Hi everyone,

I feel like many people on r/excatholic never had the opportunity to meet or even have some dialogue with their opposite, so here I am. People from r/Catholicism are welcome as well. For full disclosure, I am a genuine practicing Catholic who affirms all teachings of the Church in faith and morals and the papacy of Francis.

My story:

I am a cradle Catholic who spent many of their formative years as an atheist, both of my parents were former Catholics as well and they still are (though they were and are always supportive of me).

I reverted 2 years ago, and I could spout off many reasons about why I am a Catholic today, but the reason why I stopped being an atheist then is because its conclusions were absolutely absurd to me. There was zero point in continuing to live if there was nothing objectively worth living for. And under an atheist/agnostic view point, that's acceptable and can't be argued against. But I knew (and even many others) deep down that couldn't be true. So I did research, and the Catholic viewpoint on faith and morals made the most sense and was the most reasonable to me. You can ask me on specifics on my journet of reversion.

And before people say I might've "rabbit hole'd" my self. I had many different friends and influences who were of varying religions (and many lack thereof) and philosophies. I was in college when I reverted and I still am.

Again I want to be clear, I don't aim to "revert ex-Catholics" in this post. I just want to provide an another point of view and answer questions in good faith.

A good video to watch from the YouTube channel called The Line: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmjM0AGPPao

Okay so my original post got deleted but long story short, I’m looking for anyone who has experience with FOCUS. I am pretty much lapsed Catholic at this point with a family member in FOCUS. My biggest beef is that this organization managed to con college students into becoming full time missionaries after college and teaching them to ask for donations from family (aka rely on Gods providence ..) but they are not allowed to work a full time job to actually earn a decent wage. Well FOCUS is hosting their annual forum in SC next spring and it’s pretty fancy. It just got me wondering if anyone else had a negative experience with FOCUS?

For me the biggest thing is that all the FOCUS kids don’t really move on to anything else but working at HQ, working for a church, or staying missionaries for life. The stories are just sad (like missionary families living in campus housing have baby after baby) and make me wonder if I’m the only one who sees the insanity. Even when I was a practicing Catholic, I still was like WTF is this.

Last month, my church offered a 'god, love, and marriage' class for high schoolers and middle schoolers separately. I don't know how they did it for the middle schoolers, but in the high school class (which my parents made me attend) the boys got one book (don't know what it was) and the girls got 'How to find your soulmate.' I've been reading it because it's mine now, I might as well. However their are parts of the book that I don't quite agree with, but I can't quite articulate it. Has anyone here read it, and can they give me their opinions on this book? Thanks.

My post over there got deleted immediately, but I'm not trying to argue or anything, just curious. To anyone who's a member of the r/excatholic Rediit, did you become agnostic/atheistic after leaving? Or did you still believe in Christ, and feel that Protestant, Eastern Orthodox, or another branch of Christianity is just more reliable/true than Catholicism? Or have you converted to Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, or another mono/polytheistic religion?

Also, is the majority of the reason for those in the subreddit who've left Catholicism more on the grounds of the church lying, or the brutal history of it, or personal tragedy with priests/clergy? Is anyone here more or less apathetic towards Catholicism, no hatred, just don't really align with the teachings?

Hey everyone. I'm not Catholic/ex-Catholic, but I was raised as a Seventh-day Adventist. They are a fringe Protestant denomination that thinks the world is going to end tomorrow and also the Pope is the antichrist and the Catholic Church the whore of Babylon of Revelation.

I have no interest in becoming Catholic (proud agnostic), but I am an aspiring religious studies scholar, and I would like to dive off into Catholicism. All I really know is what my denomination told me about it and what Catholic friends have told me about it in adulthood.

So, I was going to ask: Could y'all point me to resources on Catholic apologetics and dogmas (what Catholics believe and what their arguments are for so fervently believing its true) and then also resources refuting Catholic apologetics?

I want to see it from both perspectives. Not to decide it's truth; I will not convert. As an academic, I just want to see the entire argument at play.

Thanks!

Does r/exCatholic ban people often? I’ve been having a conversation that suddenly I can’t see comments tos. Did a moderated ban me? Or did the other person mute me?

For at least the first 15 centuries after the birth of Christianity, the Roman Catholic Pope was God’s first-in-line ‘spokesman’ or representative of the Christian faith on Earth.  The Pope was the mirror of God in an earthly body, receiving direct communications from God, and he was allegedly infallible.  If Christianity is to be taken seriously, one must assume that God was involved in the voting processes that selected each Pope, and that God would always assure that each one possessed the character necessary to shed a positive light on the faith. Further, it can be assumed that God would guide and inspire the Popes appropriately during their terms.

