Atheism

Hi, everyone. I really need to vent. I don't expect anybody to actually read this whole thing, but if you do I'd love it if you could share your thoughts with me.

I live in a predominantly Catholic country and was raised Catholic myself. Despite this, I was thankfully not forced to go to church for brainwashing as a child. Catholic Mass is a strange beast to me, one that I have not built any tolerance to, for many of the same reasons why I haven't built up a tolerance to heroin.

I’ve always been a very questioning person and even as a child, I was not content in simply accepting the answers that were spoonfed to me about the nature of reality. I branched out, studying other religions and theologies, which has been a hobby of mine since I can remember. I’ve studied or participated in rituals of Christianity (mostly Catholicism and Baptism) Hinduism, Buddhism, Daoism, modern Atheism (not technically a religion but obviously related), Spiritism, Umbanda, and other lesser known religious movements that have some following in my country, and have been experimenting with different forms of meditation since around 2009.

I don’t fancy myself a religious scholar but I do know that I’ve put more effort into this than maybe 80% of people, who never stray too far from whatever religion they happen to have been brought up in. So I’m understandably bothered by people who display what I think is a hugely unwarranted certainty in the truth of the only beliefs they’ve ever been actively exposed to without even trying to look at alternative views, especially when the information is so readily available and those beliefs are so harmful to themselves and those around them.

Which brings me back to Catholicism. I’m not going to expound the contradictions of Christian theology here. Just opening a Bible to a random page and reading sequentially for ten minutes should be enough to convince any impartial observer that it’s anything but rock solid. But the Catholic Church in particular is without a doubt the greatest force for evil ever created by humans. Since the Edict of Thessalonica in 380 CE, its history has been marked by forced conversions and violence – which they were largely victimized by themselves before said edict, but the wrong lesson seems to have sunk in.

The time period when the Catholic Church was at the height of its power is referred to, not coincidentally, as the Dark Ages. This period was marked by the Crusades, the Inquisition Courts, and by the persecution of non-Catholics, women who didn’t obey their husbands (aka witches), homosexuals, freethinkers in general, people who tithed less than 10% of their gross income and, for some odd reason, gingers. That persecution has become less overt, but despite being called "catholic" (i.e. universal), this church is very much an in-group. It preaches that if you're not a club member, you're going to suffer forever in a place especially designed to torture you by a benevolent god.

In Matthew 19:14, Jesus says “Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven”. But the proportion of Catholic priests responsible for sexual abuse against children has been estimated at between 2% [1] and 4% [2], while the proportion of pedophiles (not necessarily offenders!) in the general population has been estimated at around 1% [1]. In the same chapter, Jesus also says that those who wished to follow him and be rewarded in Heaven should “sell your possessions and give to the poor” (Matt 19:21) because “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God” (Matt 19:24). Yet, the Catholic Church is by far the richest private organization on the planet while also enjoying tax-exempt status in most countries worldwide.

These are the last people I want delivering a eulogy for my grandfather. But speaking to their credit, or at least to the size of their beautifully ornamented gold balls, they don't officially deny any of this. They mostly try to distract you until they can change the subject.

One of my uncles married a really hardcore Catholic nutjob. Every third word out of her mouth is "God" and she genuinely believes that she is better than everyone else because of how humble she is. You all know the type. I arrived at the church shortly before her son, my cousin, made in her image, who remarked that it was funny how I had actually walked into the church without bursting into flames. I asked him why God would set me on fire for walking into a church (though in retrospect, I half-wish that he had), to which he replied that it's because I almost never go to church.

"So does that make me a bad person?"

"No, it was just a joke."

I let it go and didn't ask him why it was supposed to be funny. We both knew that the punchline was that his god doesn't care about who is good or bad, only about who is a member of his cult, and while my cousin might find that amusing, I most certainly do not.

Everyone else arrives, pleasantries are exchanged, and we sit. Then we all get up because the priest arrived (late) and wait for his holy permission to sit back down again.

So there I am, listening to a representative of the one organization that any Christian should be most likely to believe is run by the Devil himself, as he talks to his congregation and to several non-Catholics like me who were forced to attend by social sanctions of several kinds. Behind him, a sadistically detailed larger-than-life representation of a man who was nailed to a piece of wood and left in the sun to die for defying the establishment hung from the wall. I wonder if Catholics can appreciate the irony. I had hoped that he would deliver a few harmless platitudes about how the dead are now in the Lord's loving embrace, or about actually important things such as love and forgiveness. Instead, he went on and on about the importance of faith - the voluntary surrender of one's reason, critical thinking and good sense in exchange for the comfort of not wondering if you're being swindled and lied to. And intermittently, everybody in the pews would rise as one, chant some zombified slogan like "He is among us" or "All glory to the Lord, Creator of the World" (paraphrased) and then sit down at almost exactly the same time. It was very unsettling. It felt like I was surrounded by robots at a Fascist rally.

My impatience built up quickly and I kept glancing at my watch. Then came the straw that broke the camel's back. "Join me", the preacher said, "in the prayer of the tithe payers".

And they did.

So here is this guy basically saying "Hello all. I represent an organization unapologetically known for violently stifling dissent, afflicting people with a fear of eternal punishment so that we can sell them the cure, systematically oppressing and destroying minorities, raping children without consequences, holding your emotions hostage and giving nothing back to the community in exchange - in fact, lobbying for special legal permission not to do so - and now it's time for all of you to quite literally thank God for the privilege of being able to pay us for doing all of these things."

And they did.

I just couldn't take it. That level of disrespect and brainwashing leveraged against my own family and community – against most communities the world around – is something I am just not psychologically strong enough to face so intensely. It wasn't the priest's cruel cynicism that bothered me so much as the fact that most people there seemed to think that it was beautiful and admirable and everyone else was happy to play along.

Not me. I walked out. The worst part is, I'm still expected to go subject myself to this psychological torture again and again, every time somebody I love dies or gets married or has a baby. Those moments which should be the most important to us, the saddest and the happiest, misappropriated by mystical thugs for the sake of extorting protection money from the people.

You'll notice that I haven't said a single thing about my grandfather in all of this text other than that he died. The priest didn't either.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-28526106
[2] https://www.patheos.com/blogs/geneveith/2018/09/what-percentage-of-catholic-priests-have-been-abusive/