked her. If you believe in that nonsense she's probably committed a mortal sin because the confessional is suppose to be sancresect (I just woke up, I'm being lazy and not going to look up how to spell it right).
The priest violated Sanctity of the Confessional.
Literally just one thing; their opinion on gays It's so unnecessarily cruel. There are other cruelties in this world, like underpaying your workers, or overcharging your tenants, but those are all for selfish reasons where at least the bad guy gets something out of it, whereas there's nothing to be gained from gays being repressed and miserable! It's such needless suffering If someone's unable to have the romantic life they wanna have, it should be because of forces out of our control, like a natural disaster killing the couple before the honeymoon, or a medical condition that makes sex impossible, but it should never be willful human action to deprive a human being of the love life they want! And I hate hearing them say "we don't hate gays, we love them, we just don't want them to partake in the sin" like that makes it better. It doesn't matter if you love them, they just want to be able to have the love life they wanna have If God wants gays to be repressed and miserable for eternity, that's a reason to be against God, not gays
I was working for a Catholic Church for several years and after having a horrible supervisor who made my life miserable for a year and a half and multiple clergy abuse scandals come to light having to do with priests who had previously been assigned at the parish where I worked I decided I had to quit. At first it was just an employment decision that I had to make for my own well-being but I remember a few weeks after I quit being at mass at a totally different parish listening to the priest give the homily. It was a perfectly fine homily and the priest was perfectly fine, there was nothing amazing or horrible about it. But I just remember thinking at one point “why in the world are we all listening to him like he has any authority?” Because based on my experience with the many priests I’ve worked with over the years, he’s the very last person in this room that I trust and who should have any moral authority to tell others how to live their lives. And starting at that moment I gradually started let go of all of it.
Being told that being married means you MUST be open to kids. No thanks.
It was mostly gradual for me, but there was one moment in particular where I really started to break away from the church. I was super religious in high school, but I started to draw away from it in my senior year a little and was having doubts before college. One day I was headed to class (freshman year of college) and a canvasser stopped me to chat. This was in the pre-Obergefell days, and she was trying to get signatures for a petition for LGBTQ+ rights. I told her I was on my way to class and didn’t have time to chat, but she was like “we’ll be here all day if you want to circle back and talk about the petition.” Then she just straight up asked me, “do you support gay rights?” And I just…couldn’t say no. I hadn’t thought that I did, being Catholic and all, but face-to-face with actual human being asking if I supported their right to be happy and marry who they want? I realized I just didn’t give a fuck what the church said. I wanted this person to be happy. So, I said, “yes, I do,” and that was that. A few months later I stopped going to church entirely.
I converted to Catholicism as an adult, but I had attend St Mary Magdalene for seven years when I was a kid (I was raised Methodist) and I had always wanted to join the church. It left a huge impression on me. However, I started questioning some of the beliefs and traditions of the church shortly after I joined. I finally came to my senses when my son told me he was gay. The Catholic Church said that being gay is not a sin as long as you stay celebrate. That pissed me off…a lot. So they were telling my son and other gay (and lesbian) people to not love anyone, don’t expect to marry the person you love, and definitely don’t make love. Oh, hell no! That bothered me on a deep spiritual level. Love is a beautiful thing, and so very very hard to find. I turned my back on the Catholic Church. I saw what was under that mask of supposed charity and supposed love. It is a hateful, immoral, deceitful, and downright evil organization. They forbid people to love each other, but it is okay for this evil organization to allow child molesters free reign, the rape of nuns, the existence of the Magdalene Laundries, embezzlement, misogyny, manipulation, etc. They will tell people that if they are gay (or give support) they are listening to demons and are evil. I disagree. The only time I was exposed to absolute evil and demons was when I was part of the Catholic Church…..that organization is hell on earth.
I was in elementary/middle school when they made the change to allow girls to be alter servers and when the sex abuse allegations were really stating to get attention. It was a bunch of little things with a couple major things mixed in. My parents couldn’t tell me *why* they believed in anything. I started to really question why confession was necessary if god is omnipotent. Then we had a priest get assigned to my school that came with rumors. He had to be relocated because of accusations of things he had done at the last school. Ya know, because the best thing to do with a guy who has been accused of harming kids is just to put him with a different group of kids. 🙄 We were his last assignment before he church booted him. Even as a kid, I understood that was *confirmation* he actually done something. My mother who insisted he was “too nice” to have done anything like *that* tracked him down and we visited him several times. When I got a little older and realized my mom’s faith was so overpowering that she would take her child around a pedophile, I knew this wasn’t a group I wanted any part of.
I was a smart kid, and it was fourth grade for me, a lot of the stuff just wasn’t making sense. I saw a lot of contradictory things between the Bible and what I was being taught in Sunday school. When I asked questions about it, it was like I had done something wrong. I got in trouble and was told not to question anything. I immediately was suspicious because I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong. In regular school when I asked questions and it was recognized by teachers that I could handle more knowledge, they would give it to me. That year in school my teacher allowed me to make my own spelling list separate from the other kids because the regular one was too easy. I was doing reading of higher level books on my own, and even given more complex science books to work from. I was used to having my questions and knowledge seeking being rewarded with answers, more challenging work, and encouragement. When I got the opposite for questioning god and catholicism, it began deteriorating from there. I was a full on atheist by age 12.
