Giving Up on the Catholic Church

I wrote a long post and deleted it. Here is the bottom line.

I grew up devout Catholic and heard a lot of Catholic homophobia. I was married to my late husband for 26 years. He was an atheist and I was burned out on the Church so we never went except for important family events. Most people in both our families are Catholic.

After he died last year, I moved to be closer to my sister. Church and her faith are important to her. I heard some things in sermons that sounded vaguely homophobic. Other than that it was ok. But when I got involved in the queer community, I stopped going to church.

I decided to try one more time this weekend because today is Easter. I went to church only to hear the following homily from a priest I never heard before.

He said a priest in Ireland had developed a commercial of images of people who were happy. They were described as

a witch
an atheist
a prostitute
an addict
a drag queen
a transgender person

They were happy because they accepted Jesus and the word “former” was written next to the description of each person.

I thought that’s it I’m out. They were pretty much on their last strike because of the things I’d already heard. The sermon concluded by saying if Jesus could help a drag queen, he could help us too.

This is so bad, it sounds like I’m a troll and this is a parody but this is exactly what he said. He’s new and incredibly conservative. He gave the same homily the next morning to the Mass my sister and her husband attended.

And apparently he has said worse. He has said transgender people do not belong in the Catholic Church.

My sister and her husband are liberal and can’t stand him, they avoid his Masses, but sometimes like this weekend it’s not possible. They’ve been there a long time and are committed to the parish. I’m not.

Believe it or not, there are queer friendly Catholic spaces. They may be hard to find but they exist. My Jesuit college is very queer friendly and I can tell because their campus bookstore includes a lot of books about LGBTQ relationships, etc and they are all affirming. But I’m old enough that I don’t want to go to a college church and they are over an hour from me.

I know this is the end for going to that parish. There is a group called Dignity USA that is pro LGBTQ Catholics. I may call and ask if there are more liberal churches around here.

To make it worse, and I’m not going to dwell on it, I was sexually abused by a priest when I was young. This is part of why I was gone so long. But eventually I decided that even though there were a lot of priest abusers and those who covered up, I wasn’t going to hold people who did not abuse me responsible. But I’m not going to listen to this.

Sorry if I went on too long.

thanks

 

I also said that I attend an Aging with Pride 55+ group for coffee every week. Sometimes we talk about religion. I’ve heard positive things about a liberal Protestant church. I’ll probably go.

My Catholic identity is important to my mother, which makes it hard. But I need to do what’s right for me.

 

Which church did you grow up in?

 

I wish they were different

 

That makes a lot of sense Chillton thanks