From Catholic to Atheist due to Car Bombs - A Spiritual Narrative

I grew up in Dallas, Texas in a non-religious Irish Catholic family where my grandmother was very devout growing up, and then slowly grew away from the church. This meant that my mother was not raised very religious, and neither were my sister and myself. We do however still have family in Ireland that we visit every year. I have one cousin in particular that I am close with, Kate. She is in her mid-30s, married with 4 children and was born and raised her whole life in a town called Newry, the 9th largest town in Northern Ireland. She was raised to be a devout Catholic alongside her 2 siblings and her parents until she was about 16 when she left the church. Today, she categorizes herself to be an Atheist though she teeters back and forth between that and Agnostic. She actually says she never knew there was a term for a “non-believer” until just a few years ago. This makes since when you look at the demographics and the history where she’s from. 

Newry today would be deemed a large town in the eyes of the N. Irish, but to me, a former Dallastonian who’s population is 1.3 million people, the 27,000 people seem pretty small. When you take into account the differences in our geographic locations, we come from two totally different worlds. In the United Kingdom where N. Ireland is located, they teach world religion in the primary public schools, or “state schools”, whereas in the US, there is a separation of church and state, and I never received a “religion” course until I was attending university. Also, you are far more likely to not even attend a state school, but rather attending a private Catholic school altogether. In Newry today, there is only one state school for students to attend, and this school would be the equivalent to our high school, meaning that all children who attend what we call elementary and middle school, must attend one of the private schools. In the states, while we do have different styles of education, the majority of students attend a state-funded public school, again, where church and state are separate. Due to this situation in the States, the only place for a student like me in the public school system was to learn about religion is from the home and my parents and extended family. 

While I don’t want this to be a history lesson about Northern Ireland, I think it’s extremely important to have a small knowledge of what did happen there, and why I believe it to have an effect on Kate and her decision to leave the Catholic faith. Many people don’t actually realize that the Irish Island are two different countries, The Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. Ireland is an independent country that is a part of the European Union and has the traditional green, white, and orange flag. The Republic of Ireland is the ideal image that most people have when you think of the Irish, mostly Catholic, mostly big families, loves whiskey. There is a difference however when you look towards Northern Ireland. There is a divide, literal and figuratively. Northern Ireland is controlled by the United Kingdom and by the Queen of England, therefore, the citizens are technically British citizens and the national religion is Protestant. This situation caused what were called The Troubles, and was essentially a war against the Catholic nationalists, who wanted to see a united Ireland, and the Protestant unionists, who wanted N. Ireland to stay a part of the UK. The Troubles took place from the 60s all the way to the 1990s with some attacks even happening as recently as 2010 in Newry. The Troubles were actively happening in the county when Kate was growing up and forming her decisions on religion and spirituality, and her friends and family all supported the IRA, the Irish Republican Army, and wanted to see Ireland become united. The IRA gets a really bad history along with other militia groups, as a group who would go to deathly reaches to make their point heard, including using the famous car bombs that made the capital, Belfast, one of the scariest places to be during the time frame. While she was growing up, Kate attended a Catholic school and had friends there and her family, who was also Catholic, yet outside of this support system, she was not allowed to talk about anything she believed to anyone she didn't know for sure about their beliefs. If she was chatting with another Catholic about her concerns for the faith, she now is written off as a bad Catholic, and if she spoke to a Protestant about her concerns, this could look like an act of defiance for not only her religion but her country as well, as Kate identified, and still coherently does, as a nationalist. She says this had a true effect on her as when she was an early teen, she didn't understand how she could be in mass and be taught to be a good person and be taught not to harm her neighbors, but then there would be a report of the IRA killing Protestants in a car bombing accident. She says that it made her religious foundation really start to crumble. 

When I was a teen around Kates age, I sought after many different churches, mostly because that's just what you did to hang out with your friends. They had a youth group where you’d read the Bible, but then you get pizza at the end, what's not to love?! I bounced around from church to church, just where my friends were because a church was never something really serious to me. It was really important on Christmas Eve, and Easter Sunday, but other than that, there was no one there in my life telling me that I had to attend. Oddly, while we didn't know each other, my husband did the same thing as a child and teen. Neither one of us had a strong religious support system. That being said, I certainly don’t feel as if I missed anything by not being forced to go to church every Sunday as a child. While Kate made have felt like it was nothing more than a routine for her, to me, I didn't understand the point of it. You have to pray to talk to God? I can do that in the comfort of my own bed at 11am on Sunday morning. 

Once Kate was older she was allowed to no longer attend regular Sunday Mass but was still required to attend on holidays. She says that that made her confusion at that age even worse off as she didn't see how the God that she had learned about would be allowing of this. This caused the whole idea of church and a religion to not make sense to her. Over time, growing up she thought less and less of there actually being someone who controlled everything, pulled all of our strings. Also as she grew up, she became aware of the scandal that was the Catholic church. Kate believes that the pedophilia scandals and cover-ups were the most horrific think that anyone could think of, yet here it was, happening in the religion that everyone pushed her so hard towards. When she learned of this, she completely gave up any remaining faith that she may have. She does not believe in any sort of higher being, as for how could said higher being let something like that happen. 

Kate not only grew up Catholic, but she was fully immersed in the church. She went through several of the sacraments, from baptism, to the first communion, to confirmation. While going through these sacraments, she only saw it as a ritual, and really have no more meaning than that. She was only a baby when she was baptized and had no memory of it, therefore she felt as if it was her parents signing her away to the church. Since she has chosen to be an Atheist, she has written to her former church to have her baptismal recorded fully expunged, and to have any record at all with her name, connecting her to the Catholic faith at all, removed. 

As someone who was not brought up in any faith, and it didn't really have a meaning to me as a child or a teen, I found myself slowly looking toward the Catholic faith for myself. I, just like Kate had been baptized as a small child, but mostly due to all of my grandparents wanting it that way. It was what you did, you had a baby, and the baby was baptized. Now that I am older and have a life of my own, I have learned that I am a very sentimental person, I love tradition, and I love the idea of having a family ritual. To me, the Catholic faith fit into that idea perfectly. I am Irish Catholic, so why not actually practice Catholicism. When I attended mass for the first time, I was in complete awe, the sights, the smells, the sounds, it was all so beautiful to me, and seeing everyone feel so comfortable performing the rituals such as taking communion, and going to confession, I just fell in love. These traditions that the Catholic church has were made up just a few hundred years ago, but a few thousand years ago. There's something special about that to me. The fact that its an “old man’s religion” and “boring” is what makes it so interesting to me. 

While Kate and I both grew up in similar socioeconomic groups, religion was forced down her throat as a child and teen, and it completely backfired so far as for her to renounce religion as a whole. However, religion was left for me to figure out on my own and to make those decisions for myself even as a young child, and here I am, in my mid-twenties, and a practicing Catholic. It really shows that you never know how someones religious beliefs will develop, and what factors in their life could affect that pathway.