The Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, in Washington, D.C., is the largest Catholic church building in North America. The Muslim Times has the best collection for rational understanding of Christianity
I’m A Lifelong Catholic. Here’s Why I’ve Finally Decided To Leave The Church.
Source: The Huffington Post
By Amanda Auchter; who is the author of The Wishing Tomb, winner of the 2013 PEN Center USA Literary Award for Poetry and the 2012 Perugia Press Book Award, and The Glass Crib, winner of the 2010 Zone 3 Press First Book Award for Poetry.
When Pope John Paul II died in April 2005, I attended a memorial Mass in a beautiful church in Houston. I had not been to Mass in a while. I returned to the familiar sights and smells of my childhood and adolescence: the painted frescoes, the stained glass windows depicting angels and tortured saints, the incense and the Eucharist and the grace the Church offers. I was a “cradle” Catholic — someone who had partaken in baptism, reconciliation, first Holy Communion and confirmation. Not only were these rituals comforting, they were a part of who I was.
I say this in the past tense because I have decided to leave. I have lost trust and belief in the Catholic Church because of the staggering number of sex abuse crimes committed against children and adults over the last seven decades. I am not a victim of these crimes, but as a person of faith, I believe it is important to speak out against these abuses, to stand firm with those who suffered at the hands of men who are mouthpieces for God.
The Church is proficient at indoctrination. As children, we are taught not to question the Church, that to do so would be a grave sin, one that places us in moral peril. This is the manner in which it keeps us quiet — the priests are stand-ins for God and we are the flock, and like sheep, we must submit. This indoctrination is a manipulation tool to keep people silent to sexual abuse, or in my experience, faith abuse.
When I was 16 and preparing for confirmation, my class was given a little blue fold-out card with categories and in some cases, subcategories, of sin to prepare ourselves for confession. I counted off 15 ways I had committed sins against God. I confessed these to our visiting priest from Louisiana, and was horrified when, upon me telling him that I had made out with my high school boyfriend, he stood up in the little room — what our church called the children’s cry room — and looked at me and proclaimed that I was going to hell. I was devastated. I was not alone — several others in my confirmation class, all of us 15, 16, and 17, wiped away tears as they too left the makeshift confessional. One young woman left the room in near-hysterics, walked out the front door and never returned. I learned that day that the children’s cry room was not a place for grace.
As a person of faith, I believe it is important to speak out against these abuses, to stand firm with those who suffered at the hands of men who are mouthpieces for God.
I kept this inside for years believing I was doomed and that my spiritual life was over. I had a difficult time sitting still in the pew with my deeply Catholic mother, fearing that each time the priest saw me he would think: sinner.
When I fully returned to the Church as an adult in 2005, I ignored the Church’s teachings on contraception, abortion rights, homosexuality. However, as more and more reports of abuses have become public, especially the recent report against over 300 priests in Pennsylvania, I cannot look the other way. To do so, I believe, would make me complicit in these crimes. To hand over five or 10 dollars on Sundays in the wicker offering basket would be complicity. I need to take a stand and that stand is to leave the Church I had once loved, a Church where I hoped to receive the last rites.
Congratulations on leaving the cult. It’s always great to see anyone reach freedom.
Did she leave the Church or Religion.