The exact opposite happened.  Most of the Popes have been either incompetent, corrupt, lecherous, or murderous.  The sordid tales of past Popes comprises a long litany of embarrassments for the Church.

This website estimates the number of people killed by Popes during the Middle Ages and later:

http://www.cs.unc.edu/~plaisted/estimates.html#_Toc135810590 

As it stands, 80 popes were directly responsible for the torture and murder of over 50 MILLION people by some of the most painful and excruciating ways to die possible.

This website takes on the difficult task of picking the worst 10 Popes:

http://www.oddee.com/item_96537.aspx

Would the Christian God have allowed this situation if he was actually engaged in guiding the Christian faith?  No.  What has occurred, however, is directly in line with the common history of human-centered enterprises. The fact that the Papacy has been corrupted by so many unworthy men is extremely significant evidence that the Christian God does not exist.

SOURCE: http://www.kyroot.com/?page_id=1181#472

Hi! I'm doing a bit of research on religious family structure and participation in society (primarily how women are expected to participate in society). I quickly realized the catholic forums are not necessarily going to give me the most unbiased answer, so i'd also like to ask an ex-Catholic community about their opinion. So what would you say is the ideal Catholic family structure? Also, how are Catholics expected to participate in society? How are Catholic women expected to act in society?

Like there's a statement that God created a good world with people in it instead of just simply himself by exscizing the bad people from it in hell. There's the question of why God did it this way, and the response being that this is just God's nature, that there's a mechanism at play when God makes a command and this way is how it works. This might go around the idea of transcendentalism, but transcendentalism only works because God is transcendental, so this would essentially need God to conflict with his own nature.

I think a problem would be that this would be "hypothetical" in that it's a way for Christianity to say that it's technically not internally inconsistent, but I was wondering if there was anyone who tackled this assertion more concretely.

Hello all!

To preface, I still attend mass not because I particularly want to, but because of family obligations. In any case, yesterday’s homily was interesting to me. The priest listed what he called the top 3 reasons people leave the church, which he said are not because of the abuse scandals or spiritual issues but intellectual issues:

1. Belief in God is absurd

“Belief in Jesus and the Flying Spaghetti Monster are basically equivalent.”

“There are at least 20 proofs for the existence of God,the most famous of which are St. Thomas Aquinas’ five proofs.”

2. Theodicy - belief in God and the reality of suffering

“How can I believe in God when there is so much evil and suffering in the world?”

3. That there is a false dichotomy between faith and science

“If I have to pick between one and the other, I’ll pick science.”

The conclusion was “we have to know our faith and be able to answer these serious questions. And there are serious answers, I simply do not have time to go into them in a homily. Or more effectively, take your own question and try and find the answer.”

I was surprised that he even brought it up, because I was like… great way to get more people to leave the church? Unless since they’re already there, he thinks it’ll somehow strengthen their belief. But of course, there’s no time to actually answer any of those questions he brought up ;)

I don’t find St. Thomas’ proofs of the existence of God to be convincing, and even if did they prove the existence of a God, who’s to say it’s the Christian God? I was particularly convinced away from religion by Pascal’s wager, because who’s to say which religion’s God is the “true” God, if any? Most people believe in the religion they were brought up in. And “pretending” to believe in one God “just in case” is not a great way to live your life.

I do find the notion of theodicy to be problematic, but the part about science I’m not so sure. I didn’t think Catholics particularly have an issue with religion and science, although I know groups like Young Earth creationists definitely do.

A bigger issue for me is the issue of transubstantiation, which is a hard pill to swallow… it’s not literally true, so it must be symbolic, but that goes against Catholic doctrine.

What do you think of this homily?

While thinking why Christianity chose to effectively condemn people to the worse punishment (there's a bible quote of an ignorant servant receiving a lesser punishment, so Christians basically just make a bunch of demands and expose you to an infohazard and consequently sent to hell instead of just letting you live your life on your terms and getting a milder punishment) if God knows all the hairs on your head. Shouldn't that entail knowledge of how neurons would activate and respond to Christianity.

