The serious consequences of childhood religious indoctrination
The concept of “Catholic guilt” has become a cliche, a joke, a truism. But it’s real. For many of us who experienced Catholic childhood religious indoctrination, Catholic guilt is a pernicious and inescapable burden with serious lifelong repercussions. It clings to us, a dark spectre of our pasts, a cruel and vicious voice whispering to us, reminding us of the lessons of our childhood: that we are unworthy, that we cannot do anything right, that we do not deserve to be happy, that we are dirty tainted sinners who must constantly punish ourselves and atone for our sins, and that we are nothing. Nothing.
And this voice cannot be reasoned with. It resides in a part of our brains that is immune to rationality. It’s not difficult to apply our reason to the question of whether or not God exists. We simply look for evidence, and, when we see that there is none, we realize that the only reasonable choice is to abandon our faith and to become atheists or agnostics. But Catholic guilt isn’t like that. The irrationality of the messages that we were told as children is irrelevant. Evidence and reason are powerless against guilt and shame that is this pervasive, vicious, and persistent. For those of us who grew up with this indoctrination, faith in God is optional. Catholic guilt, though, is not.
From a psychological standpoint, Catholic guilt makes a great deal of sense. It’s no surprise that a child who is repeatedly reminded of their inadequacy, dirtiness, and worthlessness will most likely become an adult who struggles with feelings of guilt and shame, one who never feels clean, worthy, valuable, adequate, or forgiven. One who is never at peace.
Despite this, few people, psychologists or otherwise, take it seriously. Unlike other forms of childhood trauma, Catholic guilt and other consequences of childhood religious indoctrination are rarely given the consideration that they deserve. I imagine that there are two reasons for this: 1) Catholic guilt is an extremely common and widespread phenomenon, so common that it is easily ignored, and 2) admitting that childhood religious indoctrination has lifelong consequences is taboo. For example, when I try to discuss my personal struggles with Catholic guilt, I’m often accused of blaming religion for my problems. I’ve even had people laugh in my face. And that’s the problem with treating Catholic guilt as a cliche and a joke: it creates an atmosphere in which it’s easy to dismiss it and to laugh it off. For those of us who struggle with it, the fact that it isn’t taken seriously adds insult to injury.
I think that we need to take it seriously. Because it is serious. It’s real and it’s immune to reason. And year after year, children continue to experience the indoctrination that, in one way or another, will haunt them for the rest of their lives. Until we as a society admit that childhood religious indoctrination has serious consequences and begin to give those consequences the consideration that they deserve, those of us who struggle with such issues will never be able to heal, even in some small way. And, more importantly, until society stops treating serious issues like Catholic guilt as a cliched joke, childhood religious indoctrination will never be seen for what it is: emotional and psychological abuse. We cannot even begin to fight back against childhood religious indoctrination until we admit that it does real damage and has real consequences, consequences that millions of people struggle with on a daily basis.
I don’t really know how to make this happen, though. How do we reclaim Catholic guilt, how do we make it clear that it’s no joke? How do we convince others that the after-effects of childhood religious indoctrination must be taken seriously? How do we destigmatize issues like Catholic guilt? Perhaps discussing it, bringing attention to it, and writing about our experiences with it can help. But other than that, I don’t know how to change things. If you have any ideas, please do share them.
Beautiful. I myself am still living with “Catholic guilt”. I’m a recovering Catholic is my running joke, but as you have stated, it’s not a joke.
I hope more blogs like yours end up getting the message out there that this is a very real problem and should be considered child abuse in my opinion.
Thank you, Kevin. I really appreciate that. & Yes, I think that it needs to be discussed more openly & frequently. Unfortunately, because so many people struggle with the after-effects of childhood religious indoctrination, I don’t think it gets the attention that it deserves. There’s also the element of religious privilege, i.e. it’s not acceptable to openly criticize the religious practices of others, even when they may be considered abusive to children.
Of course it is child abuse.See Pat Condel’s blogs on you tube where he describes it as “sabotaging a young mind”(not just Catholicisim).They tell you that you have a guardian angel,so why does the pope drive around behind 3″ of bullet proof glass,there’s faith in action for you!
