Ministry Secrets

When I was a retreat planner in college, I found myself very frustrated by some of the things I saw within the school's Catholic ministry. I wrote a brief but impactful essay to a friend who was out of town, and today I discovered it again. This was penned on November 9, 2007.

Seriously [friend], I wish you were here. I really miss you. Being a good little Catholic boy is really starting to get to me. I’m feeling something distinctly non-Catholic coming on, and you are one of my primary sources for such behavior. I miss having you to keep me leveled-out and prevent me from falling too far into a system of rules and doctrines that I don’t really buy into. There’s been a lot going on in my head lately. I realized that while I may be wrong in what I believe, at least I’m not a hypocrite. At least I stick by my guns! Not like some of these guys I live with… all piety and humility out in the world of the Ministry, but get them alone and things stop adding up.

Everything is such a fucking performance with the Ministry! We all pretend that we don’t have these subversive, “heretical” thoughts, and we all keep quiet about the parts of our lives that don’t line up with the Church, but I know that everyone has skeletons in their closets. I’ve seen and heard it. We whisper to each other in confidence, behind closed doors. We keep each other’s secrets. Like the talented actors we are, we put on our modest costumes and play the parts of the innocent church mice. But just as with any theater production, the clothes and costume come off backstage, after the show. It’s all smoke and mirrors with these people! We spout lies scripted by the religion we all claim to follow without exception, and everyone plays his or her part wit the benefit of years of practice. I’m sick of it. I refuse to take part in this façade. Why can’t we all just stop bullshitting and act like the people we know we truly are? You’d be so proud if you could see all the quiet rebellions I’ve incited within the Ministry. I’m tired of pretending to be someone I’m not. And even if I’m wrong, at least I’m REAL! At least I know where I stand! At least I can run the race and say, “This is what I really believe!”

I envision a future for this Ministry where everyone is accepted as they are. Discourse is encouraged rather than silenced. The Church, our immortal, immaculate judge and jury, has been wrong before. There is room for a difference of opinion and understanding. Despite what the clergy profess, I feel that we can go about faith in more than one way. My views are not canon, but they’re grounded in an honest attempt to live in a way that’s true to who I am. I can’t change what I am and what my feelings tell me. Does anyone else feel the same? In the shadows of the Ministry hide others like me, other who understand this concept. Will we ever see the light? Or will the light see us?

Sometimes it’s hard to believe that people who profess such patience, empathy, and faithfulness can be so intolerant. They judge with their eyes and their superegos, knowing full well that their hearts cry out at the sight of a kindred spirit. Again, the theatrics get in the way of how the actors really feel. I think there must be more people in the Ministry who feel this way than I’m aware of. But we must all keep secrets.

The Ministry—and by extension, the Church herself—exerts control through guilt and isolation. We all have our crosses to bear, yes, but at some point the crosses stop adding up. Guilt is a self-imposed behavioral control, and therein lies its brilliance. We are forced to act the way we do because to do otherwise would be to admit that we did not—and furthermore, I think, cannot—live up to the lofty ideals of the Catholic faith. Thus, we feel guilt for our inevitable failings and isolation in our suffering, because to share the alleged wrongs we’ve done would be to invite the possibility of judgment, and furthermore, would be humiliating in the face of the others who are silent about their wrongs.

We all know that we all sin, but if no one says it, then no one is sure where anyone else stands. Each of us feels the lonely burden of being the rock upon which the Church is built; for although we all know in our hearts that we are not alone in our failings, we cannot rest without the verbal validation that other Catholics can provide. This validation is stunted and discouraged as form is social control, perpetuated by the Church herself. But I have started to break free! By identifying the system, I have already begun to exert control over it and claim exemption from it. I know there are others out there who feel as I feel. All I need is the time and courage to find them.

My Deconversion Story, Part 3

I can’t really pinpoint a moment or a specific event. Most people can't, it seems. And part of me is really glad for that fact, because if I could point to one thing and say, “That's it. That’s what did it,” then I’d have to wonder if maybe I just haven’t done a decent job of getting over whatever tragedy I blamed on God and religion. Maybe that would be easier for my Catholic friends to accept. Maybe if I had this big, terrible event I could blame, then I could get my faith back.

But it wasn’t like that. It wasn’t just one thing. It was thing upon thing upon thing.

