Or, for the 3 or so followers of this blog: "RIP, Catholic.sh".
(Originally written towards a selection of Facebook peeps)
The general "why" or "what changed":
As some of you know, my spiritual life has been in a kind of chrysalis state since I was dismissed from Carmel almost seven years ago. It's as if the many Catholic labels stuck onto my interior goods lost their stickiness, a very gradual and quiet process I've been observing since then, ending in my losing basically all conviction in and taste for the things of formalized religion. This seems to have been a pretty natural outcome psychologically, given what went down at that time. (Unpacking that is handled below.) I acknowledge broken trust in itself has nothing to do directly with whether God exists or the Church is true, but it does have a lot to do with my capacity to freely submit my intellect to the Church's say-so as if it were God's. So although I do hope Christ rose from the dead, I'm sure I can't say that he certainly did, out of obedience. Perhaps predictably, this shift also bestowed a new gravity upon how arguments for Scripture and the historical Church as coherently inspired by one God only seem to work when proceeding backwards from that conclusion.
Insofar as some may define "Catholic" as requiring that intellectual submission, I actually haven't been that for a while. I'd kept on sincerely identifying as Catholic at first, having no particular desire to be anything else, and I greatly benefited from the cultural closeness with some of my dearer Catholic friends, whose love and understanding I really needed in those early days. But the process of healing and standing on my own two feet again came to the point where my inner attitude has had to own its role as the force carrying me forward, and so it began to shape my outer practice as well. I can't say the Apostle's Creed and mean it, so attending Sunday Mass has lost its point. This also means I can't make all the promises necessary for marrying in the Church. So I haven't considered myself a member of the Catholic faith since around the beginning of this year.
The "what happened," the events in Carmel alluded to above:
(Please excuse the stuffy/legalese tone sprinkled below; I think it's useful to at least try to be precise in this regard.)
The Church proved itself untrustworthy when it broke a promise to me, which had been made in its official name, with all due form, and toward my specific person, when I took my vows. By "the Church", I mean the aspect of the Church I was directed to consider the conduit of God's authority and obey as binding upon my conscience: my superiors, with respect to whatever part of their will that was presented to me as an obedience. The promise that was broken was that the protection of my rights and obligations as a religious by means of due process in the event of a dismissal, which according to Canon law, requires such steps as documenting a religious' delicts, warning them, and acquiring the validation of the relevant extra-claustral authority, in my case the bishop. Although these delicts must be more serious in the case of a solemn professed, the rule also applies for one in temporary vows, as I was. An immediate superior doesn't normally have sufficient standing to dismiss an unwilling religious on their own initiative.
The docility I had cultivated toward my immediate superior's will was, with respect to my rights as a religious, abused: I was told it was God's will that I should leave, and ordered not to tell the bishop the dismissal was against my will, with the warning that doing otherwise may make me appear obstinate and leave me unable to pursue religious life ever again. It was not revealed to me that the Prioress was unaware of this order, and I found out later that she had been misled about this being my choice.
It's easy for a reputable institution to decree with a seemingly divine level of force. The Church has issued rules in the name of God as binding upon the eternal welfare of a particular person's soul: an extreme amount of power, exerted on the scope of a single person's life. But, it seems to me, and even seems decently self-evident, that's not sufficient for authority. Authority would seem to presuppose a capacity for responsibility proportionate to the claimed force. So we should expect the Church to be able to keep its promises in that same name of God, issued in a fully valid legal process to even one person. As even one member of the Church bears the full threat of an officially-promised damnation, it seems that person should expect also to enjoy the full security of an officially-promised protection: a marriage vow, no less. I found out beyond any personal doubt that the Church is unable to maintain the latter. So it seems to me the Church's claim to a supernatural degree of institutional authority to "bind and loose" must be empty.
There's another way to explain the same event. While my trust in "the system" was well and duly broken, my trust in my superior's goodwill toward me never really was. As Carmelites, we were taught not to obey just the letter of an obedience, but our superior's intention for us, as best we could. I did as my superior told me out of a genuine belief that she must love me and be willing my good, so I should try to follow the spirit of what she was saying to me. Still to this day, I think I discerned rightly that her message to me was: "Go out and live: it's not really worth losing your whole life over this after all." That was the last command presented to me as an obedience, and I've been doing my best to follow it ever since.
I believe my superior, Sr. Teresa of Jesus, who is now the Prioress at Buffalo, mistreated my vows because she herself was suffering badly and needed to leave, but could not overcome the sunk cost and cognitive dissonance involved. When she saw I was also significantly struggling under the psychological pressure of the cloister, and because she loved me better than she loved herself, I think she deliberately tricked me out of the promise I would have never let go of on my own. Mother Teresa has since expelled two other sisters by similarly illegal means, with one canonical battle continuing til today.
I still love the sisters of Buffalo very much, and cherish the fact that they've taught me some of the greatest things I know. Only, I couldn't have predicted what the entire content or fallout of that knowledge would turn out to be.
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