I went through a similar experience in the fundamentalist Southern Baptist church. The indoctrination/brainwashing method seems from my experiences and study of Christianity to be roughly the same in various churches: 1) they convince you that you are a terrible person in they eyes of God who will punish you unless you are “saved”; 2) they convince you that theirs is the only true church, the only way to escape the wrath of an angry god; 3) when you express doubts they tell you that there is something wrong with you (in the Baptist church it took the form of telling us that it was the Devil putting those doubts into our minds.
I went through all that and finally realized that the problem was not me—it was the church and more exactly it was the fault of the core teachings of Christianity. What helped me to escape the guilt trip was realizing that I was the one who had been wronged, Making the victim feel like the offender is part of the brainwashing process designed to keep you in the church or sect, and not unlike blaming a rape victim for being raped. I was the one who had been deceived, and I got mad as hell. Whenever someone tried to play the blame game on me, my reply was and still is, “No, it was YOUR religion.” I have absolutely no feeling of guilt for renouncing religion and refuse to apologize for being an atheist.
I think that you really nailed it here:
& I imagine that this method/process is so commonplace simply because it works. It works disturbingly well. It’s extremely effective and it gets them what they want, sadly enough.
I envy your lack of guilt. I never feel the need to be apologetic about my atheism, but I definitely still deal with the Catholic guilt, etc.
Thank you both, Celeste and Lilburn Lowell Decker for nailing the problem, which was mine for decades. Shaking off entirely any faith and boosting my self-esteem helped me to rid of that imposed by Catholicism guilt, feeling that I am nobody and unworthy of love and happiness. I truly feel sometimes like rape victim; that religion has raped my mind, when I was still a minor (well, is seems that pedophilia, is the Catholic Church’s specialty). After over 10 years of various readings and thinking on the subject I become an atheist, free of planted by the church guilt, much happier person than I used to be.
Celeste, that guild will eventually fade away with life experience. Loving, accepting ourselves and the others helps to build positive emotions, which wipe guilt. I wish you all the best in your live journey.
I was raised in the Churches of Christ, a fundamentalist Christian sect, and still have nightmares about being in church, and being condemned for my apostasy by other members. I escaped 24 years ago.
My parents are still very much a part of the sect, and although I’d like to believe they still go more or less out of tradition or habit, it still bothers me that they won’t leave it since many of the more vile sermons they hear do not reflect their personal views of the world (they don’t demonize my gay friends, for example, and my mother, at least, is of that “moderate”, wishy-washy opinion that it’s not for anyone to judge the “state of grace” of another.
If you ever do find a cure for the follow-on psychological ills that plague us escaped believers, then you could be a wealthy woman, Miranda.
Darwin bless,
Alan
Thank you, Alan. You’re always very kind and I appreciate it a lot. Have you ever written about your childhood experiences?
I would hope some of the research on guilt addresses questions such as “how is guilt beneficial or detrimental to the health and happiness of persons or societies?” My first thought would be to see what answers are out there, and to see how they apply specifically to religious guilt.
Thanks for the link, Tim. In the past, I’ve done quite a few Google Scholar searches for more specific terms and phrases, but I hadn’t thought of searching just for “guilt”. I’ll definitely check out some of the results.
Yes! I too still carry around a lot of “Catholic guilt”, despite realizing how irrational and ridiculous it is. It’s comforting to know I’m not alone.
Oh yes, it’s definitely a relief to realize that others can relate. The fact that we forget that is yet another consequence of society stigmatizing it and not taking it seriously, I’d argue.
Miranda -
Like a couple other commenters noted, it’s not just Catholic guilt. I was raised in a fundamentalist church as well. It’s somewhat related to the Plymouth brethren movement of the 19th Century, I believe. We were Biblical literalists, and the emphasis was very much on one’s ‘walk with the Lord.’ We went to church twice on Sundays and had a Bible study every Wednesday night. The running theme was always how wretched we are, and how much we need Christ.
