Catholicism can shove it!

[I apologize in advance for the length of this blog post. But as I have said, I do sometime have a tendency to write insanely long stories and blogs. I hope you enjoy!]

It's Lent season. A season that is extremely important to many Catholics around the world. All followers of the guy with the big hat are all expected to give up at least one thing for Lent, be it sex, soda, or even sanity.

I for one, can't give two shits about it.

You know why? Because Catholicism is boring, discriminating, and incredibly harsh.

Now, I'm not trying to upset people who think that religion is really fascinating and whatnot, but Catholicism does absolutely nothing for me. And as I got older, starting from a young, precocious 6-year-old who was way too rowdy and loud, the more I realized that Catholicism was increasingly mind-numbingly stupid.

So for this post, I'm going to tell you guys about my experience with the Catholic church.

Even from a young age, I knew I wouldn't be the best Catholic I could be: I was a spoiled brat (as the baby and only girl with two older brothers) and being sinful was just plain more fun. Stealing from the cookie jar before dinner was my type of fun! But then the infamous Catholic guilt complex would kick in and I'd feel like a total failure in God's eyes. And this happened when I was 7. Then I somehow got sick of feeling guilty and the breakaway from Catholics had begun.

One of the things I truly disliked about being a Catholic was going to CCD every Tuesday night, mostly against my will. At first, it wasn't so bad; I liked going and learning new things and listening to the pretty organ music. However, that would only last for a short while. Then it came to the point where I dreaded going there. I would beg and beg my mother to not make me go and she would stand in front of me, with her hands on her hips, glaring daggers at me while I wailed on the floor in protest. Eventually, she'd pick me up and almost throw me into my booster seat and holler at me to stop carrying on. All the teachers (who were all volunteers from the church) knew I was quite the handful.

On some days they would take us kids to the church for a mass. We were all expected to sit at the pew and kneel down during certain times for prayers and hymns. I for one hated that shit. I would constantly complain about how the seats were uncomfortable, that kneeling hurt my knees and that I was just so tired of doing this stuff. I always got a scolding from the teacher for that. It has never failed me.

Then came my first sign that me as a Catholic wasn't meant to be. It was during my first Holy Communion at the age of eight. I was excited to wear the pretty white dress and veil for it. But that was the only thing I was excited about. The whole mass thing was nothing but a bore to me.

But my first anti-Catholic defining moment was when I first took communion. If you're a Catholic, you know the thin piece of bread tastes literally like cardboard (not that I know what cardboard tastes like...). So I'm up at the altar, looking at the priest who's holding the bowl of the cardboard bread disguised as the "body of christ", I take it in my hand and I put it in my mouth, all eager to see how it tasted.

It. Tasted. Horrible.

It tasted SO horrible that I started to gag on it and I had this intense urge to spit it out. So when I'm gagging (and making a LOT of noise so the whole church paid attention to me), some church parents come over to me to see if I'm choking. But when they see that I'm just gagging at the taste, they give me this look of disdain and this one woman holds my mouth closed so I'm forced to chew and swallow the crap. I eventually do and when I ask the woman to let me go get a drink of water, she forcefully nudges me back to my pew. Then I go sit down, but I'm slouched over, really pissed off that I couldn't even go get a damn swig of water from the water fountain.

The next two moments come a few years later, when I'm about 10. As I got older, the way CCD was taught was completely different from when I was a kid. It became more in-depth and more mature. The first moment, I remember one time when we went on a field trip somewhere (I think it was to a retreat) and we had to write a two page paper on our experience there. All I remember was being so bored that I slept through most of the activities and getting yelled at for doing so. So when we had to write the paper, I was at a loss, ya see?

So what did I do? I wrote "The retreat was really, really, really, really, really,...[two pages later]...really, really boring." Needless to say, when I handed it in, I got sent straight to the headmaster's office and they had an emergency conference with my mother. Then the bitch that was the head of CCD told me that I would have to go to church every Sunday for six months or I will be kicked out of CCD. I wanted to get kicked out; my mother forced me to go to church every fucking Sunday.

