Pulling the ripcord on being Catholic

I had 13 years of Catholic school, K through 12. We were one of those church on Sunday and all holy days of obligation, parents are eucharistic ministers & lectors, sons are altar boys families.

About 8th grade, I started to notice little difference between books about Santa and books about God.

I got critical of theism, organized religion, and all that jazz. But I got confirmed anyway.

And on Christmas, I go to church, more for tradition and to be with family than anything else. Even though I really don't buy 90% of what's being said, I've conformed to please others and uphold tradition.

But I'm now officially done. Ratzinger has made it clear that he seeks ideological purity within the church, and that he's happy to purge the church of dissenting voices. He's a white guy who came of age in Hitler's Germany.

So I'm out. I had hoped for a brown pope. I had hoped for progress. I had hoped the church wouldn't choose a path towards isolation and irrelevance. But they've elected a guy who thinks the ideology of the dark ages is perfectly appropriate for our modern times.

I will hence forth only enter Catholic churches for weddings, funerals and baptisms. I will no longer, with my silent presence, imply support for an institution with ideals I find immoral and un-Christian. Ratzinger has backed people who claim that voting for certain candidates can be a sin. I refuse to back an institution headed by a man who would seek to have his religion interfere in the affairs of my state.

I am so done with Catholicism.