“Why is there so much suffering in the world? Why does God seem to answer only the most random of prayers? Why is it that even when I pray for someone with the deepest convictions of my heart, nothing changes? Why do I have to watch my friends go through pain and agony of many different kinds—physical, spiritual, emotional—without so much as whisper of reassurance from God? Why is it that every night I stare at the ceiling for hours, wanting so badly to feel that presence again, but try as I might I can’t? Has God abandoned me? Furthermore, why does it seem like I’m coming upon more and more aspects of God that just don't make sense? If God is good, why did he perpetrate so many evils in the Bible? If God is all-knowing, how can we have free will? If God is omnipotent, why is this world as horrible as it is? If God is perfectly just, how can he send people to Hell?” I could go on and on, and I know these questions aren’t particularly complex or deep, but they all came cascading down on me in the final months of my tenure as Retreat Planner. They shook me to my core. I sought professional counseling, for these and other problems. I wanted so badly to go back in time and erase the doubts, but I knew that was impossible.

Summer came and went. I thought a lot about what I believed. I realized that the reasons I’d had in the past weren’t trustworthy because they were primarily emotional. I believed in God because I felt like he existed. I loved Jesus because I felt like he loved me. But I had no reasons to back up those feelings. And try as I might, I couldn’t let myself believe something just because I wanted it to be true. I had to seek truth on its own, for its own sake, and without bias if possible. Nothing else would satisfy me.

I told myself I would take a break. See how things went without attending mass. Maybe I was just burnt out? Maybe I’d spread myself too thin during my service year? After all, some of my friends thought that, and I’d certainly devoted the majority of my free time to the Ministry. As my next and final year of college began, I opted to stay home on Sundays instead of going to mass. I tried to avoid weekly house prayers, but ended up going to those for the sake of keeping everyone on good terms. And a remarkable thing happened: nothing. I wasn’t struck by lightning. I didn’t get horribly sick. In fact, I had better grades that quarter than in any quarter of the previous year. I made new friends. I started living life for myself, instead of living for the expectations and approval of others.

And slowly, but surely, I let go of my faith. It was terrifying. It hurt so bad. But I let it go. I began studying arguments for and against God, seeing which ones held their ground and which ones fell flat. I told myself I was an agnostic, but once my last quarter arrived I could no longer deny how things had progressed. It felt good to step blinking into the sunlight. I was finally ready to face what had been coming for a year or more.

My name is Dale. I am an atheist. I once believed in God and his son Jesus Christ, but I don’t anymore. I don’t know what’s out there; I won’t claim to be sure that God doesn’t exist. But I know that I haven’t found a reason to cling to my old beliefs in the supernatural. I can understand a world that is purely physical. I can see it. It makes sense to me. And a world without a god seems more likely than a world with one, so for now the best answer I can give is that it’s likely that god does not exist.

I’m still searching for the truth. That hasn’t stopped either. This blog is a chronicle of my journey, written backwards, but also forwards, because even as I look at what I used to be, I get images of what I will become. I think and grow as I read more and more. Who knows? Maybe someday I’ll be eating these words. Maybe not. That’s part of the fun, isn’t it?

Our lives are a one-shot deal. Now that I’m no longer encased in a web of superficial, paper-thin illusions and imaginings, I can start making the most of mine.

Thanks for reading.

My Deconversion Story, Part 2

It was quiet. Subtle. I didn’t even notice at first. My nine-month tenure as Retreat Planner had already begun. I think it may have been in the first eight weeks or so that I discovered an alarming trend: I wasn’t getting as much out of Mass as I used to. I’d sit and stare up at the altar (makeshift; we held our masses on campus, so we had a plastic table with a cloth on it, but eh) during the Consecration and try to feel something. But there was less emotion there. There was less of a glow, less of an aura, less energy. I wondered why I’d been able to sense God’s presence easily in the summer, and now it was so difficult. As schoolwork piled up and the Ministry began demanding more and more of my time, I started to lose focus. I prayed for help. I heard nothing. I prayed more, harder, longer. Burned through rosary beads. Went to daily mass. Confessed my sins.

I’ll take this opportunity to mention that I moved into a house with seven other Catholic men at the beginning of that school year. It was a choice that made perfect sense in the spring prior, when I was still totally embroiled in the Ministry, but once I finally arrived I realized that it was going to be different than what I’d expected. The house maintained weekly prayer as a group, and there was an expectation of good Catholic behavior while in residence. These things weren’t a problem for me at first… but we’ll get there later. Back to the topic at hand.