But it was weird, too; it wasn’t a fire and brimstone kind of thing, but all the men (the only ones allowed to speak) seemed to revel in the fact that they were worthless sinners. And when they would opine on a passage of scripture, they would magnify the wretched state of whichever ‘antagonist’ was highlighted in the text.
To me, Christian guilt is a vicious cycle that feeds on itself, snowballs, and leaves one needing Christ’s salvation but at the same time being weirdly happy about it. I almost think that the people who don’t escape this cycle and remain within their religious community probably don’t feel the same inner turmoil. But we others, we ‘free spirits’ as Nietzsche would say, experience it as a brutal conscience that tyrannizes, and seems to carry with it an incontestable paternal authority. You’ve described it perfectly. If one is unlucky enough to go through a clinical depression, this ‘voice’ can damn near kill you.
Unfortunately I seem to have been born with a habit of introspection that borders on the morbid, and I’ve filled dozens of notebooks with thoughts, images, and analyses of this inner conflict. They covered about 10 years of my life – and I finally through them all away and went cold turkey with the journaling.
I don’t know what the solution could be. I’m 39, and I would think that people in my age range and older probably have the worst of it. Given some of the latest encouraging polls, it seems that the youth of the world are getting less and less religious – so maybe the inoculation of Christian guilt doesn’t ‘take’ on them. We can only hope.
Thanks for sharing this :)
Juno
Thanks so much for the kind words, Juno :) And I think this is a really accurate description:
It really is very conscience-esque, and there indeed is a very cruelly paternalistic and domineering quality about it.
And thanks for sharing your experiences. I think that doing so is very helpful for both ourselves and others. It helps us to know we’re not alone. Plus, I appreciate hearing the experiences of those who grew up in a different, but equally damaging, religious tradition. I write about Catholicism because it’s what I know, but any religion that indoctrinates children causes a great deal of damage, and if more & more people speak out about that, perhaps it will help to raise awareness about the problem & about what needs to change.
How I can empathize, Miranda! Guilt and shame is just as pernicious in the Mormon Church, the main tools its authorities use to subjugate, manipulate, and castigate its members.
Fellow ex-Mormon, here. You are right, and how! I seem to remember a virtually non-stop succession of face-to-face interviews with adult authorities, all meant to ascertain my “worthiness” for this or that. It was positively ridiculous how the most insignificant peccadillo (and, in retrospect, things I wouldn’t even consider peccadilloes) became a huge issue, either in the eyes of the interviewer or simply in my own mind. At 13 (!) I was denied the opportunity to go on a youth trip because I wasn’t a full tithe-payer! It was made very clear that you absolutely needed to have a blank “sin slate” before judgment day arrived, or you were going to be in for some pretty awful awfulness.
I really can’t understand how those adults weren’t disgusted by their own behavior.
Mark & musical beef: Thanks for sharing your stories about Mormonism. I think it’s important to talk about all sorts of childhood religious indoctrination, as doing so (one hopes, at least) can perhaps help both ourselves and others. It’s so important to let people know that they are not alone and that there are others who have gone through the same nasty and damaging experiences and can relate to the after-effects of those experiences.
I, too,was made to feel worthless and rejected by my parents’ fundamentalist Church of Christ religion. I suppose my being different and unaccepted due to my sexual orientation had much to do with my being discomfited with religion. That and just feeling that Christian answers to questions were so inadequate and confusin, along with being disgusted and morally incensed by some of the stories in the bible. Nothing describes my experience with religion better than “psychological abuse” ( thank you Dr. Marlene Winell, who has described this so well). I too wonder how it is that others can experience religion in a benign way.
Yes, “psychological abuse” is quite accurate. & I’m going to take a look at Dr. Winell’s work. It sounds interesting.
Great post, Miranda, thank you.
Even after years of being a happy and devout athiest I still suffer from Catholic damage. But what to do…hmmm…how about a class-action lawsuit (for psychological pain) against the Vatican? They seem to think that they’re above Earthly law, but one billion Catholics vs Ratzi should shake them up.