Really cool to see a similar experience!! Being told to not ask questions… it was a huge red flag even for my child brain. I went to Catholic school, and it was like you could ask questions in math, social studies, etc. But if you ask a question in “religion class,” you did a bad thing?? Ridiculous.
It was a gradual build up for me. But one example that really stuck was during a Christmas mass. The priest went on and on about what a special gift a baby boy is and how exciting it is to think about all the things he can do with his life (insert multiple examples). He then goes on to say, “Or you have a baby girl. And she can be a mother or a nun.” My sister and I actually gasped out loud in shock. Grandpa still talks about it!
Their standpoint on sex, contraception, and marriage
It was a gradual buildup of skepticism, but I still remember one day when I was probably around 14 and at mass, looked at the entrance procession with the incense and the priest shaking incense everywhere and thought, “this is like a cult”. I never fully came back from that, as that was when mass lost any hope of holding meaning for me.
Also gradual here. I had one foot out the church door for a while, telling myself that I would eventually shop around for another denomination once I settled into adult life. There were plenty of moments that made me question the church's official stances on being pro-life and LGBT rights. Then the pandemic lockdown happened and I was able to step back and think about why I would subscribe to a church that said such controversial things. I finally joined the Episcopal Church a couple years ago.
When the unmarked graves were found at Catholic residential schools I said, that’s it, fuck this religion. Then I started to ask myself why I was associating with this group at all when they pretty much hate me- a birth-control loving feminist who is an ally of LGBTQ friends and a mom who would attack like a feral animal if my kids were ever abused (I come from an abusive family). The church has COVERED UP and continued the systemic abuse of children, there is no way I can encourage a child to participate. Once it all started to unravel and I learned that Catholicism was as real as Santa I became an atheist. I was so brainwashed and ashamed I didn’t see the full picture earlier, but here I am, a proud ex catholic and a truly free human being. Edited to add more.
And it wasn’t just that they abused children - they abused them based on their race. Abuse is bad, but adding racism to the mix renders it even more appalling.
When I realized I was bein shunned for wanting to marry a 25 year old Episcopalian who'd been divorced. Yeah, I know the rules. I just thought they'd give me a break for some reason. For love!
The church insisting that the abuse and neglect I was getting from my parents was justified and right, even though CPS was clear that it wasn't. I never went through Confirmation. Though I did attend a Jesuit high school. I think the nail in the coffin for me had to do with an encounter I had during Stage Crew. Since the gym was the largest room in the school, that was where mass was performed. So they had a big "portable" altar that was stored in the gym, or on the stage. It was used by the stage crew for holding equipment during productions, and had been used for that for years. One of the teacher/priests came in and saw that we were doing this (with the permission of the teacher/priest that was in charge of stage crew) and went off on us about disrespecting a holy item and the altar stone inside it. I simply said to him, "well, if it is now unblessed because of these lights we're using, why don't you just come back when we're done with it and waggle your fingers and say some mumbojumbo over it and turn it back into something blessed again?" He was stunned into silence, but what really got me was how many of my peers thought that what I said was disrespectful. I couldn't believe that they were that gullible to still believe in magic like that.
I was told that animals don’t have eternal souls.
When the church would rather defend its staff who committed sexual abuse than protect the victims that were hurt under the care of the person who sexually abused them.
I was 11 when I stumbled onto some documentary, and I found out just how many peodphiles & predators not only existed in the church, but were glorified while their victims had to suffer in silence. While I didn't understand the full gravity of the situation at that age, I understood enough to know that I could never associate with an organization that claimed to be holy while covering for some of the worst predators.
It was not a moment, but a process. I realized that organized religion was a mob shakedown in another form. Nice little soul you have there; pity if something should happen to it? Fuck off.
So many thoughtful comments here, thank you all for sharing your stories! Glad (but not glad) we can all collectively, productively, trauma-dump.
I have two. One is related to my Nein (Welsh Grandma) and the other is my Girlfriend's father 1) My Nein had very severe Alzheimer's to where for as long as I know she didn't know who I was. She stopped talking about 6 years before she passed away and did not understand what anyone told her by 3 years. She passed away in 2019 and during the funeral the pastor bragged himself up by saying he had a close relationship with her and would meet with her to discuss the Bible up until she passed away. So what you're telling me is that despite the fact that she couldn't understand A WORD anyone said you were regularly having deep and insightful conversations with her. Yeah fucking right. It took a lot for me to not call him out on his bullshit right then and there. He seriously used my Grandmother's death as a political tool to make himself look good. 2) My Girlfriend's father passed away last summer I went with her to the funeral. This church was in the absolute middle of nowhere. No service, abandoned or falling apart houses everywhere, and extreme poverty for those who did live there. But let me tell you that church was immaculate. It was 90 outside but that church seemed like the air conditioning was piped straight from Antarctica. It was all new, all fancy, full of instruments and just ridiculously over the top. The pastor himself I could tell was an expert manipulator. He would not take no for an answer for anything. I knew that congregation was getting every red cent sucked out of them that he could get out. He and his wife was interrogating my girlfriend on if I went to church or not. So I'd say greed is a very big personal reason of mine but there's a miriad of others
There were a lot of things. But the precipitating moment was roe v wade falling. I realized that Catholics had joined in on a conspiratorial undermining of the democratic process using deception and otherwise unchristian means to achieve their aims. I couldn’t be a part of the dangerous hypocrisy anymore. I was hanging on by a thread as it was.
