#ex-Catholic

[winged-thinged]

Look, we joke a lot, but really, "you were born evil, wretched, worse than the scum of the earth, and it took killing a god to make you salvageable, so now you'd better be grateful to that god and thank him 10,000 times a day for it and fill your thoughts with him 24/7 and abide by the letter of his every word, lest you suffer unimaginable torture for all of eternity" is a truly horrendous thing to believe about yourself and other people

[samkingsketches]

If you call me an abomination, I will look for comfort in your other monsters

[wishbow]

reliquary of St Valentine - pam wishbow 2021

[amillionkilopascals]

i wish catholics understood that queer people are not welcomed in the church.

the most progressive pope in history still lambasts gender theory and gender-affirming surgery.

yes, there was some semblance of community in that space. but not for me, never for me. i was never whole, in church. the person i was in that space was always an empty shell, because i was forced to cut out my heart and insides and leave them at the door to come in.

now that i have freed myself, i am outside and whole and more joyful than i ever was in that space. can you begin to see how inviting me to subject myself to that again is not love?

i understand that you want the best for your queer ex-catholic friends. but listen to us and our experiences when we tell you about the selves we had to kill just to be accepted, and how we were only able to begin to accept and heal ourselves after leaving. i was told constantly that this desire, this part of myself, my very heart, was sinful, that it had to be culled. can you begin to see why this led me to believe i was better dead than alive?

please understand this, before you ask. that is all i request.

[halestonehyena]

people really act like abandoning/rejecting christianity just means not believing in god and then not put in any effort to unlearn cultural christianity

[kings-speaks]

baptismal

my heart shivers when I walk into the old church with its drowning font and pews, the aisles gutters guiding tears from the weeping statues, tears from the dripping parishioners as dead as their emaciated lord strung up at the front.

once I knelt here and turned my heart out into this breathless air: my fault, my fault, my fault. the quiet music repeats and repeats the refrain: grief inside a mask of shame. once I wore that mask, the stone heavy but not yet cracked— once I sang that song, tasted it, rolling sweet across my tongue—

over the baptismal font looms the baptist. his face is alien but stern, his hand outstretched: an offering or a benediction? I grip his iron hand, and he helps me into the water. slowly, I sink down. the water swills around me: shed prayers and empty tears.

guilt is a cold vice.

when I try to rise again, that’s when I feel him. iron hands anoint my head. he holds me under. I try to scream, but all I taste is water. he holds me under he holds me under

[soihavesomethoughts]

"I believed in God as a kid bc I always felt so moved during worship songs at my megachurch and then I went to a One Direction concert and felt the same thing and realised I just like live music"

credit: likethabug (TiKTok)

[knightingael]

The most bizarre bit of sexist Catholic lore you’ll ever come across is the fact that the Church firmly believes the Blessed Mother couldn’t have gone through natural childbirth, because to do so would have corrupted her virginity. Instead, the Christ child was fuckin teleported out of the womb. I’m not even joking.

[guess-how-i-stole-this-body]

God flooded the world when it was filled with violence and sin.

Jesus healed the suffering.

Jesus provided food to the hungry.

I'm not even Catholic anymore and I understand that Jesus Christ would never, in a MILLION YEARS, want a genocide is Israel.

[fromthemouthofkings]

talking about Christian homophobia is boring, I'm gonna start coming up with more and more silly lies about why i left the catholic church

"i'm gluten intolerant"

"i just really love eating meat and hate fasting"

"read too much Hildegard von Bingen and now I'm an animist :("

[winged-thinged]

You are allowed to be happy. You are allowed to seek out things that make you happy. There is no moral value in suffering. You don't have to deprive yourself of pleasure just for the sake of it. You deserve to be happy! Everyone does.

[kael-writ]

did any other ex-Catholics have an advent wreath growing up? I really loved it. We had it on the dining table. It has 3 purple and one pink candle and you light one a week, the pink one Xmas week.

(I specificed ex- because Im hoping no current Catholic strangers shall perceive me on internet).

[gods-favorite-second-child]

I read somewhere that being an ex-catholic is to be tainted and sinful, but now there's no one to forgive you. I think about that a lot.

[anxiousangerball]

STORY TIME!

Not really, but my sister just hurt me in the worst way possible. She gave me a thought that I can't let go of now!

Let's see, what are the critical facts to know? I was raised Catholic, but am very, very lapsed now. I feel like, as I have lost my religion, my mother has become more devout. In a bad way. Like, she tried to teach us kids to be kind and to do good in the world as we were raised in the Catholic faith. Now she's doing awful, AWFUL, shameful things* in the name of her religion. I look at her and I think - "you raised me better than this. What the hell happed to you?"

Anyway - I may have left the small town I was raised in, but my mom does like to keep me informed of the goings on - especially if it is about a kid I used to babysit for.

Today, my mom texted to share that one of those kids is running for a school board position.

My first thought was "yikes. I remember how devout his folks were. I wonder how he turned out. Like, is he going to be bad news for the kids?" (Bad news in the conservative, book banning, let's bring ALL THE PRAYERS (but only if they are Christian) back into the schools.

I didn't say that to my mom, of course.

But I did text that to my sister.

Her response? She's thought about how people might think about us - mom's three kids. We were known to be in church every week, front row, without fail. And now that my mom is doing horrible things (think picketing outside of abortion clinics, praying gay away, etc.) that we are sure her small town community knows about (and probably supports, tbh), do others think "I wonder how terribly AnxiousAngerBall turned out, with a mother like that."

I don't know where I'm going with all of this. It's just that - it hadn't occurred to me to even think about how others might perceive me.

Surprisingly, now that I've had a moment, I realize that I don't think I care. I have plenty of flaws that people can judge me by, I'm not going to worry about the flaw of having a mother who has forgotten how to be kind.

[giantkillerjack]

Adding "The only way to be a good person is to sacrifice absolutely as much of yourself and your own comfort as possible for other people all the time." (I grew up Catholic, in case that's not obvious.)

Things i learned as a child that probably no one intended to teach me

To grown-ups, being bad at stuff is a sin. Forgetting stuff is the worst sin of all, and also doesn’t exist - it is widely believed (and your behaviour will be interpreted thusly) that in some Freudian sense, it is impossible to forget things if you care about them or their consequences or the people who care about those things.

Your being happy and enjoying what you do doesn’t matter. All that matters is whether you are Fulfilling Your Potential.

Human beings do not require rest outside of sleep. Thinking that you do is called ‘being lazy’.

Who you show physical affection to is a matter of politeness and social protocol, and has nothing to do with your own desires

It is rude to inform people of your preferences, even if they seem to care about catering to them and therefore might find this useful information.

Etiquette centres around doing things in especially awkward, skilful and time-consuming ways in order to demonstrate superiority over people who aren’t able to keep up.