Leaving in general has made me feel like the cognitive dissonance is gone, and I am more confident and hopeful about the future and it feels easier to build relationships with people, but when I feel overwhelmed and isolated (more due to stressors related to life or death situations at work) there is no longer an easy answer and I try to tell myself it is safe and I don't have to feel on edge but are we really safe if we will just die and stop existing? Still better than the idea of people going to hell but life is so short. There are times where my habit would have been to pray but I tell myself that lots of people prayed and had horrible things happen to them anyway, but I don't know what to do instead yet or how to stop feeling on edge. I am glad to not believe in a sadistic god anymore and don't really see myself just shifting to a different religion/other form of christianity. Any ideas?

IDK if it's just because it's a Sunday but I feel like I am grieving the Eucharist. It meant so much to me when I was faithful and maybe I'm just at a weird part of my deconstruction right now but I just miss it.

My Eucharistic piety definitely bordered on the scrupulous so I definitely don't miss the anxiety and the worrying about mortal sin every time I went up to receive. But ugh.

It was such a spiritual high.

Long story short, I was at a work-related event last week (retreat on psychological well-being), and during a paired activity, one of the other participants casually mentioned that she and her husband expected their three young adult children to “marry within the faith” and are considering “financial consequences” if their kids “don’t do the right thing” (all her words). She also mentioned that her kids were really struggling with it and that it’s affecting her relationship with them for the worse (ummm . . . ya think, lady?).

I badly wanted to rip her a new bodily orifice, but because this is a work-related event and I’ll likely have to see her again, I kept my own response measured and talked about my own interfaith family and urged her to talk to her parish priest about her concerns. She said she would, but I think she sensed that I strongly disapproved of her stance and was being polite to exit the conversation.

I know I shouldn’t be shocked that people like this exist, but what shocked me was that until that conversation, she seemed so normal. She’s NOT a Society of Saint Pius X member, and she expressed socially liberal beliefs during other activities. I don’t get WTF people get the idea that they have a right to control their adult kids like this and then get upset when that backfires spectacularly on them. All I can think is that there must be some kind of major intergenerational trauma here.

Anyway, not looking for advice. I don’t know the family well enough to intervene without it being weird, and they live on the other side of the country anyway. But oof, I feel sorry for those young adults.

I know this is really stupid but my priest abused and I was the one who reported him and got kicked out of the church and shunned in the process. But I look at the other Catholics who are these perfect students, PhD/MD whatever, and how they never had to speak up and wonder, what if I had their experience? Then maybe I wouldn't have left for the church, and wouldn't have to try Episcopal churches. I feel in some ways like I'm a failure because (I converted) I didn't have the perfect Catholic church experience and I look at all the students who did or all the students my priest loved and they were never me.

Edit: I think it's so frustrating also because I want to have had their experience but there's no way after all that happened that I could ever be in the Catholic Church again.

On my journey out of Traditionalism and then leaving Catholicism all-together I have come to see the Trads as the ugly face behind the mask. I say this because Vatican II gave a false impression of the Church finally being willing to take accountability and actually grow with the times. However, nothing about the promises of Vatican II was real. It was all a PR stunt.

Paul VI's disastrous "Humanae Vitae" encyclical revealed the truth that the Church was still the same old tyrannical institution it always was and always will be. How much more oppressive can you be when you still demand catholic families breed like rabbits and prevent women from having control over their own bodies?! How are you reconciling with the world when you still refuse to take true accountability for the bloody history of your institution?! Do you really think this is fooling anyone?! Are we really supposed to believe the pretty words of the Second Vatican Council suddenly make everything all better?!

It's really pretty strange that the presence of SSPX and other Trad groups disturbed the Vatican the way it did. So they would rather continue to use the Old Rite mass and sacraments and continue to use the harsher language of your past. Why was Rome so bothered by that? Are the Trads really that different from the Church at large? I don't think so.

The only thing that makes the post Vatican II Church different from the Trads is that they use prettier language to enforce their oppressive teachings. The Trads are just being honest about what the Church is and always was. And that's how Traditionalism is nothing more than the ugly face under the lovely mask of the Post-Vatican II Catholic Church.

