Hello My Name is Homeslice, and I’m a Recovering Catholic.

50% of me is 100% hispanic.  The other half is German with a dash of Irish thrown in. Hispanics in general embrace Catholicism con mucho gusto. There’s also a lot of fear and shame built in as well, but that just makes it more fun.  It also makes the guilt last a lifetime.

My dad was a Methodist, though for as long as I can remember, his logical approach to things made him a natural atheist.  I’m not sure he’d come right out and say he didn’t believe in God, but he never had much use for Him/Her/Hym.  Hymn.  My mother used to be a hardcore Catholic in the way that I assume most Catholics are hardcore:  She was afraid to miss Mass, afraid to be busted for not sending her kids to Catechism.  We were marched in our finery to church every Sunday, where varying degrees of men in long robes made a lot of hand motions, passed out cardboard cut into discs, and had us slurping from what could be the germiest glass of wine on the planet.  (side note:  did they still do this during H1N1 panic?)  I also remember believing that it really WAS the blood of Jesus and gagging a little bit.

I was a huge pain in the ass as a child and nothing much has changed since then, frankly.  My father would shoot me an understanding look beneath his eyelids as my mother dragged me, kicking and screaming, out the door for an hour of communing with God.  Nothing says “family bonding” like a heavy religious argument every Sunday morning.  Before you judge, though:

1.  By this time, I knew that my mother had been married once before.  Her first husband walked out on her.  During a time when the church should have been there for her, they instead told her to reconcile with her husband (she’d have to know where he was in order to do that, a fact she did not).  Because there was no annulment, to this day she doesn’t take communion.  I’m not a fan of that whole philosophy.

2.  One particularly hateful teacher – a man named Nolan – insisted during Catechism that we say we believed in heaven and hell.  I didn’t, even at age 14.  I just couldn’t understand how a loving God would banish you to the fiery pits of hell.  It didn’t compute.  When I refused to say I believed in hell (lying is a sin, you moron!), he spent the rest of my session forcing me to read, outloud, passages from the bible talking about the white worm that would consume me in hell.  I am not kidding.

3.  My grandmother was so afraid of going to hell (el diablo!) that she wouldn’t attend my mother and father’s wedding.  Since it was my mother’s second marriage, it was not recognized.  This is particularly sad because she absolutely adored my father.

4.  Limbo.  Do they still teach that?  How could a baby be sent to limbo?  Isn’t that something you do at parties?  Nope, it’s a kind of “hell light” for those unlucky enough to die before baptism.

Some of my friends were passionate about their religions.  I didn’t get that they enjoyed going to church or their youth groups.  It was foreign to me.  I associated church with extreme boredom, wishing I was reading instead, and anger (as I aged) at the hypocrisy.  Oh Mr. Jones, there in front of me!  How does God feel about you beating your wife?  And Mrs. Smith – are you in church because your daughter caught you boinking the manager at Prevo’s?  And Mr. Edwards, you and your child porn – yeah, we know what you’re into.  We found it under your dresser while playing hide and seek.

For years, I fought with my mother, made her cry, and embarrassed her in front of her very Catholic family.  To add insult to injury, she had a daughter who not only despised anything related to Catholics, but wore rosaries as accessories, made up fantastical stories about sins for confession, dressed entirely in black, and spent far too much time wandering morosely around the house listening to Depeche Mode.

As soon as I left for college, I was FREE FREE FREE of the bonds of religion.  Not really understanding Atheism, I became one anyway.  I use “become” in the loosest possible terms.  If someone asked what religion I was, I proudly shouted: ATHEIST!!!  In college, only the pimply guys and girls who don’t get laid say they believe in god (note I started dropping the capital G).  Why spend time studying religion when you can be smoking clove cigarettes and hanging in coffee shops, discussing Gide and Bukowski?

But after college, when I finally started to deal with an ugly eating disorder, I had to face my lack of faith.  I did a 12-step program that, despite all the weirdness, helped me greatly.  Because I had to turn over my illness to a higher power, I had to define one.  It certainly wasn’t the angry, fire-breathing God from my past.  It wasn’t a female goddess either.  I thought long and hard about where I felt connected to something greater and bigger than me (and I’m not talking about my ass).  My higher power ended up being nature.

To this day, when I want to connect spiritually or seek solace or guidance, I go outside.  In the days I had free time, I’d hike in the mountains, rock climb, swim in rivers.  I’d park beneath a tree and read or just close my eyes and listen to the wind.

Because that kind of communion tasted so differently than the ones placed literally on my tongue, I began something I affectionately called “Religion Shopping”.  I found an amazing Baptist church in Raleigh that was more liberal than Unitarians.  I attended a Friend’s Meeting – sitting in silence for an hour was amazing (and caused me to fall asleep).  I went to the Unitarians, the Jewish, and the best funeral I ever saw:  a gospel church’s farewell to a member’s son.

I still don’t go to church.  Divorce makes you wish you had a strong faith in something, when everything else feels shaky.  I’ve shopped locally and haven’t found the right fit yet.  Also, I’m lazy and on my one day a week to sleep in, I don’t like to be rushed or prodded into doing anything.  I do know that I’m a happily lapsed Catholic, even though I find the wearings of rosaries as necklaces tacky and totally 5-Minutes-of-Madonna ago.