mm not really but yes

me airing out my catholic guilt and religious trauma ah ha ha

[fuckcatholicism]

if you're a closeted sapphic in the Catholic Church you have like. 3 options for confirmation saint names

[ginger-ale-official]

Jesus, after coming back from the dead: hey guys it’s me Jesus, just look at the scars on my hands

Thomas, a known freak: show us the feet as well please

[ginger-ale-official]

[ginger-ale-official]

Happy Easter everybody

[ginger-ale-official]

Every single Easter you monsters give me a million notes on this post

[amillionkilopascals]

the terrifying thing about trying to leave catholicism behind after being born into is that you can't. you cannot be unbaptised, you cannot wash the blood you were bathed in off of your body, you cannot divorce your body from the human sacrifice it has already eaten.

it feels like ripping yourself apart.

[amillionkilopascals]

there's a strange melancholy to attending Mass with your family so as not to stress them out with the idea that you no longer believe in god.

the sensation of dipping your hand into the holy water, knowing that no amount will be enough to cleanse you fully as you make the sign of the cross.

confessing the creed, knowing the emperor who wrote it killed his own wife and son afterwards.

listening to god abuse humanity through the readings and the priest's homily, wondering how anyone could truly believe this.

the heavy weight of the priest's hand on your head as you ask for a blessing so as not to partake of the eucharist, not to accept a blood sacrifice.

the judgemental stare of the congregation as they see everyone in your family but you consume god.

[toashesireturn]

absolutely insane take from the priest this past sunday but apparently he doesn't consider marriages only carried out at the courthouse and not through the church as real marriages so if you got married and didnt get a specifically catholic marriage then having sex is still a sin. absolutely baffling take along with the rest of the purity culture bs he was spouting

[thegothicchangeling]

Listening to Hozier is all fun and games until he sings "I do not have wings, love, I never will" and suddenly you're ten years old again. Just a ten year old Catholic school girl terrified of hell and desperately trying to be good enough for heaven.

[annasinthewalls]

im an ex-catholic queer, of course my confirmation saint was joan of arc

[pray-harder]

growing up being taught and believing:

A) that god loves you more than anything, unconditionally, and

B) that you are a dirty sinner who is unworthy of his love,

creates a nasty cycle of “sin”and “forgiveness,” where we internalize our own unworthiness until we become worthless to even ourselves, which catholicism praises as humility.

sometimes this self-hatred is so ingrained into brainwashed catholics’ minds that they begin to view acts of self-love as acts of selfishness.

[jewish-joy]

My mother’s religion is Catholicism no longer.

It is bitterness and pride.

She nods along to homilies about the nuclear family- how one mommy and one daddy is what makes the world go round. Never mind I have a scar on my right arm given to me from her as a late eighth birthday present.

Instead of hymns, she listens constantly to internet pundits calling “transgenderism” butchery and evilness incarnate. She sneers at women with short hair and men with painted nails. There is no compassion- no humanity- for those that do not conform.

She scorns the person she crosses who wears a mask, laughing to me about their stupidity and is uncaring about possible health concerns they could have. She is not bothered by the homeless mother on the street but is horrified to come across a man with a high pitched voice who could possibly be gay.

She wasn’t always like this. I look at pictures from when she was my age. She worked in charity at her church, spending all her free time volunteering. There’s a picture of her I found- a carbon copy of me in 1995- wearing an ugly yellow shirt with “Saint Thomas ministries” scrawled across it. Her arm is looped around a boy wearing the same t-shirt in a half hug.

What is strange about him is his painted nails and blue lipstick, along with two dangly earrings. He wouldn’t look too much out of place on my campus, but I cannot imagine how it was in 1995.

“My friend, Benedict,” she told me when I asked, and her eyes teared up. “He died a few months after that photo. They found him dead in a forest. I always prayed he didn’t kill himself.”

I lost the religion I grew up with, to trial and vexation, and finding a new path. And I don’t know if she’s realized it yet- but my mother has lost hers too.

The girl she was is dead, and she says no more novenas. The prayers she cries are for things to stay exactly how they were- with men and women in enforced gender roles and perfect families.

And i look at her, wondering what Bible she is reading where the world is her against everyone and everything. Where her love has gone.

I hope one day I will understand her. But I pray even harder that I will never become her.

(I do not resent Catholics in the slightest. You are on your own path. Do not become like my mother. She is as much a parable as anything)

[queer-reader-07]

Making a Home in the Liminal Space

I grew up catholic. I was born into it, baptized as an infant, first communion in second grade, roughly 8 years in catholic school, and all of it culminated in getting confirmed at age 14. Catholicism was my life, in many ways it was my only constant in life. Schools changed, people came and went, but church was always there. Every Sunday with my family and every Wednesday with my classmates I found myself either in the pews ready to pray or in the choir area ready to play the hand chimes throughout Mass. I went to catechism every Wednesday night for years in elementary school. I attended youth group with my friends. There are still parts of the Bible that I know like the back of my hand.

But then I grew up. I grew up and I realized that I thought girls were pretty in a way that gave me butterflies in my stomach and that I didn’t quite feel like a girl anymore. I grew up and I went through changing labels before I found words like ‘queer’ and ‘trans’ and ‘asexual’ that made me feel at home. And while that home is comforting in so many ways it is also not a home that is compatible with the religion that held me for so long. Catholicism was my life, I was in Church at least twice a week for years of my life. But Catholicism doesn’t leave room for queerness, it doesn’t embrace and hold close what I am. Who I am.

