Back in the day I used to live in SL County and worked in Utah County. Geneva Steel was still around, and it was often the case that as I came over Point of the Mountain, there was a distinct visible cloud of dirty air surrounding Geneva. Funny thing was, once I drove inside the cloud, it was no longer visible, except for a sense that the air seemed a bit hazy.

Things are often more obvious when viewed from the outside.

With that in mind, I recently read an essay from a recovering Catholic, and his experience, while in many ways different from the exMo experience, has some remarkable parallels too. Here's the link. If you've already hit the NYTimes paywall, I'll include a few of what I think are the best quotes.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/21/opinion/sunday/how-i-made-it-back-to-church.html

"I hadn’t been to church in five Beyoncé albums." Great opening line.


"I describe myself as a recovering Catholic, but when a more pointed question such as “So what do you believe in?” surfaces, I don’t know how to answer.

As a child, I knew what to say, thanks to a religious-indoctrination diet of Bible-themed cartoons, saint-themed trading cards and required attendance at mass. As an adult, I still think Jesus seems like a swell fellow, but I feel out of step with most Christian churches. My talking points aren’t what they used to be."

Me: Yeah, my talking points aren't what they used to be either. Ands why don't we have GA trading cards? "Hey Jimmy, I'll trade you two Eyrings and a Jowls for an Uchdorf."

"For years, my mother had been encouraging me to go back to church. The most opportune times for her to push her agenda were whenever I felt my lowest. I liked my methods of coping better: Mary J. Blige albums and maybe another prescription for a generic form of Celexa."

Me: so it's not just Mormon mothers.

Author reporting on recently attending a neighborhood Baptist church: "In church that day, everyone seemed to be welcomed and behaved as such. In the front row, which was reserved for pastors of the church, I saw a sea of women. Women were typically marginalized out of leadership roles in the church. In Catholicism, no such roles even existed. But on that day in that church, there were more female pastors than male pastors."

Me: No such roles even existed. We know about that. It is the one big thing we have in common with the Catholic Church.

"Months later, someone I went to catechism with at Saint Mark the Evangelist, the church I attended regularly as a child, got in touch with me on Facebook. She had watched an interview in which I described myself as a “recovering Catholic.”

She told me that I had her in tears. “I had no idea you felt that way about being Catholic,” she wrote. “It really hurt to hear you say you were recovering from it.” She described the church as a big family, saying that we all had different opinions yet loved one another. And that the church we both grew up in was different now. That it was welcoming and that she could actually “see and feel the love.”

Unfortunately, her telling me this story did not make me want to come back to the Catholic church or any church. All she did was remind me of what had kept me away for so long. It took me a long time to unlearn every damaging thing I’ve seen and heard about my identity. I was in no rush to fall back into old habits."

Me: Yep, been there, done that too.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/31/2018 10:35PM by Brother Of Jerry.

Doesn't sound so much as recovering (I didn't read any trauma or anger), just sounds like not interested in it.

Interesting.

Definite parallels.

The response from the friend in the last paragraph says a lot. People often feel defensive when others leave or criticize their religion. After all, they have much invested in what the religion has taught them and it shapes their world view. They don't like to think that what they value was so easily rejected by others. Their gut response is "We're not like that anymore!" as if that fixes all the BS, history, discriminatory and regressive indoctrination.

I've noticed there are differences in phrases like "Lapsed" or "Recovering" when people talk about their exits. Recovering seems to imply that they are in the process of deprogramming the "diet of Bible themes" and evaluating what they actually believe. Lapsed seems to mean they just don't participate.

Thanks, BoJ.

I used to refer to myself as a "lapsed" Catholic, but never as "recovering". I couldn't wait to move out of my parents' home so that I could stop being Catholic. Looking back I can't say that I was traumatized by the church. I just wanted to live my life without the church (and the "God is watching you" script in my head) tsk-tsking me for things that really didn't warrant its attention.

My labels have transitioned from "raised" or "lapsed" Catholic, to "atheist", and finally to "apatheist". I feel a certain satisfaction explaining to family, friends, and anybody else that asks, that religion just bores me.

I would suggest that parents will almost always be a source of conflict if someone decides to leave the religion of their youth. It is not necessarily a Catholic or Mormon thing. Children grow up and part of that process is making their own determination regarding religion. I'm sure the same letter could be written by a Protestant or a Muslim or a Buddhist who has decided not to follow the religion of their youth. I know there are Protestant parents who put pressure on their adult children if they quit going to church or become a Catholic, Mormon, non-believer, etc. Now if a person has received some kind of abuse from any religious body they definitely might need to recover from it. A Mormon or Catholic kid who was baptized as a child whose parents were inactive or slackers was likely not abused by their religion. That may be one reason there are so many Mormon inactives who are content to just let their names remain on the rolls of the LDS Church.

>>She told me that I had her in tears. “I had no idea you felt that way about being Catholic,” she wrote. “It really hurt to hear you say you were recovering from it.”

In my experience, most practicing Catholics do not respond in this manner. They generally do not take it personally when someone leaves their church. They might be concerned about *you,* but they are not going to take it as a personal affront. It's not a part of the culture.

To say you are lapsed is one thing. When you say you are recovering from it, you are indicting the people who inflicted it upon you. So in a way the term "recovering" is an insult. That doesn't mean it is an inappropriate way of looking at it. And it may keep people from trying to convince you to come back.

To me, a lapsed Catholic is the equivalent of an inactive Mormon. You still believe to one degree or another, but you no longer go to church. Or you have just become indifferent.

I am very blunt when I've told Catholics that I've left the church for good. And with only one possible exception in more than 40 years, they've been perfectly fine with it.

The Catholics that I know have zero problem with living in religiously mixed neighborhoods. They have zero problem with their kids playing with non-Catholics. They don't take it *personally* when someone's faith or lack of faith diverges from their own. Catholics don't use the word "agency" in the same way Mormons do, but they believe in it far more than your average Mormon.

In my opinion, this woman's reaction is not the norm.

Catholics are not anal about Catholic or the need for everyone else to be Catholic.

Very different from Mormons. Who tend to be very anal about everyone being Mormon. They have that article of faith that talks about the right to worship according to one's conscience, but they don't really believe it.

Opus Dei may be a better (partial) analog of Mormonism, but estimates are that no more than 40-60 thousand members exist (if that).

Even average Catholics think that Opus Dei members are insane.

I got chummy with a couple from Michigan who were about a decade younger than I. We fell into the habit of supporting local agriculture by buying a couple of bottles of local wine, local olive oil, local cheese, locally grown olives, and fresh-out-of-the-oven bread. Heavenly.

Anyway, one day, the conversation drifted toward religion. Debbie asked me what religion I was. (I wasn't offended. We had become good enough friends to safely 'go there.') I said, "Recovering Mormon." I had left the church maybe a year before that.

The two of them looked at each other and then Debbie said, "I guess that makes us recovering Catholics." We had some interesting conversations about what makes a person leave a church.

It was her husband, Craig, who got me hooked on L L Bean clothes. I think of them every time I place an order.

Catholics don’t have a ‘licked cupcake’ stunt.