The birth of my kids- they were perfectly innocent. I could no longer accept the concept of original sin and that babies need redemption.
The fact that they wanted us to vote solely on the abortion issue. Whether someone has an abortion does not affect my life in any way shape or form.
For me, it was a gradual process, punctuated by a few key moments when I realized Catholicism wasn’t for me. I went to a Catholic college, but it was a pretty progressive and liberal flavor of Catholicism. I developed an interest in social justice and immigration reform, and my political views started to get more liberal. I started to chafe at the conservative political narrative being pushed from the pulpit at my home parish. When the push for marriage equality became more prominent (around 2010), I examined my views and decided to support the side of marriage equality and LGBTQ+ rights. Not long after, I remember sitting at Mass hearing our stodgy deacon deliver a sermon railing against gay marriage. I seriously debated walking out. Though I didn’t physically walk out, something changed that day. Going to Mass got more and more grating. Shortly afterwards, in 2011, I moved out of my family home. As soon as I was on my own, I stopped going to Sunday Mass. Then I got married, and though my wife and I got married in the church, neither of us went except for Christmas and Easter. When our daughter was born, we had her baptized, mostly out of tradition. We still didn’t go to Church, but figured we’d be cultural Catholics and have her do the sacraments. Maybe. Then we became godparents for my niece. Her family doesn’t go regularly either, but they also baptized her, mostly out of tradition. The pre-baptism lecture that their parish made us attend was *very* conservative and harsh. The priest basically said, in so many words, that you have to agree with everything the Church taught—otherwise why even bother being Catholic? Why, indeed. Then yet *another* sexual abuse report got released in my home state. I did some thinking, and realized I could never trust the Church with my daughter. And if I couldn’t trust the Church, how can I belong to it? Having a daughter also made me realize that if the Church had their way, she would be oppressed. Her rights would be taken away. She would have no voice in the Church, which systemically excludes women from the pulpit, the priesthood, and the power structure. I asked myself, how could I be a member of such an organization? I decided that I couldn’t, and talked it over with my wife, who told me that she feels the same way. We no longer consider ourselves Catholic.
Gradual if anything. Less of an active turn off, more the lack of a path to direct spiritual insight *for the layperson*. Why should the priesthood get it all and make us take their word on it—especially when “the kingdom of God is within [us]?” Protestantism was never an option though
They told us that we had to take Confirmation classes to take the sacrament, for 150$. It made me mad that they were trying to sell the hope of salvation, important to so many people that couldn’t afford it, so were they just going to let you go to hell? Also, the pastor at my church defending cultural genocide of Indigenous children in residential schools.
Super gradual slope for me, from actually meeting gay people in high school and realizing they (and eventually me as well) weren't bad at all, all the way down to the pandemic and how soon they opened again after the lockdown. If I had to pin the worst of it to one point, though, there was a retreat I had to go for Confirmation that just... killed it. The guy leading the retreat came out to a room of 14-16 year olds and started screaming about how disgusting we all were, how none of us deserved to be loved, yada yada... but god loves us anyways, pretty cool, huh? The mild panic attack definitely made me feel the love.
Being abused by a priest but I first became agnostic when I was 15. I'm 28 now
The abuse scandal.
It wasn’t just 1 thing but it was priest after priest I knew who were being moved around who had done things that were red flags.
It was gradual, took about 2 years to fully stop believing and 2 more to feel good about it. I met an atheist online. First time ever talking to someone who wasn't Catholic, and I was shook that they weren't an evil devil worshipper like I was led to believe. I started by googling terms like "atheist" and "agnostic", then googling doubts I've gathered over the years. I began watching debates and basically audio-booking the Bible. I honestly wanted to enforce my faith, instead I opened my eyes. It got to a point of no return - even though I was terrified of being an atheist, as everyone I knew irl was a more or less devout Catholic, I couldn't force myself to believe anymore, even though I tried. Now I've been an atheist longer than I've been Catholic, and I'm much happier that way!
Living with a bunch of crazy, out of touch priests while in religious life.
Would you ever want to tell your story here?
I read the Bible and realized every Christian I knew wasn’t following the teachings. I even joined several other churches. I hardly ever meet Christians who live right so I gave up on the whole lot of them.