In the meantime, I encourage everyone to mail condoms to the Pope, just for the hell of it.
Thank you, Brad :) & Unfortunately, I think that it will take a government and/or U.N. crackdown to make the Vatican take legal responsibility for their various crimes. I’m not terribly optimistic that that will happen anytime soon, but it would certainly be satisfying if it did.
This sounds like something Prof. Luke from Reasonable Doubts might be interested in. I’m sure guilt resulting from childhood experiences has been looked into by psychologists, but I wouldn’t know if religious indoctrination in particular has.
Somehow, I’d never heard of Reasonable Doubts until I Googled it just now. I’m woefully out of the loop when it comes to podcasts. I really should try to remedy that :)
Excellent post Miranda. I see the doctrine of original sin as a denial of the fundamental integrity of human nature. Teaching a child that she must mistrust herself, blame herself, and fear herself is a contemptible lie and a potentially grievous injury. In my own recovery from Catholicism, I first lost my belief in guilt before I lost my belief in god. Once I no longer believed I needed protection from myself, god lost his job and I was able to drop my belief in him as well. Apropos of this, it seems like modern neuroscience is making it more and more untenable to believe in uncaused free will of the sort required for sin by Catholic dogma. Also in this connection, I’ve explored the worldview of Naturalism which integrates a lack of uncaused free will without fatalism or nihilism. These, and other twists and turns, have led me to a surprising and delightful discovery that not only is human nature faithful to itself, it is literally impossible for it not to be. It’s my view now that a full appreciation of that brute fact conveys with it absolute personal freedom to live a guilt free life.
Thanks, Jack. & I think you’re absolutely correct about the doctrine of original sin. It’s an incredibly damaging, destructive, and powerful force that, in essence, trains a child’s brain to oppress itself.
Well said and thanks for bringing a serious issue to light. I was raised very Catholic, and got so seriously into it that I spent a year in a monastery. The guilt and shame and self-hatred it instilled in me led to some very serious depression and a suicide attempt. Catholic guilt is no joke.
I am now an atheist and a lot happier than I ever was as a Catholic, but I still feel guilty for leaving ‘the faith’, and I cannot go into a Catholic church or look at a crucifix without feeling like that helpless little child again, being told I’m a ‘sinner’.
Reason is enough to lead to atheism, but reason alone cannot get rid of the emotional response to such abuse.
Thank you. And I really like how you put this:
Yes indeed. & That’s the problem: the emotional after-effects are, it seems, completely immune to reason and rationality. That’s what makes them so powerful, disturbing, and persistent.
My experience has been that rationality can be enormously helpful. For me, the other side of the coin of guilt was the gold of virtue. If I had the power to betray myself, as I was taught, then I could claim the virtue of self-mastery when I didn’t. Rationality was extremely potent in dropping the coin altogether, so long as I was willing to give up both sides.
Catholic guilt seems to sound a whole lot like PTSD caused by childhood sexual abuse.
What I’m doing with my Doctor is getting into a frame of mind where I can confront the emotional issues from an emotional point of view, not just a rational point of view.
Seems its possible to use a rational viewpoint to control the emotional viewpoint to confront the emotional issues but at the very least really hard to confront the emotional issues directly.
As an aside: I cannot help but wonder if the reason that Religious institutions seem to attract so many Child abusers could be that the type of thinking that those institutions insist on appeals to Child abusers. After all there are plenty of other career choices that give these people access to children.
BTW: love your mailing idea Brad :-)
“We are the heirs of the conscience-vivisection and self-crucifixion of two millennia: in these we have had longest practice, in these lies our mastery perhaps, certainly our subtlety; we have conjoined the natural inclinations and a bad conscience. A reverse attempt would be possible: to conjoin the inclination for the beyond, for things contrary to sense, reason, nature, in short all previous ideals, which were all world-slandering ideals, with a bad conscience.”
- Nietzsche (1885-1886)
Has anyone here experienced what I would call an unfortunate ‘side-effect’ of their religious upbringing, namely, a non-religious sense of ‘superstition’? Let me explain.
