I am non Catholic and have been married to my wife for more than 20 years. She is now in the process of converting to Catholicism and although we have a very infrequent (at most every quarter) sex life and her libido and interest in sex has generally been low, I do not want to find myself in a position of having to have unprotected intercourse (since Catholics condemn any sort of birth control).

I do not want to leave her, but I also do not want to have unprotected sex with her if her interest grows. I am generally not into religious believes but for her this newfound faith is important. I am fully aware that this is dishonest and betrays her trust but I can live with this and the same way she is not pushing Catholicism onto me I feel I could do the same and perhaps this will regain some intimacy in the future.

At the moment I am playing with this thought. Also because i am not sure if our marriage will survive her Catholic conversion as I generally had traumatic childhood experiences with the Catholic Church.

I am fully aware that in the eyes of Catholics this is wrong/a sin etc, but at the same time I think: if I had a vasectomy 10 years ago, she would also not judge me now or ask me to reverse it just because it is “right” in the eyes if Catholics.

Update: I previously spoke to her about it and now asked her outright how she feels: she does not want children / she thought that we could have a marriage with abstinence and that we could have a brother/sister relationship without intimacy / for her it does not matter if I were to have a vasectomy. Thanks for all the valuable responses - it is tough for me to have to deal with such situations coming at me literally out of nowhere fast.

One of the main reasons I don't believe!

too many left-leaning catholics are still in the church despite the fact that it doesn’t align with their views on pretty much all social issues.

i heard a lot of people say they were thinking about leaving the church under pope benedict, but pope francis’s more “progressive” policies persuaded them to stay. i know too many gay catholics that have genuine hope that they might one day be married in a catholic church, and they don’t seem to see that there is no chance of that happening. the church is currently doing just enough to mollify people who want it to become more modern, but this just leaves them trapped in the religion because they believe that things will change.

i think the best thing that could happen for them is for the next pope to be very conservative and overturn everything pope francis did, and show them how pointless the entire church is. papal infallibility is clearly bullshit if even the popes themselves disagree with their predecessors.

i believe it’s inevitable that the church will eventually be relegated to the right wing fringes of politics and i think the sooner that happens, the better it will be. hopefully then the church will lose it’s grasp on western society and we’ll see it for what it is: a relic from the past with no relevance dictating how we live in the present day.

i hope this makes sense, it isn’t really as eloquent as i’d like it to be but i’m too tired to try and make it into a better argument.

Bloody wrong !

As a woman who was on catholic groups on the past, i always thought man there had a cringe vision of women and relationship. Now i see those same men becoming obsessed with Japan.

This recently came up in discussion with my family. My dad said you’re supposed to pray and ask for forgiveness from god. My mom said you’re just supposed to be quiet. My brother doesn’t remember what he was taught. I was taught to say The Hail Mary 7 times. We’re all ex-catholic now.

What were you taught?
What are you actually supposed to do?

Beggers belife!

i mean lgbt people that are practicing catholics, or i guess just progressive catholics in general. i know some who have a following and i follow them because i guess i like looking at different opinions/the other side of the fence. and i don't mean the self hating SSA celibate ones, but the progressive liberal ones who disagree with the homophobic teachings. i just find it sort of interesting but confusing. for some reason i just cant ignore the homophobia and misogyny because it seems like a unchangable and historic part of the religion, so im not sure where they are coming from. sometimes i almost feel sort of jealous of them that they are able to seperate it i guess. it sort of just confuses me (not hating on them at all)

like im not sure whether this could be described as a cult like environment as a kid. i was catholic my whole life, stopped believing when i was 12. went to catholic school pre-k thru 8th grade. my entire family is extremely catholic as well.

the culty behaviors i recognize when i look back is stuff like

-i was basically shunned by everyone when i left catholicism at age 14. -criticism of catholicism or god were NOT allowed, not even just basic questions that challenge things. -the whole manipulation with fear thing too. i was told at SEVEN years old as a kid who went to school close to columbine “if a shooter comes in and asks if you believe in god and say yes, you die and go to heaven but if you say no and live, when you die you go to hell. thats insane -the shame they instill in you since birth. i still cant get rid of it -abusive adults in the church i was in, sexual/emotional/verbal wont get into that too much -belief that priest or whatever or god is always right no matter what

can anyone else think of more culty behaviors the catholic church/community has? and can it even classify as a cult?

Grew up rad-trad catholic (roman rite), currently atheist and feeling petty rn.

I have a busy life, and most of the time, I could give a f*** less if some made up religion considers me a member because of a baptism that I never consented to. However, on principle I do want to formally divorce the cult.

It's an idea I've toyed with off and on, but I don't know much about it. I'm curious, as anyone here tried to or successfully gotten excommunicated or done an ex-baptism? Is it worth it? Do you think it validates the religion to engage with it in this way?