I got totally screwed in a relationship early that year. Felt pretty beat up about it. On the plus side, my retreats were a major success. The one early in the year was a huge hit (Blair and I had to do some fancy footwork when an unexpectedly small number of students showed up, but we managed to turn a potential disaster into a night of fun), and the one in the fall was even more amazing (two words: Catholic Rave). We were on a roll. But something was missing. It seemed like there was… I dunno… a hole in me. Something that used to be filled, but wasn’t.

No, that’s not the right way to put it.

It was more like waking up from a dream. I kept looking around me and catching brief glimpses of the real world, but then I’d put myself back to sleep, sometimes forcibly. I didn’t want to see the world that ceaselessly tried to creep into my vision. I didn’t want to think about all the things that didn’t make sense about my faith, about God, about Catholicism, about religion in general. I didn’t want to confront the blatant hypocrisy and ignorance of some of my classmates and housemates.

Anyway, there was one more event that I feel is worth mention, and then everything else after that just continues downhill. Keep in mind, this was not a turning point; rather, I see it as a catalyst for a reaction already occurring. In preparing for and during the execution of that year’s “Search” retreat, I finally saw plainly just how artificial the whole of the religious experience on that retreat is, and it disturbed me.

Let me explain: Search is run almost exactly the same way every single year. Friday evening is when the students first arrive. We group them up and let them get to know one another. Make them comfortable. Saturday is filled with almost non-stop activity: prayers, talks given by older students, discussions among small groups, various faith related activities, and so on. The main event is that night; we give the students a long break in the late afternoon, and then subject them to another talk (usually their fifth of the weekend). But this is no ordinary talk. This talk is very carefully designed to evoke a certain emotional response in the students: guilt. We want them to relate to the wrongdoings of the speaker, and then feel in their hearts a desire to change whatever wicked ways they may have. The speaker calls for them to turn over their sins to Christ through the sacrament of Reconciliation (confession, for you non-Catholics). But things don’t end there, no sir. This party is just getting started.

We put on an “impact skit” for the students. Usually the older student leaders on the retreat do this. The show is generally about a student who becomes weighed down by sin and can only find peace and redemption by turning to Jesus. The purpose of the skit is to—and I kid you not—turn on the waterworks. Our objective is to not see a single dry eye in the house. And usually it works; the emotional charge from the talk carries over to the skit, causing that guilt I mentioned to compound upon itself. The students are now becoming malleable putty in our able hands, and there’s still one more shot to fire: the “impact activity”. This is a hands-on, prayerful event that allows us to transfer the students from the gymnasium they’re seated in to the nearby chapel, where they can go to confession. In the three years I attended and worked on Search retreats, we used blindfolds in two of the impact activities. They’re a fantastic way to maintain the emotional state we're shooting for. We didn’t use them that year, but nonetheless we succeeded in keeping everyone in the highly vulnerable state we wanted them in. They went to the chapel, they confessed their sins, they prayed their little hearts out, and low and behold, their faith grew exponentially.

Those poor kids. They had no idea we’d set them up.

Not even one minute of that evening is unplanned. We spend hours and hours before the retreat getting everything ready; coming up with the most impactful talk, skit, and activity, gathering supplies, rehearsing the performances, and generally trying our best to make the evening as emotionally evocative as possible. And we always succeed. Not a dry eye in the house.

This practice raised a red flag for me. At the time, I tried to justify our actions. “Perhaps what we’re doing is necessary?” I thought. “Perhaps these students (some of whom haven’t been involved in the Church for years when they attend) need a major hit of faith smack to have their eyes opened to the power of Christ’s redeeming sacrifice? Perhaps what we’re doing is making it easier for God to speak to the students whose hearts have been hardened by sin?”

“But why, then,” I reasoned, “would a God of infinite power need us to so flagrantly interfere with the emotions of these students? Surely God can do a fine job of communicating on his own? Moreover, it seems downright counterproductive to put these students in a highly emotional state; after all, how can we trust that what they feel when they’re all worked up is really the presence of God, and not just the feelings they think they ought to be feeling at the time? How do we know we’re opening a channel for God to speak to them, and not just making them extremely vulnerable to suggested thoughts and experiences (which we then graciously provide)?

