#ex-catholic

[winged-thinged]

Look, we joke a lot, but really, "you were born evil, wretched, worse than the scum of the earth, and it took killing a god to make you salvageable, so now you'd better be grateful to that god and thank him 10,000 times a day for it and fill your thoughts with him 24/7 and abide by the letter of his every word, lest you suffer unimaginable torture for all of eternity" is a truly horrendous thing to believe about yourself and other people

#ex-catholic #apostate #ex christian

[samkingsketches]

If you call me an abomination, I will look for comfort in your other monsters

#personal #art #pride #lucifer #baphomet #ex-catholic #sam king #Illustration

[wishbow]

reliquary of St Valentine - pam wishbow 2021

#valentine #valentines day #saint #reliquary #illustration #ex-catholic

[amillionkilopascals]

i wish catholics understood that queer people are not welcomed in the church.

the most progressive pope in history still lambasts gender theory and gender-affirming surgery.

yes, there was some semblance of community in that space. but not for me, never for me. i was never whole, in church. the person i was in that space was always an empty shell, because i was forced to cut out my heart and insides and leave them at the door to come in.

now that i have freed myself, i am outside and whole and more joyful than i ever was in that space. can you begin to see how inviting me to subject myself to that again is not love?

i understand that you want the best for your queer ex-catholic friends. but listen to us and our experiences when we tell you about the selves we had to kill just to be accepted, and how we were only able to begin to accept and heal ourselves after leaving. i was told constantly that this desire, this part of myself, my very heart, was sinful, that it had to be culled. can you begin to see why this led me to believe i was better dead than alive?

please understand this, before you ask. that is all i request.

#religious trauma #queerness #queer #catholic #catholicism #ex-catholic #journal #tw: suicidal thoughts #christianity #ex christian #apostasy #ex catholic #apostate

[halestonehyena]

people really act like abandoning/rejecting christianity just means not believing in god and then not put in any effort to unlearn cultural christianity

#op #srs #christianity #religion #ex-christian #ex christian #ex catholic #ex-catholic

[knightingael]

The most bizarre bit of sexist Catholic lore you’ll ever come across is the fact that the Church firmly believes the Blessed Mother couldn’t have gone through natural childbirth, because to do so would have corrupted her virginity. Instead, the Christ child was fuckin teleported out of the womb. I’m not even joking.

#I fuckin WISH I was joking #this beats the miraculous lactation I think #radfem #radblr #ex-Catholic #radical feminism

[soihavesomethoughts]

"I believed in God as a kid bc I always felt so moved during worship songs at my megachurch and then I went to a One Direction concert and felt the same thing and realised I just like live music"

credit: likethabug (TiKTok)

#ex-catholic #ex christian #apostate #athiest #ex religious #worship music #ex catholic

[spurgie-cousin]

#dare i tag this tiktok and tempt the fates again #I'm still inexplicably getting likes from the last one i have no idea.... how it can still be going #ex christian #ex-religious #ex-Catholic

[mandalorian-loving-mandalorian]

damn they weren’t lying this catholic really can guilt

#mando.txt #ex-catholic #raised catholic #ex catholic #catholic #catholic guilt #going thro it at the moment!

[fromthemouthofkings]

talking about Christian homophobia is boring, I'm gonna start coming up with more and more silly lies about why i left the catholic church

"i'm gluten intolerant"

"i just really love eating meat and hate fasting"

"read too much Hildegard von Bingen and now I'm an animist :("

#ex-catholic

[kings-speaks]

An Ex-Catholic’s Wager, or No Binary Can Hold Me, Including the Binary of Belief/Unbelief

Two years since the last time I stepped foot in a church, my friend asked me, “Do you still believe in God?” What an interesting question.

There is nuance to belief, I wanted to tell her, And belief Is not the same thing as worship.

Like Pascal, let me lay out my wager. Belief and unbelief, my lack of worship; Even when I gain I lose. God is, and is, and is, and is not

A church pew, a forest, A father, a stranger, an asshole, A street corner, a far-away star. I believe in four choices.

Choice One: If God is like the god of my childhood, Then he can eat my entire ass and balls. I was raised to love a god who hated me,

Raised to love the sting of fear, To breathe in the incense and the candle smoke And feel the hunger Lightheaded inside of me, and call that holy.

I was raised to love pain, To pour myself out onto the plate to be a sacrifice, And I would walk, knowingly and gladly, into hell Rather than worship that thing that almost killed me.

And I think I’d be right to. If the god of my childhood exists, He’s an abusive asshole, And I want him to lose my number.