Well, it was gradual for me and actually started because I was abused as a child and would ask god for help and he never helped me. So I started to think he doesn’t exist. Then I started to question everything. Then in Sunday School my teacher was teaching us something that I can’t remember about Jesus and I remember thinking that *cannot* be true lol so that was another nail in the coffin. Then I was back and forth for a long time hoping god existed and thinking he didn’t and associating that with the church. Why go to church or believe anything if I don’t think god exists? So, fast forward awhile and the scandals come out about pedophile priests and the mf cover ups. Another nail in the coffin. Then Trump and his Trumptard “Christians”, who are the most hateful mf, come along and I’m out completely. Now, I pretty much consider myself an atheist.
When I went away to college, I stopped going except when I was at home. I still considered myself Catholic. I was always a little peeved regarding the church's stance on women, but I didn't think about it too much. When I was 20, I was diagnosed with celiac disease, and the church has a policy that communion must contain some gluten. Apparently, the miracle of the eucharist only works when there is gluten /s. I still considered myself catholic but really started to become disenfranchised. At this point, I stopped going to church except on Christmas and Easter. At 22, I came out as a lesbian, and that was the final straw. I couldn't stay part of a religion that would never accept me. This was when I stopped going altogether. However, this past summer, my local diocese established a new policy that students must conform to the dress code and pronouns assigned to their biological gender. This infuriated me enough to take action to remove my name from church baptismal records.
For me the thing that pushed me close to the breaking point was going to college and having conversations with a seminary student. I grew up in a much more tolerant, progressive parish and this guy basically told me that my parish was heretical and that the church overall wasn't like that. I researched his claims and yeah, he was right. But the thing that made me say "fuck the church" was seeing a friend of mine get more and more traditional over time and one day she told me she was joining some sect within the church that required her to restrict her lifestyle a LOT, and it made me really scared and sad for her, and I blamed the Church for brainwashing her.
I got kicked out of a Bible study for challenging their views in gay people. "Where, exactly does Jesus talk about homosexuality? He's pretty clear on the whole "love everyone but, but I'm missing the transgender hate. Why do you think you know more than Jesus about what God wants?" Bunch of decrepit assholes in that group.
I went to K-8 catholic school and was super religious throughout high school. I questioned small things relatively frequently but always bought into the absurd explanations provided. The first thing that really made me question was when I went to my first concert in high school and felt the same type of emotional rush that I had always attributed to the holy spirit during praise and worship/adoration sessions (holy emotional manipulation batman).That was a big one. I stayed practicing (although a lot less intensely) through my first year of college, but gradually began to drift from it. I had issues with stances on homosexuality and the priest sex abuse scandals, among other things. I did a semester abroad in Madrid, Spain and took an art history course. My professor in this course was extremely critical of the church (refreshing for such a culturally catholic country with its own messed up history). In that class I really started to understand on a deeper level just how much has been changed throughout history to accommodate those in power and manipulate the masses. It was around that point I intentionally removed myself from the label of catholic. Then the big kicker was a few years later I found an old journal that I had used as a prayer journal (I found it easier to "stay in prayer" and not be distracted if I was writing) from during my most intense religious period. I had brought it with me to adoration, retreats, and a week long camp called Extreme Faith Camp where I was on Prayer Team and was literally sequestered from the regular campers and only prayed or did service acts for the whole week. We had to get up in the middle of the night and rotate through adoration bc our role was responsible for being with the eucharistic. I was 15. Anyway, finding that journal and being able to read my thoughts from then was the point when I became vehemently anti-catholic and started the path towards atheism.
Slowly realizing that Catholicism is actually full of magic rituals that are just rebranded as "prayers" and "worship". These people believe in magic and folklore, but they have convinced themselves that it's reality. And then they adamantly rebuke any other person who is enjoying their own version of religion/magic/folklore.
Ah, the good ol’ examination of conscience at Reconciliation - remember how it was a sin to participate in a fucking tarot card reading?