Even to this day (I’ve been an avowed atheist for about 11 years), I experience a very disagreeable, albeit fleeting, twinge of punishment or foreboding at certain times. It’s almost like a mental pinprick. These feelings do not carry any religious flavor; no religious cognitive content, so to speak. But there are times when a thought/feeling simply enters my consciousness either when contemplating taking some action, or sometimes even for no reason at all.
It’s either a sense of a future retribution for something I am about to do or not do, or that bad luck is just around the corner. I’m not talking about premonitions – I should say that not only am I an atheist, I am a thorough-going naturalist, so I don’t believe in anything supernatural. Though I can’t rule out the possibility of something like premonitions occurring through natural means, what is generally meant by ‘premonition’ is something supernatural, I think. The other experience, though considerably less frequent, is that something I may do or refrain from doing will bring me good luck.
An alternative hypothesis is that these experiences are the result of a more general proto-moral instinct that has evolved with our species and has been reinforced (positively or negatively) by not only our families but by society at large.
But I really don’t know what to make of them at this point.
I get that too, but it’s more of a feeling like a sudden psychic clenching. Almost, physically, it occurs like a spasm in a limb or something. Might just be a ptsd thing from other experiences but often it occurs when I recall something I’ve done that in retrospect I would do differently now. Maybe it’s the impulse to right (what we then perceive as) our own wrongs, or a mental process educating ourselves to do differently what we’ve already conditioned ourselves to do incorrectly. Kinda’ over-writing a remembered response. It’d be really fun to look into… I hope I don’t get the impulse that I should have done that now later….
Sounds almost like a form of Anxiety attack. It can be controlled with practice, can take awhile but knowing what is being controlled and why it occurs is a big part of the battle. Quick Disclaimer: I am not a Doctor, simply an average guy who is in the process of dealing with what happened to myself(successfully I will add). I am not intending to recommend a particular treatment, simply making it clear that we can get better.
I might have misspoke before. It is not a physical sensation, but rather an intruding thought that appears suddenly, but is also very quickly dispatched by a shaking of the head and counter-thought of “Juno, you’re not superstitious, remember?!”
But its recurrence is annoying at best and disheartening at worst. Though I must say this tendency has gotten less frequent in the past decade.
Well I’m glad it’s abated a bit for you, Juno. And I see what you’re talking about with the differences.
Private is right, except that it lasts an instant and I wouldn’t dare compare it to the people who have elongated panic attacks. But he’s right that there’re ways to deal with it that work. Practicing a bit of mindfulness decreases the likelihood that they’ll occur in the first place, etc. Sometimes my mind is such a mess though…
Thank you Miranda for a great post. I’m amazed at how similar so many of the comments are here. “Reason is enough to lead to atheism, but reason alone cannot get rid of the emotional response to such abuse”. Finbarr was sadly correct in this statement. After dealing with this for over 40 years, sadly I do not have an effective emotional palliative. But it does get better. Finding vestiges of this pernicious indoctrination in your life, is for me both embarrassing and extremely annoying. I can share a dream I had that illustrates some of the lifelong effects of early childhood religious indoctrination. http://ablazeofbrightblue.blogspot.com/2011/09/i-have-dream.html
I wrote that post at the end of July but for some reason was very hesitant to post it. After reading Miranda’s post up it went. Miranda wrote:
“Each time I write about Catholicism, particularly when the post is personal in any way, I feel hesitant and nervous and guilty about it. I suppose that’s yet another indicator of the power of childhood religious indoctrination. Its after-effects don’t seem to ever fully disappear.”
That applies to me also, and fully explained (to myself anyway) why i was reluctant to post that dream. So thank you Miranda for shining a bright light on another aspect of the church’s lingering effects in my psyche. Brad, You can sign me up for the class action law suit against the catholic church, anytime, anywhere. Those condoms your mailing to the pope, were they new?
I’m so glad that you decided to post it. I know how difficult that can be. & It’s frustrating, because we know that there’s no good reason for it to be difficult, and that we should just ignore the guilt, nervousness, etc., but that’s much, much easier said than done.
