Monday, October 1, 2007

My Big Mistake

OK, as promised, here’s the big mistake I made –

See, I was doing pretty good in the ol’ religion department, going to daily Mass, praying the Rosary, etc., etc. -- all good stuff, or at least it seemed so to me.

But then I started going to the Eastern Catholic Church to flirt with Steve P (see previous post) and contracted a big case of Cognitive Dissonance, based on the fact that he and everyone on this Eastern Catholic bulletin board kept saying things like, “The Romans do this, but we do this” -- with the not-so-subtle implication that everything after the “but” was better.

Of course, if you pinned them down, most of them would insist they didn’t mean it that way, but heck, it’s okay even if they did. It’s their heritage, their custom, their thing. That’s cool. The problem for me was that after a lifetime of being told that kneeling in front of the Eucharist was the numero uno best way to honor Jesus – based on the authority of the Catholic Church – all of a sudden I’m being told that standing in front of the Eucharist is also the numero uno best way to honor Jesus – based on the very same authority (because these guys & gals are Catholics too)!

Whew! So I'm already getting a little discombobulated! But I could have hung in there - gotten some spiritual counseling, found my own way, etc. Except – I also started getting really, really discouraged by the fact that my prayers about Steve P. did not seem to be getting answered.

In fact, they seemed to be getting ignored. And as anyone who’s ever seen “Fatal Attraction” knows, it is never a good idea for anyone – even a Supreme Being – to ignore a single woman of a certain age!

So after months and months of being ignored, I decided – it was all a crock! There was no God, no heaven, the Church was a bunch of cattle malarkey and I didn’t need it!

So somewhere deep inside me I (or the little person who lives inside my brain and is responsible for these little jobs) reached over and flipped the switch from “Theist” to “Atheist”. And away I went!

I was pretty relieved to have realized the whole thing was a big scam. To help advance my deconversion, I (re)joined a great site called Internet Infidels (where I’d been a member a few years ago, under the charming names of both “Atheist Gal” and “Theist Gal”, during my previous de/reconversions).

I was doing great there. I even became a moderator (the powah! heh heh!).

Then – something completely and totally unexpected happened – something which really shook my steady deconversion process all to hell (so to speak).

Next time: Out of a clear blue sky!