My second moment of badassery had to do with me stealing something. So I was sitting in the classroom, listening to the lecture, when I see inside the desk that I'm sitting in, is a wad of gel pens. Seeing back then that gel pens were all the rage at that time (circa 2000), I really wanted some. However, my mother told me that I'd die of lead poisoning if I got gel pens. And I also noticed that I was sitting at the same desk as this little bitch who lived down the street from me and made fun of me. So the little horrible Catholic ended up taking the pens for myself. And I didn't feel any guilt for it whatsoever. The next class, the 'principal' came in and asked all of us if any one of us stole the girls' gel pens and that she was incredibly upset about them going missing. I could have spoken up and been honest with them, but I kept my mouth shut. And looking back on it, she got her just desserts, since she ended up stealing my Tamagotchi a few years before then. BITCH, HOW DO YOU THINK I FELT WHEN YOU STOLE MY PRECIOUS BOOPY?!

Another year continues and I get confirmed with the church in sixth grade, everyone's happy, yaddy yadda. Then for another year, I'm part of the teen group at my church and we're at a meeting where we talk about marriage, relationships and sex. Also, I must add, this was the origin of my feminism and seeing the hypocricy and degradation of women in the church.

I'll go down a list of all the shit they told us girls:

~ We're 'allowed' to pursue careers, but when we do get married, our only goal in life is to be a housewife to tend to and obey our husband and to raise his children. The only 'acceptable' way where you can work after getting married is if he's on disability or you're widowed. No mention of divorce or money issues whatsoever.
~ They acknowledged that some women don't want to get married, but they said that these women would have to remain virgins for the rest of their lives if they want to get accepted into heaven, since they would fall short of fulfilling the Seven Sacraments by not marrying.
~ They said that women should remain 'pure' until their wedding night and that when you have sex within marriage, it's only for purposes of procreation; not pleasure.
~ Birth control will give you a one-way ticket to hell if you use it, even for non-sexual uses. So women and girls with terrible cramps and highly irregular periods would have to suffer!
~ Women are not allowed to ask guys out on dates; it's a man's job to do that. If a woman does it, she'll be labeled a slut by society if she asks the guy out for coffee.
~ Pre-marital sex will make you contract HIV and get pregnant, even when using a condom.
~ If you get pregnant out-of-wedlock, you're expected to marry the father of the baby if you want to get into heaven.
~ Women that get pregnant out-of-wedlock will fall into poverty, never get a good job, and go clinically insane and you will die. (this was my favorite one)

On the last piece of shit they spewed, a girl's hand raised up high to ask a question to the lecturer (the lecturer was creepy Catholic and seemed possessed). She tells her, "My older sister got pregnant and kept my nephew and she's graduating from UPenn this semester. She didn't self-destruct when she got pregnant. She seems just fine being a single mom."

The woman's response (I. SHIT. YOU. NOT. It just came back into my mind recently, after being dormant for almost 7 years. It makes me feel so upset every single time I think about it.): "That's great to hear she's graduating. However, she's never going to go to heaven and neither is her son, since he's a bastard child. And since she has a kid, she'll be labeled a whore by everyone and nobody is going to hire her for a job or want to marry her. There also must have been something wrong with her for her baby's father to not want to spend the rest of his life with her."

The girl responds: "Yeah. I highly doubt she would want to spend the rest of her life with her rapist."

The woman: "Then she obviously deserved what she got. Should have kept her legs closed, like a good Catholic girl would."

I swear, at that moment, I was completely turned off by Catholicism. And I never want to go back to it. (Thankfully, the crazy lady got quite the earful from a very angry mother of the girl and was fired from the church. However, one year later, she comes into my middle school health class and spews all this stupid religious shit about saving ourselves for marriage. She said something offensive to another student and she got an earful from another angry mother and was not allowed back into the school district.)

So you see, people, Catholicism has not been nice to me, nor to anyone else who doesn't share the same beliefs as them. It's sad that there are people who feel like they have to obey everything they say, even if your own personal opinions clash with their beliefs.

Why can't people be allowed to practice their religion in a way that will match their own values? If we could do that, then there wouldn't be so much oppression of peoples' values and morals.

Okay, I'm done. Now...where did I put my birth control pills?