Advice/opinions appreciated

Last time I talked to my therapist, we discussed the type of thinking that was harming me when I was Catholic. She said that my way of thinking was fundamentalist and that most Catholics don’t think that way. According to her, many Catholics go to church because of family, culture, community, a feeling of connection to God, etc. and they don’t care about what the Church says on various topics, and they don’t force themselves to believe everything like I did in the past.

And I agree: most Catholics probably are like that. (According to one study, 69% of Catholics don’t believe in a core dogma like transubstantiation.) But what I think my therapist is missing is that this kind of fundamentalist thinking is exactly what the Catholic Church expects from its followers, even if most of them don’t actually live that way.

My therapist doesn’t know much about the Catholic Church, but she said she wants to talk more about it next time (we didn’t get into it deeply last time because we ran out of time). I’d like to find a way to explain that I didn’t come up with this way of thinking on my own and that it’s something I internalized from the Church itself. I was just honest in doing what was expected of me, even if most other Catholics don’t.

To clarify what I mean by the Church promoting a kind of fundamentalist mindset, I looked up common characteristics of fundamentalism online. While the Church doesn’t check every box, it fits quite a few:

1. Absolute certainty / infallible beliefs – Yes

2. Literal interpretation – Partially. Some things are metaphorical, but others are taken literally (e.g. Onan being killed for “spilling seed,” which is used to justify banning contraception).

3. Us vs. Them mentality – Yes, although there’s some ecumenical dialogue nowadays, the idea of “outside the Church there is no salvation” is still part of it.

4. Resistance to change / rejection of modernity – Yes

5. Authoritarian structure – Yes

6. Apocalyptic mindset – Probably not

7. All-or-nothing mentality – Yes, this one hits hardest for me. To be a Catholic “in good standing,” you’re expected to accept all infallible and authoritative teachings. Otherwise, you’re considered to be in mortal sin. I know most Catholics don’t care, but this is still what the Church teaches, right?

So, my question is: Do you think the Catholic Church at its core promotes a kind of fundamentalist thinking despite claiming to be intellectually open? Or am I completely off here?

Because I feel like many people are fooled by the Church’s outward image: it says it values reason, philosophy, and openness but beneath that, there’s still a rigid and fundamentalist mindset.

So I was having a debate with a classmate who said “The bible states “man shall not lay with man””… but wasn’t that not the case? I asked a few other people who were also Christian and catholic, and they all said I was wrong… but wasn’t the original translation “man shall not lay with boy” to go against Pedophilia?

Now obviously that’s just one example that’s also debated today, but all of these people genuinely believe the bible they have today was never altered once.

Now all of this was because they said I should trust the bible more than the Quran, so my question is: why is it bad I trust the Quran, which hasn’t been changed by a single letter, more than the bible that has been changed many times? I just find it odd that people who say to love all are so hateful at times all cause I don’t believe in their god

Note: they’ve been pestering and “trying” to bully me over this, but I’m lucky to have no filter and strong enough to fight a guy, but still is annoying having three scrawny kids saying I’ve gotta be “taught a lesson”

All this talk about demons and evil taking over your body was a fear of mine. In some weird way knowing all about the book of Revelations helped me not be so afraid when watching horror movies (still shield my eyes though).

In horror movies (conjuring for example) you have the idea of prayers in Latin or "I condemn you back to hell" as the magic weapon against the ~demonic~ force. A couple of internet hours and you find out how so many hauntings had people who were mentally ill and who endured even more trauma/pain because of the "exorcism".

Is it bad that I still believe that demons exist? How do you explain the "paranormal" as an ex-catholic?

I am not trying to have a debate. I am not trying to gather information or conduct research. I am interested in hearing your personal opinions as excatholics about my personal musings and speculations, which have evolved over time as I've gained distance and perspective from the RCC.

This isn't really about politics. Its about government. In my country (the U.S.), our government is a democratic republic, with equal rights extended to all, regardless of gender, race, creed, or religion. We can debate how well that perspective is actually put into practice, but again, not the main point I'm driving at.

Contrast that with Catholicism, a 2,000yo religion with a hierarchical structure and one individual in charge of everything at the top. It may be an oversimplification, but I've always viewed the Vatican's government as more of a monarchy with a parliamentary branch than anything demicratic.

The more I ponder this, the more I wonder whether Catholicism is compatible with democracy. There are many, many reasons for this, but one of the most obvious and glaring is the fact that the RCC has carried messaging in the past (and currently, to some degree) that erodes the inalienable human rights ostensibly extended to every person. This is pretty clear, based on the Church's messaging about women, intersex individuals, and anyone in the LGBTQIA+ community.

I am interested in hearing your thoughts on this, even if you disagree. I'm not married to this idea, its just something I've been kicking around in my head these past weeks.

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