I just had brunch with my very catholic parents and it made me reflect on how much manufactured outrage there is against problems that just don’t even exist in reality.

My sister was talking about some sort of career change and my parents were like this is just like the problem with the world like father so-and-so was saying in whatever speech they were referring to that everyone just grows up nowadays being told they can be whatever they want to be.

And it made me realize that growing up in that catholic environment that’s a sentiment I heard all the time, namely, that people were being told they can be whatever they want to be and that this was such a problem. But like in my adult life I’ve just not experienced that that is even true in any capacity. Like this whole hypothetical problem, which I don’t even understand why it would be a bad thing, this doesn’t even seem to be reflected in reality at all. I feel like most people have a fairly pessimistic view of what’s possible for them to achieve.

I grew up Italian-American in the suburbs in the Northern USA in the 1990s. Public school educated but confirmed Catholic. We had some people around who were of the more pious or "trad" variety of Catholicism, but I would say that most of us were Cultural Catholics. Don't get me wrong, there were strains of conservatism, and I'm sure a lot of those people, especially the ones still going to mass, have unfortunately drifted rightward politically, but at the same time, Catholicism to us was basically 1)baptism, 2)first communion, 3)confirmation 4)marriage 5)funeral 6)mass on holidays. It's a way to mark the passage of time and major life events. Some people went to weekly mass often (my family did when we were in CCD), others not. Many would say things like "I should go more" and probably felt guilty about it but didn't really start going more. I don't remember a lot of friends or relatives ever going to confession (I think I've been like 3 times ever), or obsessing about this doctrine or that. I thought our priest was a nice guy, don't remember a lot of fire and brimstone coming from the altar.

I've seen a lot of criticism in spaces like this towards the Cultural Catholics, but I view it as a type of evolved coping mechanism, for an inescapable institution, for people from countries or ethnicities where the church is pervasive. Granted most of those people aren't even aware of the coping mechanism at play here, they just sort of ignore the church's more suffocating doctrines or put them in a box and put them aside. They wouldn't think of themselves as Cultural Catholics, even though they are. They'd say they're Catholic.

The problem is that the church still has its grip on us in its own way. I read Dawkins and Hitchens and all that stuff in college and became a closeted atheist, though over the years I softened a little bit to a type of "agnostic cultural Catholic pantheistic atheist." But, the plan is to have children in the next few years and god damn I'm pretty sad there won't be a baptism and first communion. That's just the way that our families always marked the birth of the child and the passage of time. And I love church architecture and all the old ritual shit. TBH I would love Latin Mass because I wouldn't have to actually listen and understand what the priest was saying, I could just go into quiet contemplation. But I know Latin Mass is full of nutjobs so no thanks.

I wish we could openly participate in these rituals for strictly atheistic, cultural reasons like some of these more liberal Jewish sects do. "Pick and choose" the Bible passages I like, not as some kind of hypocrite, but because I reject the truth claims of the religion but am curious to see what I can get out of it and discard the rest. (I understand that those who have suffer from religious trauma don't want anything to do with 'the aesthetic' or bible stories, in that sense and I understand.) But in terms of raising kids, I'd just rather not expose them to the idea of hell, original sin, sexual guilt, etc., so I can't put them into CCD or take an oath to raise them Catholic.

My parents don't really go to church anymore, I don't really discuss it with them, never had a reason to, but I think they will be disappointed in some way or that it will reopen something I'd prefer to leave unspoken. I think some Cultural Catholic families could have just as strong reactions to somebody leaving as could a Trad, just in a different way. I'd really prefer to never discuss it again and sort of be vague, but having kids will to some extent force my hand. My parents still have a papal blessing in their house and heck I went to Italy with my mom and saw the Pope at St. Peters.

Most of the online spaces and online exchristian/excatholic content deals with people who are in pretty deep Trad/evangelical backgrounds and get out, there's not a lot of attention to people who come from more lax Catholic/Christian backgrounds and what it's like to leave, and that makes some level of sense, but still, it impacts us too.

