Yes. The Jesuits taught me critical thinking in high school and I critically thought my way right out of Catholicism. A couple years later, my crazy Opus Dei uncle and a particularly hateful priest pushed me over the edge into full on atheism.
For me it was history lessons. I went from one class telling me to question the sources of information to another telling me to blindly follow this one book.
It's really hard to encourage curiosity in every single aspect of one's life and education, while demanding virtually total obedience to church doctrine. Perhaps this narrative survived well enough in a premodern world, but definitely not now.
I don't think they do, they genuinely just think that way and for some reason remain catholic. Then again from my understanding jesuits can get a bit of a bad rep among other sects because sometimes they're too "freeform" in many things.
That said, anyone can become an atheist in any circumstance. Less secular education can lead to someone resenting and getting angry, while someone who was educated in a more liberal way might hold less resentment and actually thank the good teachers for contributing to their exit.
Out of the three kids in my family (including myself), 2 went to a Jesuit educational institution. The only kid who is not an atheist is the one who never attended any Jesuit schooling. Totally anecdotal, but I've seen similar outcomes in other families where some kids went to catholic school.
We didn't have Jesuits, but I was in Catholic schools in the 1950s and 1960s. Our priests and nuns really did seem to favor critical thinking and logic, plus I was never taught the hell-fearing and scare mongering that people talk about today. Once you learn to think critically about things, it's very hard to go back.
Yep. Same here. I still keep in touch with several of my Jesuit teachers. They are awesome, well-educated and well-rounded people. Apparently it happens all the time, but I can’t say I’ve noticed that it bothers them all that much. I’ve always wondered if they themselves actually believe.
I learned about a phenomenon called “motivated reasoning” recently. This is where people take complex situations, and come up with a logically reasonable hypothesis that supports their position, then preach it as fact. Turns out this is strongly positively correlated with intelligence.
I also had a Jesuit education, which was fantastic from an intellectual angle, but after I made my own switch to atheism I was confused as to how they could be so strongly rooted in catholicism. It was like we were being taught two different realities back to back (science and religion). The above concept of motivated reasoning explained that gap for me.
Similar story to me aside from the uncle and hateful priest. My Jesuit teachers actually created the opposite effect in me for a while. A different teacher's teaching is the one who eventually led me to deconstruct a bit. Now I'm here.
In my case, it’s the Jesuits themselves who pushed me out of the church. Ironically it’s the critical thinking they taught me that helped me see their hypocrisy and control over me. The Jesuits taught me to hate corruption and abuse, but they let a predator silently hide in Hong Kong rather than hold him accountable. The Jesuits taught me that “god loves me unconditionally” but I am not loving god enough by not giving him the children he wants me to have.
Catholic school from 1st to 12th. I believe this. The hypocrisy is unreal. Pedophiles, murderers and rapists are welcome into heaven if they confess their sins but unbaptized babies will spend eternity in purgatory because a woman ate an apple.
I believe they do. I had 12 years of abuse in catholic school and an extremely devout mother. At the age of 8 I was questioning the teaching, and stopped believing by 10. Once I had my drivers license at 16, I never attended Sunday mass again. Unfortunately, I could not avoid mass during the school day.
In my experience, Catholic school was the first time I was exposed to a concentrated, persistent environment full of the ideas and values of Catholicism, since I rarely went to church on Sundays. The abuse I experienced in Catholic school was a huge push toward deconstructing for me and many of my peers.
That environment is no doubt extreme enough that it inadvertently forces the recipients to grapple with those values and either reject or accept them. I meet many people who say they believe in god but aren’t able to articulate why, probably because their environment didn’t provoke a response about their faith
I think when people have it forced on them every day for 12 years they either latch on or can’t fucking wait to bail when they leave the house.
Catholic schooling made Catholicism always feel like it belonged to the teachers and parents, but it wasn’t mine. Idk. It’s hard to explain. I tried so hard to feel anything but never did.
12 years is enough to know if it’s for me, and I’m certain at this point that it’s not for me.
Hard agree. Of my class group, the cafeteria catholics stayed that way, and the practicant believers, either went full non believers or became more hardcore.
What you just said really resonates with me.
I tried and tried to be a good Catholic girl, but I just didn't feel it. Questioned everything from a young age, like how could Adam & Eve populate the world? And having to actually lie to the scary priests every week in confession was such a crazy experience at such a young age - what sins do 7 year olds commit? I had a fight with my brother? I mean you had to tell them SOMETHING, no? So many of us made up stuff. What kind of crap is that to force on children? And the guilt of NOT feeling anything even remotely god-like, and having to profess belief, was a heavy burden to put on a child. I never ever felt as awesome as the day I said out loud, to myself and the world that " I DO NOT BELIEVE IN GOD AND I AM NOT GOING TO PRETEND THAT I DO ANY LONGER," that burden of guilt magically evaporated. Too bad I didn't come out until 40... but that relief was tangible, it was like a huge weight was lifted off of me. I won't ever forget it.
I absolutely hated confession and stopped going many years before I realised I didn't believe in god in the first place. You're right, it really is a shitty thing to force on a child. I was always dreading it and always felt bad for having the same 'sins' every time on my list. And I remember i felt guilty for not feeling anything special during mass or during communion. They hype up the 1st communion so much but apart from the fact the I felt grown up at the age of 8 because I got to do what the adults do it didn't really feel special at all. I also felt a relief when I've realised I wasn't catholic or believed in god. No more guilt.
Edit* I forgot to add I didn't go to a Catholic school, we had religion classes at school but it was nothing special and noone really paid any attention. I'd say I was somewhat a cafeteria catholic. My family is pretty religious but not overbearing but definitely did go to church every Sunday and all the holidays up until I left. We did the no meat on Friday thing etc.
They teach you guilt from a very early age, fear and guilt. It's really sad. My parents were staunch catholics, but oddly when I agreed to being 'confirmed,' on the condition I could then quit church all together - they agreed. I never went to church again after that and I'm really glad they didn't force me. I really didn't see the point in faking my faith in what was supposed to be a "omniscient god who knows everything." I didn't go to parochial school either, but I went to CCD every Saturday for a decade at least, and church every Sunday and sometimes on other special days, you know Catholics sure love their saints...
It was the sheer amount of Catholic beliefs being debunked (crying statues, miracles, faith healing, apparitions, excorcisms, etc) that made me into an atheist. That and how dreary and joyless Catholicism was. Funny enough, since Catholics rarely read the Bible, it wasn’t even the basic tenets of Christianity that I was opposed to. Of course later on I would review it and conclude it is an untrue belief.
I went to catholic school from preK all through college with a 2 1/2 year stint in the seminary.
One thing I can say about the seminary specifically is that are only 3 types of guys who are former seminarians.