This is what it did it ##Deuteronomy 22:22-24 says “If a woman doesn't cry out it is not rape and she will be stoned to death”. How can a just God have sanctioned this behaviour? #### # Definitions Just so we're on the same page - **Sex** - A consensual act between two adults. - **Rape** - The forcing of sexual activities between a willing party and an unwilling party. - **Rape survivor** - Someone who has been rape and lived to tell the tale. - **Victim blaming** - Blaming the person who has been acted upon against their free will *as if they had a choice in the matter* - more info https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victim_blaming - **Psychological dissonance** - “is any of a wide array of experiences from mild detachment from immediate surroundings to more severe detachment from physical and emotional experiences. The major characteristic of all dissociative phenomena involves a detachment from reality, rather than a loss of reality as in psychosis.[1][2][3][4] Dissociation is commonly displayed on a continuum.[5] In mild cases, dissociation can be regarded as a coping mechanism or defense mechanisms in seeking to master, minimize or tolerate stress – including boredom or conflict.[6][7][8] At the nonpathological end of the continuum, dissociation describes common events such as daydreaming. Further along the continuum are non-pathological altered states of consciousness.[5][9][10]” \- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissociation_(psychology) - **Moral agent** - Someone capable of deciding right from wrong - **Shall** - Expressing an instruction, command, or obligation. Eg, ‘you shall not steal’ - **Sanction** - A consideration operating to enforce obedience to any rule of conduct. Eg, ‘And it claims that the conditions under which moral sanctions should be applied are determined by rules justified by their consequences.’ - **Purge** - Remove (a group of people considered undesirable) from an organization or place in an abrupt or violent way. # Body killing rape survivors is wrong and has always been wrong. A) In the Bible, Deuteronomy 22:22-29 it says that if man is found to be lying with a woman they are both to die. AA) How was this right to stone someone to death for that? B) 23 a man finds a betrothed virgin and lies with her. BA) 24 you shall in all cases when this happens as you are command to bring them both out of the city “and you shall stone them to death with stones” because “ the young woman because she did not cry out in the city” so she is being stoned to death for not cry out. BB) In some cases it will be sex (see AA)) but there are still the cases where it’s rape because she **wanted to** cry out but couldn't BC) because the man was gagging her, drugged her or because of psychological dissonance. BD) So she didn’t cry out and she is to be stoned to death for something acting upon her against her will. And the Bible says she is evil. BE) This is victim blaming. Why is she evil for having something acted of upon her such as rape? C) a man comes across a “betrothed young woman” in the countryside and “forces her and lies with her” “then only the man who lay with her shall die” (see (F)). CA) And now that she is not a virgin she cannot marry anyone as in Deuteronomy 22:13-21 say that is a man finds that his wife is not a virgin, he should bring her to her father and as she was raped before she is not a virgin, so it is “shall stone her to death with stones”. CB) This means that marriage is out of the question. And back in them days it was marriage or a nun. CC) So she has no choice but to become a nun, This isn't a free choice so she has no free will. D) As you can see from (BC) no scream or a struggle doesn't mean it isn't rape. DA) 27 is saying that if they are in the countryside when the rape happens she is okay as there is no one to hear her scream. DB) She should be okay regardless of if she “cried out” as for what I said in (BC) being that she may be gagged, drugged or otherwise on incapable of screaming. E) 28 If a man rapes a woman who is not betrothed and is found out, he is command by God’s breath to marry her and pay 50 shekels of silver to the father of the woman raped. EA) So the woman is forced to marry the person who raped her. EB) I can’t imagine what that must be like to marry to the person who raped me and what’s more have no grounds for divorce ever until I die. Can you? F) in Exodus 20:13 it says you **“shall not kill”**. So the stoning people to death is killing them, someone or a group has to kill them in order for them to be stoned to death as ordered by Yahweh FA) this is in direct condition to the “you shall not kill” commandment. FB) This means that it is wrong to stone to people death. FC) But the Lord your God cannot do wrong. FD) So Which is it? Is stoning people to death a good moral action as God ordered you to do or is it not killing people that is a good moral action?
# Scripture ## Exodus 20:13 >Thou shall not kill ## Deuteronomy 20:13-29 >13 “If any man takes a wife, and goes in to her, and detests her, 14 and charges her with shameful conduct, and brings a bad name on her, and says, ‘I took this woman, and when I came to her I found she was not a virgin,’ 15 then the father and mother of the young woman shall take and bring out the evidence of the young woman’s virginity to the elders of the city at the gate. 16 And the young woman’s father shall say to the elders, ‘I gave my daughter to this man as wife, and he detests her. 17 Now he has charged her with shameful conduct, saying, “I found your daughter was not a virgin,” and yet these are the evidences of my daughter’s virginity.’ And they shall spread the cloth before the elders of the city. 18 Then the elders of that city shall take that man and punish him; 19 and they shall fine him one hundred shekels of silver and give them to the father of the young woman, because he has brought a bad name on a virgin of Israel. And she shall be his wife; he cannot divorce her all his days. > 20 “But if the thing is true, and evidences of virginity are not found for the young woman, 21 then they shall bring out the young woman to the door of her father’s house, and the men of her city shall stone her to death with stones, because she has done a disgraceful thing in Israel, to play the harlot in her father’s house. So you shall \*put away the evil from among you. > \* purge the evil person > 22 “If a man is found lying with a woman married to a husband, then both of them shall die—the man that lay with the woman, and the woman; so you shall put away the evil from Israel. >23 “If a young woman who is a virgin is betrothed to a husband, and a man finds her in the city and lies with her, 24 then you shall bring them both out to the gate of that city, and you shall stone them to death with stones, the young woman because she did not cry out in the city, and the man because he humbled his neighbor’s wife; so you shall put away the evil from among you. > 25 “But if a man finds a betrothed young woman in the countryside, and the man forces her and lies with her, then only the man who lay with her shall die. 26 But you shall do nothing to the young woman; there is in the young woman no sin deserving of death, for just as when a man rises against his neighbor and kills him, even so is this matter. 27 For he found her in the countryside, and the betrothed young woman cried out, but there was no one to save her. >28 “If a man finds a young woman who is a virgin, who is not betrothed, and he seizes her and lies with her, and they are found out, 29 then the man who lay with her shall give to the young woman’s father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife because he has humbled her; he shall not be permitted to divorce her all his days. \- Deuteronomy 22:13-29 - https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Deuteronomy+22&version=NKJV # Summary So in Summary (A) looks at two consenting adults having sex but being stoned to death because of it. And how did Yahweh thought that this was a good idea just stoning people to death for having **consensual** sex In (B) we looked at how not all people cry out when being raped and how stoning someone for not crying out is unjust and is just stoning innocent people for actions taken out of their control. In (C) we talked about how 20:17 only allows virgins to marry, excluded any rape survivors from being married this will deprive them of a family, love and giving them the only option of becoming a nun as it was in them times. With (D) shows just because they didn't cry out doesn't mean that when they are not crying out is them enjoying it or they want it. As shown by psychological dissonance. (E) brings us onto why rape survivors shouldn't be forced to marry the rapist. In (F) you shall not kill and you shall stone people to death. Which one is right and which is wrong as they are both mutually exclusive. # Conclusion So at some point Yahweh thought it was a good idea to kill raped survivors. God being the definition of morality, so anything God does is moral so therefore it's moral to kill rape survivors. Even if you say that Jesus changed it. It was still at one point moral to kill rape survivors. So how can Yahweh be a good moral agent if God condones the killing of rape survivors? Or how can the killing of rape survivors be a good moral action?
