Hi, I feel like this might be a weird request, but I could use some advice. My entire family was catholic, but they all converted before I was born and I was raised as an evangelical christian. A lot of the stuff involved with that I found to be sorta traumatizing and it's turned me away from church, though I'm still privately religious, and I've been trying to find ways to make my beliefs "my own" to feel closer to God and stuff. This has lead me to exploring christian-based witchcraft, because the little rituals are comforting and make me feel like I'm actually doing something. But the more I've explored this, the more it's started leading me back to Catholicism--I'm italian, so I know catholicism is rooted in my ancestry, and in italy some practice folkmagic using catholic rituals/beliefs, which I found really fascinating!
My problem is this, though: Catholicism makes me feel more religious guilt than witchcraft does. I think the reason for this is because with witchcraft, I'm still fundamentally using the same beliefs I was raised with, only praying and focusing my energy on God. And I was told my whole life that catholicism was "evil" because the extra rules and praying to saints or Mary is bad, you're supposed to only focus your energy on talking to God Himself.
As I'm trying to make my religious practice my own, I've been feeling very drawn to catholicism partly because of my ancestry and partly because I find the ideas/rituals comforting. But I'm struggling to fully look into it or try anything involving it because my whole immediately family turned away from it and drilled it into me that it was bad. Every time I think about talking to Saints or Mary or even just Angels, I feel guilty for it. So... I guess I'm just wondering if you ever felt something similar? I feel like I remember you converted to catholicism as well, some years ago. If you have any advice, or even just encouraging words to share, I would really appreciate it! Sorry this ask turned out to be so long, lol
Hey there! I was actually born and raised Catholic, didn't convert to it -- my path was sort of the opposite of yours, where I had to make the hard decision to move beyond Catholicism. I eventually discerned that I could keep my roots there, however, and now identify as both Catholic and Protestant.
It's the stuff about Mary and Saints and the like that I have kept from my Catholic roots, while leaving behind the more institutional stuff like the hierarchy of bishops and popes etc. And I always get excited to hear people express being drawn to the Saints, because their wisdom and communion is powerful and deep!
My hope is that the rest of this post shows you that you can engage in Catholic practices while continuing to, as you wrote is your aim, pray solely to God and focus your energy solely on God.
There are a lot of misunderstandings about Catholicism, and it sounds like your family members hold that kind of misinformation even if they were once Catholic themselves.
Just like in most if not all forms of Christianity, the focus of Catholicism is upon the Triune God -- it's just that many of the methods for focusing on God are different, and from an outside perspective might look like we're focusing more on something or someone else. Let's take Saints for example...
It's a common misconception that Catholics worship Saints, but this isn't true. Rather, we recognize the holy lives that Saints led that enabled them to be vessels of the kind of power and love that comes only from God.
And, since we believe that people live on in God's Kin(g)dom after their earthly death, we can reach out and cultivate relationships with the Saints (or just about anyone else who has died) — this is the concept of “the communion of Saints” that Catholics and many Protestants (and other groups) share. Those currently alive and those dead are all part of the Body of Christ; we share a community.
If praying directly to Saints feels wrong to you right now, try instead to invite them into praying to God with you. It's just like how you might ask a loved one who is still alive for prayer or guidance.
Example: In the Hail Mary prayer, we don't pray directly to Mary even though we address her -- we ask her to "pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death." We are asking Mary to use her unique relationship with Jesus to pray on our behalf.
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Many Catholics do pray more directly to Saints (a common little prayer even kids learn is “Saint Anthony, Saint Anthony, please look around, ___ is lost and can’t be found”), but if this discomforts you, you don’t have to do it! But know that many Catholics who do still understand that any “power” any particular Saint holds doesn’t come from them, but from God -- it just flows from God through them.
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Furthermore, just like when we pray to God the prayer is more about cultivating relationship with God than getting things out of God (God’s not a vending machine or a wishing well!), it’s the same with praying to/alongside Saints — the focus should be less on “getting them to do stuff for you” and more on “This Saint was a human just like me, a fellow member in the communion of saints and the Body of Christ; and they have unique wisdom and experiences that I can learn from so that I can grow deeper into God’s love and will just like they did.”
I think that educating yourself on what Catholicism is really about, rather than what your family has told you it's about, would help you feel safer about trying out more Catholic stuff. Here are some resources for that:
Article about how Catholics don't worship Saints
"Owning Our Faith" - a video where people talk about being LGBTQA+/queer and Catholic
My Saints tag explores some cool Catholic Saints -- i also have a specific #lgbtqa patron saints tag and a #black saints tag
Also a #Mary tag, and a #queer and Catholic tag!
Some resources for LGBTQA+/queer Catholics
Syncretizing Witchcraft & reaching your Italian Roots
I've found that Catholic faith and witchy stuff go really well together, since both involve making use of physical items or embodied rituals to connect us to the spiritual.
Moreover, Catholics across the world in different cultures have syncretized other religious practices with Catholicism (to the Vatican's dismay but my delight -- how wondrous it is that there is so much variety in how human beings connect to and worship Divinity!). (You can search on the term Folk Catholicism for many examples.)
For me, it's my Irish Catholic ancestry that I connect to when I communicate with Saints — one of my patrons is St. Brigid, who has also been a patron to my mom, grandma, great grandma.... It's really cool that you might be able to access your Italian ancestry in a similar way.
