I began "losing my religion" around the age of 12. I was having serious reservations getting confirmed or not. I went through with it, thinking it was a "phase'. The spiritual void just got bigger and bigger from that point forward.

I still love a lot of aspects of Catholicism, but unfortunately, I am not finding spiritual comfort there. Right now I am on the cliched Eastern religion kick. I think every Catholic I know goes Buddhist, at least for a spell.

In second grade, one of my teachers gave me a book of (Greek? Roman?) mythology. Kinda went downhill from there, really. Checked with another teacher: Since we figured these myths were wrong, how did we know Christianity was right? "We just do, that's all."

Suddenly, I'm wondering if Mrs. C was intentionally baiting my childish curiosity with that stonewalling. Nah, that's the sleep deprivation talking.

I think it started with the whole confession thing. There's no need for me to tell a priest that I'm sorry for things I've done, when I could go straight to "the top" ... no need for an intermediary. And original sin? WTF? I was born, haven't done anything, yet I still have sin? Then the pedophile priest that we had and the way that the congregation treated the families of the kids who were molested was just horrible. (They later left the church as well.) Anytime I would ask questions, the most common answer was, "Because we just know." Argh!

I went to catholic school. I remember in 2nd grade, my teacher said, "If you are good, you will go to heaven." I felt so sorry for all the good kids because I though they were all going to die sooner than the rest of us.

I too thought that getting confirmed was going to help me become the spiritual catholic I was supposed to be. But that only lasted a couple more months. Then I stopped going to church after I took a philosophy class in college. My life has been filled with sex, drugs, and rock and roll ever since, I have not looked back, and I am enjoying my life. Now I can sin with no guilt. You know, acutally, I think I never really felt catholic guilt.

I think I lapsed in high school. I went to a Christian Brothers school and semi-regularly attended Eucharist before lunch at the chapel. My father was a lapsed Irish-Catholic, and my mother was Protestant. Neither of them ever felt at home at any church and so we only went to Church for the Xmas eve service. The chaplain at our school was a very kind and caring person, but he was replaced by someone much stuffier who seemed to be more about propiety than people. I was unimpressed and stopped attending mass. At that point, drugs and sex had gotten more interesting to me anyway. That and the fact, that most of my peers only seemed to pay lip service to their faith anyway. As for the Christian Brothers and lay teachers - I had some really great teachers - caring, intelligent, and wanting us to be caring, inquisitive and intelligent as well. They were real post-Vatican II liberation types. But I could already see how marginalized they were and how their views did not really have much of an effect on my peers who were into their cliques, parties, etc... A couple of the Christian Brothers were into Zen however, and one of them used to start class with reflections from traditional Zen koans, Krishnamurti, Alan Watts, D.T. Suzuki, Thomas Merton, et al. That really intrigued me because here were people and stories about people who went beyond the letter of the law and seemed to have seen or acquired a more graceful, intuitive and compassionate view and way of living. I followed up on it in college and ended up joining a semi-Buddhist cult from Japan (go figure!). I ended up seeing through that scam after a couple of years, but was not at all disillusioned by the authentic Buddhist teachings which made a lot more sense than any Christian ones. I ended up meeting a very compassionate and helpful Korean Buddhist nun who encouraged me to maintain the practice of chanting that I was already doing and who taught me much more about East Asian Buddhist teachings and practices. When I arrived on the West Coast (the foregoing happened in and around Philadelphia) I ended up finding a traditional form of Japanese Buddhism that I could really relate to and after several years I even ended up becoming fully ordained as a minister in that tradition after studying both here and in Japan.

As for Catholicism, I had read the writings of Matthew Fox and saw what I thought was a fresh, vibrant, and more compassionate approach. I ended up getting an M.A. in spirituality from his Institute of Culture and Creation Spirituality which at that time was located at Holy Names College in Oakland, Ca. That was the year that he was kicked out of the Dominican order, and I think it was a year or two after the year of silence which the order had imposed on him. It became apparent to me at that program that Matt was no longer anything resembling a traditional Christian and that what he was doing was already being marginalized and even edged out of the Church. I also saw that his reading of Western spirituality was itself a biased reaction to the conservative agenda. In the end, I saw that Matt was not really reforming Christianity but was following his own personal intuitions and that Buddhism still made more sense to me than either he or Christianity. In retorspect I would say that I ended up disillusioned by him. However, I also studied with Starhawk there and against my own expectations I ended up having much more respect for her.

