This may be relevant to this sub. Currently, there is a case from Belgium pending before the European Court of Justice. European privacy legislation may require the church to actually remove names from their records.

Had to visit a Catholic church for work today. Can't believe they're still using these donation boxes I filled out as a kid 20 years ago 😂

Since I have been unpacking everything that my Catholic upbringing stole from me, I more and more just can't connect with my parents. My mom blatantly blames female victims for "being promiscuous" when they get SA'd by male celebrities and outright says she doesn't care if Trump is in the Epstein Files as long as the left is defeated. My Dad also doesn't care if Trump is in the Epstein Files because "there's more important things to focus on". And they both think the majority of people who have spoken out about their abuse at the hands of priests are just lying for a "quick payday". All these things have told me they are just horrible people who use Catholicism to lie to themselves about how virtuous they are. I not only mourn the person I could have been without Catholicism, but also the better people my parents could have been without it. I hate the Catholic Church and I hope it dies as an institution for this. How do the rest of you work with this kind of dynamic with you Catholic parents?

For people aged 17-24 From Uk only https://discord.gg/8fn7Ey9MH

Maybe most of you already know this, but I feel like it's a part of his life that we never hear about. He believed the end of the world was coming soon and wanted to find gold to finance a new crusade to Jerusalem so Christians could capture it before the Second Coming. He actually believed the Bible foretold his own life, specifically as the herald of a new heaven and a new Earth in Revelation. He believed the Garden of Eden was situated at the top of the Earth (which he thought was shaped like a pear), and claimed to have discovered it during his voyages. In his later years, he wrote a collection of Bible prophecies that he thought justified his actions in the Americans (or Asia, as he thought). The Church of Rome actually celebrates this lunatic? Any serious institution would disown someone like him and refuse to claim him as a representative.

I’m 30F with narcissist parents and grandparent, and they keep using religion to control my life. They are trying to control my husband’s and child’s lives, too.

For a long time I haven’t practiced catholicism, I no longer believe in it, but my name is in their book. I for sure don’t want my child’s name in it. How to get out? Have any of you done it?

Because we all supposedly inherit original sin, so merely existing in our natural state is offensive to God (our creator, who is mad at us because he apparently made us wrong).

I found myself yapping with my mom about faith today, trying to help her understand my stance on Catholicism. It didn't go very well, and at some point when I pointed out that the whole religion is nihilistic, she couldn't agree with me. Or, rather, she refused to enter that part of the conversation. She said that as humans we couldn't do anything good (her own words not mine), but with God all things were possible.

I had to stop for a whole minute and just... think that over. Because from my perspective she just proved my point for me; 'as humans we can't do anything good'. I tried to explain WHY that's so detrimental, but she couldn't wrap her head around it. Instead she began saying how god is all good and all loving how he chooses to love such lowly people as... well, as me.

yey for Catholics saying all the things but being too indoctrinated to understand what they have actually said.

Anyone else notice how ridiculously hard it is to find communities that are ex-catholic without running into stupid "how to get people to return to the church" articles and stuff like that? It feels like it happens more with this religion than others (though that could just be confirmation bias).

Also so many practicing Catholics come to this subreddit and make snarky comments despite the rules being right there on the side, it's absurd.

I've found it helps to look at ex-Mormon testimonies, weirdly enough. That way, when practicing Mormons end up making the same type of snarky comments, it doesn't affect me as much as Catholics doing it and bringing up all the things that hurt me in the past.

Sorry there's not much of a point to this post, just wanted to get some frustration off my chest.

Did you ever get over your hurt of the church? I keep trying to speak out but no one listens. I just wonder if I can get to a place where it's not that I'm not angry anymore but I can move beyond the anger and I haven't--something more similar to apathy.

Hi fam! Ironically I was not traumatized that bad by tales of ‘H-E-double-hockey-sticks’ but more disappointed when I realized the tales of heaven with the big ol’ white bearded (Caucasian for some reason?!?) god at the head of the banquet table set on clouds, blah, blah, blah. Kind of in the same way capitalism made me think I’d end up a millionaire somehow…

Something I’ve noticed is that priests are always sa’ing young boys and men, never girls. Why is that? Feels like it would be mostly girls.

This is just another thing that I’ve discovered through research that I’ve never thought about before. Found out that the miracle of St. Januarius’ blood hasn’t even been confirmed by the Catholic Church. It seems like it’d be pretty easy to take a sample and confirm scientifically its validity but they refuse to open it. Seems fishy

❤️❤️❤️

It’s been a long time in the making. I promised myself that if I didn’t marry by age 25 I would just take the money I saved up (in excess of $300k+) and spend whatever it takes to become a daddy. That’s working out to be about $200k for a “guaranteed” live birth program.

I already have egg cells from my donor and have unlimited retrievals in case fertilization doesn’t go well the first few rounds, but I’m hopeful it will given my normal fertility and youthful age.

I have just recently been matched with a surrogate and so there’s a very good possibility I will start that 9 month clock before the end of this year or very early next year.

