It’s been many years now since I first stopped referring to myself as “Roman Catholic” whenever asked what brand of religious faith I subscribed to. My breakup with Catholicism was private, because I was raised in a devoutly religious community and losing my religion felt almost shameful at first, though I’d never felt more whole in my life. As a child, I had always assumed I would be Catholic forever because almost everyone I knew was Catholic, and I just could not imagine myself ever leaving that very religious setting. Cue my surprise when my (then) fiancé sprung on me his plan to enlist in the military. In an instant, my plan to raise my children in my childhood town went up in flames. I was distraught and at first mourned the death of my life plan. I suffer from anxiety, and going to new places is a significant source of anxiety for me. The idea of moving away from everything I ever knew to a place I had forever intended to avoid (California) caused much fear and stress in my life. With much reluctance, I moved because the military doesn’t really care how you feel and you don’t get a say in where they send your spouse.

After living there for over 4 years, I can say I’m still not a fan of California as a state. The traffic is wacky, the politics are horrible, and I’m so boring a person that I actually hate mountains and beaches. However, the personal growth I experienced there is irreplaceable and I’ll forever be grateful for that aspect of my time there. I no longer had a tight knit community to lean on and do my thinking for me. I had to rely on myself to draw my own conclusions about world topics. It was an extremely frightening time, and trying to navigate and process so much information alone was dizzying. I was forming opinions on politics for the first time. I was encountering perspectives on social topics that I had never even considered. Slowly, my opinions started to shift and mold into something completely new. I still kept some opinions from my past life, but a lot of what I fought for from the perspective of Catholicism now seemed ridiculous. I looked back on my life as a devout Catholic and realized there was so much I resented about my time in the Church. So many things had pushed me away, and while I hate that I experienced some of those things, I am also so glad it caused me to look at my life from a new perspective.

Let us take a moment to outline some of these experiences that woke me up to my encounters with the toxicity of the Church. Keep in mind these experiences are from the perspective of someone who was not only raised in the church, but was also raised in a homeschool group that was directly affiliated with our local Catholic Church. I am also currently excommunicated from the Catholic Church, which I personally find hilarious (more on that later).

Elitism: Our church and homeschool group had a very distinct pecking order. The wealthy families of course sat at the top, and this never sat right with me. It was always the elite families who had the problems with drama and scandals, but hardly anyone ever talked about it. The worst part was that those families almost always had a very obvious superiority complex and looked down their nose at the families who weren’t on their level. A very small handful of well-to-do families were genuinely humble and gracious. I’ll forever be grateful for the kindness from those families, because they’re part of the reason my faith in humanity wasn’t totally lost as a child.

The elite families were horrible. They would look down on you for any little thing. I grew up feeling like I was expected to turn into an embarrassment. It felt like the elite moms of the community assumed I’d grow up a failure in some way or another, like I was too trashy to amount to anything. I don’t remember any specific thing that was said to make me feel this way, but the way people looked at me, talked to me, and treated me made me feel like they though I was beneath them. That’s a pretty destructive detection to pick up as as child. There was even a period of time when I was very young in which close friends of mine were not allowed to associate with me because I had a different father than the rest of my siblings. Yep, you read that right. They were forbidden from even talking to me because their mom found out I was from my mother’s first marriage, which had been previously annulled. That was an extremely confusing and hurtful experience, and as I child I couldn’t wrap my mind around why my friends were being taken away from me for something over which I had no control.

Feeling judged didn’t stop there. It only grew worse as I entered teenagerhood. It felt like I was expected to be the promiscuous girl of the group, especially when a situation where a boyfriend and I exchanging pictures was publicized. I’m not exactly sure what was specifically said about me, but I know it spread around the group like wildfire and that one of the sources was actually telling people that I had “seduced” my boyfriend, which couldn’t have been further from the truth for two reasons: one, our relationship was 100% initiated by him and I turned him down several times before finally agreeing to be in a relationship. I had never been in a relationship, so I was reluctant. He was persistent, though, and I did like him so I decided to give it a chance. Secondly, this was my very first relationship experience. He, however, had experienced trouble several times in the past with “inappropriate” behavior with girls that was, as far as I know, similar to the trouble he got in with me. I could care less that he participated in typical teenage boy activities, but I fail to see how anyone could construe the situation as me seducing anyone. Even my now mother in law was told I had seduced the previous boyfriend before her son, and that probably pissed me off more than anything else. It was especially frustrating to have my reputation among the church moms obliterated when many of the elite moms had daughters running around having anal sex with boys so they could stay a “virgin” for marriage someday. However, this ties in to my next topic.

Gossiping: you’ll never hear as much gossip from a person as you will from a Christian woman who is allegedly trying to earn a place in heaven. I went to public and catholic school for one year each, but I can promise you the judgment and hateful gossip you hear from peers at school doesn’t even hold a candle to what comes out of the mouths of Catholic homeschool moms. And that’s really saying something, because children can be very cruel. I’m not going to pretend I’m above gossiping because I’m not, though I will say I definitely draw a distinct line regarding gossiping about literal children. But the fact that these women pretend to be so pious in public while contributing to the slandering of children behind closed doors is something that always really rubbed me wrong throughout my childhood.