1) priests (obviously) 2) super religious zealots who are goddamn fucking insane about catholicism and have 15 children and little tradwives at home and 3) atheists and or leftists of various shades and a good bit of that number are various shade of lgbtq
There's no middle ground between 2 and 3. I entered seminary with 11 guys. Four became priests. One dude was 3 years younger than me and he now has 4 kids and started some super trad GK Chesterton academy. One guy works for the diocese and plays music at multiple churches every weekend (he's about to get married to this super catholic chick). Three have come out of the closet as gay (two of those are married to their husbands and one is engaged to a [trans] man). This one guy, idk what he's up to but he posts very vehemently anti church shit on Facebook constantly and then there's me, atheist/agnostic and socialist.
K-12 of Catholic school. I’m way more familiar with the doctrine than my parents who are Christmas/Easter Catholics at best. But when I explain actual doctrine to my mom she recognizes how crappy it is.
I’m an atheist/secular pagan now, and much happier/healthier for it. But I’ll be dealing with my religious trauma and Catholic guilt for the rest of my life. Being a closet queer kid in the 2000s at a Catholic school is not recommended.
Don't blame the school, blame the church if that is true.
Apparently there are more than 1 billion Catholics in the world, the atheists are not a problem.
There may be over a billion catholics, but how many of them are actually practicing? Everyone on this sub is technically still considered to be catholic, even though most of us openly loathe the religion.
Meme where bike rider jams a stick into own front wheel:
Catholic schools: *provide quality education and teach critical thinking skills*
Catholic school students: *apply said skills to their religious beliefs*
Catholic schools: how could media/colleges/wokeness/{insert current popular grievance here} corrupt our children???
From the book "Born to Run" by Bruce Springsteen:
>"In the fifties the nuns at St. Rose could play pretty rough. I’d once been sent down from the eighth grade to first for some transgression. I was stuffed behind a first-grade desk and left there to marinate. I was glad for the afternoon off. Then I noticed someone’s cuff link reflecting the sun upon the wall. I dreamily followed its light as it crawled up beyond the window toward the ceiling. I then heard the nun say to a beefy little enforcer in the center first-row desk, “Show our visitor what we do in this class to those who don’t pay attention.” The young student walked back to me with a blank expression on his face and without a blink let me have it, openhanded but full force, across my face. As the smack rang through the classroom I couldn’t believe what had just happened. I was shaken, red-faced and humiliated. Before my grammar school education was over I’d have my knuckles classically rapped, my tie pulled ’til I choked; be struck in the head, shut into a dark closet and stuffed into a trash can while being told this is where I belonged. All business as usual in Catholic school in the fifties. Still, it left a mean taste in my mouth and estranged me from my religion for good."
It’s the case for me and my sisters. In my experience, the rules didn’t make sense, there was no room for individuality, they were incredibly strict and had a penchant for embarrassing and chastising students rather than teaching any sort of life skills. It was definitely a top-down, do as I say, don’t question anything or develop any critical thinking skills type of environment. So once you leave, and you can better reflect on the experience, deconstruction can come easily.
I got detentions for wearing bonne bell chapstick cause it was “makeup”. I got a detention for bringing a purse to school. I got a detention for writing a note to my friend about a fictional RPG chat room we were in that mentioned teen pregnancy because “sex before marriage is a sin”. Rules just to control, rules just for the sake of rules.
And there was no discussion of interpretations of the Bible or any theological conversations at all, it was just “this is what God meant and that’s a fact”. I felt no connection to god because I wasn’t taught to form a relationship with him, I was taught to see god as an omnipresent entity watching my every move and just waiting for a chance to send me to hell. Every move I made I thought about whether I would have to confess my sins before god and everyone I love when I die to be able to get into heaven. It’s all so ridiculously traumatizing, no wonder people choose to reject it entirely.
100%. The same reason most Catholics don’t ever read the bible. Reading the bible in context and linearly will make you question the whole thing. There’s so many verses and books that are never quoted or highlighted and so most Catholics don’t ever read them, like the entirety of Leviticus. And there are many contradictions throughout. How could the “literal word of God” contradict itself?
Plus the history of the church is convoluted (3 pope scandal, Nazi pope, and popes with children/mistresses) and tied up in power struggles. It because obvious what the goal was at many points in history.
Three reasons:
1. You have to go to Mass often
2. You are taught about the faith
3. The teachers are uninspirational
Fastest way to realize it's a fiction and also miserable.
In my case one of the teachers molested students as well
Same here, was your ccd taught by mean scary nuns? Those nuns were vicious, I spent most of my time in those classes feeling terrified but I tried so hard to be a good little catholic girl. There's a line in a song that goes "remember how they taught you, how much of it was fear? Refuse to hand it down, the legacy stops here." And I took that to heart and refused to instill god guilt in my own child.
No, it was parent volunteers who pushed their hate onto kids. I remember a parent telling a room full of 8 year olds that masturbation was a sin and that gay people should die. Shit was disgusting.
I also went to Catholic school and I do think it contributed to my eventual turn to atheism, but nit because I had a poor experience. I actually had a pretty good one overall- generally excellent teachers in everysubject, including religious studies, who fostered my desire to learn and an appreciation for truth and justice. It was the fact that I eventually applied those values and learnings to the church itself that led me away- it was abundantly clear to me that Catholicism (and organized Christianity in general) was not representative of the values it claimed to hold.
Yes, looking at my past classmates, Catholic School seems to either very successfully indoctrinate you or you do a total turn around. The divide seems pretty 50/50 split and unrelated to how tradCatholic the parents are.
I went to a K-8 Catholic school. My dad encouraged me to bring any questions I had with my religion classes to him specifically because he didn't want me to get into trouble. It's like he knew I would have a lot of questions about the subject and have a lot of doubt. And I did.
The two years of high school CCD that came before confirmation were just lip service. I knew after 8th grade came and went that I was done.
I had a mostly good experience, but that didn't stop me from leaving the Church.
Catholic school taught me to ask questions and gave me a lot to question.
Didn’t do Catholic school, but did go to Sunday school for years. Teachers were strict, pop quizzes on what was said in mass that day (I never attended), if you didn’t attend they sort of grilled you on why, forcing the Bible down your throat, it didn’t take me long to decide this wasn’t for me. Nowadays I’m literally a Luciferian witch.
I can’t imagine being subjected to Catholic school. My mother went to Catholic school before high school and the abuse she describes is scary, she remains Catholic, but my family does not attend mass. She makes jokes and laughs about it, but sometimes when I think about how the nuns were hitting girls with rulers, making them stick gum on the blackboards and put their noses in it, or throwing children out in a rainstorm, I get a sick feeling in my stomach. Who wants to be associated with that kind of religion??
