Former Roman Catholic raised in a catholic family while also having gone to private Catholic schools until I was 18.

I wasn’t extremely religious after 18, and mostly began to align myself with Christianity rather than Catholicism. I was indoctrinated to never question, never doubt, and always believe because God is watching you. My catholic education and the stories of “doubting Thomas”, Job, the Egyptian plagues, Sodom and Gomorrah, and all that stuff were lessons that were deeply engrained.

One day my sibling committed suicide when I was young. He was in the hospital, and I prayed so hard for god to heal him. God didn’t, and in the viewings and funeral, Catholics would say to me “I’m sorry for your loss, we’ll be praying for you, God needed him in heaven, and God works in mysterious ways that you are too human to understand.” Whatever, I accepted it due to being deeply indoctrinated.

It took me a little over 30 years before I finally accepted that God wasn’t real. In my 20s I certainly entertained the thought, but I suppressed until as I grew older I started to become less and less religious. I constantly had the doubt in my head, the nagging feeling of why did God let suffering happen if it’s only to bring us to heaven, why did God hate homosexuals, why would God commit genocide against the people he created and loved, why would he kill indiscriminately, why did he let evil happen(like children being born with leukemia) if he was omnipotent and omniscient. Why was his divine plan so callous? Why did he let my sibling die? I prayed so very hard that god would pull the bullet from my sibling's brain and somehow heal my sibling, but it never happened - God didn't answer my prayers. My indoctrination and subconscious reacted with the normal response: suppress, don’t question, and obey. Once I finally began to separate morality and ethics from religion, accepted that I could question my religion (despite Doubting Thomas), and began unpacking the cruelties of religion did I get to a better state. I also began looking through history to eventually determine that all religion was intended to do was co-opt societies of different values, and institute control on primitive humans incapable of true critical thinking. I learned about Christmas being Saturnalia, and then it started to click that all these religious holidays I celebrated were aligned with solstices and co-opted from pagan celebrations. I learned that the traditional image of St. Nick or Santa Claus was actually marketing from Coca-Cola almost 100 years ago. I felt like such a fool.

I of course researched Dawkins, Darwin, other religions, regaled in George Carlin’s monologues about religion, and started embracing my already logical and scientific side. I couldn’t justify, even when I was in my catholic educational years, why there was a bad God of obedience in the Old Testament, and a new cool hip God of love and forgiveness in the New Testament. Why did Catholics select only certain things from the Old Testament while ignoring the rest? What caused God to stop being such an indiscriminate killer? Was it because he sent Jesus, his only begotten son, to suffer and die so that we could finally be saved and get to heaven? At that point, I concluded that religion doesn’t have answers but rather addresses the existential dread everyone faces: it gives hope, and a promise that the reason for our existence is so we can do good and get to heaven. Religion was debunked and no longer important in my life.

I gave up Catholicism and am in a much better mental state now. I felt icky for decades that the Catholic Church protects their pedophile clergy (of course not all clergy are pedophiles or evil, there’s a lot of people that do really good things and I’ll always have respect for them). I no longer have fear in my heart that God is watching me. I now have love, and deep-seated morality and ethics that guides me rather than a spooky creator. It’s been liberating and I feel at peace finally.

The one thing I can’t do, however, is tell the truth to my parents. They are from a very, very religious place where religion comes first. Telling them would destroy them. Better to keep the peace rather than cause severe emotional distress in their old age which could likely impact their health. They’re thankfully not religious nut jobs, and are the exemplary kind of good religious people that help and serve others, rather than the scary conservative kind that uses their religion to oppress others. I’m glad they taught me well how to be a good person so I can make good choices - without the need for an invisible parent watching me, judging me, and threatening me with eternal damnation.