From there came a thought of the bible not needing to acknowledge that because it was divinely inspired by people who wouldn't know what neurons were, and that this was fine. There's another quote about Jesus telling the disciples to not punish someone performing miracles in his name, so there might be some type of pluralism permitted on unmentioned questions while stuff already answered shouldn't be questioned.

There is a concern about some type of heretical thinking, in people elevating their own interpretations solely because of shoehorning and appeal to ignorance.

Additionally, there's the question of why divine inspiration doesn't create a full or consistent message. Like supposedly God created neurons but just didn't create an answer for them, just something church elders would have to retcon into the bible by themselves. Why not reveal this stuff already to people? The only problem I can think of is the book becoming bigger, and even then there are monks who would dedicate their lives to reading the whole thing any way, assuming that an exhaustive argument would take over a decade to read. Better yet, God could turn a woman into salt, he couldn't at minimum mark a child to be the next pope or something to do so little as fill in the gaps?

Catholic Struggles When Pressed for Good Reasons to Believe

Catholic Stumped Trying to Philosophically Defend God

Catholic Priest Called Jimmy Snow + Matt Dillahunty! (Was his faith shaken?) 

Hosts WRECK Catholic Caller's Hypocrisy Regarding Loyalty 

Catholic Caller Claims Miracles Prove God's Existence

Anonymous Christian Gets EVISCERATED Defending Resurrection: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAkg6Ef0xvo

A miracle some Catholics hold as true is that of San Galgano. There are two here and I'll number them; the second is of more interest to me than the first, though, as that one can still be seen today.

Quick background: a ruthless and materialistic youth set to be a knight saw visions of the archangel Michael, Jesus, Mary, and the apostles, and wanted to commit to a life of servitude as a hermit. Iirc this vision also gave him information of where this new life was to happen. He wants to start this immediately, but his mother convinces him to see his betrothed one last time. (1) On the way to her house, his horse suddenly changes direction and ignores his commands to go in another direction, instead running to and stopping at the hill Galgano saw in his vision.

He thinks it will be hard to renounce all materialist things for this servitude, to which something supernatural (I'm assuming God) said that no, for you it will be easy. Galgano replies by saying it will be as easy as driving a sword into rock and to prove his point, tries to do just that. (2) Instead of the sword bouncing off or getting dented the way he expected, it cleanly stabbed into the rock all the way to the bottom easily, almost as if it wasn't rock at all. In the end, only 2-3 inches of the sword plus the hilt were left outside of it.

There's an explanation from the Archaeological Institute of America as to why the sword was seemingly impossible to take out (it was simply stuck, at least that was the case until 1924 when lead was put in). I'm more concerned about how it got there in the first place. For the sake of argument, it happened more or less the way it is presently narrated; I'm not excluding intentional hoax or other supernatural things other than the Catholic God being the one enabling this, etc. but I would prefer to not have to fall back on those as none feel stronger than just saying it was an actual miracle (can we not debate this statement of mine?).

You can't, as far as I know, stab a sword clean through rock by natural means, regardless of whether the rock is categorized as "soft" or "hard" (in this case, I'm having a difficult time finding the rock the sword's in, but the first I saw was sandstone. You may be able to cut depending on the type, but not stab). To do such a thing would require a durable sword that won't dent, bend, or break, incredible strength that can actually push the sword through (whether its supernatural or almost supernatural but still natural strength is up to you), and a rock type that is soft enough to be cut through like this and will actually be cut through as opposed to shattering upon impact.

(Edit: removed some words I thought unnecessary)

I was raised Catholic. Irish Catholic.

When I was a preteen I remember being lectured that suicide was straight to hell. Only God could take life.

Now I was never suicidal but that set me thinking how could one cheat the system. My cunning plan was to take slow acting poison, then go to confession and confess to having killed yourself. The priest would then give you absolution, clean soul, off to heaven with you.

The priest would not even be allowed to call emergency services to save you because that would break the seal of confession.

Any flaws in my dastardly plan to exploit a loophole in canon law?

Unfortunately I'm now not completely convinced that reincarnation is invalid. It's a no no there also as you lose the lessons life should have thought you and mess up many future incarnations.

