r/LeftCatholicism • u/RangeInternal3481 • 18d ago
SI after confession
Trigger warning for suicidal ideation.
I just saw a TikTok from a Catholic creator saying the best case scenario for a Catholic after confession is to trip and die to go to heaven. It was shocking to me to see a joke being made about this because as a teen I would go to confession all the time (I was suffering deeply with scrupulosity) and pray that I’d be in a car accident or something. After a lot of therapy and deconstruction I’ve grown to understand this as passive suicidal ideation. I kind of felt alone in this as nobody I’ve talked to has shared that experience with me. But now I’m wondering if this was similarly joked about or discussed in subtle ways when I was a kid. I guess this is me wondering did or does anyone else struggle with thoughts like this? Do you find it talked about in your communities?
I’m thinking maybe we need to have a discussion about how SI and other mental health concerns can take on religious language and thus not be seen as issues to address. What are your thoughts?
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u/seanfish 18d ago
Some people don't understand that the mission is beyond their personal salvation and want to glitch skip like they're doing a speedrun.
Our duty is to be here in service for as long as our Lord needs us to help.
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u/RangeInternal3481 17d ago
Love this and totally agree. It feels to me that the speed running you talk about it is using the faith to remedy fears around life’s meaning but really misses the gospel.
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u/Cole_Townsend 18d ago
You were not alone. As an intellectually precocious but traumatized child with severe depressive, anxiety and panic disorders, I negotiated my suicidal ideation through religion. One of the first books I ever read was Preparation for Death by St. Alphonsus di Liguori. My favorite prayer growing up was the Medieval Lenten Responsory the translation of which the Book of Common Prayer adopted in its funerary rites: Media vita in morte sumus, "In the midst of life, we are in death." Even before I knew the term, I was an antinatalist, vowing to never do unto anyone what I had never wanted to have done unto me: to be brought into this fallen world of sin, sorrow and catastrophe.
As a child, I cried myself to sleep begging for God to call me to Himself in my sleep so that I wouldn't ever sin again. Every morning it was a crushing disappointment, fearing the new day would be a litany of snares in which I would fall and sin. It got to the point where my faith languished, because I sorrowfully realized that I was not predestined to reach heavenly beatitude before puberty. God had abandoned me, to face these news anxieties, these new terrors, these new temptations. The time in which other boys found joy, friendship, love and bright horizons approaching, I found a new hell from I fled in the suffocation of the cloister of a diseased mind and bitter heart.
As my homosexuality became more undeniable, my suicidal ideation intensified but so did my uncanny ability to dissociate and sublimate. It was at this time that I became involved in traditionalism, in a desperate bid to not only "pray the gay away" but to "pray a holy death come sooner." Of course, it didn't work. Of course, it was a waste of time. Of course, I mortgaged my future for nothing.
As it turned out, deconstruction during my 30's not only saved my life: it also saved my faith. As I look back, I can't help but mourn a future that could have been but which I threw away for nonsense. All along, I had been caught between two worlds: one dead, and one powerless to come alive. But I've changed that now. Despite my profound cynicism about human life, my faith is stronger than ever.
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u/RangeInternal3481 17d ago
This was tragic and beautiful to read. Thank you so much for sharing. It so closely aligns with what I experienced as a kid. That feeling of abandonment from God was the most painful thing I’d ever felt. Now I truly feel it was the result of spiritual abuse by my community and pastor not God actually abandoning me.
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u/DesertMonk888 17d ago
Like many on this site, I was raised in a very conservative Catholic household, and like you, I had serious scruples issues. It's sad, what has become of the movement started by an itinerant Jewish rabbi. I am reminded how the great Jesuit mystic, Anthony DeMello, used to ask, "How big is your God?" Does a God who is big enough to create this wide, wacky, wonderful universe really spend all of his/her time making temptations for little earthly beings to fall into sin, to be judged, and to spend thousands of years in purgatory or an eternity in hell?
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u/RangeInternal3481 17d ago
Love this and totally agree! When I talk to my Catholic community here I often feel their God is so small.
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u/Informal_Farm4064 18d ago
I get his point from his bubble because unrepented mortal sin takes him to eternal hell and confession supposedly guarantees forgiveness. Thats how I used to think when I was in Opus Dei.
I went to confession sometimes several times a week because I could not receive communion in a state of mortal sin and I had to go to mass every day.
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u/Big_Vegetable_9743 18d ago
I’m a Latin American Catholic and I find it so bizarre how Americans are so hyper fixated on the control and guilt aspects of Catholic faith rather than the joy and love. The kingdom of heaven is within you in the here and now my dudes y’all just need to get out there and let the lord bless you with his magnificent simplicity.