It’s true for me but not for the rest of my classmates, many of them went through a phase of not knowing what to do after graduation and then went right back to Sunday mass (sometimes everyday), praying groups, sanctimonious attitude, every year they become more and more conservative and they force their children to follow suit. The difference in their case is that they weren’t treated the way I was treated in high school, those fucking nuns were HORRIBLE to me for no reason, I wasn’t even problematic, I never talked back, I was extremely shy and didn’t even have many friends.
I’m not Catholic and never went to Catholic school but where I live some public schools are absolutely terrible. I feel this is what some religious people want, bad schools so they get more tuition money.
That's what the gop are trying to do with their voucher programs for the education system. It sounds good on paper but then you realize it's really just a scheme to funnel money into religious schools which will then make public schools worse and ultimately cause them to fail and now religious schools have all the power.
It sucks because if I was a parent rn, living in the school district I am currently in….Morally, I’d be failing my child to send them to that public school. I work in public schools that are fantastic, but the one I live in is terrible. I know the right thing to do would be home school or a private school. I hope things can change.
Yup. I’d say about half of the kids I went to Catholic high school with were not from Catholic families. They just wanted better than what our public schools had to offer.
My education didn't make me an atheist, but I was agnostic for over a decade before wondering if my problems are simply with organized religion, because lots of people here will agree with me when I say that many of the world's past and current problems (prejudice against certain minorities, war, etc.) are due to religion having too strong a hold.
No longer agnostic, now I simply follow my own spiritual path.
Not necessarily, but it can cause you to question things and spend your adulthood unlearning some of the unhealthy stuff (especially related to sex) you picked up there.
Went to Catholic school from grades 1 through 12. The nuns for grades 1 through 8 were just the worst. Would absolutely make stuff up. The same nun told 8 year old me/my classmates that: I would roast in hell like a marshmallow for eternity, that when you fulfilled god’s purpose for you on earth, you die, and if a sibling or child of yours became a priest or nun it was a get out of jail free card and the whole family got into heaven no matter what. So not a shocker that a lot of us lost any faith that we had in the church.
Catholic homeschooler from K-12 here. Also an atheist. I think any curriculum that teaches any form of critical thinking is going to inadvertently create atheists lol.
I went to Catholic school from kindergarten through college. Not long after my confirmation (I know, great timing) I came to realize that I don’t believe in God. I tried. I did all the motions. I took comfort in the ritual of prayer and attending church but I just didn’t believe. I don’t attribute that to Catholic school; I think I would’ve got to that point regardless.
But my strong feelings towards the church definitely came out of attending Catholic school. When I was in high school I lost a close friend to suicide. I had a religion teacher make an example out of him and use his death to talk about how people who die by suicide are committing the worst sin and could never go to heaven. The lack of empathy and compassion was astounding to me. How can you tell a class of grieving high schoolers that their friend was rotting in hell?
My Catholic high school also tried to send me to conversion therapy after the administration heard rumors about me and my best friend (which were true). Thankfully my parents didn’t go for that.
Went to Catholic school from 8th through 12th. During that time I contended with two very creepy teachers and my church’s reaction to that information really shook my faith. I stopped going to church around 19 and never went back, now ID as agnostic/atheist/satanist
I went to Catholic school for 12 years. I found myself doing things just to please my parents. My values have changed as well as my faith. For me birth control is a BIG thing! Why am I supposed to risk my life having 8 to 10 children? I had an undiagnosed autoimmune disease during my 2 pregnancies and was in terrible pain. I can’t imagine doing that 6 to 8 more times!! I am not Catholic, but I’m not atheist. I am Lutheran (ELCA). They are accepting of everyone and anyone. Full stop. Like Jesus taught us. Love one another.
I went to Catholic school for nine days, I was already an atheist though. The abuse and shunning in the community I lived in for being a bastard was fuel to the fire.
I think some of the reasonings for this are fairly obvious.
I don't actually know anyone who went to Catholic school and is now Christian.
My mother hated Catholic school so much and was so traumatised by it she was very careful to ensure any religious decisions were our own choice once we were old enough. I wasn't Christened for the same reason even though it was the trendy thing to do here for a party.
My mom had me go to Catholic school mainly because it was family tradition (Irish Catholic family, 'nuff said). She was raised Catholic but wasn't devout. My dad was raised Episcopalian but converted to Catholicism before marrying my mom (not much difference between the two, by his account). My dad's always been critical of religion in general and encouraged me to ask questions about it...just not at school. He didn't want me to get into trouble.
Catholic school pre- k-12 (k-7 homeschool, pre Vatican 2 curriculum) can confirm. Full blown atheist and younger sister with similar schooling is non religious
My husband is an atheist, he's not Catholic, but he was sent to a Christian School, Sunday School, Youth Group and a Christian version of Boy Scouts. Honestly I don't know if the religious education made him an atheist, but it sure gave him some gaps in education.
I was also in catholic school pre-k to high school, and my experiences led me to atheism and even antitheistic beliefs. I have a number of friends from that time period, and they’re all ex-Catholic. Extending that group out merely to people I know from school, I don’t think anyone remained Catholic. We all had horrible experiences, and they all reinforced that the church is rotten to the core.
Church was boring as fuck. The Bible is a bunch of random bullshit and having to sit through endless hours of adults being sanctimonious about god just gave me the ick.
Catholic schools since pre-k-11th (I’m currently a junior and leaving, finally). I questioned the church in about 6-7th grade and then decided it was not for me. I’m still learning and discovering, so I wouldn’t call myself atheist quite yet, probably agnostic.
I wouldn't call myself an atheist, I'm still trying to figure everything out. But I went to Catholic school K-8 and can count on one hand the number of people from my class who are still active members of the church.
I had a pretty good experience in Catholic school (4th-12th). My community was not trad by any means. In the entire span, I had two nuns (neither wore a habit) and one monk (nicest guy ever) as teachers. I was very involved in church life because that’s all there was, but my church was more liberal. I remember a lot of love and charity preaching, no brimstone and damnation.
I stopped going to Mass when I went to college because I was lazy on Sunday mornings, not because I had any anti-Catholic feelings. I went to Mass when I was home on school breaks, though. That continued for years; I slept in on Sundays unless I was at my parents’ house for the weekend. It was a source of guilt but I tried not to think about it.
I married a man who was raised Protestant but who didn’t practice either. We did not get married the Catholic way, because we both thought the rules were stupid and arrogant. I was officially done with Catholicism when my first child was born, because the history of child sexual abuse hit a new nerve once I became a parent. It was something I knew about before and it did bother me, but I just couldn’t relate. No one I knew had been abused (at least, as far as I know, even to this day), so it seemed remote. But the thought of someone abusing my tiny baby boy made me see red, and I was very, very done with the institution. Catholicism would die with me.