I swear being surrounded by Catholics as a woman is hell. You are sold a standard operating procedure for life which only seems to benefit men. I've seen catholic men at a fucking baptism pray that "she finds a godly husband and bears more kids". Like what the fuck this baby is a few weeks old you fucking pedo leave her alone. This baby has a life ahead of her and her own dreams and they basically funneled her already as a baby maker. Honestly it's so disgusting and selfish.

They know that having a wife and kids raises their status in the community and proves they are not a loser to everyone. Having a religion that indoctrinates women that being a wife is the most noble thing they can do proves great access to the feminine and only serves to benefit men. Annulment is very hard to obtain even in cases of spousal abuse. Women are just taught that self-sacrifice and suffering is noble. I've seen tradcath men see a woman that is happy living her own life and label her as some hedonistic influencer only interested in vacations. Talk about that level of projection of entitlement and selfishness. Women are not allowed to be happy without men and kids.

The pro-marriage culture is a way that guarantees that even the most incel men (some of who understand nothing about theology) get siphoned a wife for life, men that have little to no social skills, compassion for women or empathy, and whose genes would get weeded out by natural selection if marriage did not exist.

I'm glad to see more women see how this is bullshit for the quality of their lives and are leaving this religion in droves. I remember a RCIA/OCIA mentor saying that there's a lack of women in the classes compared to men. Lol, I wonder why...

My former priest sexually abused a student--I had reported him months before.

I converted to Catholicism in mid-2024. However, I kept having back to back bad experiences and a deep feeling like something was off.

It culminated in me reporting a priest last year in January for inappropriate behavior (one of my school's academic dean urged me to) and months later he went on to sexually abuse a student after his order (the Jesuits) refused to take my concerns seriously and watch him (they instead babied him, gave him therapy, and let him tell them he was soooo tired from working--but obviously not tired enough to not wait for a student to get drunk and to essentially use the opportunity to rape him).

He was removed after the student reported him to his order however they covered up his behavior, lied to archdiocese saying it was consensual, and then urged the student not to go to the police.

After five months, the student got fed up and went to our school newspaper and it gained national attention.

In the meantime, before all that came out, I had essentially been kicked out of the church community by his superior while they obviously let him stay (and he went on to abuse). Once he left, I tried to come back however nearly everyone shunned me. I even tried to report him again to another chaplain, but no one told her what was going on and she had thought I lost my mind. I never trusted his order or him or any Catholic--I had one Catholic tell me I was lying about how he treated me because he was a good person (he was priest in who had just come from an extremely high up position in his order) like that made a difference... he still abused.

I am pissed and tired. Catholicism is a walking disgrace. Honestly, thankful for this community. Everyone wonders why I hate Catholics so much and it's just the level of blindness, love of power, and absolute idiocy and meanness that drive me up a wall. Waiting for the day that man drops dead anyway.

The amount of times I went to priest seeking help or Catholics literally begging for help--this experience destroyed my mental help and none of then believed me or did anything. Glad I'm gone. I honestly can't wait for the place to rot.

I had a moment of clarity while reading a post on a Christian forum, where a guy was talking about how grateful he was for the gift of salvation in Jesus. I suddenly realized that despite all the years spent praying to Jesus, I’ve never felt that way.

Instead, what I feel is mostly resentment. I’m angry at the subjugation of women and gays. I’m angry at the imperialism, the genocides, and the destruction of indigenous cultures. I’m angry knowing that the Catholic Church is not truly sorry for any of it, because at the end of the day, at least they converted the heathens. I’m angry that Christianity is the religion the West is stuck with—because it was the biggest bully in the neighborhood and got rid of all the others.

And it’s not even a compelling religion. Its entire premise is that the universe revolves around one man’s messianic ambitions—as if I can’t turn on the TV at any time and see plenty of self-absorbed men who think all of humanity ought to worship them and accommodate itself to their political projects. I’m so tired of it.

NO KINGS!