I still retain a lot of good feelings for some aspects of Catholicism (as someone else here has said) but I have found that it is not enough. It doesn't make the same sense or speak to me or effect me in the way that Buddhism does. But certainly I do continue to draw inspiration from it in many ways - though not as my own faith tradition.

Namu Myoho Renge Kyo,
Ryuei

When I realized that the church would rather see me raise my son alone than with a loving step-father. That the church condoned all of the evils done to me by my husband rather than allow me to re-marry. That the priest should have known that no sacrament took place on my wedding day. But most of all that I could murder another human being and be forgiven but would never be forgiven for divorcing an evil man. That is when I left the church -the Church had left me and my needs behind long before.

I've spent the rest of my life over-coming the catholic guilt thing!

Immediately after baptism. My parents thought that dunking a baby in water and asking said baby "do you renounce the devil???" as the baby cried, probably just wanting its mama, was silly. So that was that.

I attented mass regularly until this past summer (July,'04). But I was becoming more disgusted with the church's constant homophobia. I also realized, after the better part of my life, that I had internalized this homophobia and guilt, and had acted on it, to my own misery and that of my life partner. I will be trying to right this probably for the rest of my life.
Another thing is the church's obsession with physical pleasure, and sex in particular. The US is involved in a questionable war, 44 million people lack health care insurance, many will lose decent retirement benefits, pollution is rampant; but the Catholic Church's prime concerns are preventing gay unions, extra-marital sex, and abortions. These are followed closely by getting tuition vouchers, keeping the laity un-empowered, and sweeping the pedophilia scandal under the rug.
Perhaps I am too cynical at this point. I have not had any spiritual life at all in the last six months. I think of myself as more of a 'Deist" or "general believer" than anything else now. I believe that our relationship with the Divine is to be sought in our relationships with other people; helping those we encounter every day.
Hope this encourages others who are struggling with similar situations to reach out to me, or to others on this site. I know I can work through this, and I am confident that others can too.
Thank you for giving me the chance to reply to your comments on this site. Hope to hear from you.

(short answer: i became dismayed with the lack of respect for the environment, following exposure to daniel quinn's writings.)

i was baptized and was in catholic schools up through high school. my parents, however, were a lapsed catholic and a lapsed protestant who only went to church when my school requested their attendance for something-or-other, and there were only a couple people in my extended family who went to church.

i hardly ever went to church outside of school events and major holidays, but considered myself a practicing catholic and stayed interested in catholicism in some way or another up until i was 21. when i was 12 i started attending a catholic nature camp, and that influenced my belief structure to include more reverence for nature and introspection/meditation. my high school was pretty liberal and focused on world religion and ethics, which further encouraged me to explore spirituality through diverse schools of thought rather than strict rules.

the death of a close friend when i was 19 pushed me back closer to catholic ritual. but then when i was 21 i read 'the story of b' by daniel quinn. religion is responsible for environmental degradation and the devaluation of earthly existence, and mythology is mythology is mythology. i had a crisis of faith, talked it over with a former spiritual advisor, and walked away whistling. i'm out, and i feel great about it.

i haven't felt any need to take on any organized thought or belief structure since then. (and i quite resent the implication by soooo many people i meet that i should have to do so in order to feel spiritually complete. my spirituality is what i need it to be, and it's working well for me.)

Probably in High School. I became more aware of the so-called "proofs" for God's existence, and realized that it was essentially impossible to prove the existence of God without reference to God; that one had to have faith or a personal experience of God.

I've never had the sort of personal experience of God that many Christians I know have had, and so I gradually stopped believing.

I read this string with much amusement as well as self recognition. I am 48 and I returned to the Catholic church last year after many years of being in many other churches. The church I enjoyed the most, (from a purely selfish stance) was a mostly black Southern Baptist church. They really knew how to worship. As years have gone by I have discovered that the central issue to the whole matter of what church I attend is purely a matter of taste, in my heart and soul I am first of all a christian, and as my wife loves saying, we are simply christians who happen to attend a catholic church. It has been a very long trip for me especially since I was born and raised Roman Catholic. Why did I leave the Catholic church to start with? For just about every reason listed in this string as well as the culture shock of coming from a european Roman Catholic background to an American Catholic quagmire. I don't think the church here had a common identity then and it is still working on it. The only difference is now I realize it and the best place for me to be is back in the church doing all I can to help.