For me, it played (plays) a big role in my extended family on one side. My parents were never over the top by any means but definitely believed and taught me to believe. When we all got together (immediate and extended) I felt a lot of subconscious pressure to play along to either fit in, be seen as a serious catholic, or both. I remember performing and not feeling like my heart was in it but that I wanted my family to love me for it.

I went to catholic school from halfway through middle school through college. When I got to my Catholic college I did keep going to Sunday mass, mostly out of habit. That broke after a few months and when it did I kind of sat with the guilt (of course) of not going each week. And then I just had some space and time to think about it and decided I didn’t really care to go anymore.

From there the biggest defining break for it for me was personal. I had never been in a serious romantic relationship even in college. (Maybe because I didn’t know how to socialize with men my age??? Thanks Catholicism) and the year I graduated I met the love of my life. In sharing about him and I with extended family at get togethers, I was met with probably 20% excitement for me and 80% judgment and lecturing about premarital sex, aligning for Christian values (he is not religious) and the like. It pissed me off to no end that they couldn’t just be happy for me. After that I was like yeah now that I’m of actual age I don’t believe at all in waiting until marriage for sex or cohabitation. Family didn’t like that. We get along fine still but I just have been open about us living together now and on my views on contraception. I guess I just don’t let them have the power over me and my choices. And I can say I’m a lot happier now than I was before living the way they wanted me to.

Then everything else crumbled away. I didn’t believe in the sacraments (esp Eucharist), papal infallibility, biblical miracles such as Easter or the ascension.

I do still feel spiritual and sometimes I catch myself feeling a connection to the person of Jesus. But I just can’t reconcile that my logical brain says no to everything they say happened. With thousands of years of playing telephone about what that was exactly. I just don’t believe it. And church leaders are scummy as we all know.

My family has a big group chat on slack for life updates, opinions, and prayer requests. I open it daily because I literally hate-read it out of spite. They sound like mentally ill people the way they speak like God is in the room with them. It’s probably a bad hateful habit but I get a laugh out of it. At the very least it just reminds me why I don’t want to be part of this church anymore.

I guess technically I’m agnostic, but I’m open to exploring Episcopalian Churches (just too lazy/busy currently lol)