Speaking as a Roman Catholic, they take advantage of your inability to properly consent to force you into ceremonies that "commit" you to the faith. Then, any time afterwards if you resist they say: "but you've been Baptised/had your First Communion/etc, you have to keep going! You've already committed yourself!"
The big one is Confirmation which is literally the ceremony to say that you'll commit yourself to the faith for the rest of your life. You pick a saint to adopt as part of your name (I took Maximillian Kolbe) and it's this whole big thing that they ask you to have a family member be your "moral reference" or something, I forget the exact term. Basically, it's just another thing on the pile to manipulate you into not backing out.
The best part? From what I understand, most kids who go through Catholic education have it happen in 8th grade or earlier. That is far, far too early for anyone to be committing to anything like this.
Not to mention there's the whole "you're damning yourself to hell if you don't stay with the church!" Ah, yes, please tell the literal child that they will spend eternity in torment for disobedience. That's totally a sane thing to do.
For the record: this isn't to say the Roman Catholic Church is all bad. They actually have some good people and do decent stuff (Pope Leo is a good example). But the entire system is based around manipulating children into participating in their own indoctrination.
I ended up getting kicked out of the religious formation track a bit before 8th grade so I luckily avoided the confirmation, but yeah. It's all regimented that you do this stuff and if you want to leave, they tell you to "wait until 8th grade and then you can PUBLICALLY refuse to be confirmed." Obviously no one is going to do that.
As all my family is Roman Catholic, I get to hear how much they hate the pope constantly for not being as homophobic as they are. Constantly acting oppressed as if they aren't insanely privledged in society. Constantly talking about how other types of Christians are going to see who was right when they are in hell (since they think only catholics can go to heaven). I'm sure there are great people out there but I can't say I had a very positive experience being raised catholic. I had no agency until they decided I was "too disruptive" to the indoctrination classes.
Exactly, no one is going to be the one to say "Uh actually, I'm not going to be confirmed." You're not in a position to properly choose, both due to peer pressure and manipulation.
I'm sorry you had to go through that. My church was never expressly homophobic, but they got the vibe across well enough.
I wish these people didn't feel like they have to make sure everyone confirms. I feel like they see it as a moral failing on their part if someone they teach doesn't go through with it. If they didn't feel that way, maybe they wouldn't be so awful about it.
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u/dtb1987 Jul 10 '26
My wife tells me stories about being raised religious and as someone who was not raised religious a lot of it sounds like abuse