I bet you've already been exploring this, but just in case you haven't looked into benedicaria, it's a new-ish term for the syncretism of folk magic and Catholic faith that's been around in Italy for centuries! Here are some cool resources on benedicaria I dug up:
The wiki page on benedicaria offers a good starting point
"Benedicaria: The Blessing Way of Southern Italian Folk Medicine"
This cool essay from someone whose grandmother was an Italian immigrant to the US who was a devout Catholic who practiced benedicaria
Edited to add: oh yeah, i also found this tumblr blog that seems cool! @grotto-of-benedicaria
Check out Stregheria too, which has reached into Italian American communities.
According to Wiki, one distinction between the two is that, "Unlike practitioners of Stregheria and some practitioners of Stregoneria, practitioners of Benedicaria consider themselves to be devout Catholics, and the practices of Benedicaria are inextricably linked with Italian popular devotions found in Traditional Catholicism."
As you discern whether there are elements of Catholicism that will nourish your own connection to the Divine, take things slow!
It takes time to unlearn ideas that were drilled into us. It takes time to recover from trauma.
So whatever steps you take to explore Catholic faith, take moments to be mindful about your own reactions to what you find. If you experience any panic or upset in your mind or your body, pause. Maybe have a short prayer prepared for such moments, either one you pray often that comforts you or something like, "God, I seek you, only you. Open my mind to anything that can open me to you; protect me from anything that is not of you."
Reading about a handful of Saints who intrigue you before you attempt to connect to them in prayer, or reading about Catholic traditions before diving into them yourself, might also help. You can learn about all of it and only when you're ready start incorporating it into your spiritual practice, bit by bit.
If I may recommend a few Saints whom I find really cool and you might connect to...
Thomas Merton: okay so, he's not actually a canonized Saint, but he was a really cool monk who is deeply loved by many persons of various denominations and religions for his simple wisdom, interfaith experiences, and honesty about doubts being a natural part of faith. If you can find a book or website with collections of some his writings, you might really like them!
A lot of people love his "Prayer of Unknowing" for instance -- it might be a prayer you'd like to pray as you explore faith! It beings, "My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me..." and you can read the rest here.
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Another wonderful Catholic who isn’t a Saint, I find Sister Macrina Wiederkehr’s writings to be a wonderful introduction to the most beautiful parts of Catholic faith. I have. lots of passages from her short devotional A Tree Full of Angels in this tag! If you are interested in getting that book, there are parts about the idea of “divinization,” becoming one with the Divine, that you might like as someone who seeks to focus your energy on God.
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St. Joan of Arc is another well-loved Saint. Joan is one of my own personal patrons, in whom I see much that resonates with my own nonbinary, queer self. Joan's also got an interesting connection to the original religions beliefs of France -- peasants seemed to connect Joan to "the ancient honoring of gender variant persons and cross-dressing priest(esse)s [that] lingered in some pockets of European countryside" (read more in the "Called to Cross-Dress" section of this webpage).
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Another great place to read about Joan from a trans perspective that dives deeper into her connection to peasant religious traditions is in Leslie Feinberg's book Transgender Warriors, which you can read online free here -- the stuff about Joan of Arc is in chapter 4.
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You might like some trans-resonant Saints i write about in my Trans Christian Timeline! One of my own favorites on there is St. Francis of Assisi (in the “Mother Francis, a Female Trinity, and Brother Jacoba” section).
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This list of Saints who have special places in Italian folk magic
There are times that guilt can be healthy: when we have actually done something that harms ourself or others, guilt can nudge us to make amends. But because we are surrounded by individuals and groups that try to convince us that we should be guilty of things that aren’t actually bad (from being gay to getting the medical support we need), it’s important to learn how to let go of the misplaced guilt.
For me, recognizing any given things fruits is helpful in discerning whether I should feel guilty about something (and instead of wallowing in that guilt or letting it fester into shame and self-loathing), or whether I should let go of that guilt as misplaced.
Jesus tells us that we can know whether a thing is good or bad by its fruit -- if the fruit it bears is good, so is it; if the fruit it bears is bad, it’s not.
...Of course, this can get tricky: for example, for some people, realizing they’re gay comes with a lot of bad fruit like self-loathing and fear -- but the “tree” bearing that fruit isn’t actually being gay; homophobia is that tree. Meanwhile, being happily and healthily gay bears good fruit like loving relationships and self healing.
Same would go with you exploring Catholicism. If some of your immediate reactions to trying certain things include guilt or fear, the “tree” bearing that bad fruit isn’t necessarily the Catholic practices, right? Rather, the “tree” is more likely the stuff you say you’ve internalized about Catholicism being dangerous, etc. But with patience and practice, the “tree” of your spiritual exploration can bear the good fruit of getting to know more about yourself and your own relationship to the Divine; as well as growing more connected to the communion of saints to which we all belong.
Even if after exploring Catholicism, you find that it doesn’t actually bring the spiritual nourishment you were hoping it might, that’s still okay! God does not dissuade us from exploring — She calls us to “seek and find;” to notice the Spirit blowing wherever Xe will; to get to know our fellow human beings and what ways they connect to Divinity, even if those ways don’t work for us.
Invite God into your exploration, wherever it takes you. Whether you find some of what you are seeking in Catholic practices or not, it’s okay. God is with you and will guide you where you need to go in time -- and you will learn vital things on the journey; no need to rush to the destination.
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