Anyway, my apologies for that long story. The overall point is this: after seeing how crafted the whole of the Saturday evening experience is at Search, I realized that everything I went through on that fateful night at my first Search two years prior was, in fact, just as artificial. I could no longer trust the revelations I’d had at the time, despite how real they’d felt and how much they’d meant to me. I became jaded. I wondered how much of what I’d been through in my faith life up to that point was formulated the same way.

After that, things continued to crumble. I got embroiled in another unhealthy relationship. My grades fell. I did things that I knew my religion taught against (things that would make a nun blush, if you take my meaning). The final retreat Blair and I planned that year went well, but my heart wasn’t in it. I didn’t feel like praying anymore. For months and months I’d been asking God for a sign, for help, for anything. Here I was, living with die-hard Catholics and acting as a spiritual role model for the Newman community, and I was having doubts about God’s existence! I hated what I’d become, and I tried even harder to hang on to the God who seemed to have disappeared from my life.

But like an old picture left in the sun… God faded.

Next time: The exciting conclusion! Stay tuned!

My Deconversion Story, Part 1

I’m going to try to keep this short and sweet, because I don’t know that it requires a lot of explanation and other people have already told stories similar to this one many times over. Sure, it’s my story this time, but that doesn’t necessarily make it more interesting for you to read. Anyway, on with the show.

I was raised in a “Catholic” household. I use sarcastic air-quotes here because my home was not a stereotypical Catholic home, and thus it’s almost unfair to classify it as such. My father is a cradle Presbyterian (though he’s been practicing Catholicism for the last twenty-something years) and my mother is a cradle Catholic. I was always carted to church growing up, and I attended Sunday school classes, but that was the extent of it. No prayers at home (save for the occasional grace before meals, when we remembered). No rosaries or Bible readings. And certainly no discussions about faith, God, or the Catholic Church. I went to public school and spent my time on other pursuits. My knowledge of religion came from weekly Masses, and nowhere else.

As I got older, I became interested in learning more about Jesus and all that rigmarole. When I was about twelve, I attended a weeklong summer service trip in a nearby town and worked with an impoverished migrant population. This adventure taught me how to feel the presence of God. Doing good things for others made me happy and satisfied; I attributed this emotion to the Holy Spirit and its invigorating presence in my soul. After that trip, hanging with the youth group in middle and high school seemed natural. I attended Catholic conventions and rallies. I became a leader in my church community. I was often the only person in my family who wanted to go to church, and as soon as I was able to drive I generally flew solo on Sunday morning. But none of that bothered me: I was sure that I was doing the right thing, and any doubts I had about my faith I attributed to my lack of a firm Catholic upbringing. Surely I’d know all the answers, if only I had the time to study/had had them drilled into my head from the beginning!

High school graduation arrived, and with it came a college acceptance letter. I attended a public liberal arts university, and on my first day there I sought out the Newman Ministry on campus. It was a thriving community, filled with firm believers who were knowledgeable in all areas of the faith. I was among people my own age who shared my beliefs. I’d at last found a place that I could call home! I dove eagerly into every activity they could throw at me, attending retreats and other functions with great regularity. I learned new things about the Church; my first experience with Adoration (the Catholic practice of displaying and worshipping the “Body of Christ”, in the form of a communion wafer of course) took place during that initial year, and I learned many new things about Catholic morality (for example, I had no idea that there were “degrees” of sin, i.e. mortal and venial). Again, I found no reason to doubt or wonder at why I believed what I believed, or whether it was all true and worth following. People I thought were cool were telling it to me. That was good enough. I was among believers. I knew very few people of other religions, and no atheists. My main friend group consisted of Catholics and other Christians. Why would I ask any questions in that kind of environment?

Well, all right, perhaps I should be a bit more generous, because I wasn’t entirely without questions. I took an introductory course in the philosophy of religion (incidentally, my professor is extremely well-known in the field; I’ve seen his work cited in my textbooks and on some of the atheist blogs I’ve read) and came out with more questions than answers. Why did it seem like every argument for God ended in a heap of fractured logic, while every argument against God led to, if nothing else, the idea that disbelief was at least reasonable?