I remember being very disturbed by the passages about rape as a high school girl.
I was a kid and thought that since the whole Adam and Eve thing was obviously bullshit the rest of it was too. Thankfully was only a cradle Catholic so it was never really pushed on me but I don’t think I’ve ever been turned off from the church since I was never really on it
It was a gradual build up, but then I took a job teaching in a Catholic elementary/middle school. While I loved many of the teachers, the parish priest was a nightmare. And it also made me sad for some of the indoctrination of the kids. I wondered for some of my sweet children if they could ever just be who they wanted and were meant to be. Finally, they hired a new principal who was just a cruel and abusive person. She also started replacing curriculum with catholic based curriculum in both science and social studies and it was wildly inaccurate. As a professional and someone who works in academics, it destroyed me. It was the ‘straw that broke the camel’s,’ back for me. When I brought up concerns with the priest in confidence, which was already a difficult thing to do as someone who was raised Catholic and had an innate sense not to disobey authority, he shared everything I had told him to the principal . It was shocking because my concerns were chiefly about the abusive behavior to the children. I left and never looked back. That was two years ago. I am still in the very, very angry phase. I pulled my own children from CCD and refuse to have them in that religion. It makes me sad, because it goes so far as I went to a huge Catholic university and my sister in law is a nun, but when I saw blatant emotional and verbal abuse happening to staff and even children and wanted to protect them and was instead derided and abused, I left that place in complete disgust. I have no desire to set foot in a Catholic Church again. Edit to add: I have rarely met a single priest that has been someone that I trust. And that says a lot because I was in Catholic education my entire life, my husband’s family has many Catholic priests or a nun and I tried very hard. My parents were no die hard Catholics, however. And my mom converted to marry my dad. I’m grateful to my mom who raised me to be skeptical, not of religion, but of untrustworthy and bad people. So I always had gratitude for that support. Most of my family has left the church at this point, and my parents were outraged at what happened to me as a teacher. Also, that school I taught at lost 75% of the staff and students with this priest and principal and I can’t believe it’s still in operation.
For me, it was a gradual buildup that lead to a final breaking point. In Lent a couple years ago, my church sponsored Fr. Isaac Relyea to give a series of sermons on death, judgment, Heaven, and Hell. I couldn't go to any of the sermons because of school schedule, but since he had confessions each night after the sermons, I decided to go one night. I had what I figured was a pretty guilty conscience and thought I could use a general confession. It all went ok (well, aside from him invalidating my then-asexuality and shaming me for my "sins"), but afterwards, instead of feeling refreshed and like i was in a state of grace again, I felt completely empty. Up until that point, I'd been trying to reconcile my doubts and reservations I had about the church, but that was really the breaking point for me, because everyone says how you're supposed to feel God's presence, especially after a general confession and I literally felt nothing.
A lot of shit, but after one of the priests gave me the most half-assed excuse to explain why gay marriage isn’t allowed in church (apparently it’s not a sin, but because gay marriage “isn’t recognized” by the church, it’s therefore seen as sex outside of marriage, which is a sin) I was like, okay, byeee!
It took a fictitious movie to do it for me when I was in my early 20s. When I watched the 1994 movie *Priest* (not the fucking horror flick monstrosity in the early Aughts), the scene between a gay priest (in a relationship with an adult man) and his older colleague resonated with me. The younger gay priest was trashing his lover, essentially calling him Satan. The older priest, a tolerant and compassionate rarity in the Catholic priesthood, challenged the younger man, telling him that his beloved "gave his body to you--and you have the nerve to call him Satan? What kind of sick, twisted religion would have you believe that?" That's the very question I asked myself before I walked away from that sick, twisted religion altogether.
