Hating God Was So Much Worse Than Being Catholic

On social media, people are still responding to our invitation to explain why the heck they remain in this challenging, counter-cultural, sometimes counter-intuitive-seeming church.

Here at Patheos, a couple more bloggers have answered the question, as well, and today we hear from two surprising sources who speak of having hated the whole notion of belief. Margaret Rose Realy gives a searingly personal account:

At ten I stormed through a darkened church, past the communion rail and, standing in the sanctuary, yelled at the crucifix “I hate you!” Four years later lost and hopeless, I became an emancipated child.

My only remaining connection with the Catholic Church was my maternal grandmother. Because of my love for her, I did whatever she asked. As a teenager, that included accompanying her to Mass. I would often stop at the narthex’s massive doors and glare at the crucifix as Grandmother dipped calloused fingers into the holy water font.

“I’m not here for you,” was the snark I offered the Trinity. “I’m here for her.”

Read the whole thing. Then take a look at Melinda Selmys in the opener to her new blog:

I was an atheist because I craved absolute autonomy, complete independence and ultimate authority over my own life. Yet none of these desires were rational or justifiable given the manifest limitations of the human condition. Fundamentally, my existentialism itself was inauthentic. So being a good existentialist, I had no option but to honestly investigate the God hypothesis in good faith.

In that sense, Melinda sounds a bit like Leah Libresco, who more or less arrived here via a commitment to an ethical search for truth. It’s interesting how people find their way into the church not just through the emotion, but the intellect, as well.

The Holy Spirit has a knack for meeting us where we are, accessing us via the available opening. We should take a lesson in that — it’s an example of great evagelization, I think.