Coming from a Puerto Rican family in NYC, my mother made certain I was baptized a Catholic. I went to Catholic elementary school, sang in the choir for 5 years and was an altar boy for one. In fact, while my classmates wanted to be fire or policemen, I wanted to become a Maryknoll missionary, go to Africa and “save the heathen”. At night I would pray for my sweet “abuelita” (little grandmother) who I was sure would spend eternity in hell because despite her having the kindest, caring and gentle soul, she did not go to church every Sunday so would surely burn in perdition.
Sometime around the 6th grade three things happened:
- I started asking questions that were tossed aside with stock responses like “because the bible tells us so” and “you must have faith”. These were highly disturbing, as I was simply trying to understand the faith that I was so committed to.
- My father who was not a believer, was concerned about all my talk of becoming a priest. He decided to have me transferred to a military academy. As my parents were divorced, my mother agreed, thinking the “male influence” would be good for me.
- I started reading the bible directly without the catechism or priests to “help me interpret it correctly”. Exposure to all the horrible things it contained was the final straw for Christianity.
So I spent the next few years exploring other religions. I learned about Judaism and realized that for the most part it still had a lot of the crazy of the Christian Old Testament, without the turn the other cheek parts. Then came Islam which was abhorrent right out of the gate. I had no desire to follow a desert warlord who had all the crazy of Christianity and then some. Briefs stops at the fringe Christian cults, Mennonites, Quakers, etc. but I was looking to the future, they hold on to the past. Mormons were a special kind of crazy. The idea that a known fraud had found plates of gold with “Egyptian” writing that nobody could… not even worth going further. I admit that my most tempting sojourn was with Buddhism, specifically the Zen variety. In fact to this day when posed with the question “if you HAD TO pick one” it is still my go to.
But none had any real answers that could stand up to reality as I knew it. So, I shed ALL faith and become an atheist.
At the time, I had no idea there were others, beyond the few that were regularly pilloried in public. But I had the love of reading on my side, so I started learning that it wasn’t an evil thing, except to theists. That many very intelligent people proudly wore the moniker. That throughout history there had been many who’d walked differing paths, arriving at the same or similar destination.
In the many years since, I have come to realize that not only was that early period detrimental to me, but was even more so for those who were not lucky enough to escape the grip of fear and superstition that is the Catholic Church. In fact I have come to regard ALL religion as nothing more than a series of myths and fables, for the main handed down from Bronze and Iron Age barely literates, as a way of understanding their universe. The harm caused in the name of Jehovah, Allah, Yahweh and all the other manifestations of ignorance have and continue to create or justify strife, pain and bloodshed. The historic record is rife with examples of cruelty done in the name of (fill in the blank) and what’s worse is the ongoing evil influence this continues to have on society around the globe.
The homophobia, misogyny and hatred of the “other” promoted by the existence of “the one true faith” (take your pick) is something the world would be far better without. In my dreams the new pope will be the last one. He will preside over the dismantling of one of the most oppressive institutions ever devised by man. The churches will become museums or other useful edifices. The priests and nuns encouraged to contribute something worthwhile to society. And the world would focus on truth, logic, reason and evidence as our guide posts and practice the scientific method as a way of the never ending process of understanding who we are, where we come from and what (if anything) it all means.
A boy can dream and this one still does…
