Ask an ex-Catholic

[Aroura]

Why is the rolleyes smiley once again not working? Why?! WHY, DAMMIT?!?!

I'm an ex-Catholic Damn-it, not a programmer!

---

[c172]

What's better with communion wafers? Salsa or onion dip?

[SteelCurtain]

Hummus!

[c172]

The world's just better with hummus.

[Nope]

Is there anything you miss from your days as a Catholic?

[Pyrrho]

Why did you stop being a Catholic?

Because I came to my senses.

I went to a private Catholic school for 7 years, and was quite heavily indoctrinated, so it was an uphill climb. Fortunately, my family also loves science and taught me critical thinking skills, so by my teens I was questioning heavily.  By my 20's I'd left the RCC, by my 30's I'd left all supernatural nonsense behind.

Another acceptable answer would be, because you did not want to support an international pedophile ring.  But your answer is good.

I am not sure how much science matters in such things.  I was raised a Southern Baptist (to get an idea that is not totally wrong, visit the Landover Baptist site), and was kept away from science as much as could reasonably be done while sending me to public school.  I was heavily questioning in my teens, and in my early 20's I was a strong atheist.  For me, it was more a philosophical rejection, rather than a particularly scientific one.

But this is supposed to be about being an ex-Catholic, not about being an ex-Southern Baptist.

So, what were your thoughts on the Eucharist?  Did it bother you eating Jesus, or did you never really believe that part?  (I should probably try to be funnier, and just ask what Jesus tastes like.)

[Aroura]

Is there anything you miss from your days as a Catholic?

Good question.
Once, I did miss the community aspect.  But I've since learned you can join all kinds of wonderful groups of people.  I'm a girl scout leader and part of the local secular humanist chapter.  These things provide me with all the things I used to miss.

---

Eucharist

Because I came to my senses.

I went to a private Catholic school for 7 years, and was quite heavily indoctrinated, so it was an uphill climb. Fortunately, my family also loves science and taught me critical thinking skills, so by my teens I was questioning heavily.  By my 20's I'd left the RCC, by my 30's I'd left all supernatural nonsense behind.

Another acceptable answer would be, because you did not want to support an international pedophile ring.  But your answer is good.

I am not sure how much science matters in such things.  I was raised a Southern Baptist (to get an idea that is not totally wrong, visit the Landover Baptist site), and was kept away from science as much as could reasonably be done while sending me to public school.  I was heavily questioning in my teens, and in my early 20's I was a strong atheist.  For me, it was more a philosophical rejection, rather than a particularly scientific one.

But this is supposed to be about being an ex-Catholic, not about being an ex-Southern Baptist.

So, what were your thoughts on the Eucharist?  Did it bother you eating Jesus, or did you never really believe that part?  (I should probably try to be funnier, and just ask what Jesus tastes like.)

That's actually a great point, I mean ex-whatever, we will still have things in common.  It took me a lot longer than you to get to the stron atheist part, so science might not have had a whit to do with it.  A lot of it was just objecting to morality of their claims, as well as realizing a HUGE amount of what they do is basically magic.  Mass started making me think of a berobed Merlin casting spells.  It's all just pretend, and at some point, I could no longer suspend my disbelief, I suppose.

As to the Eucharist, I honestly never really thought I was eating flesh.  When you eat it, it's clearly a thin, fairly tasteless wafer, not flesh.  No one ever really pushed the notion of transubstantiation on me at a grade school age.

As an adult, I look back and think how childish so much of that belief system really is.  No different than my 8 year old daughters deep desire to believe that Hogwarts is real, and she'll get to train dragons some day.  It's fine when you're a kid, but I have a hard time understanding how grown people can still fully believe that the wafer is somehow magically actually Jesus.  And if it was?  Ewwwww......really.

Also, the wafers are really so bland, I guess I'd pick salsa, to give them some zing! Although I really love Hummus, too! (especially the regular garlic lemon kind, though sun dried tomato and roasted read pepper is also awesome).

[Minimalist]

Also, the wafers are really so bland, I guess I'd pick salsa

...and a nice chianti.

[Aroura]

Also, the wafers are really so bland, I guess I'd pick salsa

...and a nice chianti.

[Pyrrho]

...
As an adult, I look back and think how childish so much of that belief system really is.  ...

I know the feeling.  I almost start to feel ill if I think about it too much, that I really believed the nonsense that I believed.  To be thoroughly indoctrinated as a child gives one a kind of understanding for how people get sucked into such nonsense, but I really wish I were one of those atheists who had no clue about it.  So much wasted time and effort thinking about all that ridiculous nonsense!  It makes one wonder what one would have done if one had not been raised to believe fairy tales.

So much of it is so bizarre and crazy, but when raised to believe it, it did not all seem that way at the time.  Even basic points, like why did God insist that he become a man and then be killed in order to forgive people?  Why not just forgive them?  It is just so crazy, it boggles the mind.  And yet it is what millions of people believe, or claim to believe, and they don't seem to think it is a crazy thing.  It is very disturbing to think that one ever believed such rubbish, and very disturbing that many people still believe such rubbish.

Back to the questions.

Did you attend one of those cool, magnificent (from an architectural standpoint) churches, or one of the more modern ones?  And did the church have great music, with a glorious pipe organ?  Or was it more like just some nun strumming on a guitar?  And do you think any of these things had an influence on how long you stayed in the church?