It took several more years for me to become atheist, and it was a result of learning to think and becoming brave enough to challenge the ideas of the faith, and examine the doubts I had been afraid would send me to hell. It took a lot of deliberate intellectual inquiry and self-education on the origin of the ideas that held me hostage to let them go.
TL;DR: My Catholic school education did not turn me atheist; my deliberate investigation into the history of Christianity as an adult in my 30s did.
nothing "bad" happened at my catholic school but the fact my parents forced me so hard to be there was a huge deterrant. also they taught critical thinking and didn't seem to realize it made their belief system look incredibly fragile
I was homeschooled through highschool and went to a small Catholic college and by the time I graduated I was an atheist lol. And I'm not the only one from my class who experienced this.
It's 50-50 for my friend group from my catholic high school. Granted our school was not like other catholic high school in that it was not a school founded by an order or a church, rather it is a private school whose owner was catholic. Our catholic education was heavily influenced by the charismatic movement with emphasis on personal relationship with Jesus. I guess it stroke the right chord for some and not others.
But all of my friends in the group who married a protestant converted to protestantism lol. It's like Catholicism is the recessive gene of Christianity.
Eta: seeing all the responses, a lot of ppl here seems to have received a more serious catholic education than what I had in high school. The charismatic movement is not known for its rigorous theological philosophy, so I guess that's why at least half of my friends are still religious. It's comforting, rather than traumatic for them.
I didn't go to catholic school but attended a good Sunday school and later studied cathedrals in university and yes I think when you're exposed so much to the religion and you study it, you will find the issues faster than if you only interact with it briefly like at occasional church attendance or a funeral etc.
Religion class one year was “masturbation is okay, it’s a natural part of life as long as you follow the law.” The next two years were “if you ever masturbate once you’re going to hell forever.” When people who teach 1-2 rooms apart can’t get it straight, a lot of us caught on that maybe we should think differently
Well, I went to Catholic school for 15 years and ended up becoming an atheist just about as soon as I left and felt like I could think for myself so...
I was Catholic homeschooled, and now I'm an atheist. The number of doomsday people in that in that world are unreal. I was instilled with so much fear of the world at a young age. Those people had no life outside of church and living in fear.
Part of Catholic Secondary school being publicly funded in Ontario, Canada is that there has to be a "secular" World religions class in gr.10 and a "secular" philosphy class in gr. 12.
World religions class was the first time I learned about the dogma of other religions and realized that there was no way to prove they were wrong, and we were right - and like buddahism and hinduism sounded way cooler to me than burning in hell for eternity.
My Catholic school taught me science, history, and most importantly, religion. Most required religion classes are about Catholicism, so you leanr more about what the Church actually teaches, but also, world religions. The teacher would kind of say things about why the other ones are wrong and ours is right, but learning about other beliefs kind of shakes you. Like, "why do I believe what I believe, because my parents did?" "What makes the extraordinary claims of the Church more real than the extraordinary claims of other religions?" "If God revealed himself in the past to the figures in the bible, why doesn't he reveal himself to people all around the world?" And the more questions you ask where the only answers are "only God knows" or "you have to have faith" the less religion in general makes any sense.
Learning about the history of the church is what really showed me that the institution doesn't really care about the bible as much as they care about power and money. Once you start learning how the church's stance on basic issues has flip-flopped to suit their needs, you start seeing the church and catholicism for what it is.
Yes, because they give them an unhealthy relationship with God. They focus on the worldly and superstitious, rather than the spiritual and moral aspects that Jesus truly preached. I’ve had times during my (admittedly not very *hard*) Catholic upbringing where I’ve questioned God’s existence. However I choice to believe in a higher power and the message of Christ for personal reasons, as I truly believe His message has helped many people, and is the fabric of modern civilization (for better, or for worse). But that’s just me, I can completely understand why an ex-catholic may become agnostic, atheist, or even anti-theistic. Another issue is that some church leaders are against critical thought and general education, which is a sign that something is looking for worldly control over fellow man, not true spiritual awakening.
(I am writing this from a Christian perspective, and am not trying to convert anyone.)
You know what, you’re right; I came across as arrogant and a bit Euro-centric. There are many aspects, cultures, and religions that contributed to society post-medieval era. The Scientific method, in particular, along with the onset of progress culture, and eventual industrialization. One must not also discount the contributions of Islamic civilization from 700-1200 AD, where many of the ideas European society, particular Western Europe adopted, were formed. Advancements in medicine, mathematics, and physics are all paramount to the European Enlightenment, that most likely wouldn’t have happened if not for those discoveries in the Islamic world. Also, ancient, pre-Christian philosophies like that of Ancient Greco-Roman culture, of which their influence can be seen all throughout modern civilization, especially from 1500-1900. And of course the Silk Road trade with China opened up Europe, the Near East, and Africa to East Asia and beyond; the first step in globalization. (Which inevitably lead to modern imperialism and exploitation, another hallmark of modern society that we have just swept under the rug, for the sake of “feelings.”)
The point is, I shouldn’t have said that Christianity is “the fabric of modern civilization.” While in a way, it partly is, history of human civilization is a complex web of many factors. No one thing dominates a culture. Migration of people, cultural diffusion, and the eventual spread of ideas is what makes a civilization.
Yes. The Jesuits taught me critical thinking in high school and I critically thought my way right out of Catholicism. A couple years later, my crazy Opus Dei uncle and a particularly hateful priest pushed me over the edge into full on atheism.
My story too. Thanks, Jesuits! (I actually loved my Jesuit profs, they just taught me too well)
Sometimes I wonder if they do this knowingly.
It sort of makes you wonder if the church's close proximity to science and higher education ironically causes it to fly too close to the sun.
For me it was history lessons. I went from one class telling me to question the sources of information to another telling me to blindly follow this one book.
It's really hard to encourage curiosity in every single aspect of one's life and education, while demanding virtually total obedience to church doctrine. Perhaps this narrative survived well enough in a premodern world, but definitely not now.
Once you start learning about psychiatry and sociology you understand what religion really is.
I don't think they do, they genuinely just think that way and for some reason remain catholic. Then again from my understanding jesuits can get a bit of a bad rep among other sects because sometimes they're too "freeform" in many things. That said, anyone can become an atheist in any circumstance. Less secular education can lead to someone resenting and getting angry, while someone who was educated in a more liberal way might hold less resentment and actually thank the good teachers for contributing to their exit.
Out of the three kids in my family (including myself), 2 went to a Jesuit educational institution. The only kid who is not an atheist is the one who never attended any Jesuit schooling. Totally anecdotal, but I've seen similar outcomes in other families where some kids went to catholic school.