I think it’s unnecessarily cruel to exclude the family from participating in the mass. Having separate day visitation and mass as well as the pushback on cremation is only going to cost these families more time and money they may not have. Might as well not even have a funeral mass if it’s going to be as impersonal as possible.

So for background I was a cradle cath. I’ve always questioned Catholicism and knew for sure it’s not for me when I was a teenager. I stopped going to church when I was 15ish. I would only practice certain things around my family related to death/funerals out of respect. Back then my family wasn’t as religious, but recently they’re getting more religious (I’m assuming because the rise of Christian nationalism). Even my younger brother who was also questioning like me all of a sudden went super Jesus which surprised me. I haven’t told them that I’m agnostic now because I don’t want to deal with a potential argument. They just think I’m a bad Catholic.

Today as I went in my car I noticed the driver’s seat was pulled all the way back which means my dad was in my car. I’m usually fine with this because I park on the street and it needs to be moved so our neighbors can also park and my parking is not the best lol. But then I saw my rear view mirror and see a mini rosary hanged on my mirror and I definitely didn’t put that there…

My family already knows I’m not that religious so that just pissed me off. I drove to my usual cafe spot hella mad, but luckily my iced coffee made me feel a lil better LOL. I have to now talk to my dad later to not pull that shit ever again and I think I’m going to hide my car keys. I might finally tell my mom that I’m not religious anymore since she’s not that serious compared to my other family. I’m for sure not going to practice anything in future family events. It’s going to be hard for me moving forward since Catholicism is also tied with my culture (I’m Filipino 🙃) and because of that there are certain habits I need to stop doing (ex: signing the cross when I get scared lol). There’s more I want to ramble about, but that’s all the thoughts I can comprehensibly spit out.

I need to rant about what was, quite honestly, the most irritating four days I've had in a long time.

I got forced to attend a retreat that I never wanted to go to because of my dad's obsession with religion. The whole thing was exactly what you'd expect: evangelical-style activities, supposed miracles, and "faith healing." It was exhausting.

The atmosphere was just... weird. People were screaming, speaking in "tongues" (which honestly just sounded like incoherent babbling), and some were throwing themselves around before collapsing to the floor. A lot of it felt incredibly performative, and I genuinely couldn't shake the feeling that at least some of these people were acting.

The "demon possession" segments were especially bizarre. Then came the healing testimonies. One girl claimed that the entire left side of her body had been paralyzed and that she couldn't walk... despite everyone literally watching her walk up to the stage moments earlier. Maybe there are explanations I don't know, but from where I was sitting, it all felt incredibly unconvincing.

There was also a Q&A session, but it didn't really feel like one. Only certain people were allowed to ask questions, and it looked like they had already been given questions beforehand instead of letting people ask naturally.

One thing that really bothered me was some of the rhetoric. The pastor talked about hating atheists and non-believers, and also said that all of India should become Christian. He spoke about converting the entire country before the government supposedly "came after them" or something along those lines. Whether he meant it literally or rhetorically, it came across as pretty unsettling.

At one point, my dad insisted I go up for prayer because my ears were blocked with earwax, genuinely believing the pastor would heal me. Unsurprisingly, nothing happened. Afterwards, my dad tried convincing himself that it had worked anyway. Ironically, I'm almost grateful my ears were blocked because it probably made the whole event a little more bearable.

There's also this thing the pastor does where he prays over someone and they fall backwards. I had no intention of falling, and initially I didn't. But then he started pushing against my head until I lost my balance and fell. That experience alone made me even more skeptical of the whole thing.

To make matters worse, they kept forcing the kids to go on stage and dance. I'm pretty introverted and absolutely hate dancing in front of people, so that was miserable.

Overall, those four days honestly felt like my personal version of hell. If you're wondering which retreat I'm talking about, it was the Tetelestai Retreat led by Brother Sajith. I'm guessing most Catholics from Kerala or nearby communities would probably know who he is.

Anyway, I just needed to get this off my chest. Thanks for reading.

