Since we’re getting closer to Ash Wednesday and that means a lot to… Bub’s paternal family (they are Catholic), I thought that I would take the time to write out what they tried to do to me since we are coming up on it nearly being a decade since I formally rejected Catholicism as well as Christianity and theism. I have absolutely no regrets about any of this, but I wanted to “pass the word along” as to what my own personal experiences with the Catholic church were for the thankfully limited length of time that I was… involved with it. And I know that some people continue to hold out hope that I will “repent” for this, that I will “have regrets” for “turning my back on the church”, although we are coming up on a decade now since I actually did that and my resolve not to have anything to do with Christianity or theism on any fundamental level has only been strengthened by the research that I have done into them and solidified the fact that me and mine will not become members of any of these churches, let alone have anything tangible to do with any of them.

When Bub’s paternal grandmother and grandfather found out that I was pregnant with him (because he was conceived “out of wedlock”, which mattered to them… and did not matter one bit to me), they were upset because of their religious views. After he had been born, his paternal grandmother rushed me through filling out forms that I would later find out were enrollment forms for RCIA, or the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults. She rushed me through these so fast that I did not even have time to read them, so I had absolutely no idea what these forms were for. And she intentionally downplayed the seriousness of these classes. I would later come to find out that this was entirely intentional on her part, as I was rushed through these so fast that I wasn’t even able to figure out the name of these classes, another purposeful thing that she did… I mean, I couldn’t Google them to see what she was trying to shotgun me through if I didn’t have the name of the classes, and she was preying on what was then my lack of knowledge about the Catholic religion to try and strong-arm me through them. At the same exact time, she was giddily and gleefully telling all of her friends at church that I was interested in converting to the Catholic faith, and I had absolutely no idea that they even wanted me to convert. The cherry on top was the fact that she insisted that I put her phone number down instead of my own when I was filling out these forms, all “so my parents wouldn’t find out”. So she knew exactly what she was doing. It was clear that she had planned this out from the start…

It was not until I had attended what would be my first, last, and only RCIA class that I found out what the purpose of these classes actually were, and that she had told everyone at their church that I was interested in converting so that I could marry her son and “fix our sin”. Naturally, I fixed this problem the only proper way — at the end of the class, I disclosed the fact that I was actually an atheist, and that I had been one for decades. Although I did so in a civil and polite manner, this resulted in me immediately being dropped from the class roster. So much for the whole, “The church is offering here an invitation to initial conversion. There is no obligation involved during this period,” right? And when I disclosed this, I was also permanently disinvited from all future church functions, which didn’t bother me one bit as I didn’t want to attend them anyway… I had been connived into attending weekly Mass with Bub’s father, completely against my will (as I did not want to go, refused to participate, and when drug up to the priest for a blessing made it a point to get away from him as soon as I possibly could) for the better part of my third trimester. I had also been connived into attending various other, random church functions with him that I did not at all want to attend.

Needless to say, the idea of marrying him, let alone in the church, was dropped after I outed myself.

Bub’s father and grandmother were also told at some point after this by their priest that he did not feel comfortable baptizing our child even if Bub’s father was the only one that presented him “because of my views”, and that “as long as I held them, he did not feel comfortable baptizing (our child) because there was no chance that he would be raised in the faith”. It was at around this time that Bub’s paternal grandmother forbade her adult son from conversing with me for any reason (to include about our child), something which I find hilarious to this day, and he stopped being involved in Bub’s life. The last time that he saw Bub was when Bub was a few months old, and Bub is now nine and a half years old. None of us are bothered by this.

I do not have any regrets about outing myself as an atheist (or as I see it, being honest about my lack of religious beliefs), making the conscious decision to reject Catholicism and Christianity, and continuing to do so to this day. I would not change a single one of my behaviors if given “the chance to do it all over again”.

If I had been shotgunned into converting and marrying Bub’s father, I would have divorced him as soon as I could, and I would not have had any more children with him. This was irrevocable, and it would not change.