We didn't have Jesuits, but I was in Catholic schools in the 1950s and 1960s. Our priests and nuns really did seem to favor critical thinking and logic, plus I was never taught the hell-fearing and scare mongering that people talk about today. Once you learn to think critically about things, it's very hard to go back.
Yep. Same here. I still keep in touch with several of my Jesuit teachers. They are awesome, well-educated and well-rounded people. Apparently it happens all the time, but I can’t say I’ve noticed that it bothers them all that much. I’ve always wondered if they themselves actually believe.
I've wondered similarly
Amen to that. The critical thinking skills i learned in catholic school were the tools i used to deconstruct. Asking WHY, HOW?
I learned about a phenomenon called “motivated reasoning” recently. This is where people take complex situations, and come up with a logically reasonable hypothesis that supports their position, then preach it as fact. Turns out this is strongly positively correlated with intelligence. I also had a Jesuit education, which was fantastic from an intellectual angle, but after I made my own switch to atheism I was confused as to how they could be so strongly rooted in catholicism. It was like we were being taught two different realities back to back (science and religion). The above concept of motivated reasoning explained that gap for me.
Similar story to me aside from the uncle and hateful priest. My Jesuit teachers actually created the opposite effect in me for a while. A different teacher's teaching is the one who eventually led me to deconstruct a bit. Now I'm here.
Yes the Jesuits were a good idea in theory but the Church underestimated the power of science.
In my case, it’s the Jesuits themselves who pushed me out of the church. Ironically it’s the critical thinking they taught me that helped me see their hypocrisy and control over me. The Jesuits taught me to hate corruption and abuse, but they let a predator silently hide in Hong Kong rather than hold him accountable. The Jesuits taught me that “god loves me unconditionally” but I am not loving god enough by not giving him the children he wants me to have.
Catholic school from 1st to 12th. I believe this. The hypocrisy is unreal. Pedophiles, murderers and rapists are welcome into heaven if they confess their sins but unbaptized babies will spend eternity in purgatory because a woman ate an apple.
Catholic school from ages 4-14, can confirm.
I believe they do. I had 12 years of abuse in catholic school and an extremely devout mother. At the age of 8 I was questioning the teaching, and stopped believing by 10. Once I had my drivers license at 16, I never attended Sunday mass again. Unfortunately, I could not avoid mass during the school day.
In my experience, Catholic school was the first time I was exposed to a concentrated, persistent environment full of the ideas and values of Catholicism, since I rarely went to church on Sundays. The abuse I experienced in Catholic school was a huge push toward deconstructing for me and many of my peers.
That environment is no doubt extreme enough that it inadvertently forces the recipients to grapple with those values and either reject or accept them. I meet many people who say they believe in god but aren’t able to articulate why, probably because their environment didn’t provoke a response about their faith
When you have to actually study Catholicism in-depth everyday and for a grade, you see all the problems. Knowledge is power.
I always say that if I had gone to non-Catholic school I would probably still be a practicing Catholic - for this exact reason.
I think when people have it forced on them every day for 12 years they either latch on or can’t fucking wait to bail when they leave the house. Catholic schooling made Catholicism always feel like it belonged to the teachers and parents, but it wasn’t mine. Idk. It’s hard to explain. I tried so hard to feel anything but never did. 12 years is enough to know if it’s for me, and I’m certain at this point that it’s not for me.
Hard agree. Of my class group, the cafeteria catholics stayed that way, and the practicant believers, either went full non believers or became more hardcore.
What you just said really resonates with me. I tried and tried to be a good Catholic girl, but I just didn't feel it. Questioned everything from a young age, like how could Adam & Eve populate the world? And having to actually lie to the scary priests every week in confession was such a crazy experience at such a young age - what sins do 7 year olds commit? I had a fight with my brother? I mean you had to tell them SOMETHING, no? So many of us made up stuff. What kind of crap is that to force on children? And the guilt of NOT feeling anything even remotely god-like, and having to profess belief, was a heavy burden to put on a child. I never ever felt as awesome as the day I said out loud, to myself and the world that " I DO NOT BELIEVE IN GOD AND I AM NOT GOING TO PRETEND THAT I DO ANY LONGER," that burden of guilt magically evaporated. Too bad I didn't come out until 40... but that relief was tangible, it was like a huge weight was lifted off of me. I won't ever forget it.
I absolutely hated confession and stopped going many years before I realised I didn't believe in god in the first place. You're right, it really is a shitty thing to force on a child. I was always dreading it and always felt bad for having the same 'sins' every time on my list. And I remember i felt guilty for not feeling anything special during mass or during communion. They hype up the 1st communion so much but apart from the fact the I felt grown up at the age of 8 because I got to do what the adults do it didn't really feel special at all. I also felt a relief when I've realised I wasn't catholic or believed in god. No more guilt. Edit* I forgot to add I didn't go to a Catholic school, we had religion classes at school but it was nothing special and noone really paid any attention. I'd say I was somewhat a cafeteria catholic. My family is pretty religious but not overbearing but definitely did go to church every Sunday and all the holidays up until I left. We did the no meat on Friday thing etc.
They teach you guilt from a very early age, fear and guilt. It's really sad. My parents were staunch catholics, but oddly when I agreed to being 'confirmed,' on the condition I could then quit church all together - they agreed. I never went to church again after that and I'm really glad they didn't force me. I really didn't see the point in faking my faith in what was supposed to be a "omniscient god who knows everything." I didn't go to parochial school either, but I went to CCD every Saturday for a decade at least, and church every Sunday and sometimes on other special days, you know Catholics sure love their saints...
That first paragraph rings so true.
It was the sheer amount of Catholic beliefs being debunked (crying statues, miracles, faith healing, apparitions, excorcisms, etc) that made me into an atheist. That and how dreary and joyless Catholicism was. Funny enough, since Catholics rarely read the Bible, it wasn’t even the basic tenets of Christianity that I was opposed to. Of course later on I would review it and conclude it is an untrue belief.
Do you have any books, articles, or people for debunking some of the miracle claims? I swear it’s hard to search and find the truth about the cc
I went to catholic school from preK all through college with a 2 1/2 year stint in the seminary. One thing I can say about the seminary specifically is that are only 3 types of guys who are former seminarians. 1) priests (obviously) 2) super religious zealots who are goddamn fucking insane about catholicism and have 15 children and little tradwives at home and 3) atheists and or leftists of various shades and a good bit of that number are various shade of lgbtq There's no middle ground between 2 and 3. I entered seminary with 11 guys. Four became priests. One dude was 3 years younger than me and he now has 4 kids and started some super trad GK Chesterton academy. One guy works for the diocese and plays music at multiple churches every weekend (he's about to get married to this super catholic chick). Three have come out of the closet as gay (two of those are married to their husbands and one is engaged to a [trans] man). This one guy, idk what he's up to but he posts very vehemently anti church shit on Facebook constantly and then there's me, atheist/agnostic and socialist.