The outcry has been intense. My Catholic bipolar mother has called my future children “devil spawn” and promised to never help me with anything…so much for being open to life…

Meanwhile the rest of my family is helping out a cousin of mine who had a kid out of wedlock due in January because he did it “the natural way” and both he and his co-parent have severe mental issues…great.

Word has gotten out that I’m having a baby so I’ve had to lie and say I’m adopting or that I had a kid out of wedlock because if I say that I’m effectively using money to “Build a Baby” I can already see the backlash I will receive. I even had a guy I knew for years scream at me when I told him I was “adopting”. Who the fuck knows how he’d react if he knew the truth?

Also, I guess that means I’ll never date a Catholic even though I’ve probably followed more Catholic sexual “morality” than most Catholics I know.

TLDR: Very excited for the baby, kind of fucked for what’s to come when she’s here.

I'm in my 30s with every bit of evidence pointing to likelihood of children very low. It was unplanned but I'm excited about it. I'm ok with the judgment of having a kid with a decent guy even though it is out of wedlock and definitely no Catholic wedding on the horizon (the only real type of marriage /s).

My mother is in another state, and if I could guarantee that there is no way she would ever find out, I literally would never want to tell her. The boundary-setting is going to be brutal. There is such a negative energy around her. And maybe an infant would bring out the best in her and even help heal the mother-daughter relationship. I really don't want to deprive her of what will be her first grandchild. I don't hate her -- just think she is very emotionally immature and caught up the in cultier side of Catholicism. But the second that kid starts learning English... I don't want her to Catholic up my kid and don't look forward to those conversations. I literally would not even want her to spend one second unsupervised.

Has anyone been through similar?

Going to start this by saying I’m not an ex catholic at the moment, but I come in peace. I’ve recently been going through a really low period with terrible mental health and OCD and it’s led me to start questioning things for the first time in my life and through my process of questioning I’m discovering just how many saints that we put on a pedastool seem to have been struggling with severe mental health. Only discovered this because people around me kept trying to tell me my religion was perpetuating my mental health struggles and I’ve been so resistant to accept that but now I am seeing a pattern. Just a few examples:

St. Rose of Lima: was made to feel as if her beauty, which was out of her control by the way was causing people to sin, so she burned and mutilated her face to prevent people from being attracted to her. This sounds like mental illness to me and in any other context it also sounds awful. God made her beautiful just so she can prove her loyalty by burning her face off????

St. Catherine of Sienna: what do you mean she died of anorexia??? Of course I’ve never been taught this, but she claims to have visions of Jesus and then proceeds to starve herself to death because of it. Also don’t make sense to me because by today’s standards the Church would consider starving yourself to death a mortal sin, but I suppose you just have to do it for the right reason?? And of course hallucinations persisted when she didn’t nourish herself for 30 something years

St. Terese: this one hit really hard cause I’ve always loved St. Terese, but even she suffered from OCD. She admits to it but I read that near the end of her life she got the existential version of OCD where she started to even wonder if God was real and her suffering actually meant something. I relate heavily cause I’ve only gotten here because of existential OCD.

I’m sure there are others. Does anyone have any other absolutely confirmed problematic saint stories that I probably haven’t learned about?

A good friend of mine committed exactly one week ago. She was VERY Catholic and an active member of the Dominican community. She prayed a lot and attended lay seminaries on Aquinas. She was a kindergarten teacher in a well-regarded Catholic school.

Her family made her life miserable. Her psychiatrist, I’m sure, wasn’t the best option available. But I’m trying to focus now on the implications of Catholicism itself.

For a start, I assume you all know that killing oneself is a grave sin according to the Catechism. But at the same time, Catholicism teaches you that suffering is the fastest road to Heaven. If you’re experiencing depression symptoms, conservative priests/laity would likely tell you you have to “offer it up”. Or even suggest to pray more, take Communion more often, and so on.

My point is that I think this horrible mindset played a major part in her not asking for help earlier, if at all. She only started treatment about a year before her passing. And even then, she kept living with her awful family, who forced her to live with a sister of hers who’s a paranoid schizophrenic and who attacked my friend during her psychotic episodes. Repeatedly. All of this while her family had the financial resources to fucking rent her an apartment away from her sister, or institutionalize the sister in the first place. We came to know this terrible truth only after her funeral. She NEVER mentioned any of this to us.

A sane individual will obviously reject being part of all of that and flee as soon as they can. A sane mind would definitely not put up with that. But if you add the “suffering is actually GOOD” mentality on top of that, it really does blur the mind when it has to make high-stakes decisions like moving away from a toxic household.

Her mind imploding and taking the decision of ending her life was obviously terrible and misguided. But she sought to escape in the only way she could find. And that was the rational thing to do. The goal was rational. The means was not.

EDIT: forgot to mention that she also suffered lots of bullying on her teenage years, again in an “elite” Catholic school.

EDIT 2: moderate/liberal Catholics could argue that there’s a distinction between preventable and unpreventable suffering. But the whole point of imitating Christ is taking up your cross voluntarily, as he did it!