Catholic Guilt (and its Jewish counterpart) has given us many of our greatest stand-up comics. It’s all in how you process your abuse. Some sink into depression and self-destruction, others use it productively to (among other things) tear down those abusive institutions.
Even if you’re not a performer, find a way to tell your story and look for applications of your experience that will help prevent others from suffering the same experience. “Religious education” is a contradiction in terms.
I think that’s quite true. It sounds sort of cheesy, I know, but it really does seem that telling our stories can be extremely helpful to both ourselves and others
Agreed it is a psychological assault on children. Every human who has ever lived, started life as an atheist. Religion is drilled into children like a cycle of abuse that rarely ends until a person in a family tree has the intelligence to break the cycle. Child indoctrination is essential in the manufacturing of a robot-like adult. Believers in a deity are without a doubt, skillfully manufactured.
Fortunately or unfortunately I did not grow up around religion and therefore can’t relate, sometimes I wish I could. Miranda, I don’t understand why the guilt stays with you? After all that you have come to understand, why would you feel guilty? This is very perplexing to me. If it is personal, it requires no response of course.
Perhaps if we think about how a child’s developing brain is wired. The young brain is inherently flexible and hard-wired to acquire like a sponge. Programming a child is easy. Many parents have a distorted sense of ownership of their children, instead of viewing them as adults in the making. Parents assume they have the right to indoctrinate their kids resulting in children doubting their own sense of reality, having low self-esteem, withdrawing from relationships, becoming mistrustful or misinterpreting the world around them. Miranda, you were manipulated at an age where you had no defenses. Shed that guilt. Don’t let what happened to you define you.
In a perfect world, children should not be allowed in churches just as they are not allowed in bars until they are old enough to understand their choices.
Cheers
Maybe some of the foundation of Catholic (or other Christian, even other religious) guilt rests on a literal reading of scriptures. My way out was by reading liberation theologians and other progressive Catholic theologians in college–like Hans Kung, Edward Schillibeeckx, a few others like Jesus Seminar people (John Dominic Crossan, “Jesus: a Revolutionary Biography”). Some of the older ones had served as advisers at Vatican II and helped draft some of its documents, but in order to avoid censure, they’d make careful statements like “the resurrection was not the resuscitation of a corpse.” In effect, this puts me out in Joseph Campbell’s neck of the woods, with religious texts as metaphors, with many of the lost metaphors about the oppressions of the Roman occupation (“my name is Legion, for we are many”), and with too many insiders to the religion taking their own metaphors too literally. If God is a metaphor for something deep in human experience, it’s hard to get uptight about guilt unless one really has good reason for a guilty conscience.
This is very good, my wife is a recovering Catholic. I agree that it’s essentially child abuse, but the tough question is, how to you regulate how parent’s raise their kids? That’s a very difficult area, people are largely left alone to do what they will with their kids, so long as there is not physical abuse, but I can imagine a time when something is different so that this mental abuse is also not tolerated by society. California was considering a law preventing spanking, and I think this is a step in the right direction. Mandatory education for parents? I don’t know the answer, but it’s a question we need to keep asking. Thanks so much for your post.
Thank you, Francis. And, yes, that is a tough question indeed. I don’t know the answer, either. But I think it’s definitely important to keep talking about it. Anyway, thanks again for the kind words.
It’s all about choice. I grew up in Catholic world and knew it for the irrational superstition it is from the age of 7. I was stuck there for another ten years with the idiocy, the condescension and the attempts at sexual abuse. I kept my thoughts to myself and as soon as I was done with school, I got out.
I made a choice that it would not ruin my life, nor, indeed, have much effect on me at all. That choice is as easy to make as choosing to wallow in self-pity and shame. After all, when you do that, you’re only giving in to them.
I guess the catholic churches I attended were remarkably liberal compared to the ones the people here seemed to have attended. I was always taught that yes, we are sinful creatures, and we will never be perfect or as good as good, but we are still capable of being good.