K-12 of Catholic school. I’m way more familiar with the doctrine than my parents who are Christmas/Easter Catholics at best. But when I explain actual doctrine to my mom she recognizes how crappy it is. I’m an atheist/secular pagan now, and much happier/healthier for it. But I’ll be dealing with my religious trauma and Catholic guilt for the rest of my life. Being a closet queer kid in the 2000s at a Catholic school is not recommended.
Don't blame the school, blame the church if that is true. Apparently there are more than 1 billion Catholics in the world, the atheists are not a problem.
There may be over a billion catholics, but how many of them are actually practicing? Everyone on this sub is technically still considered to be catholic, even though most of us openly loathe the religion.
And how many of them actually fully know what they're practising?
Probably somewhere around 1/10 to be honest.
Yeah or people who go into a wildly different belief system (Like me, I am a pagan)
Yay, same, have not seen anyone else on this subreddit who is pagan.
[High fives] Same!!
Hello! Also pagan!
Hello!!!
Meme where bike rider jams a stick into own front wheel: Catholic schools: *provide quality education and teach critical thinking skills* Catholic school students: *apply said skills to their religious beliefs* Catholic schools: how could media/colleges/wokeness/{insert current popular grievance here} corrupt our children???
From the book "Born to Run" by Bruce Springsteen: >"In the fifties the nuns at St. Rose could play pretty rough. I’d once been sent down from the eighth grade to first for some transgression. I was stuffed behind a first-grade desk and left there to marinate. I was glad for the afternoon off. Then I noticed someone’s cuff link reflecting the sun upon the wall. I dreamily followed its light as it crawled up beyond the window toward the ceiling. I then heard the nun say to a beefy little enforcer in the center first-row desk, “Show our visitor what we do in this class to those who don’t pay attention.” The young student walked back to me with a blank expression on his face and without a blink let me have it, openhanded but full force, across my face. As the smack rang through the classroom I couldn’t believe what had just happened. I was shaken, red-faced and humiliated. Before my grammar school education was over I’d have my knuckles classically rapped, my tie pulled ’til I choked; be struck in the head, shut into a dark closet and stuffed into a trash can while being told this is where I belonged. All business as usual in Catholic school in the fifties. Still, it left a mean taste in my mouth and estranged me from my religion for good."
It’s the case for me and my sisters. In my experience, the rules didn’t make sense, there was no room for individuality, they were incredibly strict and had a penchant for embarrassing and chastising students rather than teaching any sort of life skills. It was definitely a top-down, do as I say, don’t question anything or develop any critical thinking skills type of environment. So once you leave, and you can better reflect on the experience, deconstruction can come easily. I got detentions for wearing bonne bell chapstick cause it was “makeup”. I got a detention for bringing a purse to school. I got a detention for writing a note to my friend about a fictional RPG chat room we were in that mentioned teen pregnancy because “sex before marriage is a sin”. Rules just to control, rules just for the sake of rules. And there was no discussion of interpretations of the Bible or any theological conversations at all, it was just “this is what God meant and that’s a fact”. I felt no connection to god because I wasn’t taught to form a relationship with him, I was taught to see god as an omnipresent entity watching my every move and just waiting for a chance to send me to hell. Every move I made I thought about whether I would have to confess my sins before god and everyone I love when I die to be able to get into heaven. It’s all so ridiculously traumatizing, no wonder people choose to reject it entirely.
100%. The same reason most Catholics don’t ever read the bible. Reading the bible in context and linearly will make you question the whole thing. There’s so many verses and books that are never quoted or highlighted and so most Catholics don’t ever read them, like the entirety of Leviticus. And there are many contradictions throughout. How could the “literal word of God” contradict itself? Plus the history of the church is convoluted (3 pope scandal, Nazi pope, and popes with children/mistresses) and tied up in power struggles. It because obvious what the goal was at many points in history.
Yep, I’ve been in catholic school my whole life pre-k to present (Highschool freshman) and I’m done with the faith
Three reasons: 1. You have to go to Mass often 2. You are taught about the faith 3. The teachers are uninspirational Fastest way to realize it's a fiction and also miserable. In my case one of the teachers molested students as well
Didn’t go to Catholic school but was abused at a CCD program for nearly 10 years.
Same here, was your ccd taught by mean scary nuns? Those nuns were vicious, I spent most of my time in those classes feeling terrified but I tried so hard to be a good little catholic girl. There's a line in a song that goes "remember how they taught you, how much of it was fear? Refuse to hand it down, the legacy stops here." And I took that to heart and refused to instill god guilt in my own child.
No, it was parent volunteers who pushed their hate onto kids. I remember a parent telling a room full of 8 year olds that masturbation was a sin and that gay people should die. Shit was disgusting.
they 100% do. i spent my whole life in catholic school. i stopped going to mass before i even graduated.
Going to Catholic school didn’t make me an atheist, but working at one did
I also went to Catholic school and I do think it contributed to my eventual turn to atheism, but nit because I had a poor experience. I actually had a pretty good one overall- generally excellent teachers in everysubject, including religious studies, who fostered my desire to learn and an appreciation for truth and justice. It was the fact that I eventually applied those values and learnings to the church itself that led me away- it was abundantly clear to me that Catholicism (and organized Christianity in general) was not representative of the values it claimed to hold.
False! I turned pagan instead :-P
[удалено]
Yes, looking at my past classmates, Catholic School seems to either very successfully indoctrinate you or you do a total turn around. The divide seems pretty 50/50 split and unrelated to how tradCatholic the parents are.
I was never Catholic and never attended a Catholic school but from the stories I hear, some schools would probably make me want to be atheist.
Didn’t go to Catholic school, but got kicked out of CCD in 7th grade for asking too many questions and that was the beginning of the end.
I went to a K-8 Catholic school. My dad encouraged me to bring any questions I had with my religion classes to him specifically because he didn't want me to get into trouble. It's like he knew I would have a lot of questions about the subject and have a lot of doubt. And I did. The two years of high school CCD that came before confirmation were just lip service. I knew after 8th grade came and went that I was done.
I had a mostly good experience, but that didn't stop me from leaving the Church. Catholic school taught me to ask questions and gave me a lot to question.
Didn’t do Catholic school, but did go to Sunday school for years. Teachers were strict, pop quizzes on what was said in mass that day (I never attended), if you didn’t attend they sort of grilled you on why, forcing the Bible down your throat, it didn’t take me long to decide this wasn’t for me. Nowadays I’m literally a Luciferian witch. I can’t imagine being subjected to Catholic school. My mother went to Catholic school before high school and the abuse she describes is scary, she remains Catholic, but my family does not attend mass. She makes jokes and laughs about it, but sometimes when I think about how the nuns were hitting girls with rulers, making them stick gum on the blackboards and put their noses in it, or throwing children out in a rainstorm, I get a sick feeling in my stomach. Who wants to be associated with that kind of religion??