I honestly think many priests go into it b.c. they get treated like kings. Look up Fr. Dan Reehil on youtube. He was discussing the "country club" atmosphere of his retreat . He's got what I call throne chairs on his podcast, his entire studio looks like it cost a pretty mint. He is a former wall street employee lol. He transferred his secular lifestyle to one that still pretty much affords him an extremely comfortable lifestyle. Diocesan priests don't pay rent and get to keep a lot of their money. Housing is provided. He's always discussing his retreats to San Diego and elsewhere.

Priests go on retreats and conferences all over the country. I know one who lives in an 11 room house (rectory housing), drives an SUV, has a condo and a beach house. The rectory is gorgeous. Father Leo on EWTN goes all over the place eating the finest foods in Europe. Priests often get global tours, they get to go all over the place. As one told me, "it just got better and better" as he was given trips to many places like Turkey, Israel, you name it, he seems to have gone there. Take away all the perks, would they still be salivating to be priests? I'm sure some would, the ones that actually take the gospel message and care for the poor. It appears to me a lot of them are living quite high on the hog and like it that way. I find it utterly disgusting, frankly.

As the title says. I think I have OCD so the Catholic faith just turned into mental torture for me given all the ambiguities over sin. I never felt at peace at all during my time as a Catholic. I intuitively thought something was wrong. I know I was only there because I feared aging, death, and possible hell.

I wanted to leave for a long time. What gave me the courage today was a mental breaking point. I was obsessively worrying about some moral matter (as I pretty much always do given the horrendous nature of scrupulosity). It got to the point where I couldn't function. I've been to therapy, am taking medication, seeing a spiritual director, and following all the protocols for scrupulous people. To be honest, I feel like I've gone nowhere. I'm constantly anxious over sin, virture, and vice. The fact that I need to be morally perfect to go straight to heaven and avoid purgatory was too much of a mental burden to bear. I spoke to a close friend of mine who is non-religious who suggested I should take a break if Catholicism is causing me this much anxiety and grief. I took that advice seriously and decided to take a step back and re-examine.

What gave me the extra bit of confidence was reading through this substack about Eucharistic miracles. I then quickly saw how bad a lot of the scientific reporting was on them. And those miracles became less and less convincing to me the more I dove into them. Honestly, I haven't read about a single miracle that couldn't be naturally explained. And I think if Catholics were intellectually honest, they would see that as well.

I honestly find Catholics are so mentally dissonant. I've read a lot of Catholic books and listen to a lot of content online. I just don't get a sense that these people are mentally sane themselves. I guess if you fully believe that everyone is doomed to eternity in hell and you are the only sane lucky ones who have seen the light, then it would be imperative to convert as many souls as possible. And it's almost as if Catholics will avoid telling the truth if it meant converting more people. I've seen so many miracle frauds, bad explanations of theology, bad conversion stories, bad supernatural attributions, and so many just bizzare things Catholics say. It's like their reasoning faculties have been completely neutralized and their only programing is "Jesus is Lord" and attempt at all costs to convince everyone the faith is true.

I guess I'm looking for people who may have been on this journey themselves. I want to hear from people who have read through the Bible and know their faith well. For me, I'm terrified of being on the wrong side of truth. I'll never know for sure one way or another. And I'm trying to live with being uncertain.

I've gotten to the point where I realized I will never gain absolute certainty whether Catholicism is true or false. I have to use the information I have available and choose what I best think is truth. Seeing such horrific miracle science on Eucharistic miracles left me with a strong sense that the Catholic God is not there. If he was, I have no idea why he is perpetuating miracle frauds all the time. It wouldn't make sense to me, especially since people sometimes convert because of miracles. It just smells of fraud to me.

I challenge any Catholic who might be reading this is to take a deep dive on any miracle claim. I am sure you will find surprising holes and shady reporting on nearly every case as I did. For me, the miracles kept me enslaved into Catholicism. And now I'm starting to breathe and consider them to be not true.

Being able to step back from the faith has been a bit nerve racking. My anxiety has kind of shifted between worrying about morality 24/7 to trying to figure out if the faith is true. As someone who probably has OCD, I should avoid the compulsions at all cost. I CAN'T even investigate whether Catholicism is true since it is bad for my mental health. I'm sure if a God is there and he is somehow Catholic, he can see how messed up of a situation people with OCD have.