A friend asked me recently if I still I identify as catholic. If I, someone who is now staunchly leftist and proudly and openly queer, aligned with a religion that is so notoriously bigoted and conservative. Easy answer, right? Just say no? How could someone like me ever call themselves a catholic? And good god, I wish it were that simple.

Because, the thing is, I tried to just say no. I tried to say “eh not really,” but it felt so deeply disingenuous. It felt wrong. How do I denounce a faith that was my life for 15 years with a simple “no”? How do I go from staunch catholic to atheist in the blink of an eye? I can’t.

To be honest, I’m not sure where I fall on the spectrum of spirituality and religiosity. It feels like a lie to say I believe in God, but it doesn’t feel anymore honest to say that I don’t believe in God.

I know I believe in love. I believe in the power we as people have to do wonderful and amazing things. I believe in hope’s ability to help one through the darkest of times. I believe in humanity, in the human story. But none of that is mutually exclusive from religion, from Catholicism.

I think, right now, I exist in the liminal space between catholic and atheist. I can’t bring myself to align myself with an institution that doesn’t believe in my right to exist. But I also can’t bring myself to fully denounce the faith that held me for so many years. I can’t bring myself to denounce the faith that was my only real constant for all those years. I haven’t been to Church on my own volition in ages, yet I refuse to take down the rosary adorned crucifix above my bed. I don’t pray all that often anymore and yet I could recite the Our Father without a second thought. I don’t go around professing any faith in God and yet the phrases “good lord” and “for the love of all that is holy” seem to leave my mouth daily. These are the things that make up the liminal space. The not quite prayer, the familiar comfort of a crucifix and rosaries about my bed, the acceptance that I’ll never have a secular vocabulary. It’s weird, it’s contradictory, and yet here I am existing in it.

There is still so much beauty I find in the world that feels like it must be more than mere coincidence. I think a lot about hope. About how it feels so unique to the human condition and I can’t help but wonder why. Did someone, something, endow us with hope? So that we could never cease in our endeavors of discovery and creativity? So that we would not lose sight of a better future? Or, did we just get lucky?

But I don’t think that’s God, necessarily. I don’t know that it’s one being, but I’m not confident it’s no being.

Existing in the liminal space is difficult. Because to be here is to know you can’t ever go back while still grappling with where you’re meant to go now. I hope that one day I find a new home, a home that isn’t built on guilt and shame for merely daring to exist. But for now, I am making a home in the liminal space. I am letting this liminal space hold me in any way it can while I work to figure out what I am outside of the church. And I hope that wherever I go next— whatever space becomes my home after I outgrow the liminal space— I hope it welcomes me with open arms and a warm embrace.

[myclericalromance]

i went to a tiny counterserve diner once and accidentally poured sugar instead of salt all over my hashbrowns and was eating them sadly anyways. the waitress took them away and started making me another one and I tried to protest, but she just snorted and said "we're not catholic here". now every time i'm doing something painful out of obligation i think about how that is not repenting, this body is not a catholic establishment, there is no nobility in suffering.

[hulahoopsoupgroup]

catholics are required to have a breeding kink according to their doctrine

i said what i said

[locustabortiontechnician1988-de]

saw conversion therapy vids in my moms youtube history. feeling super shitty and getting and urge to be straight/convert. any tips on how to ignore it until i move?

[fuckcatholicism]

SPITE BAY BEE

no but frfr that's how I kept myself going when I lived at home. nobody will tell me what to do or how to be. not even my traitorous brain that feels guilty for stupid things.

(this next part is me to my brain btw not you) oh yeah?? you wanna be straight and convert?? aight. let's feel that then. okay. bet. you won't. you cant. you know you won't and you can't.

because same as there will always be the intrusive thoughts about converting and going back, there will also be intrusive thoughts abt when you deconverted. the only thing you can do is wake up each morning and say fuck you to your subconscious and choose what you want.

[apostate-in-an-alcove]

Catholicism: a religion where celibate cis men will lecture women on how they should think and feel about aspects of womanhood and their own sexuality without a shred of irony.

[lavendercasson]

catholicism is wild like it can be so traumatic to be raised in that church but. its fine. like its not actually cult or anything so its fine. i barely remember being taught the bible but it still dug under my skin and dictates most of my life over a decade later but like. whatever. its fine

[apostate-in-an-alcove]

I too would kiss Jesus. Not to betray him though but just because I could.

[fruitofthespirithalloween]

op tagging this “blasphemy” is sending me. the idea that kissing Jesus is blasphemous when eating him raw is (in some denominations) not only permitted, but encouraged, and in fact required. voring Jesus is fine but a lil smooch??? blasphemy.

[apostate-in-an-alcove]

I know you're trying to be a funny guy but the blasphemy tag is because I keep specific posts under that tag. When Tumblr's tagging system wasn't so shitty it made it easier for me for to find posts like this on my blog again (if I needed for whatever reason). It's not that deep.

[die-bi-the-sword]

my raised atheist friend unprompted telling me that her ex catholic roommate has more religious trauma than me bc catholicism is worse than other denominations. let’s play the shut up game