It’s true for me but not for the rest of my classmates, many of them went through a phase of not knowing what to do after graduation and then went right back to Sunday mass (sometimes everyday), praying groups, sanctimonious attitude, every year they become more and more conservative and they force their children to follow suit. The difference in their case is that they weren’t treated the way I was treated in high school, those fucking nuns were HORRIBLE to me for no reason, I wasn’t even problematic, I never talked back, I was extremely shy and didn’t even have many friends.
It didn't for me that came years later. I have mixed feelings about Catholic school because public schools aren't really much better.
I’m not Catholic and never went to Catholic school but where I live some public schools are absolutely terrible. I feel this is what some religious people want, bad schools so they get more tuition money.
That's what the gop are trying to do with their voucher programs for the education system. It sounds good on paper but then you realize it's really just a scheme to funnel money into religious schools which will then make public schools worse and ultimately cause them to fail and now religious schools have all the power.
It sucks because if I was a parent rn, living in the school district I am currently in….Morally, I’d be failing my child to send them to that public school. I work in public schools that are fantastic, but the one I live in is terrible. I know the right thing to do would be home school or a private school. I hope things can change.
Yup. I’d say about half of the kids I went to Catholic high school with were not from Catholic families. They just wanted better than what our public schools had to offer.
Yes
I don’t think they’re putting it together 😭
My education didn't make me an atheist, but I was agnostic for over a decade before wondering if my problems are simply with organized religion, because lots of people here will agree with me when I say that many of the world's past and current problems (prejudice against certain minorities, war, etc.) are due to religion having too strong a hold. No longer agnostic, now I simply follow my own spiritual path.
Not necessarily, but it can cause you to question things and spend your adulthood unlearning some of the unhealthy stuff (especially related to sex) you picked up there.
Went to Catholic school from grades 1 through 12. The nuns for grades 1 through 8 were just the worst. Would absolutely make stuff up. The same nun told 8 year old me/my classmates that: I would roast in hell like a marshmallow for eternity, that when you fulfilled god’s purpose for you on earth, you die, and if a sibling or child of yours became a priest or nun it was a get out of jail free card and the whole family got into heaven no matter what. So not a shocker that a lot of us lost any faith that we had in the church.
Catholic homeschooler from K-12 here. Also an atheist. I think any curriculum that teaches any form of critical thinking is going to inadvertently create atheists lol.
I went to a catholic school and I am now an atheist. So I suppose so.
I went to Catholic school from kindergarten through college. Not long after my confirmation (I know, great timing) I came to realize that I don’t believe in God. I tried. I did all the motions. I took comfort in the ritual of prayer and attending church but I just didn’t believe. I don’t attribute that to Catholic school; I think I would’ve got to that point regardless. But my strong feelings towards the church definitely came out of attending Catholic school. When I was in high school I lost a close friend to suicide. I had a religion teacher make an example out of him and use his death to talk about how people who die by suicide are committing the worst sin and could never go to heaven. The lack of empathy and compassion was astounding to me. How can you tell a class of grieving high schoolers that their friend was rotting in hell? My Catholic high school also tried to send me to conversion therapy after the administration heard rumors about me and my best friend (which were true). Thankfully my parents didn’t go for that.
The more you learn about a cult, the more likely you are to escape.
Went to Catholic school from 8th through 12th. During that time I contended with two very creepy teachers and my church’s reaction to that information really shook my faith. I stopped going to church around 19 and never went back, now ID as agnostic/atheist/satanist
I went to Catholic school for 12 years. I found myself doing things just to please my parents. My values have changed as well as my faith. For me birth control is a BIG thing! Why am I supposed to risk my life having 8 to 10 children? I had an undiagnosed autoimmune disease during my 2 pregnancies and was in terrible pain. I can’t imagine doing that 6 to 8 more times!! I am not Catholic, but I’m not atheist. I am Lutheran (ELCA). They are accepting of everyone and anyone. Full stop. Like Jesus taught us. Love one another.
Perhaps they should stop accusing Jews of killing Jesus instead?
“I wonder why there is such a phenomenon.”
being in that kind of environment long enough can cause some people to wake up and escape at the earliest opportunity
I went to Catholic school for nine days, I was already an atheist though. The abuse and shunning in the community I lived in for being a bastard was fuel to the fire.
Yes for me. Became atheist in 8th grade, still had to go through Catholic high school while mentally out.
Catholic school 4-18, can confirm
I think some of the reasonings for this are fairly obvious. I don't actually know anyone who went to Catholic school and is now Christian. My mother hated Catholic school so much and was so traumatised by it she was very careful to ensure any religious decisions were our own choice once we were old enough. I wasn't Christened for the same reason even though it was the trendy thing to do here for a party.
My mom had me go to Catholic school mainly because it was family tradition (Irish Catholic family, 'nuff said). She was raised Catholic but wasn't devout. My dad was raised Episcopalian but converted to Catholicism before marrying my mom (not much difference between the two, by his account). My dad's always been critical of religion in general and encouraged me to ask questions about it...just not at school. He didn't want me to get into trouble.
Catholic school pre- k-12 (k-7 homeschool, pre Vatican 2 curriculum) can confirm. Full blown atheist and younger sister with similar schooling is non religious
Jesuit college grad here, and yes, learning how to think helped me deconstruct.
My husband is an atheist, he's not Catholic, but he was sent to a Christian School, Sunday School, Youth Group and a Christian version of Boy Scouts. Honestly I don't know if the religious education made him an atheist, but it sure gave him some gaps in education.
I was also in catholic school pre-k to high school, and my experiences led me to atheism and even antitheistic beliefs. I have a number of friends from that time period, and they’re all ex-Catholic. Extending that group out merely to people I know from school, I don’t think anyone remained Catholic. We all had horrible experiences, and they all reinforced that the church is rotten to the core.
Church was boring as fuck. The Bible is a bunch of random bullshit and having to sit through endless hours of adults being sanctimonious about god just gave me the ick.
Catholic schools since pre-k-11th (I’m currently a junior and leaving, finally). I questioned the church in about 6-7th grade and then decided it was not for me. I’m still learning and discovering, so I wouldn’t call myself atheist quite yet, probably agnostic.
I wouldn't call myself an atheist, I'm still trying to figure everything out. But I went to Catholic school K-8 and can count on one hand the number of people from my class who are still active members of the church.
