Tag Archives: Catholic

Leaving the Cult

St. Bartholomew Church in Middleburg Heights, Ohio. This is where i was raised.

I was never in a cult, technically speaking.  Yet I identify with people who grew up in cults and then left and found sanity.  My story is different, yet oddly similar. I grew up with a mentally ill father in a deeply religious family.  We didn’t know he was mentally ill at the time.  But he was incredibly abusive to myself and my brother.  If parents were governments, then I grew up in an absolute dictatorship.  My father reigned supreme.

The abuse drove me away from my family.  Complicating the situation for me was the inability of anyone else in the family to recognize the abuse, let alone do something about it.  

This led to my lifelong struggle with mental illness.

My family is Polish on both sides.  The Catholic Church was the institution of our lives.  My grandparents were immigrants.  I loved the church as I grew up.  I wanted to be a hero to my faith.  I wanted to be the person who could prove beyond any shadow of doubt that Jesus was real.  But two things happened to me.  The first is that I began to see God as an abstraction of Truth.  And over time my allegiance to God transformed into an allegiance to the concept of truth.  The second development for me was an intense desire to be rational.  I wanted to live, as an adult, in a more rational world.  It had to do with language.  By a fairly young age I could see that some people made sense, while other people spoke with ignorance.  I wanted to be someone who made sense.

During my sophomore year of high school, a Sunday sermon set the course for my life.  The priest was speaking about the Catholic Church and science.  The message was that the teachings of the church and the teachings of science are both true.  Science, because it is based on evidence.  Whereas the Church is blessed with divine authority.  When I heard this, I could see a problem with what the priest had claimed.  There was a contradiction between the preachings of the church and the teachings of science.

Life is filled with contradictions.  But during the previous year, I had learned in my math class that contradictions were not possible.  We were studying geometry and proofs.  And during my sophomore year I was studying biology, where I learned and accepted that evolution was true.  Evolution made sense to me.  In the moment of that sermon, everything clicked.  And I could see a way to prove that Jesus did not die for our sins.  I didn’t even know what to make of it.  Because, up until that moment, I not only believed, but I wanted to believe, what the church had been teaching.

I left the church because of the logical contradictions inherent in Christian belief.  But I never stopped studying the church.  I couldn’t let go of the fact that my faith was false.  I didn’t know how to because I was leaning on my faith to help me endure my father.

Something interesting happened some years later in the throws of mental illness.  I was reacting badly from the ways I had been treated within my family.  I had ended my relationship with my father.  My relationship to the rest of my family suffered too.  I withdrew from them.  And I had this reaction to the church that was not merely ideological.  So much nonsense in my life had been justified through church teachings.  I wanted to tear it all down.

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Several decades have passed. My rage has mellowed.

These past few years I have been trying to write a book that takes on the theology of the church..  But I have reached a point where I need to stop isolation myself to work on this, and integrate my self instead with others by sharing what I have discovered.  So, I am going to unravel it here on this blog.  The Christian faith is a false faith.  Evidence and proofs forthcoming.

Letting Go

My resolution for 2017 was to publish something.  I failed to meet the deadline.  But this past February, I finally did submit my first manuscript for publication.  I had been working on this paper since about August of 2015, when it began life as the opening chapter of a book.  The last little bit of work was easy, and yet so difficult.  I had put a lot into this project, and a psychological block was preventing me from closing this chapter and moving on. I finally did.

Then, I took some time off.  I kept writing daily.  But nothing specific, and not very imaginative.  My mind needed a break.  I needed a break.  Sending off the manuscript felt like victory, even though I can’t really celebrate until it is published.  It has been two months, and I haven’t been rejected, yet.  My fingers remain superstitiously crossed.

One of the things preventing me from blogging more had been this paper.  I needed to finish it before I could say anything meaningful here.  Until it is published, I can’t really discuss it in detail.  But this manuscript was a personal thesis.  The more I put into it, the less there seemed to be to say here, until it was done.  Blogging about this unfinished project felt self-defeating.  Why?  I would ask myself.  Am I writing for this blog when I could instead be finishing one of my dream goals?

Now that the work is behind me, I have had a chance to re-orient.  The thesis is finished. Now I want to test it out.  I want to challenge how we see religion.

My parents raised their children Catholic.  I began life quite devout, but with a burning desire.  I wanted to understand my world.  I wanted to understand my faith.  Originally, when I began this journey, I began with the assumption that my faith was true.  This is what I had been taught as a child.

For years my mother defended Catholicism as ‘the one true faith.’  How could this be the one true faith?  I would ask.  How do you know which version is true Christianity?   I have met Protestants who steadfastly proclaimed that their own versions were true, and who condemned Catholicism as everything from misguided to the work of the devil.  I would ask them the same questions.  How do you know that your beliefs are true beliefs?  I could never get an answer that made sense.  People defend their faith in many ways.  I was looking for something rational.  When I realized that there was nothing rational about it, I let go, and my faith fell away.

Letting go of my faith was perhaps one of the most important decisions of my life.  It forced me to confront my own spirituality more directly.  I was changing my thinking by challenging my assumptions.  I wanted to be able to defend my words.  This meant discarding indefensible beliefs, in order to speak truthfully.

