The two reasons I left Christianity

I didn’t fully realize it at the time, but it had to do with logic and science

The “logical” structure of the Holy Trinity, Wikimedia.

I grew up Catholic in Rome, Italy. And I left the Church during my teenage years. More than forty years later I’m still thinking about how exactly that happened.

First of all, it was not an instantaneous de-conversion. It took several years. The first hint that I remember was when I told my mother — who was mildly upset by this — that I would not go through confirmation, the sacrament that follows first communion. I had done first communion a couple of years later than usual in order to wait for my brother to be old enough, so we could go through it together.

So we did. He was ahead of me in the line that led to the priest, his communion wafer, and the wine. Real wine, because this is Italy and Catholicism. None of that unfermented grape juice that is given out by many Protestant denominations.

I saw my brother taking the wafer, drinking the wine, moving on… and then pivoting back to the end of the line! Later I asked him why he went for a second round. He said the wine was good, so he wanted another sip. I can happily report that to this day he does not suffer from any form of alcoholism.

Since confirmation is understood as the sealing of the covenant that is created by baptism, my refusal to proceed was a rather big deal. For all effective purposes, I had left the Church. Ironically, confirmation is supposed to be administered when a child reaches the age of reason. I guess my reason had developed in a different direction from the one expected by my priest. Confirmation is also the time when the Holy Ghost comes in and strengthens your faith. But I felt neither Spirit not any strengthening.

St. Michael the Archangel Parish, Findlay, Ohio. Eucharistic stained glass window depicting bread and wine. Image from Wikimedia.

That said, complete rejection and the realization that — gasp! — I was an atheist took several more years. (I never did have patience for the wimpy position known as agnosticism, sorry.) The immediate causes were multiple and mutually reinforcing. My initial, intuitive skepticism about religion in general and Catholicism in particular began to be…