In mass, sunday school, and at home I was always taught that there is still good in all of us despite our flaws. That’s why god loves us, because we are worth loving. He knows we are going to mess up, just like our parents know that we will mess up from time to time. We’re human, it’s to be expected.
Have you questioned why you are a ‘sinful person’? What have you ever done to cause sin? Look to your own clerics from the lowest to the highest (and I include your pope} for evidence of the most vile and covered up examples of sin.
I too grew up in a fundamentalist christian church called The Gospel Hall which is something like The Brethren I would say. The negative effect of hearing from as far back as I can remember that I’m a worthless sinner headed for hell not to mention I’ll be left behind when my parents are raptured any minute has been great. Their most used tool is fear, especially when they meet some resistance the fiery rhetoric gets amped up past 10; you name it I heard it including my mother showing me where she kept her will in the freezer when I was 9 because I was going to be left behind any day if I didn’t repent. I can go on all night with stories like that after being in the church for over 20 years. It’s so clear now that it was abuse but at the time that was all I knew. I’m just starting to search for answers and reasons for why I am the way I am today, this has been a help.
Try being raised Mormon. At least once a month from the time I could speak I was told to say the following: “I “know” the Mormon church is the only true church, I know Joseph Smith was a Prophet of God, I know the Book of Mormon is true, I love my Mom and Dad and brothers and sisters”.
So Mormons not only have Christ guilt, but we have the connection ingrained between our love of family and our belief. I have recently decided to leave the Mormon church and it has felt like I was leaving my family as well.
I would love to see a study linking the connection between the feeling of love and security linking me and my family to the Mormon faith as well do to this indoctrination done every week my entire life.
I tell my story on http://www.Spiritualdiscovery.info I would love to have your comments there.
Thanks
You are not leaving your family, you have a greater family of concerned people who do not villify you for outrageous reasons.
I was searching the internet and Amazon for books on ‘Catholic Guilt’ and there seems to be little to nothing out there on the subject. Catholic Indoctrination is EVIL, it cuts us off from the God within, and fills us with fear and guilt! It is no accident! It is abuse for the sake of power. It is vile psychological abuse and programming! People who are ‘nothing’ are easy to control!
When will you realise that there is no god within? God is just a word used as a tool for control, control, control and more financial control. Have you ever seen a poor religion? the Catholic church alone could ‘feed the world’ !!!! not to mention the other so called ‘caring religions’ so don’t start me on Muslims………………….
I see what you are saying, unfortunately some catholics have taught this way, but it is crucially important to understand that these negative ideals that u speak of is not what the church preaches.
You say religion says “that we are unworthy, that we cannot do anything right, that we do not deserve to be happy, that we are dirty tainted sinners who must constantly punish ourselves and atone for our sins, and that we are nothing. Nothing.”
NEWSFLASH: we are worthy because God loves us and so he sent his son to save us, We do deserve to be happy – that’s why God created us, we are not dirty tainted sinners- we are a loving good creation of God who he unconditionally loves, and even though we may be prone to sin, God still loves us, We do not need to constantly punish ourselves for our sins, God just wants us to tell him we still love him even though we fall, and in no way does the Church teach that we are nothing- it teaches that with God we are everything
The problem isn’t teaching faith, The problem is improperly teaching the faith – instead of focusing on washing away everything with God we need to help those raised in the wonderfulness of faith that there are some that have misinterpreted God, and help these people understand the proper message of Jesus and catholicism- which is Love of yourself, one another and God, and as long as u love God and have a personal relationship with him , u are on the right path
I am finally learning to deal with my catholic guilt as I approach my 60th birthday, denounced as a heretic at convent school assembly for questioning the infallibilty of the pope at the age of 12, With a mother who wanted to make sure her child did not become to precocious, so appeared to put me down at every opportunity. I ended up pregnant at 17 shortly after the death of my father and ‘bless her’ I couldn’t have coped without her support (rip) she never failed to remind me of my shame and failures for the next 30 yrs. I married very unsuccesfully more than once because I had learned I had to be greatful that anyone who was prepared to take me on under the circumstances. I am finally learning I have worth and value in my own right but it has been an uphill struggle all the way and I am still working at it
Now in my sixties, it took me 25 years to “undo” the harm of my religious upbringing. The three phases for me: 1) shame and fear when I discovered I really did not believe at age 16. 2) Anger and ridicule at those that do/did believe, especially my family for many years 3) Eventual release and liberation and focusing on the joy of this life, but not till in my late 50s.