How do I know Thee, father?

As a former Catholic with a more naturalistic understanding of the world, I have long suspected that many Catholics, maybe most?, must have priestly ancestors.  There was a scandal in my own community that was kept hush-hush when I was a teenager.  A priest had become a real father with a girl from the church.  She was my age, +/- 1 year.  No one talked about it.  Years later my mom brought it up.  For some reason, we didn’t discuss these things as a family while they were an actual threat.  Ah, but that is the Catholic way.  We were kept ignorant by our own inability to speak about sexuality without feeling shame.

Now we have strong evidence that children fathered by Catholic priests is a worldwide phenomenon.  Thousands of people around the world have strong evidence that they were fathered by priests.  They are pressured not to speak about these things.  Why did I leave Catholicism?  Because the ideology does not allow for open and honest communication about things that matter.  Plain and simple.

 

Some Thoughts…. I need to get out of my head before I can share my views on God.

I have received multiple invites to watch today’s debate between Bill Nye, The Science Guy, and Ken Ham.

One of the hams on stage is a creationist.  The other will represent evolution.  In a theatrical form.

Symbolically, we get to choose.  Which one is right?

But, I won’t tune in, until it has cured a few weeks, on a hook in the meat closet.  Away from the flies.

Right now I don’t want to watch it at all.  Because, I know which side is right.

Neither!  The reason we have these silly debates is because we aren’t able to move beyond our differences.  I want to talk about how we can.

*****

I have been waiting for the right moment to elevate the content of my blog.  Today seems perfect, for a couple reasons.

One.  I am more lucid to-day, than any other, these past couple weeks.  And when I am lucid, my thoughts drift to the big questions we all struggle with.  God, or no.  Life, and the before-after sandwich we call the spiritual.  And, consciousness.

Also.  Two.

There’s a reason for switching my voice, that allows me to discuss why my voice has changed.  It’s not puberty!  Just so no one is confused.

Voices change with thoughts.

The Ham-Nye debate somehow represents my own thoughts, and my blog.  How opportune!

So onwards from here.   Some days I will share my thoughts about God.  Others, I will think about the mind.  And still others, I will pull lint from my navel.  But, it’s all related.  Trust me.

At least now, hopefully I can launch directly into discussions of my beliefs about God, without feeling self-conscious doing so.

*****

You may have noticed that my writing often seems focused on ordinary things.  The useless riffraff, left from otherwise forgettable days.  And, yet, today, I am switching to the topics of God, and death, and understanding.  Even if, only my own.

But, my ordinary days are always related to the special, now that I pay attention.  I write about the ordinary so that I can draw on those experiences when discussing the extra-ordinary.  So, when you read about my day shopping for a wheel chair, or another spent dealing with the insurance company that cut off my disability payments, it’s because my ordinary experiences have some meaning for me.  And, I want to convey meaning through my writing.  But, I can only do so through the trial and error of everyday attempts.

I want you to see me for who I am.  I am sometimes neurotic.  And, I guess that makes me human.  And if you can see me as human, then you can read my thoughts without being offended.  And believe me.  Some of my thoughts will offend.  It’s why I don’t discuss them lightly.

*****

Here are some rules that might help clarify my posts regarding God, and no gods, and religion.  My first on the topic, but by no means, my last.

  • I reserve the right to offend.  I’m not trying to offend.  It’s just inevitable, if I am to express myself clearly.
  • You reserve the right to be offended.  Just know, I’m not doing it, like a comedian.  Whether you thump a bible, or got rid of yours long ago, my views might offend you.  Or worse, turn you off.  But, I don’t want anyone to think I am making anyone else the butt of a joke.  I may discuss a certain belief, and then tweak it to get a point across.  Once you feel that point, you might get what I am saying.  Sometimes offending each other is the only way we can communicate.
  • You reserve the right to offend me.  If I am wrong, please tell me.  I want to know, because I want to grow.  And I typically have to be dragged, kicking and scratching against the friction of my offended feelings.
  • We respect each other as human beings.  The golden rule doesn’t belong to any one set of beliefs.  I believe religious people can be rational.  I also believe that atheists can be irrational.   But, sanity is our common right.  We will never arrive.  But, it is possible to imagine how we will all be viewed one day by the survivors.

*****

I believe we can only understand properly through other points-of-view.  This is not a place where one of us is right and the others are wrong.  Common understanding comes through mutual understanding.  We each embody something the other needs.  And truth is never perceived directly.  Nor is it claimed as a battlefield prize.

This blog is not where you capitulate to me, or visa versa, unless one of us is seriously wrong.  This blog is where believers and atheists are welcome to commune.  I do believe a common understanding is possible, and that belief vs. non-belief is the wrong way to approach the subject.

Sure, it’s necessary for some people from each persuasion to duke it.  But, that’s only because they symbolize what we all struggle with.  And their fight is the topic of our discussion.  It’s the human way to understand.

The monkey way.  The tribal way.

At least, it’s my way.