So many things about the church teachings take years or even a lifetime to get past. There's always a feeling of "they're gonna get me". The scars it leaves include guilt; and the feeling that even though you're doing what's right for you, you're bad, and God is an angry man who will be angry with you. Also, one is left with the feeling that unless you're perfect, you might as well give up - perfection is the only goal. And, if you suffer, on some level you must deserve it for something you've done.
Kathleen
Anything human was considered bad: sexuality, feelings like anger and the like. It's not surprising that Catholics have to spend a lot of time later in their lives putting themselves back together, considering we have to deny all these parts of ourselves that are normal and human.
Abby
I am forty-eight. I spent a lot of energy trying to work on my self-esteem. One of the outcomes of my [Catholic] indoctrination was a deeply imbedded belief that I have no worth. This self-esteem issue is the number-one problem in my life today.
Loretta
My break with the Roman Catholic Church came after forty years of blind obedience to laws that I now know were man-made, not God-made as I was told throughout my life by the hierarchy of a religion that I finally see to be, at best, anachronistic, and at worst, a threat to society.
Glenna
Why go somewhere every week when it would only make me feel down on myself and especially bad because I'm a woman, like Eve, the one who messed it all up?
Joanne
Why are women leaving the Roman Catholic faith? Why are so many refusing to raise their children as Catholics? What has made some women so outraged at Catholicism that this ander remains long after they have left the church? What would make these women view themselves as "recovering Catholics"?
Women are leaving the Catholic church in record numbers. Many quesiton a faith that continues to maintain a patriarchal attitude toward them. Some women are disturbed by the church's obsession with sex and its ban on birth control and abortion. Not allowed to serve as proests, women feel discriminated against when they are not included as full members of the faith.
The Recovering Catholic brings together poignant stories of more than fifty women whose ages, backgrounds, life experiences and geographical locations differ markedly yet each made the difficult choice to leave the Catholic church in order to find a more fulfilling way of expressing her spirituality. Women profiled range from an eighteen-year-old sudent to a twenty-nine-year-old homemaker to a sixty-nine-year-old retired market researcher.
Author Joanne H. Meehl addresses a wide variety of topics including the reasons why women begin to question their faith, the heavy burden of religious guilt, the attitudes of the Catholic hierarchy toward women and the escalating amount of sexual abuse cases involving priests. She includes practical advice on breaking away from the church - including how to tell your family that you are no longer Catholic - as well as information on choosing new spiritual outlets.
The Recovering Catholic is the first book on the Catholic church to focus on the individual journeys of women who faced not only discriminatory practices and oppressive dogma, but the ire of their families and society in their search for a spiritual happy ending. For all who are struggling with the emotional turmoil of religious commitment versus church teachings. The Recovering Catholic illustrates how you can successfully choose to leave the church and find new avenues for your faith. You, too, can recover from the crippling effects of a dogmatic religion.
Joanne H. Meehl is an employment counselor with the South Coastal Assistance Center and a recovering Catholic.