The mass-murder of the crusades and the Spanish Inquisition, the persecution of Galileo and other scientists, and Pope Pius XII’s willingness to turn a blind eye during the Holocaust. Huge stores of priceless artifacts stolen from the Egyptians and hoarded in the Vatican vaults, covetously kept by the Catholic church even in times of crisis, despite its primacy in the world’s poorest countries. Years and years of corruption and greed, popes vying with emperors for supreme power, selling indulgences, committing and covering up crimes hundreds of years before the current sexual abuse scandal. When you look at the list, a partial one at that, it is easy to see just why there are so many former Catholics out there.
Martin Luther had gotten this message by 1517 when he tacked his "95 Thesis" to the church door and began a split that resulted in his own wing of Christianity, a wing he humbly named Lutheranism. Who can blame him? The baggage attached to being Catholic is certainly weighty. The years after Luther’s bold move have given us a myriad Christian offshoots, some even offshoots of Luther’s own creation. And though the basic tenets are similar, non-Catholic Christians are quick to point out that Evangelical, or Protestant, or Baptist, or whatever splinter-group of Christianity they belong to is NOT Catholicism and they should not be in any way associated with those culpable Catholics. The Unitarians with their short, innocuous history, married ministers, and generally untroubled ministry must be feeling particularly smug as the Catholic Church reels from its latest scandal.
Yet not all disillusioned Catholics flee to the welcoming arms of a non-Catholic congregation. Probably since the time of Christ himself, there have existed "lapsed" Catholics, overwhelmingly common in Catholic communities today. Much of the Roman-Catholic side of my family falls into this category. The lapsed Catholic still claims to be Catholic when asked, but rarely if ever attends mass. These "Seasonal Catholics," notorious for their attendance at mass only on major feast days like Christmas and Easter, often assuage their guilt by giving generously to the offering plate. My father’s contributions always took the form of an impressive check slipped into an envelope once a year at midnight mass. Lapsed Catholics often complain about the church, pointing to their liberal views on abortion and contraception or their conservative views on the death penalty as evidence that the church is behind the times and should change. And yet they do not leave it entirely. Perhaps because they are so near the unquestioning belief of other Catholics (often their parents as in the case of my father and uncles), or maybe because they recognize the fallibility of all organized religion, they remain Catholics.
There are still others, and I count myself among them, who have forsaken the church altogether. We are the "recovering" Catholics. How exactly did I become a recovering Catholic? It certainly is not like becoming a recovering alcoholic. My fall from grace was not precipitated by a deterioration of my social and family life, academic failure, debilitating relapses, or fits of rage. There were no twelve step programs or Catholics Anonymous meetings. In fact, my withdrawal from the church began gradually, almost imperceptibly, before I was ten.
I have pleasant memories of Sunday school, catechism classes and even of church services from my childhood. My eager face among many, turned toward the priest telling bible stories at the alter, struggling with sleep at the rare pleasure of church at midnight with the promise of presents afterwards, playing Joseph in the Christmas play… A bit later, I still recall enjoying church and looking forward to classes, but the images mostly involve girls: the brunette with the long lashes who played Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer in our ever so pagan Christmas play one year, the red-headed, freckle-splashed twins in confirmation class, the beautiful blond rich girl who always seemed to sit three rows up and to the right. The irony here is that while I can rustle up many memories like these, most are simply memorable moments in a child’s life. There are no instances of religious ecstasy in my past. The clearest recollections I have of church involve my butt protesting silently against the hard wooden pews of the Carmel Mission. Surrounded by hundreds of year old adobe, religious artifacts, and pungent gardens, I methodically scanned the rows for a cute girl to stare at or someone fat or ugly or strange to ridicule later with my brother who was equally preoccupied. After church we’d walk through the mission museum which shared the lives of benevolent friars who, devout despite sleeping in five by five cells on hardwood pallets, ministered to grateful Indians. But not even their shining example could raise in me some sort of religious sentiment.
This lack of sincerity in fact seemed to permeate my youthful religious experience. Thursday nights without fail I convinced my father to spend his evening shuttling me back and forth to the youth pastor’s little house near campus for youth group. Though we still attended mass fairly regularly at this point, my father was not so concerned with my immortal soul that he easily sacrificed his evening. So I usually suffered through two silent fifteen minute car rides, one there and one back, wrung from my father so I could spend an evening of devotion with my peers. We read the bible, even memorized parts, played together, prayed together. Of course there were girls there, lots of them, and they respected us for our piety. I remember little of the religious instruction that went on there. Instead I remember that often the girls who chastely held our hands during discussions of celibacy, often later held our hands less chastely at keg parties or even spent meaningful moments communing with us in the back of the family van.
My confirmation classes also somehow lacked religious significance. These classes leading up to the most solemn of early Catholic rites often seemed nothing more than some sort of Catholic-themed meat market. The classes which were supposed to prepare me for the day I would confirm my faith and permanently accept Catholicism as my religion, in a year introduced me to several crushes and at least one girlfriend. Yet somehow, despite my preference for girls over God, I was still in class on the day of confirmation. I even got to choose a name for the occasion: Anthony, after Saint Anthony, though I still don’t know what Anthony is the saint of or what he did to deserve such grace. The priest carefully conveyed the solemnity of the rite and made clear we should not accept confirmation if our faith was unsure. And yet, each and every one of my fellow students and I, doubting Thomases all, took that solemn vow and claimed our shiny new names before a church full of beaming family and friends. Two years later, my brother facing the same choice, made the honest one and decided not to be confirmed because he did not believe. And though this was exactly what they asked of us, his choice caused a furor at home and in class. As both sides pressured him to go through with the ceremony, their hypocritical message became abundantly clear to both of us: observance of tradition and form outweigh true belief. This realization was perhaps my first conscious step away from the church.
