Part One

Part Two

Part Three

This is a multi-part series in which I chronicle my history as a nominal Christian, then seeking adolescent, then Catholic, then atheist. I guess some people would call it a “spiritual journey.” I wouldn’t.

After reading many of the “deconversion stories” published in the Converts’ Corner section of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science web site, I decided it would be useful for me (and perhaps for others) to write out my experience.

* * * * *

The old University Catholic Center, a mysterious, flat-roofed, mid-century building with a big blue panel on the front showing its name, was directly across from the main mall, and had intrigued me since my arrival at university. It was like another planet. I had only been exposed to Protestant churches back home, and I wasn’t impressed with them, though I had enjoyed the movie nights at the local EYC, where we ate cookies and watched The Color Purple and discussed racism in America. I mean, it wasn’t even like church! And the priest, who actually looked like a priest (with the black outfit and white collar and everything!), was all liberal and cool. Anyway, the ritual of both the High Episcopal tradition and the Roman Catholic one appealed to my natural love of both history and order. I still most definitely did not literally believe in anything I’d read in the Bible, but I was floating around, grieving, confused, and angry. The Catholic Church, at the time, seemed a haven of reason and security, with its Mass, the same every week, and its disdain of embarrassing evangelical fervor, and its statues of Mary, a woman.

One day that fall, I went inside and asked about conversion. I met with a short, curly-headed lady over a fizzy soda and discussed the prospect. I told her I wanted to convert because I hadn’t been part of any church back home, and now I was at college and free to make my own decisions, and Catholicism seemed the right fit for me. I liked the Church’s historical foundations, its service, its emphasis on social justice, and its art.

Then the friendly mother of three asked me if I would say I’d had more of a Peter or Paul conversion experience, and I had no idea what she meant. After she explained, I said, “Oh, no, definitely Peter.” This was after all, mostly an intellectual attraction.

I think, honestly, that I believed my becoming Catholic would suddenly remake my entire cultural experience from one of pickup trucks and fried foods to something out of The Godfather. I thought it was richer and more significant, somehow. I thought it was like joining a club – the biggest and most mysterious club. I thought all that crossing myself and kneeling and bowing would transform everything around me to some sort of fascinating tapestry of deeper cultural meaning. I thought it would make me a Kennedy.

Looking back on it now, and knowing what I know about liberal Judaism (based on the study I have done out of my own interest, as my best friend converts to that religion), if I had explored another two blocks down the street, and walked into the campus Hillel, I have no doubt in my mind I would now be writing this as a secular Jew rather than a lapsed Catholic. Judaism’s truly monotheistic, action-based, ethically-driven beliefs are much more agreeable and rational to me (though still too woo – and sectarian – for me to seriously entertain). But, at eighteen, I was fascinated by the Catholic building, so in I went. I didn’t question the dogma much; I just appreciated the internal logic of the Catholic worldview. It seemed so sophisticated and beautiful when compared to the ugly Baptist church back home.

I know, right?

I completed the year-long Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults. I enjoyed the class a lot, as it wasn’t touchy-feely like the Protestant experiences I’d come to loathe in school. It was intellectual, and we studied Church history, and Thomas Aquinas, and wrote short essays about our own experiences and expectations. I had a sponsor, a cradle Catholic named Mary (of course), who met with me once a month and attended all the rites along the way (including being blessed by the bishop, being blessed at Pentecost, being blessed by the congregation, etc., etc., etc.). She was engaged to an atheist and getting married in the Church. She gave me a catechism. I read the whole thing.

At the Easter mass, during my sophomore year of college, I submitted to the inevitable and was baptized. My father and stepmother came to the ceremony, their first Catholic one, and were proud of me, if a bit surprised by my choice of denomination. I wore a white sack and flip-flops, and, when it was my turn, climbed into the hot-tub-like baptismal font and went under the water, rejecting Satan, accepting Jesus, and adhering myself to the Roman Catholic Church. I now regret this, one of the few genuine regrets I have about my life.

I joined the Catholic sorority. They were fun, and didn’t rush or haze. They accepted anyone who wanted to join. We had a good time. Some of the women were Good Catholic Girls™ and some were the best dancer at Saint Bernadette’s. I was neither, and I struggled to fit in there, too. I didn’t want to spend my Saturday in the church in adoration of the holy sacrament, but neither was I boy crazy and driven to party. So I joined some other church groups. I was Eucharistic minister. I even went on the big spring retreat, so excited was I about Catholicism, so determined to find my place.

I think I was really looking for what the Four Horsemen (Hitchens, Dennett, Dawkins, and Harris) recently called “the numinous”. And this is certainly a misconception a lot of people, including some of my own friends, seem to have about nonbelievers. Just because I am an atheist (and, also, a person not prone to public displays of effusive emotion or sentimental abandon), that doesn’t mean I don’t experience the same transcendent feelings of beauty, awe, and gratitude that all other people do. I’ve just realized that, for me (and, I think, if they were being honest, for others), religion is not the best framework for validating the numinous. I simply do not ascribe these feelings of transcendence to any supernatural cause.

The retreat was the first thing that shocked me back into my senses. Most of the undergraduates who attended were by definition serious Catholics. They prayed a lot. They enthusiastically attended the three masses per day on the schedule. They threw themselves into all the silly little craft projects and bonding exercises. Luckily for me, my group leader, a senior from the Valley, was cool. She had a bad attitude, and made us all vampire-themed T-shirts (which, really, is quite appropriate for a group of people who ritually cannibalize their god, but, we’ll get to that later). So I managed to hang around the edges of the festivities, quietly meditating and reading. That is, until the passion play. Now, I’d been to one passion play before. Once, when I was 12, I went to Eureka Springs, Arkansas with my Lutheran friend. Eureka Springs is home to one of the most famous passion plays in the United States. Predictably, the whole event made me uncomfortable, and I couldn’t wait to get home, although I was somewhat fascinated by the all-encompassing, in-your-face Christianity of Eureka Springs, and of course the town itself, which is a hilly gingerbread Victorian dreamscape confection.

In the Catholic passion play, we all had to take a role. Once again, as is my way, I hung back, not wanting to be picked for any of the big parts, in which I would be expected to emote for Jesus. I think in the end I was just one of the Jerusalem crowd or something; I don’t really remember. I do remember that the guy who played Jesus took it very, very seriously. And that everyone else did, too. And that, by the end, half my fellow Catholics were in tears, wailing, calling out to Jesus.

Again, I was mortified. I was deeply uncomfortable, and a little scared. I realized again that I did not share the faith of these people. All weekend, I had tried to pray and contemplate the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, tried to make this connection that my peers seemed to have, tried to convince myself that I needed to do so, but once again I was left wholly repulsed. Once again, I couldn’t wait to get back to Austin.

After four semesters of sorority life, during which time I was elected to offices, won awards, and went on retreats, I decided to go inactive.

I still went to Mass weekly, and I still studied and prayed, but I was no longer in love with Catholicism.