I have a friend who happens to be the most Catholic person that I know. Lately though, she's been posting a lot in her LiveJournal that she's questioning her faith. Well, not her faith in a god, but her faith in the Catholic church. It's been bringing me back to when I went through this a few years ago. I can empathize with her, and everything she's saying makes complete sense. A lot of what the Catholic church teaches you is backwards. Bunk. I was maybe twelve when I realized that science made sense to me. The Bible's story of creation? It was too mythical. There's skeletal proof of early humanoids. Proof! Tangable, physical, proof. I can believe that. From then on, I started to look at the Bible more like a book of mythology rather than anything factual. Yeah, it had great "and the moral of the story is" type of tales, but there were way too many fallacies for me to take it for fact.

So this was in my early teen years. Fast forward to my late teens, when I really started to question my beliefs. This was when I started to explore other religions. I did not agree with a lot of the teachings of the Catholic church. I do not agree that sex before marriage is bad, or that you shouldnt take birth control and have sex to enjoy it. Dont even get me started on homosexuality, PEOPLE ARE BORN THAT WAY THERES NOTHING WRONG WITH IT. I also started realizing that the whole "The Lord is my shepherd" thing is true. I would sit in church during mass and watch the priest lead a prayer and the congregation would chant along with him. I was seeing sheep. This freaked me right the hell out. To me, it was like a cult and I did not feel a part of it.

Im going to tell a secret. My mother started hauling me to weekly mass when I was five or six. I stopped going to church when I was about twenty one or twenty two. During that time, not once did I pray. Not once. I would go to mass and sit and listen and not open my mouth unless it was to talk to somebody. I tried to be Catholic, because it was what I was supposed to be. I come from two Catholic parents, and my mother's family are really Catholic, (dont confuse that with closed-minded, we're kind of radical that way) but I wasnt comfortable calling myself that. I decided to educate myself on other religions when I was eighteen or nineteen. I steered myself more toward Paganism, especially Wicca. The problem with even that was, they have gods to worship. It took me years, but I finally realized that my problem was that I dont have it in me to actually worship a god. I wouldnt call myself an Athiest, I cant say for certain there is no god, but I cant say there is either.

When I was twenty I took a university class called The Existance of God. I forget who taught it, but that's where I learned the difference between an Athiest, and an Agnostic. Finally! That was it. I had a word to describe me and how I feel. This was all great and everything, but I live in a place where it is expected of you to be a Christian, or at least Jewish. You cant not believe, here, and I didnt. This was sort of a crisis, and how do I handle a crisis? I run and hide. I kept going to church until I was about twenty two and I had a blowout fight with my mother about going to church. I never told her that I stopped believing, just that I didnt feel comfortable going to church anymore. Since that fight, I've only been to church for funerals.

So, is that it? No. In the future, I dont want to be married in a church. If I have children, I dont plan on having them baptized (I dont want to force them into a religion). And, when I die, I dont want to have a Catholic funeral. I can not see me ever going back into a religion. I am a happier person without. But I am always open to learning, and the history of Christianity is fascinating. I would love to go back to school just to learn theology. I am fascinated by how easily people are led to believe. All it takes is a charasmatic leader, good or bad.

Dont get me wrong, I have the utmost respect for other people's religions. That is, until they try and force them down my throat, or use them to justify discriminating against people. No human has the right to discriminate against another human, that's just wrong.

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