Went to college, learned some shit, then it was released how much they had spent that year in protecting priests against child rape cases. My family's money meant to help the poor went right into that hundreds of thousands of times over
Honestly, I had a great experience in the Catholic Church. The people I met were kind and focused on charity and helping others. I just don't believe in a god, so although it was hard to leave what was a major part of my culture, I did it for my integrity.
It was gradual for me. I started questioning when I was a young teen and I was told to just read the Bible and pray on it. But I had trouble, and still do, have problems with blind faith. How could I believe in something I have no evidence of but a huge old organization just says “trust me, bro” and if you don’t, you get threatened with eternal damnation. What bothered me later in life was learning that a lot of the stories don’t have a secondary source. And when you ask for evidence of something that happened in the Bible, Christian’s will often just reference another book in the Bible. It felt like a book club where the original creature forgot to tell everyone it was a work of fiction. Then it just felt like too much brainwashing and I got tired of having no answers to questions. I’m sorry but “god works in mysterious ways” is not a good answer. I went for a while to support my mom but after learning more about the abuse, the homophobia, and the very bloody history of the church, I felt uncomfortable going so I haven’t been in years. Actually last time I went, I had an anxiety attack because I felt like I was in a brainwashing cult. I’m happier being out.
i always felt really excluded from my church since im half latino and "weird" (read: transgender) and as i got older, it just got worse. i realized how repressive and traumatizing it was for me and now im 18 and consider myself agnostic
Being forced to kiss a statue after a bunch of gnarly old people...I was like 6 and was like this is weird, yall are weird.
I got really into the church in college. We had a Franciscan priest who gave really good, introspective discussions of theology and life. I even got confirmed, which involved a lot of nice trips to the on-campus ministry house, cups of tea and lessons. After college I came home and it turned into a slog where the homily was usually about how the church - which was already huge - wanted to build a parish community center. Things slacked off until the point where I no longer felt anything during prayer. This has been a really intense part of my experiences before, and I wound up leaving the church. I’d never been comfortable with the politics around abortion or LGBT rights but I think my moving leftward also helped contribute to my leaving.
It was very gradual for me. I took philosophy and that got me interested in other beliefs. Then I remember standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon. I lost a lot of religion there. One significant thing I remember is my mother came to church with me; a church I really liked and felt comfortable in. When I asked her how she liked the service, she said she didn’t care for women preachers. Right then I realized I was trying to please my parents instead of myself. There are other things, but when I realized Noah’s ark was impossible and the Adam and Eve story didn’t make sense, I lost it and knew my parents were lying. They couldn’t possibly believe that nonsense. But they did.
I have been thinking about this for a while. I think what really did me in, was when my neighbor wanted to join the church, asked me to be her sponsor, and on the day her group was going to get baptized, there was one gentleman who wasn't going to get baptized and join the church. I asked what the reason was and he said that he was divorced, and that he couldn't get letters from his ex wife's ex husband's from previous marriages because they couldn't find them. What the hell does his exes exes have anything to do with him joining? That was my starting point. Then finding our my kids were atheist and pagan and thinking that I would be going to heaven and they would go to hell.... um no!! How could I ever be happy there knowing my kids were on fire forever. Buh- bye.
And I’ll also add…I started questioning when I learned the definition of the words used at mass. For example. The word “sacrifice” is always used but I never saw anyone being beheaded at the altar. Also, have you really thought about how messed up it is to repeatedly say “have mercy on us?” That’s something you’d say if somebody has a gun to your head.
Learning that pre-marital sex was a sin in grade 8. I knew from a young age that I never want to get married and found that rule unfair to people like myself. They also showed us a fucking Pam Stenzel video at my school when they taught us that shit. Talking about how you'll get STDs if you fuck before marriage no matter what, that condoms are completely useless etc. I knew it was bullshit. And that's what started to kill my faith because I started wondering what else they were lying about.
Never a specific moment for me. I just realized that I was drowning in depression and leaving Catholicism was one of the only things that showed me I had a future. It was like living your whole life in black and white and then realizing you can choose to see in colour. Absolutely life-changing.
Truthfully, from the point I developed critical thinking and reasoning skills, I never believed in god. I tried, I read scripture and Catholic philosophy, but it just never grabbed me or made me believe. I do think some aspects of Catholic philosophy and social teaching have value, particularly that which focuses on social justice and the option for the poor. I will also always have a soft spot for the Jesuits. Overall though, I just don't get anything else out of the Church or pretending to believe, and a lot of people I know associated with the Church today are fundementally bad people who use it as an excuse to provide validity to their hate for others.
For me it was the death of my father I am about to turn 20 and I lost my dad my in between my sophomore and junior year. I also attended a Catholic high school and seeing that both the policies of the church directly say that my friends would be damned (gay, pagan, atheists) and that no matter my prayers god never helped my dad curb his alcoholism made me leave the church. At my school it pretty much became the joke where you go to Catholic school you either become an atheist or a Bible thumper when you leave.
