Trigger warnings: homophobia, transphobia and suicide.
Having to face your own mortality at the ripe age of six-years-old is not best for your psyche.
The Catholic Church’s moral absolutism devastated me before I could even really understand the difference between “good” and “bad.”
Try juggling the moral implications of your everyday decision making on top of realizing you’re queer.
From second to eighth grade, I attended a private Catholic school in Sacramento. The nicest way I could describe my experience would probably be akin to being in a cult for six years of my life.
I remember how uncomfortable I felt in class when my seventh grade religion teacher said the only marriage valid in the eyes of the church was between a man and a woman.
I sank into the wooden church pew as the priest droned on about the shame our country was facing by legalizing same-sex marriage, a moment that should have been celebrated.
I would go to church twice a week, on Fridays with my entire school and again on Sundays with my parents.
If you’ve never been to a Catholic Church, it's a lot of sitting down, standing up, sitting back down again and thinking about the inevitability of death.
Church always made my chest feel tight.
So much of its teachings revolve around how your current actions will result in either paradise and oneness with God or eternal damnation in the flames of hell.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but it feels a bit obnoxious and counterintuitive to only do good things for the sake of avoiding punishment.
I have been depressed since the fourth grade and I was unable to get professional help until my sophomore year of high school.
Before getting help, I was told that I was ungrateful for God’s blessings in my life, that I should just pray and find solace in “Him” instead of feeling sad.
While I might have had a genetic predisposition to mental illness, I largely attributed my distress to thinking about death so much because of the Catholic Church.
By the way, suicide and thinking about suicide is a sin too.
As a child, the idea of the end of the world, the second coming of Christ and judgment day, scared the absolute shit out of me.
In the Catholic Church, the second coming of Christ will happen instantaneously and without warning. Everyone will die and their souls will be judged by God directly according to the “Catechism of the Catholic Church.”
The “Catechism of the Catholic Church” contains fundamental Christian truths formulated in a way that facilitates the Church’s understanding according to the United States Conference of Bishops website.
Though the “Catechism” calls for gay individuals to be treated with compassion and respect, it refers to homosexual acts as “objectively disordered.”
On top of rejection of homosexuality, the U.S. Conference of Bishops also reject gender transition.
Learning that your existence as a queer middle schooler is “objectively disordered” isn’t the best news to hear while you’re still trying to figure out who you are as a person.
I felt like a bad person for being queer and for thinking about death, a double whammy.
I have always been a curious child growing up, asking incessant questions about how the world worked to the annoyance of the adults that had to deal with me. Catholicism always left me with more questions than answers.
What was so bad about Eve eating the apple to know the difference between good and evil?
Was God really cruel enough to wipe out all life on Earth except for one family and their boat full of random animals?
Why do I feel guilty for existing?
As I got older, I realized that some of the questions I had could not be answered by my religion.
I had to figure it out on my own.
When I finally received counseling for depression and anxiety, I was able to talk to others my age who went through similar struggles to me, as well as a professional therapist who never told me to just “pray it away.”
I find comfort in talking about these feelings with my friends from elementary school who experienced growing up in the same confusing, hurtful environment.
Despite receiving baptism, holy communion and confirmation, I’d like to think I have now distanced myself entirely from the Catholic Church.
I have stopped attending church for six years now and I am more at peace without a religion than I ever was following a church that did not want me.