My wife was born non-religious, and watched in amazement while I spent all those years going through this process.
Ditto! Except for many years as a young person I have tried to conform to my religious friends. Being brainwashed from early childhood I could not understand what was wrong with me, that I lack that religious enthusiasm my friend exhibited. Years of readings, thinking, discussing things with other “doubting Thomas” finally helped me understand that there is something wrong with religions, not with me. What a relief and happiness it is not to bother anymore with “sin”, confessions, guilt, praying, trying to figure out the “mystery” of “holy trinity”.
I am happy for you that you also shook off that burden. I am in my early 50-ties but for about 10 years now I am completely free of that holly crap.
Live long and prosper!
Hey Margaret, thanks for that. Of late I am am beginning to feel a sense of responsibility to push the gentle wave of reason to encourage more of us to find that release; or, better still not be infected to begin with.
Societies that have left religion behind seem to function so much better on all fronts. In order to reduce strife and violence in this world, there needs to be a sense of urgency to speed up the spread of reason and encourage life without religion, or at least without the religious fervor that creates intolerance and hatred.
This is a quest for the years I have left.
Thank you Walter for your reply. I am always happy to hear from someone who have similar to mine agenda. Indeed we need to spread the word as far as possible. I think that evolution of human consciousness is working for us too. If you compare times, say 100 years, back, there are more rationally thinking persons now than then. I am quite optimistic in that regard. If I still believed in a god, I would say: thanks god for Internet! Thanks goodness, and human inventiveness for that wonderful medium of communication. Think-tank of atheists is growing, and in the next few generations, I hope, churches/faith organizations become only social clubs (like golf, or tennis clubs) without much influence on global politics, like it is now.
Margaret, I share your hopes, but fear the reality that Sam Harris expresses in his book: the End of Faith. Our mission is somewhat urgent I am afraid.
Still need to read that book. Harris’ other book, The Free Will tells however a very different story on the subject of urgent actions. I would not though agree with you more, that we need to create an atmosphere for secular world. Only by expressing our thoughts here, on Miranda (Thank you Miranda for that opportunity) blog, we send message to the world, stir some ferment in somebody’s mind.
Do you know that even in that very catholic Poland, for over 10 years there is a website for rationally thinking people, and number of readers/writers is growing? See for yourself: Racjonalista.pl. I read it regularly and my hope is growing even more. Sam Harris’s blog messages are translated often as well as Matt Ridley, rational optimist (his books and blog are worth checking).
Cheers,
“I cannot find in the entire bible, one word in praise of intelligence”
Lord Bertrand Russell
Replace “bible” with any of the “words of gods”, and it always holds true.
What you are experiencing is caused not by catholic upbringing but rather by lack thereof. You wrote that feel like this: “. It clings to us, a dark spectre of our pasts, a cruel and vicious voice whispering to us, reminding us of the lessons of our childhood: that we are unworthy, that we cannot do anything right, that we do not deserve t
o be happy, that we are dirty tainted sinners who must constantly punish ourselves and atone for our sins, and that we are nothing.” This is not a catholic teaching. The basic catholic idea is that everybody is capable of doing good and everybody potentially may obtain salvation. Therefore if somebody told you in your childhood that you are worthless, damned, can not do anything right, then it was not an orthodox catholic teaching. Somebody most have told you some heresies :)
Christopher Hitchens said it best……“Violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism, tribalism and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children: (organized) religion ought to have a great deal on its conscience.”
This is the reflection of 2000 plus years of Catholicism. Please join the growing movement to rid our society of this millstone around our necks.
Please add to that the rest of the world’s religions ( oh sorry Islam is a religion of peace!!!!!!!!!! Tell that to the dead of The Twin Towers!).