It’s especially charming to be told that “people will pray for me” during Lent season, and that they “hope that I will become Catholic” during this particular… season, of all of the seasons to do it in, so I decided to make a list of some of the Catholic dogma (definition, if you want to get in the pit: “a principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true”) that I do not agree with, which you have to either agree with or agree that you will live your life by to become Catholic. Needless to say, by the end of this post it should become extremely clear that it was correct of the RCIA instructors to drop me from the class roster (although I did not make all of this clear to them at the time I admitted to them that I was an atheist, just that I had been “out” as one for at least a decade at this point). I wasn’t ever going to change my mind on any of these.

Abortion: I believe that the pregnant person, using trans-friendly language, and her or their care provider should be the only individuals involved in making this decision… not the state, and certainly not your religion. Whatever reason they have is good enough for me, and I will wholeheartedly support them in that decision, just as I would expect them to support me in any decision that I made (which would be a 100% termination rate of all subsequent pregnancies, namely for health reasons, although “I just do not want to have another child” is also a small factor). I do not believe that anyone gets an abortion “because it tickles” or comes to the effortless conclusion that they should get an abortion, although some arrive to this conclusion easier than others, and again, I respect that. I will “go down to the mat” for them to get this abortion in the safest way possible. I absolutely disagree with “abortion protestors” trying to sway the decisions of those procuring abortions by standing outside of healthcare facilities praying, singing, screaming, or getting violent (tell me, is your rhetoric so sound that you honestly feel that violence is the answer? because really, if you have to resort to violence for this kind of thing, it’s not). If you feel otherwise and are not willing to pay for all of that pregnant person’s prenatal, labor, and postnatal care, and the benefits that they may need to raise that child, or you can not expediently raise those funds, you are a hypocrite, and you just need to stop talking.

Also, I don’t have to have my significant other’s permission to terminate a pregnancy. I’m not getting it, so…

Birth control/contraception: Your religion is not going to tell me how to plan my family, if or even when I am going to get pregnant, and it’s certainly not going to do that to anyone else… unless they want it to, or they are so “obedient” that they let it (which, if you get technical, isn’t that kind of sexual assault if they have sexual relations under circumstances that they are not quite willing to have? ponder that, why don’t you).

You can delude yourselves otherwise all you want, but that’s all you will ever do.

Fidelity, “one marriage, between one man and one woman for life”: I believe that marriage is a social contract that can be entered and exited at any time for any reason, that it is primarily religious in nature, and that some people value it more than others. I have also learned over the decades (okay, since age fourteen) with abysmally bad results that I can not function in a relationship where there is the stern expectation or even the “requirement” to be monogamous, let alone monogamous with that same individual for the rest of our lives. For me, consensual non-monogamy is ideal, and it works for me because all of my romantic needs are met in this way, whereas they are not met in long-term monogamous (or even monogamous) relationships. They are not even remotely met, so “settling” is not an option at all. It is extremely unfair.

LBGT rights: If you don’t like gay marriage, don’t get “gay married”.

If you don’t like various gender-affirming therapies, don’t get them yourselves. It’s really that simple. What other people do to their bodies to affirm their identities, and how they live their lives, is none of your business at the end of the day, and you really need to learn to realize this and find some way to live with it. Seriously.

I have many LBGT friends whose integrity and mental sanity I’d gladly choose over “conforming to religion”.

Although I know that I’ve actually been writing more about religion in here than I have video games over the course of… well, this Lenten period (even though I actually had to Google “when is Ash Wednesday?” and “when does Lent start?”, as well as some other things like “what is a Hail Mary?” and “what is Our Father?”, because all of those Masses that my ex and his mother coerced me into attending, as well as those functions and get-togethers that they made me come to, were intentionally completely lost on me because I ignored as much from them as I possibly could, did not listen to or learn a thing from them, and just wanted to be done with it all and leave because I did not want to be there and still wish that my ex had respected me enough to say something to someone about that… but I honestly think that he thought that “with enough exposure, I’d change my mind,” which led me to believe that he had an idealized version of “me” in his head, I was never actually going to be that person), I do intend on stopping come Easter and only picking it up come each Lent.