Can't think of any clever loopholes. Any (ex) Buddhists or Hindus got a cunning plan?

https://www.reddit.com/r/antitheistcheesecake/comments/16hemfw/i_love_eucharistic_miracles/

Basically, one book from cardiologist Franco Serafini said that one eucharist miracle was fake but the rest are totally real, there's supposedly no other scientific explanation besides "Jesusdidit", and any opposition to thinking bread has blood in it is supposedly a conspiracy and sealioning, none of these complaints being strawman points, for reasons.

https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/34727/was-there-a-molecular-test-of-lanciano-and-buenos-aires-eucharistic-miracles

And then this one has commenter Bakuriu claiming that Linoli somehow vindicated the Lanciano miracle that Serafini's book pointed out had documentation on mummy's stuffed into it, and an atheist writing an article for the BBC that supposedly says the Vatican is rigorous in declaring things miracles.

Seriously, people who call other people "cheesecakes" for knowing that bread doesn't poof into blood because a kid diddler says magic words can't be right, especially when they want to instill an authoritarian moral system that they can't even follow all the way. There's got to be someone who criticized this mess we call Eucharist miracles.

Edit: Thanks for the help.

Hey Guys - I am a Catholic convert and have gotten a lot of positive feedback from like minded people on a podcast about Saints I recently created. However, I was thinking that I may be able to get, perhaps, the most honest feedback from you all given you are ex-Catholic and likely have a different perspective.

I won’t be offended and would truly appreciate any feedback you may have.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/0r24YKsNV84pX2JXCCGnsF?si=xoFjte6qRY6eXUC5pGbzlQ

Okay so this seems to me to be scientific proof of Catholicism

To answer two common objections

How does this prove the Catholic Church? I think clearly if there are supernatural occurances that line up with a core tenant of Catholic teaching then it provides substancial evidence for the reality Catholicism. I think that a conspiracy seems quite far fetched one would have to believe someone high up in the Church provided substancial money to make this happen.

The people aren’t trustworthy enough: I think the text below answers that

Sokolka, Poland (2008)

The first Eucharistic phenomenon we will discuss occurred at St. Anthony of Padua Church in Sokolka, Poland. On October 12, 2008, a priest placed a host (a piece of consecrated bread) in a container of water after it had fallen to the ground. Consecrated hosts that become dirtied are usually dissolved in this way so that they can be poured into a sacrarium for disposal. Sister Julia Dubowska, the parish sacristan, placed the container in the sacristy’s safe. One week later, she was astonished to find in the container a red substance connected to a partially dissolved host, and she quickly informed the other priests.

After 18 days of submersion in water, the tissue and the associated host were moved to a linen corporal and left to dry. In January 2009, the archbishop asked two anatomical pathologists from the Medical University of Bialystok to examine the tissue. Professor Maria Elżbieta Sobaniec-Łotowska and Professor Stanislaw Sulkowski were both highly respected pathologists in their university who had each published dozens of research articles in peer-reviewed journals. Sobaniec-Łotowska took a small sample of the red portion, along with its connection to the host, and gave half of it to Sulkowski for microscopic analysis. He was not told of its origins at first so that he could independently analyze the tissue without prior biases. The professors each came to the same conclusion after inspecting the tissue with both light and electron microscopy: The samples were heart muscle.

The Polish newspaper Nasz Dziennik interviewed Sobaniec-Łotowska and Sulkowski in December 2009. The following is an excerpt from that interview:

Sulkowski: If we put the Communion wafer in the water, in the normal course of events it should dissolve in a short time. In this case, however, part of the Communion, for some incomprehensible reason, did not dissolve. Moreover, what is even more incomprehensible—the tissue that appeared on the Communion was tightly connected to it—infiltrating the substrate on which it was formed. Take my word for it that even if someone had intended to manipulate it, he would not have been able to connect the two structures so inseparably.

Sulkowski found two things astounding about this sample. First, the Communion wafer, which contains only flour and water, did not decompose after 18 days of submersion in water. Second, the bread and cardiac muscle tissues were intricately interwoven in a way that would be impossible to accomplish through human manipulation.

Sobaniec-Łotowska: This remarkable phenomenon of the intermingling of the Communion and the fibers of the heart muscle observed in both light microscopes and transmission electron microscopy also demonstrates to me that there could be no human interference here. In addition, please note another unusual phenomenon. The Communion stayed in the water for a long time, and then even longer on the corporal. Thus, the tissue that appeared in the Communion should have undergone a process of autolysis [a type of necrosis or tissue death]. Examining the collected material, we found no such changes. I think that at the current stage of development of knowledge, we are not able to explain the studied phenomenon solely based on natural science.