This same empty faith echoed through the halls of the Catholic boys junior high and high school I attended. Guided as it was largely by celibate Christian Brothers teaching classes like Marriage and Family and underpaid, non-credentialed teachers, my academic and moral education suffered. Those six years, however, were far from devoid of learning. From Brother Lefevre, an elfin little man in possession either of a wicked sense of humor or a dangerous sadistic bent, I learned that adults, even "holy" men can be jerks. He liked to creep up behind an off-task student with a needleless syringe of water. Waiting for the appropriate moment, he would tap the offending student on the shoulder, and, as the student turned expectantly, shoot water into their open, unprotected eyes. Here was an upstanding man of God we could all emulate and did. In government, we learned through extensive year long trials that Billy’s flatulence could indeed peel the puke green paint from the back wall. In chemistry, I carefully determined just how hot to heat a penny on the Bunsen burner before it would stick fast to the linoleum. Biology offered the opportunity to study the eating habits of the teacher. When we had determined her favorite candy, my friends and I would stealthily slip it into our loose, Catholic school slacks on our lunchtime Safeway run. Fifth period we watched gleefully as mousy Ms. Chandler unknowingly sinned eating the stolen sweets gave her as gifts. And in religion class, each of us was the architect of our own service which our fellows were forced to attend. Showing a flair for bullshit even as a tenth grader, my mass centered around the Metallica song "Fade to Black." As my friends scrunched on the carpet of the small dark chapel suppressing giggles, I intoned somberly on the subject of teen suicide. In my hands, the heaviest of heavy metal bands spoke for tormented teens unable to reach out for God’s help. With an A on that project I began to glimpse the great catholic tradition of rationalizing. Clearly if a 15 year old boy with no interest in religion to speak of could make Metallica seem pious, imagine what adults versed in thousands of years of religious history could do. Repeatedly, my school experiences reinforced what I had learned from my brother’s confirmation experience. What goes on behind the scenes is unimportant. What matters is what’s on the surface.
By the time I left for college, from Sunday school to catechism to youth group to Catholic school, I had been immersed in Catholicism for 18 years. Yet when I finally struck out on my own, I did not seek out a church to join, a religious community to embrace. No, I went cold turkey, though not consciously. Maybe because I had finally started paying attention and actually doing my reading, academia lifted a veil from my sight. The texts in my undergraduate history showed me a history I had never known. Sociology and psychology provided insights into human behavior. Literature offered alternative lifestyles and beliefs and warnings to the church from hundreds of years ago, ignored then as they are now. Against this backdrop the Catholic church’s many mortal sins began to unfold. I began to see a link between my own disinterest and the church’s history of oppression. The same church that fostered the crusades and followed popes of dubious moral character and belief, fostered my own indiscretions and accepted my own lukewarm faith. In two thousand years, the church had not changed.
When I met and became friends with Christians, some of them Catholic, I began to combine my new knowledge with 15 years of Catholic school and bible study (I was surprised how much had actually stuck). Jennifer and I spent many hours in her car, windows steamed from our hot breath, the car rocking not from youthful frolicking, but with verbal combat. Evening after evening she argued the case against homosexuality, premarital sex, and birth control, defending her church dogmatically, always trying, I think, to save me. I had only begun to grasp the origins of my disillusionment, and, though I didn’t know it at the time, these battles, first with Jennifer, later with anyone who would pick up the other end of the rope, even the Jehovah’s Witnesses who came to my door, were outward signs of inner struggle. I wanted desperately to best these people in a battle of wits, to take their faith, Christian, Catholic, whatever, and grind it slowly under my boot heels.
Over time, and with reflection, my attitude has softened. I no longer engage in bouts of religious wrestling. Believe what you want as long as it does not infringe on my right to believe what I want is my motto. I will not join the Catholic Church and most organized religions in their biggest fault: an unfailing belief in their own truth. I cannot believe that most of the world is going to hell simply because they have chosen the "wrong" faith out of so many seemingly similar faiths on offer. So I have not gone back to the church, any church.
Yet much like an alcoholic will always be an alcoholic, I will always be a Catholic, though a "recovering" Catholic. The issues affecting the church I grew up with still weigh upon me, though presumably not as much as they weigh upon Catholics who have not renounced their faith, and I cannot ignore them. I cannot attribute the Catholic Church’s faults to history and another time and place, cannot swallow official apologies offered a hundred years after the fact, do not understand the Pope’s unwillingness to address overpopulation and the AIDS crisis by lifting the ban on contraception. I will no longer accept a male-only priesthood or the persecution of homosexuals, sweeping it under the rug with mumbled comments about how the church is simply behind the times, slow to change. Ironically, I could accept the sexual abuse scandal. After all, the numbers are not any worse than those of the general population. While the crime is reprehensible, it is not one that breeds only in the church. But the church’s fault is clear: a failure to address the issue honestly. The ponderous Catholic bureaucracy has again proven incapable of prompt decisive action. So as lapsed Catholics everywhere pull the bandages from festering, guilt-induced stigmata, we recovering Catholics publicly celebrate our Pyrrhic victory, tempering our own guilt by loudly criticizing our former church.
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