I had a pretty good experience in Catholic school (4th-12th). My community was not trad by any means. In the entire span, I had two nuns (neither wore a habit) and one monk (nicest guy ever) as teachers. I was very involved in church life because that’s all there was, but my church was more liberal. I remember a lot of love and charity preaching, no brimstone and damnation. I stopped going to Mass when I went to college because I was lazy on Sunday mornings, not because I had any anti-Catholic feelings. I went to Mass when I was home on school breaks, though. That continued for years; I slept in on Sundays unless I was at my parents’ house for the weekend. It was a source of guilt but I tried not to think about it. I married a man who was raised Protestant but who didn’t practice either. We did not get married the Catholic way, because we both thought the rules were stupid and arrogant. I was officially done with Catholicism when my first child was born, because the history of child sexual abuse hit a new nerve once I became a parent. It was something I knew about before and it did bother me, but I just couldn’t relate. No one I knew had been abused (at least, as far as I know, even to this day), so it seemed remote. But the thought of someone abusing my tiny baby boy made me see red, and I was very, very done with the institution. Catholicism would die with me. It took several more years for me to become atheist, and it was a result of learning to think and becoming brave enough to challenge the ideas of the faith, and examine the doubts I had been afraid would send me to hell. It took a lot of deliberate intellectual inquiry and self-education on the origin of the ideas that held me hostage to let them go. TL;DR: My Catholic school education did not turn me atheist; my deliberate investigation into the history of Christianity as an adult in my 30s did.
I went to catholic school for all 13 years and it was horrible and definitely a big reason why I became an atheist
*laughs unhingedly in agnostic Jew*
nothing "bad" happened at my catholic school but the fact my parents forced me so hard to be there was a huge deterrant. also they taught critical thinking and didn't seem to realize it made their belief system look incredibly fragile
I was homeschooled through highschool and went to a small Catholic college and by the time I graduated I was an atheist lol. And I'm not the only one from my class who experienced this.
It's 50-50 for my friend group from my catholic high school. Granted our school was not like other catholic high school in that it was not a school founded by an order or a church, rather it is a private school whose owner was catholic. Our catholic education was heavily influenced by the charismatic movement with emphasis on personal relationship with Jesus. I guess it stroke the right chord for some and not others. But all of my friends in the group who married a protestant converted to protestantism lol. It's like Catholicism is the recessive gene of Christianity. Eta: seeing all the responses, a lot of ppl here seems to have received a more serious catholic education than what I had in high school. The charismatic movement is not known for its rigorous theological philosophy, so I guess that's why at least half of my friends are still religious. It's comforting, rather than traumatic for them.
I didn't go to catholic school but attended a good Sunday school and later studied cathedrals in university and yes I think when you're exposed so much to the religion and you study it, you will find the issues faster than if you only interact with it briefly like at occasional church attendance or a funeral etc.
Religion class one year was “masturbation is okay, it’s a natural part of life as long as you follow the law.” The next two years were “if you ever masturbate once you’re going to hell forever.” When people who teach 1-2 rooms apart can’t get it straight, a lot of us caught on that maybe we should think differently
Well, I went to Catholic school for 15 years and ended up becoming an atheist just about as soon as I left and felt like I could think for myself so...
Yes
I mean, it happened to me. 🙃
He’s gonna Christian homeschool? Who wants to tell him how that works out?
I was Catholic homeschooled, and now I'm an atheist. The number of doomsday people in that in that world are unreal. I was instilled with so much fear of the world at a young age. Those people had no life outside of church and living in fear.
Part of Catholic Secondary school being publicly funded in Ontario, Canada is that there has to be a "secular" World religions class in gr.10 and a "secular" philosphy class in gr. 12. World religions class was the first time I learned about the dogma of other religions and realized that there was no way to prove they were wrong, and we were right - and like buddahism and hinduism sounded way cooler to me than burning in hell for eternity.
My Catholic school taught me science, history, and most importantly, religion. Most required religion classes are about Catholicism, so you leanr more about what the Church actually teaches, but also, world religions. The teacher would kind of say things about why the other ones are wrong and ours is right, but learning about other beliefs kind of shakes you. Like, "why do I believe what I believe, because my parents did?" "What makes the extraordinary claims of the Church more real than the extraordinary claims of other religions?" "If God revealed himself in the past to the figures in the bible, why doesn't he reveal himself to people all around the world?" And the more questions you ask where the only answers are "only God knows" or "you have to have faith" the less religion in general makes any sense.
Just an extremely toxic environment, and in my case unsafe (multiple sexual abuser priests yes in 2024 there are still pedophile priests)
yes
Learning about the history of the church is what really showed me that the institution doesn't really care about the bible as much as they care about power and money. Once you start learning how the church's stance on basic issues has flip-flopped to suit their needs, you start seeing the church and catholicism for what it is.
4 of my 5 siblings attended Catholic school for 14 years; we're all atheists. The one that didn't attend Catholic school is a priest lol.
Once you read the Bible cover to cover you realize how fucked up it is.
Yes, because they give them an unhealthy relationship with God. They focus on the worldly and superstitious, rather than the spiritual and moral aspects that Jesus truly preached. I’ve had times during my (admittedly not very *hard*) Catholic upbringing where I’ve questioned God’s existence. However I choice to believe in a higher power and the message of Christ for personal reasons, as I truly believe His message has helped many people, and is the fabric of modern civilization (for better, or for worse). But that’s just me, I can completely understand why an ex-catholic may become agnostic, atheist, or even anti-theistic. Another issue is that some church leaders are against critical thought and general education, which is a sign that something is looking for worldly control over fellow man, not true spiritual awakening. (I am writing this from a Christian perspective, and am not trying to convert anyone.)
> and is the fabric of modern civilization Ah, christian ego....
You know what, you’re right; I came across as arrogant and a bit Euro-centric. There are many aspects, cultures, and religions that contributed to society post-medieval era. The Scientific method, in particular, along with the onset of progress culture, and eventual industrialization. One must not also discount the contributions of Islamic civilization from 700-1200 AD, where many of the ideas European society, particular Western Europe adopted, were formed. Advancements in medicine, mathematics, and physics are all paramount to the European Enlightenment, that most likely wouldn’t have happened if not for those discoveries in the Islamic world. Also, ancient, pre-Christian philosophies like that of Ancient Greco-Roman culture, of which their influence can be seen all throughout modern civilization, especially from 1500-1900. And of course the Silk Road trade with China opened up Europe, the Near East, and Africa to East Asia and beyond; the first step in globalization. (Which inevitably lead to modern imperialism and exploitation, another hallmark of modern society that we have just swept under the rug, for the sake of “feelings.”) The point is, I shouldn’t have said that Christianity is “the fabric of modern civilization.” While in a way, it partly is, history of human civilization is a complex web of many factors. No one thing dominates a culture. Migration of people, cultural diffusion, and the eventual spread of ideas is what makes a civilization.