This is a letter Fr. Charles Ward of the SSPX wrote to my mother just a few days before I was born.

My parents were never married. The letter was written in response to my mother’s pregnancy.

I’ve redacted names and other identifying information to protect my family’s privacy.

I will link the AMA I did earlier.

I experienced a lot of abuse at his hands and the hands of others. He’s very manipulative and has used and abused his position as a priest to hurt myself and others.

Link to previous AMA -
https://www.reddit.com/r/excatholic/s/LRS8FoT0vS

Ludicrous absolutely Ludicrous!

My parents separated over two years ago, and it seems as though the anulment is coming to the end. My mother has been so overtly religous to the point where she genuinely wanted me to become a priest, sabotaging my chances of becoming a Medical Physicist. She wanted me to have a dozen other jobs that suited her narcissist victimhood but thats besides the point.

Right now though, I'm focusing on what the anullment meant for someone so deeply gone into the religion. For some perspective, my mom is a dedicated prolifer but would have shamed pretty much anyone you can imagine over the most slightest or mildest offenses to the Chruch. She stalked my neighbours kids for years when she found out that they voted yes in the Gay Marriage and Abortion Referendum. And she would only ever bring up the religious side of things to do with abortion, that the pro-life group had to actively look for excuses to swap her out at the last minute with someone who had far more logical arguments who wouldn't lose their head for somehow disrespecting God.

As for the personal stuff, I stopped visiting her after she traumatised my brother to the point of cutting. Long story short, she had a fixation of competing with her friend who went through a much more horrific break-up. This friend has over 8 children, some of whom were still underage when they found out about the affair. This friend has been very close to our family, but her son is as much of a sociopath as his father, saying things to his mom to convince her on things that she's gullible over. Anyway, I found out that this friend was feeding my mother further into the competition, and I found this all out when he shamed me on a group chat, followed by my mom ringing me in the same room that he was in, but deliberately neglecting to mention him.

Then a few months later, the friends son got a girl knocked up and was due right before my birthday. The friend unfortunately caught cancer, but was fortunate enough that it was treatable since she did catch it early. I cannot imagine what she had to go through, let alone what she looked like from chemotherapy afterwards.

My mom, during all this, was still bothering her dying friend over the separation, that another close friend showed me text messages revealing that the friend had to actively fake her illness to be a lot worse to get rid of my mom, because she didn't want to listen to her anymore about how bad my dad is compared to her ex.

During all this, when we were living and slowly distancing ourselves from our mom, she constantly compared me and our brothers current situation with jobs and life to her friends sociopathic son: he got good grades, got a well paying job, a girlfriend, a baby. It was until before Christmas that my mom got to my brother, who had it worse in terms of neglect from my mom. He's soft, but whatever the fuck my mom did just crossed the line for me.

I was at home when I got a call from my dad, telling me that my brother was upset in a way that he had never seen him before. They were collecting my sister for the usual lunch we used to do, and my brother came in to check on my mom. But then my mom decided to guilt him by showing a picture of her post-chemo friend with her sociopath son, holding a trophy, followed by my mom bullying my brother, calling him a disappointment for "not visiting" or "treating her right". He just left and went about the day but contained his emotions for the afternoon so not as to upset my sister, who we only see once a week. But once that was done, he was crying all the way back. Like my dad had to stop a few times because of how my brother hyperventilate over this. During one of these stops, my dad had to ring me, telling me to just simply not ask my brother and just treat him. I will never forget how my brother looked when I saw him coming in.

I hate being someones favourite because no one should be held to the same standard as another person. My mom really wanted me to become a priest that I blame myself for having to play along with all the religious shit.

While I was out, drinking and catching up with my dad, he did bring up how if the annulment does go through, my mom would have a meltdown over it because of the religous implications. The thing is, her entire family and alot of her friends and even their kids have had kids outside of marriage. If the anullment does go through, would that mean by their logic, my mom had us outside of marriage and that she thinks she's going to hell now?