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Catholicism, I'm afraid, is a bit like a hereditary genetic disorder which is somehow also contagious. By that I mean that there are so many people who are Catholic because they were born Catholic, and their point of view on the religion tends to be radically different from the point of view of a recent convert whose family history and upbringing don't predispose them to Catholicism.
This is probably true of other religions too; Judaism comes to mind most strongly, but that's just because I do have a small amount of experience with Judaism. But I don't have enough to speak on the subject more than to suggest that there seem to be similarities. Catholicism, on the other hand, I have gotten a ringside seat for while being not one, so I can perhaps provide perspective that someone on the inside, even a lapsed Catholic, could not. I suffered through Catholic school because in my area the public schools are worse than awful and the Catholics provide most of the other options.
Catholicism, and here I'm going to be nasty about it, is unpleasant. It's abusive, and I don't mean the ways in which Catholic priests and others are literally abusive. Catholicism privileges the convert because they typically take everything very seriously, whereas the folks who were born into it, they've typically figured out the score, so they suffer from it more. It's not a choice, for them. But at the same time, it makes up such a large part of their upbringing and family history that they can't really escape it.
What's worse is that, unlike those on the outside, born Catholics have been hurt so much that they think anything that isn't suffering is great. This applies to both their personal relationship with the Church but also to doctrine in general. Any time the Pope announces that maybe homosexuals shouldn't be executed on the spot but rather taken to a farm where they can be fattened up and then humanely slaughtered and processed into gruel for child laborers, every Catholic I know is like, "Liberal papacy ftw!!!"
And this applies to Catholics who aren't exactly observant anymore. They got older, they fell away a little. Maybe they stopped going to mass every Sunday. Maybe they got away from their family and realized that there's more to life than the Eucharist, so they stopped going to Confession quite as regularly. Whatever. They still think of themselves as Catholic, they raise the kids Catholic, and they do a half-assed job of obeying Mother Church.
Sometimes they're the worst, because most of the bad stuff doesn't really affect them anymore, so they see their childhood and family through rose colored lenses. They think Catholicism is fantastic. There's nothing wrong with it. And they make their kids into smaller versions of themselves. They perpetuate the family trauma another generation. And they're often the ones who are the most conservative about other people, because why wouldn't they be? Catholicism is fantastic.
This is not an anti-religious screed. If you want one of those, post a picture of Jesus and wait. One of the millions of fedi atheists will be along shortly. This is just commentary on Catholicism, which even I, who really doesn't like it, find strangely fascinating. My spouse is culturally Catholic and they sometimes make me a little frustrated with how they can be totally opposed to everything the Church stands for but still so connected to it. I don't understand how so many Catholics in the US can say, in the same breath, that the Pope is the spiritual arbiter of all things and that birth control is fine. I just want to scream, "You know there are other religions, right? You know that you can belong to a church which actually teaches things you actually believe in, as opposed to remaining a member of a church with which you seem to fundamentally disagree on many, many major issues?"
But I don't. I come here and toot through it. You're welcome.
As an addendum and excuse to share anecdotes, when I was in Catholic school I wasn't the only non-Catholic there. We had some mainline Christians of various Protestant denominations, because as I said the public schools are terrible in my area. I believe at one point we even had a non-Christian of some sort several years below me, but I wouldn't be prepared to swear to it.
What always made me confused was that many of the non-Catholic Christians would behave Catholic when called upon to do so. They'd take Communion. A lot of them. And they belonged to denominations which do not believe in transubstantiation. They'd say the prayers to the saints that their religion didn't believe in either. But whatever, Christians gonna Christian.
What I also found weird, and I mentioned it at length above, was my friends who were super rebellious, anti-establishment, the whole bit, until they got into church at which point they became model Catholics, knelt at all the right times, took Communion, the whole bit. It always seemed two-faced to me, but that's honestly how most Catholics do it. It's just rote for them at this point. They're on autopilot. It's a little disturbing.
Now, I was raised by two people who were nominally Quakers. Our attendance at Meeting dropped off after awhile because the nearest Meeting House was an hour away (it's fun being a member of a fringe religion) but as far as I know my parents still consider themselves Quakers, and that's really all that's necessary as far as the sect of The Religious Society of Friends to which they loosely belong requires for membership. There's no magic words to say or bread to eat.
