I grew up in a Catholic family in the rural Midwest. This was a mostly Protestant (or “non-denominational Christian,” which, in my book, just means “Protestant”) part of the country. Part of growing up Catholic in rural Protestant country meant listening to all sorts of anti-Catholic sentiment. Maybe that’s gone now, but it survived well past the integration of Catholics into the U.S. following the JFK presidency.
I’m no longer a Catholic.
Formally, I haven’t been a Catholic since my late teens or early 20s. That is to say that I haven’t gone to church regularly or engaged with the Catholic Church since then. But, really, I haven’t been a Catholic believer since my mid-teens. Like many young people, I kept going to church until I moved away for college.
But my attitude toward the Catholic Church has changed quite a bit in the last year or so.
Worse, Not Better
At this point, readers might think this means I’m moving closer to the Catholic Church, reuniting with a church from which I’ve been estranged for 20+ years. Maybe years in the wilderness convinced me to return to the flock?
Well, no. Quite the opposite, in fact.
I left the Church on amicable terms. Really, I had no major beef with the Church itself. No hard feelings. Rather, I just stopped believing in its doctrines. My political and religious beliefs changed in my mid-teens. I accepted some form of socialism and atheism. And while my beliefs have evolved in various ways, I still carry socialism and atheism as core views.
But then, the Supreme Court released the Dobbs decision, overturning Roe v. Wade.
While technically the Catholic Church isn’t a political organization, everyone knows it openly lobbies against abortion rights. And with the Dobbs decision, the Church finally succeeded in forcing its ridiculous theology onto the entire country. Including the tens and tens of millions of non-Catholics who recognize no Church authority over themselves.
And for that, the Church can go fuck itself. It’s one thing for the Church to make demands of its own members. But it’s quite another to push theocracy onto the entire country.
Who Gets To Be Anti-Catholic?
I didn’t care for the anti-Catholicism I heard from the right-wing Protestants who lived in my home county. Even after I left the Church, I didn’t appreciate it.
That hasn’t changed now. I still think the Protestants need to take about a million seats.
But I attended church for close to two decades. I went to dozens of Catholic fish fries, church picnics, and so on. I was baptized, made First Communion, and did all the milestones. So, look, I’ve earned the right to criticize the Catholic Church.
But I mostly didn’t exercise that right until the Dobbs decision. When that decision came down, the Church crossed a line it shouldn’t have crossed.