Another incident that planted small seeds of doubt was a series of classes I took with the Ministry. They were extracurricular and student-run, so their accuracy with regard to Catholic doctrine is somewhat questionable, but I have no reason to think that my teacher (a fellow student) misled her pupils deliberately. She taught us to the best of her ability with all the materials she had access too. The classes were on the Theology of the Body (ToB), which, in short, is a series of teachings that explain the divine purpose of human sexuality. I attended these courses and listened to her words with increasing unease; I felt utterly unprepared as I discovered how strict the boundaries were. I’m sure you’re aware of the basics: birth control is wrong, pre-marital sex is wrong, etc. etc. Catholicism 101, right? Well, this class explained why the Church taught against these acts. And the reasoning behind many of the tenets was, as far as I could tell, shaky at best and downright contradictory at worst.

I hope you’ll pardon a brief anecdote on that topic. One of the inconsistencies that bothered me the most was this one: ToB proclaimed that love needed to be given Freely, Fully, Faithfully, and Fruitfully, or it was not “real” love, but instead some kind of twisted perversion of love, one which God could not bless. This was all explained in great detail, but the thing that struck me was the claim that having sex without being married or while using birth control was denying one of those F’s (Fully and Fruitfully, respectively). Furthermore, if I were to commit such an act, doing so would be tantamount to lying, because what I’m doing when I have sex under these conditions (unmarried, with birth control) is saying through my action, “I want to give myself to you… but not my whole self.” Thus, although my act of engaging in sex indicates that I wish to give everything I have to my partner (which is why I’m having sex in the first place), this is impossible while the conditions are being met, and thus I am being untruthful in my actions. My body is saying one thing, but my heart is saying another. Basically, I am lying with my body, and lying is a sin.

Counter this with a point made much later in the sequence (perhaps to help keep people from noticing the logical discrepancy?): many of the teachings of ToB are not in line with the beliefs of American society. Pre-marital sex, birth control, and so on are all widely accepted in our country today. And thus, convincing oneself that these things are wrong, for reasons that required a month of classes to explain, is a tough task. How were we told to go about it, you ask? One of the keys was—and I wish desperately that I could quote the documents I was given on this subject, but I have lost them over the years—to act as if you believe in the rules laid out by ToB, despite having doubts in your heart. Does this sound like anything I’ve already mentioned? Isn’t it the case that doing this would fall into the category of lying with your body? I’ll make it perfectly clear, if I can: In the example I gave earlier, the sin was that I did something with my body that my heart was not in agreement with. Yet when I’m trying to live my life under these new rules, I’m supposed to do something with my body that my heart is not in agreement with!

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. That’s what it boils down to. But enough of my digression; let’s return to the topic at hand.

I shrugged off all these worries; surely they meant little to me, a true believer. I couldn’t have my faith questioned. I was too deeply involved in that community. On the Ministry’s “Search” retreat in the winter of my first year, I had a spiritual experience unlike anything I’d been through before. I honestly believed that God was sending me guidance, that I could somehow “sense” his presence. I knew what I had to do, though how I knew it I could not explain. I made some changes in my lifestyle: I joined the choir, read the Bible more often, and stopped fooling around with my girlfriend (a move that, as you can likely imagine, was met with a fair bit of displeasure in both the literal and figurative senses). Although these changes were difficult, I did my best to stick by them. And I found fulfillment in carrying out God’s wishes.

For a while, I was happy in my faith. During the summer, I ended up breaking things off with that girlfriend I mentioned (though not for any religious reasons), and consequently started my second year on shaky footing. But luckily I had the Ministry to turn to, and I found solace and comfort in that community. The school year came and went. No major turning points, just a greater level of involvement in Ministry activities. In the spring I interviewed with and was selected for a paid position within the Ministry in the following school year—I was set to be a Retreat Planner, along with another student who I’ll call Blair. My involvement had reached its highest point. I’d never felt so in tune with Christ or the Church, and I anxiously awaited my opportunity to give others the kind of experience that had brought me closer to God just twelve short months prior. I was on fire with God’s love. The Holy Spirit imbued me with purpose and zeal. Nothing could stop me.

And surprisingly, nothing did. No one came forward to say, “Dale, you’re nuts. Here’s why you shouldn’t be a believer.” Nothing terrible happened in my life: no deaths, no personal losses or tragedies, no arguments or broken promises. Sure, I screwed up a couple of relationships over the next year or so. But there wasn’t a devastating loss or a sudden realization. There was simply nothing.

And in the end, nothing was exactly the problem.

Next time: Part two of three!