Never once in my life have I had a questioning moment that has led me to speculate the existence of a higher, or supernatural, power. I have been happy with that, and I don’t think that will ever change anytime soon given that it has been a decade now since I have “rejected” RCIA in the literal self-admission of being a decades-long atheist to the class instructors (and my ex’s mother), which led to me being dropped from the class roster and being disinvited to the church functions that I had been coerced into attending. It was my ex’s mother’s plan to get me to convert to Catholicism so that I “had” to consent to have her son baptized so that she could use that to exert even more control (or what little control she comparatively had), make me marry her son in the Catholic church to “fix the sin of us having had a child out of wedlock”, and then use that to exert control over me because of how the Catholic church feels about contraceptives, even though I made it plainly clear to both of them that I was done having children… I guess they didn’t realize how done I really was, and that as long as it had to do with my body, I could and would be the one making that decision.

As far as “rejecting” RCIA though (even though I literally actually did it), I do not regret doing so in the manner that I did. It would have come out at the end of the inquiry period had it not come out then, and then I would have been dropped from the class roster by the RCIA instructors or the priest himself after being interviewed by one (or two) of them, but it would have been worse because I would have sat through more classes that I didn’t pay attention to and the fact that my ex’s mother had lied to as many people as she did telling them that I wanted to convert to Catholicism would have become even more of a glaring lie. Either way, at some point early on in the process the truth would have come out and I would have been dropped, because if my mind hasn’t changed on the matter aside from me continuing not to believe in the existence of anything supernatural and being completely opposed to all theistic doctrine in an entire decade it would not have changed in a few weeks’ time. And they would not have married me in the church (which is that important to his family) because I would have stood in opposition to any and all infant baptisms (which, if you get down to brass tacks, would only have been one because I was not having any more children), and I was opposed to all of his church’s doctrine, especially that which involved me in any way, shape, or form…

If they had been content to keep their religion to themselves and not force it, things may have been different.

But I don’t really think that they would have been because they, and Catholicism, are not that kind of people.

Before I was coerced into those religious conversion classes that Bub’s paternal grandmother rushed me through filling out forms to sign up for (you know, the ones that she intentionally did not even give me the chance to read), Bub’s paternal grandmother told all of her friends at church that I was actually interested in converting to Catholicism. This was news to me, given that this had never actually come up in conversation with me and I had never actually been told that I was interested in it. You know, because I wasn’t. Not at all.

Apparently she had also spoken with the instructors of the class and let them know that I was also interested in converting to Catholicism, so it was… surprising, to say the least, when I showed up to the first, last, and only class that I actually participated in, did not even know the name of the class, had no idea why I was actually there, didn’t even know that the instructors of the class were not priests themselves (as, having been coerced into attending Masses with my son’s father for weeks up until that point and various church functions and get-togethers, and clearly not wanting to [although it might not have been clear enough to everyone, including him, because they had their heads in the sand and could not see that it was actually clear as day that I did not actually want to be there or want anything to do with any of this], I was ignoring as much as I could about everything that had to do with the Catholic church, to include who all of these people actually were), and at the end of the class, that I had actually been an atheist without interruption since I was three years old. So, by that point, we were going on decades of non-belief in anything supernatural. They were stunned. What I told them did not match up with the impression that Bub’s paternal grandmother had given them of me. And I suppose it was then that she was outed as having lied about at least one thing (“my interest in conversion”, “signing up for the classes of my own interest”).

And then she had to find out that yes, I was actually an atheist and that I had been one my entire life. She would not be getting what she wanted. She would not be able to convert me by force into her religion, and she would not be getting the Catholic wedding that she so desperately wanted to “wash away the sin” that was her grandson being born out of wedlock. Not only would I have been dropped from the class roster at the point in which inquirers would have had to interview with the class instructors or priest had I not been dropped from the roster at the end of the very first class (I was actually dropped from the class roster at the end of the first class, and I was disinvited from all subsequent church functions and get-togethers after this, even though I was civil in… letting everyone know that I was actually a long-term atheist), but his church would not have married us because of my long-term lack of belief, refusal to participate in anything that the church would have required my participation in, refusal to consent to our child’s baptism or participation in anything relating to the church (I believe that children should have a right to choose if or when they participate in anything religious and would have virulently fought his father on this), and the fact that I am diametrically opposed to everything that the Catholic church believes and teaches. This has only grown over the decade, although it can also be said that my opposition to theistic religion has also exponentially grown as I have continued to study them. Evangelists have tried to wear me down over the years with absolutely zero success, even “well-trained” ones who “have a high rate of success getting individuals to want to convert, and planting seeds”. I have actually caused them, well, ire, because my objections are enduring.