#i just wanted to pay homage to them someway

[italoniponic]

habemos cute header with top3 twst faves SSRs!!

(blog theme on desktop wont change tho, so there's this nice baby blue and when you enter, boom have some pink/purple)

[thereissuchathingasatesseract]

Why did you leave Catholicism and what brought you back?

Alright, so this is an issue I have never talked about so publicly before. However, I will try to do my best to give the short, concise version, skipping the stuff that is boring to anyone but me. 

A lot of what I am going to talk about is pretty personal and some of it is still very raw, so to anyone who comments on this post, I ask that you please respect that. I can’t make you, of course, but I can ask nicely. 

I was born and raised Catholic, although only my immediate family was. The rest were atheists or agnostics, so it isn’t as though I came from a sprawling Catholic family. I heard dissenting opinions left and right as a child, but something in my heart said, “No, this is right.”

When I was in the eighth grade, my infant sister Rachel passed away. I watched it tear my parents to pieces and I watched one brother close up to the whole world and the other throw himself into it so he wouldn’t have to think about it. My own crushing sense that I was responsible somehow, someway, I carried with me for a long, long time. In many ways I still do. However, I looked to God during this time, believing that He would magically spirit away all the badness around me if I merely behaved well enough, if I prayed hard enough. 

In the eleventh grade, my sister Rebecca also passed away in infancy. There was no warning; the doctors whom my mother visited during her pregnancy had told her there was nothing to worry about, that she was a healthy baby. We had all been so excited and hopeful. I prayed nonstop. I thought nothing could go wrong. Once again, I believed that God would magically answer all of my prayers to a letter and that if I just tried to behave well and pray often, then He would never let hardship befall my family again. 

When Rebecca passed, something inside of me snapped. Grief, or anger, or simply more guilt, or some nasty soup of all of those and something else - they were more than I could bear. I had to turn those feelings on someone or something. I couldn’t turn them on my parents; my mother was barely hanging on as it was. Something in me said God, it was God’s fault, I had done all the things you were supposed to and still He had taken my sisters - both of them - and been silent in response to our prayers. 

I stopped wearing my crucifix, stopped praying or reading the bible, I stayed home from Church, I loudly announced to anyone who would listen how I was turning my back on God as He had turned his back on me. I fell into self-destructive habits. During this time, I had constant thoughts of suicide which I never acted on because of the grief my parents were already going through and the fact that death just meant God, and I didn’t want God anymore. Not even His afterlife. 

I was on the road to crash and burn. Everything in my life was building up to a handful of possible eventualities, all of them tragic. My dad encouraged me to talk to someone, talk to anyone, to ask the questions that were on my mind, but I denied that I had any questions at all. Of course, I did. But who could I ask that biggest question: Why? Why did a God who was supposed to be the God of Love, supposed to help and heal His children, why did He kill both my younger sisters, shatter my family, and refuse to offer us comfort? 

Then, He decided to intervene. I was studying French at the time, and I paid my way to Montreal on a school trip in order to immerse myself in the language for a time. While on this trip, we toured St. Joseph’s Oratory, which is an enormous and beautiful cathedral. While were there, we were told the story of the thousands of people God had healed through him. We were shown where pilgrims climb up hundreds of stairs on their knees to pay homage to the Lord who resides in the tabernacle there. Most importantly to my story, we were shown the hall where the thousands of canes and crutches of the people he healed still hang on the walls above the candles lit in offering - thousands of candles flicker of people who have faith. 

It was like a train to the chest. I had gone about this all wrong. Here was proof that people who hurt could turn to God for answers, could turn to God for comfort, and would find it. I can’t put into words exactly what happened on that mountain, but it set the wheels rolling for my return to the Church. 

I started getting my feet back under me, and I improved my academics enough to be accepted to a state university. I went to church intermittently my first year, and then in the spring I was invited on a weekend retreat. This is where things really changed for me, and where perhaps you will have trouble believing my story. 

The first night, we were all praying individually in the chapel. The lights were off; only the light over the tabernacle and the candles on either side provided luminescence. We were all very quiet and very still. I kinda have always sucked at praying, so I was kneeling there, wondering what to say. My eyes wandered up to the crucifix over the tabernacle. He looked so real hanging there, in so much dreadful pain, and suddenly my heart was overwhelmed with a desire to stop that pain. I wish that I could help You down, I thought. It was a pressing need within me, to remove that man who was not a man from the cross, from the source of His pain. 

And then, I heard a voice that was not my own speaking in my head. That would defeat the whole purpose. Instead, you must help them with theirs. 

I don’t know if you’re going to believe that. It doesn’t matter one way or another if you do or don’t - it really happened. And perhaps you will try to explain it away, but I know what happened and I know what it meant. 

From that day on, I started asking questions. I started reading texts. I started going to church more regularly, and praying real prayers, not just throwing words out into the darkness and hoping for the best. I began to heal and to repair a relationship that was worth repairing. 

That’s not to say there weren’t setbacks. Recently, my spiritual adviser and the man I thought of as a second father was in the middle of a (non-juvenile related) scandal and dismissed. It ruined me. I felt I was back at square one, that everything I had learned had been a lie and everything was wrong. But then I realized that the only person I wanted to talk to about it was God. I’m still on the road to recovery, but I have found strength in the Lord this time, and I am working to rebuild the connections I had made to Him. 

There is a concept in the Catholic church called Metanoia. It is the concept of turning away from sin and back to God. Because we have confession. Catholics do it constantly. I am a huge sinner. I screw up every day. But every day, I try to stop those things which I find I am doing over and over again. 

I know that you were deeply hurt by people who claimed to be practicing Christianity, and I am so, so sorry you were subjected to that. I’m sorry about what you were taught about Hell, and women, and science. I’m sorry you were lied to about how religion is supposed to feel. On behalf of Christians everywhere, I am sorry you were subjected to that kind of mental torture. I offer you love from the bottom of my heart. We are all sinners, but we are all offered redemption as well. No one has a right to say this one or that one is going to Hell except the Lord, and He is a Lord of Mercy and Love. He doesn’t want any of us to be separate from Him. Anyone who says differently is wrong. 

As someone who needed questions answering, I would like to recommend C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity and Madeline L’Engle’s Crosswick Journals, both of which are amazing texts about being an atheist who had to struggle and question their way into finding faith, or, in L’Engle’s case, an agnostic who had to fight to figure out what and how she was going to believe. 

I am always open to more questions and more discussion. I’m not saying you have to convert. Only you can make that decision for yourself. But I am offering you a chance to open civil discourse and learn more about what Christianity can be, and what it can offer you. 

With fellowship and love, 

Scout.