The Quakers are split into two sections: the evangelical Quakers and the weirdos. I have just made a lot of Quakers mad by simplifying it to that division because if you get two Quakers in a room together there will be members of three different versions of the religion present, but the broad truth is that I grew up as a weird Quaker. My parents thought it would be a good idea for me to learn things about Christianity in the same way that it would be to learn things about Greek and Norse mythology. They're in common cultural parlance.
So I knew a fair amount about Christianity while being about as non-Christian as you can be while still technically belonging to a Christian denomination. Maybe if I had been raised Unitarian instead it might have been even more, but whatever, I like the Unitarians and based on what I know about their denomination I can't say it's that different from weirdo Quakerism. The point being that, by the time I got to high school, I was not really a Christian at all but knew a fair amount about the religion, including Catholicism.
I used to put this combination to great effect by flummoxing religion teachers. I'd make a real pain in the ass of myself. If I hadn't been forced to take classes in a religion I kind of feel is evil, I wouldn't be proud of this, but as I don't care for Catholicism and most of my religion teachers were engaged in indoctrination, I feel very little guilt. The worst were the seminarians, which if you're unfamiliar is Catholic for "priest-in-training." They'd show up full of the fire of the Lord, ready to teach a class full of obedient Catholic angels, and they'd get me instead.
I won't bore you with boasts about how my high school hijinks drove my religion teachers to distraction. At a certain point, my parents told me that as long as I passed religion class, they didn't care how I did it. I managed to do that.
But my hatred of Catholicism (which at that time was largely down to it being forced on me) was well-known by all. I might have been the first non-Christian who wasn't one of the other major religions that any of these kids had ever met. I remember one of them, with whom I was perfectly cordial if not friendly, asking me why I worshipped Satan.
This is what you're dealing with when you deal with Christians in this country. They've been taught that everyone who isn't a Christian must worship Satan. Sure, maybe things were liberal enough that Jews and Muslims don't count in that calculus as much, but they probably secretly believe it about Jews and Muslims too. A person who isn't a member of a religion they've ever heard of before? Yeah, they're a Satanist.
And the thing is, he wasn't being nasty. He genuinely thought I worshipped Satan and was cool with that, he just wanted to know why. He probably would have asked an actual Satan worshiper the same question.
I attempted to explain to him that no, I didn't worship Satan, and I think I just confused him, but maybe it made it into his head enough that he got the gist of it. I'd love to believe so. The other problem about all this was that I was so anti-Catholicism at that time that I probably would have pretended to be a Satan worshiper if it riled up my religion teacher.
Catholic school when you're not Catholic or at least Catholic-lite is a trip. And I managed to make it through without being molested or anything. I still hated that school though. So when I learned last year that it was closing (because the diocese apparently owes so much in settlements over sexual abuse that it can't afford to fund the school anymore, to which I say yikes) I was thrilled. I won't lie. Didn't feel anything but happy. No nostalgia there at all.
But several of my friends from high school, with whom I still have slight contact, were lamenting the closure as if it were a death in the family. And I just wanted to say, "You fucking dipshits, when we were in that hellhole you would have lined up to get to light the fuse that would blow it to kingdom come." Again, two-faced. I really don't get it.
@RamenCatholic
#TeamWeirdQuaker all the way!All those evangelical fundie Quakers make me cringe to be even vaguely associated with them.
@intransitivelie
My own inclinations are #TeamWeirdQuaker, on the basis that most adherents have at least studied at that universal university, STFU. :) Your classmates may have a misplaced nostalgia anchored in the school, but centered on the people met there.
@canusfeminacanis
I think that's part of it, but the way they talk they seem to feel that it's a shame no future kids will be able to be indoctrinated and traumatized by the institution. To be fair, I don't really get nostalgia either.
@intransitivelie
If one's past was uncomfortable, nostalgia is less likely to feature. So, no surprises there.
Think they might have wanted to share the misery of the place with their offspring? Shared experience & all that.
@canusfeminacanis
I would have said their past was just as uncomfortable as mine if not moreso, but time sands the sharp edges off of memories for a lot of people, I guess. I've experienced it about things I watched or read as a child which, when seen in the cold light of adulthood, are kind of awful. But for various reasons my past is not one of the things that time has really softened.
You may be right about shared experience. That's still kind of repugnant though, to me. "I had to go through it so therefore you should too," is a terrible way to live. But I try to empathize with them because Catholic upbringing is trauma and it affects people like any other trauma.
@intransitivelie
"I had to go through it so therefore you should too," is a terrible way to live.
Agreed.
It's never about blaming the victim, but understanding that their cognitive 'tics' have deep roots. Some of those roots are twisted indeed.