Choice Two: If God is like the god of my adolescence, Then God is a complicated, numinous, And multivalent thing

Shining through the cracks In our universe like a star. God is the contradictory, diverse Infinite That we're all already looking for.

The capital-t Truth, A sun with a thousand different planets, A star with a hundred thousand points, And what I’m doing now

Isn’t any better or more imperfect a way to worship God Than anything else. If the God of my adolescence exists (in any comprehensible way), Then he knows why I had to leave.

Choice Three: Or maybe the Truth really is multivalent. Maybe God isn’t just one thing, And there are as many different spirits

In the wild, teaming universe As there are blades of grass, Not one path but a thousand thousand, curling Through the rich, wild

Insect-bitten and overgrown forest. Maybe each tree is holy, And the river that sings does not sing With another god’s voice, but with its own

And the gods are just as many and as different As anything else. If God is just one of many, Then I choose a different path.

Choice Four: And if God does not exist, Then all we have Is this one life, right now, that we’re living.

There is no perfect life, No perfect Truth besides the stuff in front of us. Doesn’t that make us The most important fucking thing in the whole universe?

Doesn’t that make every person And every empty parking lot and street corner Unbearably precious? And brief?

If there is no God, then I won’t Spend my one life on my knees, Small and waiting to be struck down. I’ll spend it as whole as I can be,

And happy.

#ex-catholic #pagan #unitarian #agnostic #nonbinary #poets on tumblr #my poetry

[winged-thinged]

You do not have to stay up and wait. The end of the world is not coming. You do not have to act as a witness. Nothing bad will happen if you close your eyes. Go to sleep. The man called Jesus is dead. The terror of that night was over a long time ago. Humans hurt each other all the time. It doesn't mean anything. There is nothing you can do about it right now. It's late. The world will still be there in the morning.

Go to sleep.

#ex-catholic #religious trauma #apostate #ex christian #anti lent

[guess-how-i-stole-this-body]

God flooded the world when it was filled with violence and sin.

Jesus healed the suffering.

Jesus provided food to the hungry.

I'm not even Catholic anymore and I understand that Jesus Christ would never, in a MILLION YEARS, want a genocide is Israel.

#catholic #ex-catholic #free gaza #gaza #palestine #from the river to the sea #fuck israel

[gods-favorite-second-child]

I read somewhere that being an ex-catholic is to be tainted and sinful, but now there's no one to forgive you. I think about that a lot.

#god loves you but not enough to save you #ex-catholic #where did you go #god? #I want to be perfect again

[unholybinchicken]

my catholic upbringing gave me hella religious trauma but also an indepth knowledge of the musical godspell wtf

#ex-catholic #no fr it was the first musical i ever saw #on the willows still hits as hard as it did the first time i heard it

[anxiousangerball]

STORY TIME!

Not really, but my sister just hurt me in the worst way possible. She gave me a thought that I can't let go of now!

Let's see, what are the critical facts to know? I was raised Catholic, but am very, very lapsed now. I feel like, as I have lost my religion, my mother has become more devout. In a bad way. Like, she tried to teach us kids to be kind and to do good in the world as we were raised in the Catholic faith. Now she's doing awful, AWFUL, shameful things* in the name of her religion. I look at her and I think - "you raised me better than this. What the hell happed to you?"

Anyway - I may have left the small town I was raised in, but my mom does like to keep me informed of the goings on - especially if it is about a kid I used to babysit for.

Today, my mom texted to share that one of those kids is running for a school board position.

My first thought was "yikes. I remember how devout his folks were. I wonder how he turned out. Like, is he going to be bad news for the kids?" (Bad news in the conservative, book banning, let's bring ALL THE PRAYERS (but only if they are Christian) back into the schools.

I didn't say that to my mom, of course.

But I did text that to my sister.

Her response? She's thought about how people might think about us - mom's three kids. We were known to be in church every week, front row, without fail. And now that my mom is doing horrible things (think picketing outside of abortion clinics, praying gay away, etc.) that we are sure her small town community knows about (and probably supports, tbh), do others think "I wonder how terribly AnxiousAngerBall turned out, with a mother like that."

I don't know where I'm going with all of this. It's just that - it hadn't occurred to me to even think about how others might perceive me.

Surprisingly, now that I've had a moment, I realize that I don't think I care. I have plenty of flaws that people can judge me by, I'm not going to worry about the flaw of having a mother who has forgotten how to be kind.

#Ex-Catholic #Family Issues #Judgement #Mothers and Children