Sasha Ernest
The holy water dripped from my hair and into the baptismal font. I was 11-years-old and an official Catholic, fully embraced by God’s love or something of that sort. Becoming a Catholic at that age was much easier than leaving it for good ten years later, but there was no ceremonial de-baptism or excommunication. I just simply said one day, “I am an atheist.” As a kid Catholicism was like being in a fraternity: I took a loyalty oath, there were secret rituals, we drank alcohol and my big brother was some old guy keeping tabs on me. Starting Catholic school at 12 years of age was a whole new world of daily prayers, shiftily eyeing a bloodied Jesus on the Cross and the ever popular Redemption card game which had scenes from the Bible. The cards had your usual head on a platter scene, lions with wings, sword-wielding warriors and, of course, the occasional butterfly. Now when I see the girls across the street picking flowers for Mary’s adoration I think, “Someday Catholic School might turn them into an atheist too…god willing.”
Questioning my beliefs was a long and often grueling process full of self-doubt and years of pretending to understand the concept of the Trinity (so he’s his own dad and son?). Years later my turn to atheism, or as my family likes to say my ‘rejection of God’, was brought about by voracious reading of various philosophy and science related books. But I have to say it all started with how awkward I felt at my church’s weekly youth group meetings with their unnatural amount of hugging, overly expressive singing and massive hypocrisy. Nothing turns you sour about church when the self-righteous are spending their free time violating every moral law they pretend to uphold. It’s all hugs and loving Jesus at church and then at school it’s all I’m so much cooler than having values.
There were many occasions throughout my Catholic high school upbringing when I felt out of place among the ‘holy’, besides my liberal feminist mindset. Of course at times I thought there might be a supernatural being. For example, there was that time the microwave clock flashed ‘6:66′. But the whole religious thing wasn’t really my shtick. As a hardcore rock fan, no matter how much I loved God, I just couldn’t stand friends blasting Christian pop music that altered the words to popular songs, like “Holy Deeds Done Convert Heaps” (that’s like rocksephmy).
And now that I’ve included an incredibly lame joke I can get more serious. My youth group had a weekly testimonial where someone would stand up and confess to a room of their peers and then end up huddled on the floor crying, and of course there was hugging. They were usually pretty serious like being involved in a gang, doing hard drugs, or abusive boyfriends. The most intense testimonial was about sex and the evils of the human flesh. My mind was burned with images of how you defile yourself for your future spouse and that when you get married you are sharing your bed with every previous sexual partner. It’s terrifying for a hormonal teenager to believe that God sees your every act and impure thought. You just can’t hide from that. They made us sign these abstinence cards, promising to keep ourselves pure for Jesus, but I knew it meant as much to us as our D.A.R.E pledge. Scare tactics like these really made me feel disconnected and unprepared for the real world. Although part of that might be because I am kind of a geek.
The beginning of a skeptic is seen in the young person who steps back and first questions the traditions held by their community. My deconversion took a long time, as all periods of introspection should be, and it all started with a curious observance of my Catholic religion and my aversion to frequent hugging.
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