I really gave the Catholic Church a go. Did all the sacraments, married by a Priest, Baptised the children, even enrolled my Son at a Catholic school. Pre cana, the Catholic pre-marriage process, was a powerful part of building a relationship with my spouse.
My ancestors have all been Catholic for as long as anyone has records, and I felt an obligation at a social level to give it a hard try. My father went to Jesuit school, and while I was not brainwashed, I was raised in a Catholic household, and felt no drama about that state of existence.
But I am out.
It started with the child abuse scandal (I am a victim - from a public school teacher), when the Priest I asked about it claimed that it was the homosexuals who were responsible. Even when I confronted him with statistics proving the negative correlation between Pedophilia and Homosexuality, he remained unmoved.
It continued when the local priest would not baptise my daughter in the hospital room of my mother who was in her final weeks of battling with colon cancer. "It is not a sanctified place" he claimed. Since when is a place of healing not sanctified? Jesus had two main professions - rabble-rouser and healer. And her hospital room was less than his pile of rubble?
But the hatred of homosexuals and the paranoid fear of sex has turned the church into a den of unkindness and there is no love there. The inbred patriarchy that refuses to accord respect to women from a church that asked me to worship a woman is anachronistic and deplorable.
I have finally reached the point where I not only do not claim allegiance to the church, but I no longer feel any desire to be associated. I am beyond guilt, beyond anger, and not I can't even care about its existence. It shares an ranking in my emotional registry with Blockbuster Video.
Adieu, herr Pope, and your eternal church.