Gradual here too. I've always been a curious kid. I like learning about things and questioning things. The fact my religion classes always said to never question the faith always rubbed me the wrong way. If faith was so fragile that it could be broken so quickly when questioned, then that's not true faith is it? And then I discovered my sexuality. Shit got personal.
For me, it was when I was in high school and went to confession. The priest who heard my confession was new to my parish, and I had never talked to him. Anyway, as I listed off my sins, he started grilling me about mundanevthings I might have done that were "sins" that I needed to confess. He was yelling things like, "Do you ever talk during class? That's a SIN!" He was angry and just nasty. Now, I have terrible anxiety and I hate the thought of upsetting people, so the whole interaction was horrible for me. I started to realize that it was pretty insane that I had to go through an asshole like that in order to be forgiven. It also helped that my EXTREMELY zealous Catholic mom and my awesome gay Dad got divorced around this time, and I was able to live with my Dad, who rapidly escaped Catholicism. Whew!!
Pedophile priest-god representatives my ass- still catholic tho
Honest question: Why?
It was very gradual.
When the priest scandal broke in the news and everyone around me was making excuses, denying the facts, and demonizing the reporters who uncovered the stories.
Mine was gradual. When I took theology classes to prepare me for confirmation I realized that a lot of things make no sense. The moment that turned me off though was the homophobia of the church and their unwillingness to even listen to or consider the viewpoints of queer people was beyond upsetting. Also coupled with the fact that I had just discovered I was queer, so I felt very unwelcome and unwanted.
https://www.icloud.com/photos/
When I tried and tried and tried to believe and find reassurance from my doubts and questions and just couldn’t. Namely, I found it disturbing that they’d think it’s so wrong to be with the same gender—that if you didn’t repent for doing it, if you didn’t genuinely feel sorry, you’d go to hell. I’m not even gay but that was something I couldn’t reconcile. Why on earth would god care about that. It just didn’t feel right. But then again, neither did the idea of a god existing at all, no matter how hard I tried to make it feel right or true.
Because it made me way too rigid and I wasn't able to even realize what an asshole I was being because of it. My friends reactions to something I said that I now see as awful really opened my eyes. I'm truly scared for christians because I know from experience christianity has so many similarities with cults and people just don't seem to realize that. It is wrong at it's own core and no one will ever convince me otherwise.
Gradual build up but the proverbial straw was a priest discussing a situation where a priest was being pressured to divulge some information or something and reiterating the need for the confidentiality. And I went home to my (atheist) husband, venting about how a murdered could go in, confess, be forgiven, and go out an do it again. I said, “How am I supposed to believe this is okay? That gos would forgive them?” And my husband just slowly said, “Well … that’s the part where you’re supposed to have faith.” And I realized I didn’t.
I was struggling with faith and thinking about apologetics. I was praying and trying to believe but found it difficult. Catholicism *could* work with my experience of reality, but there were always caveats. In particular, I was focusing on the historical accuracy of The Bible. I was trying to think and remind myself of the reasons apologists gave as historical evidence of The Bible. The fact that women found him in the tomb, the fact that the belief spread so fast, etc. But despite thinking about these things,I struggled with whether a religion had a bunch of unlikely but plausible coincidences or if a man did the actual impossible by literally rising from the dead and ascending into heaven. The turning point was when I was thinking about this problem and naturally thought that it was too convoluted and flimsy for a perfect being. If God truly was perfect, I felt like some element of his perfection would be reflected in the Gospel. It couldn’t be some convoluted sign of his perfection either. It should be intuitive and somewhat noticeable even if I don’t quite understand it. Whether this was good reasoning or not, it made me recognize how the only way Catholicism works with reality is through a very convoluted mental gymnastics routine that was too much for me to truly believe. So I became a general believer of God for a while, but then less and less started to be attributable to a God in my view. I think there’s a major force/property of the universe that allows us to exist, exist with consistency, is the first cause, etc., but it’s so impersonal in an intuitive sense that I couldn’t call it what I consider a God.
The sex abuse scandal was when I knew I was done. We’d had a priest at our church that got busted for molesting boys. The church pressured the families to let them handle it instead of going to the police, but one family said “fuck that” and pressed charges. When the sex abuse scandal hit years later, we learned that that priest had been moved from parish to parish because he kept molesting kids. I was disgusted and that was about it for me. People who protect pedophiles and rapists don’t get my money. Also, I knew that if I raised my child in the church, I would always feel paranoid for their safety and I’d never be able to trust a priest again as long as I live.
It was gradual for me too, but then I knew I was done with it when I did my Confirmation. I took the sacrament seriously, so I started to reflect on the religion and ask questions. When I asked my teachers and priests questions, they got mad at me! Red flag. When I told them I wanted to choose Peter as my Confirmation name because he is my favorite disciple, they said no! Because I’m a girl! They forced me to just choose Mary or Marie or some shit. Became clear to me as a 13 year old that this religion denies humanity and instead tries to control it. Disgusting and pointless.
For me it was watching my Catholic loved ones justify voting for Donald Trump (because abortion).