Hate disguised as truth: If there’s one thing about religion that has growingly disturbed me, it’s the amount of people who are discriminated against in the name of religion. It took me a long time to shed the indoctrination that causes people to believe that consenting adults can be sinful for loving each other solely because they are the same sex. Coming to terms with my own sexuality was a huge first step in unraveling that damaged belief. Yes, Christians are called to not judge. Yes, they think that loving the the sinner, not the sin is a gracious response to criticism of their beliefs. Yet they are judgemental. They do look down in condescension on people who don’t hold the same beliefs as them. They assert that their “truth” is the one and only truth, and that any other truth is just sinful relativism in disguise. This is how they justify trying to discriminate against others. Because they interpreted a book, written thousands of years ago and translated thousands of times, to say that anyone who doesn’t follow their xyz beliefs is a sinner who will burn in hell’s flames for disobeying the ridiculous rules outlined in aforementioned book. I try to not care about what differing opinions others have, but when it gets to the point where these people are voting in a way in which they’re trying to allow their discriminatory religion to shape the country, I tend to have a problem with that. It bothers me, and I’m always saddened and infuriated when I see the tripe people come up with to defend things like wanting to discriminate against people who are gay or trans. They cling so hard to their antiquated belief system, which in and of itself isn’t a problem as long as they aren’t hurting others because of it. But they do hurt others, and I couldn’t align with a religion that behaved that way any longer.

Excusing bad behavior: Catholics are always quick to look outside their circle for sins, but the sins of their peers gets willfully ignored. People just look the other way because “they’re good catholics.” I remember there was one “good catholic boy” who everyone knew was a total creep with mental issues, but people kept pandering to him because he was so religious and his family was popular in the homeschool group. I even had tried to give him the benefit of the doubt and be painfully nice to him thinking maybe he would grow out of the creepiness. He tried to molest me in a swimming pool on one occasion, and I didn’t even dare try talking to any adult about it because I knew it would either get swept under the rug or I would be victim blamed for it because I was a few years older than him and being trashy was expected of me. The only people I told at that time were my boyfriend (who yelled at the guy about it and threatened him if he ever went near me again) and possibly my best friend as well. I’ve told more people since then because it weighs heavily on me that I could be responsible for him having the opportunity to hurt other women, but even now, many years later, I have had people close to me try to defend him after I tell them what happened. It disgusts me that people like that are protected, but decent people who aren’t the most religious are gossipped about and looked down on because they aren’t as religious as others. As long as you look pious on the outside, you can get away with almost anything.

Excommunication: I wish I had a cooler story behind how and why I was excommunicated, but the reality is really boring and stupid. Basically, they would not allow me to marry without going through their dumb/bullshit marriage prep classes. So I gave them a metaphoric middle finger and married my husband via justice of the peace instead of a priest. If a practicing Catholic marrying a non-believer does not get married in the Catholic Church and force their heathen spouse to sign a document saying he will only raise his children to be Catholic, you are excommunicated and can no longer recieve the sacraments. A lot of people think I didn’t try to get married in the church, or that I only wanted to get married fast because it was a shotgun wedding and I was pregnant. Neither are true. In reality, I did meet with a deacon to discuss our options, and he told us that getting married without doing marriage prep was basically impossible. We would have to get a letter from the Archbishop saying we were allowed to get married without marriage prep, which didn’t help us at all since we were on a time crunch and needed to get married soon. See, the reason why we got married fast is because my fiance had enlisted in the military and was leaving for boot camp on some unspecified day within the next few months. We wanted to be married before he left for boot camp, which ended up being an excellent decision later on. But the church wanted us to not get married, and just do the marriage prep online. The problem is my fiancé would not have access to computers for at least the next ~6 months, and then we would have to get through the classes over the span of several months. Then we’d have to plan a wedding long distance and try to schedule a time for him to travel back home from wherever he gets stationed just to marry me. I swiftly decided fuck that, he’s here now and I’m getting married. The church can kiss my fluffy white booty because they are absolutely not going to dictate who and when I can marry someone I love. Several members of the church belittled us for not getting married in the church, and even went as far as telling our wedding guests that they were sinning by attending our wedding. We’ve been happily married over five years now with no divorce plans in sight, so it appears that so far that we have miraculously made it in life without their frumpy classes on how to be married. I am forever grateful for how it all happened because we found out two weeks after our wedding that I was expected our first baby (conceived after being married, in case any of the snobs who accused us of a shotgun wedding are reading), and then a week or so after that my husband was shipped off to boot camp. The timing of everything was perfect, and it just didn’t make sense to wait to marry someone I knew I wanted to marry. I’ll gladly stay excommunicated for that.

Sometimes it hurts to be on a different wavelength than the community I grew up with. That community is all I ever knew, and just like with an abusive relationship, sometimes I miss all the good times despite the bad times. However, I am grateful for how far I have come as a person, and how personal my beliefs are to me now that I am not being told what to believe. I always knew deep down that I did not fit into the Roman Catholic box I had grown up in, but it took moving thousands of miles away for me to finally gain the courage to explore that side of myself. I don’t harbor any ill will towards the religious people in my life because truly, most of them are genuinely amazing people. I won’t ever expect to agree with someone on absolutely everything, and I’m grateful to have so many diverse people in my life to keep my perspective fresh. But just like it only takes one negative comment to turn an entire day of complements into a negative memory, it only took the handful of bad people and bad experiences to show me that I will never be able to, in good conscience, entertain religion in my life.