Transmission electron microscopy can be used to visualize incredibly small details, including viral particles and atoms. After using this exquisitely sensitive tool, Sobaniec-Łotowska agreed with Sulkowski’s assessment of the interwoven fibers. This integration could not have been achieved by any human craft. She also affirmed that the cardiac tissue should have decomposed in water, yet it remained intact without any signs of degradation.

Because of these astonishing findings, Sobaniec-Łotowska and Sulkowski were formally reprimanded by their university and accused of carrying out “illegal” and “disloyal” investigations that incorporated the “emotional” aspect of their Catholic faith (Serafini chapter 4). A tabloid magazine article speculated that the red substance might have been bacterial contamination with Serratia marcescens, even though these rod-shaped bacteria look nothing like heart tissue under the microscope. The president of the Polish Rationalist Association even initiated a frivolous lawsuit calling for a criminal investigation for murder since the heart tissue must have come from someone.

Sulkowski defended what he did (Serafini chapter 4):

We have the duty to investigate every scientific problem… Just as a doctor cannot refuse to care for a patient, likewise, we have the duty to research every scientific problem, according to the guidelines of the Polish Academy of Sciences.

Yet their report led to more questions than answers. Where did the heart muscle come from? Why didn’t the heart tissue decompose after 18 days in water? How did the muscle and host become so intertwined that two experts independently concluded that a human could not have fabricated it? Science cannot currently offer satisfactory answers to these questions.

It is natural then to consider fraud. Only two people had keys to the safe with the transformed host, but let’s imagine that someone got access and wished to publicize a miracle to garner attention. It’s difficult to envision such a person going to the trouble—if they even had the ability—to fabricate a piece of heart tissue interwoven with bread in the anticipation that it would later be examined under an electron microscope.

Reporting these scientifically inexplicable findings only harmed their professional reputations at their university, so Sobaniec-Łotowska and Sulkowski lack any obvious motive for colluding or falsifying their strange results when they were already respected for publishing traditional journal articles. On the contrary, their rigorous approach convinced them to stand by their objective findings despite the surrounding controversy. Their results highlight both the usefulness of science in confirming a tissue’s identity and the limits of our current knowledge of science to explain everything. If one believes, as the Church does, that this event was a Eucharistic miracle, these mystifying findings are part of the miracle.

Professor Maria Sobaniec-Łotowska Medical University of Bialystok

Research Gate (129 publications)

Dr. Barbara Engel, a cardiologist on the Legnica ecclesiastical committee

He says he is a former atheist that his spent 1,000s of hours studying Catholicism.

His website is saintbeluga.org

“Hi, I'm the author of saintbeluga.org.

Where did you find that supposed paper for Sokolka, Poland 2008? AFAIK that's the only one of the 5 events where the researchers involved in the investigations did not publicly release a formal paper (they gave interviews instead where they described the results). Perhaps you found a paper authored by someone else?

You also mentioned several times the lack of peer reviews and appearance in scientific publications. See the section of my article titled "Where are the triple-blind studies and peer reviews?":

Triple-blind studies, by definition, involve repeatable experiments. Eucharist miracles, on the other hand, are one-off events that cannot be deliberately recreated or instigated for study. Likewise, the peer review process is designed for experiments that can be independently reproduced and observed. Since Eucharistic miracles are singular events and not repeatable, they don't fit into this framework of scientific scrutiny. Although various reputable, independent researchers and laboratories have analyzed the reported miracles as mentioned throughout this article, their examinations are not the same as replicating the entire event, which is a fundamental aspect of traditional scientific peer review.”

We’ve all heard about the abuse scandals in the Church and it should be easy for anyone to see what these are so damaging to the victims.

Since leaving the Church I’ve been able to clearly see that some of the teachings themselves (particularly around sex) are explicitly abusive. The one thing every Catholic is affected by is the prohibition of self-pleasure (a normal healthy human thing). Threatening people with hell for doing something harmless with their own body, then on top of that demanding a person tell an adult male (particularly in the case of women and children) when and how many times they’ve done it is so appallingly creepy I can’t believe I ever let myself be subjected to it.

So I guess my question is, if a practicing Catholic is even able to engage with the topic? Is the Church’s violation of boundaries so complete that we can’t see the abuse being done to us? It seems like some people are able to do this better than others. Perhaps having anxiety or OCD makes one more vulnerable to manipulation?

According to Catholic doctrine, homosexual actions are immoral because they "close the sexual act to the gift of life" and violate the natural law (CCC 2357). This is because sex has two teloi in the Catholic cosmos, namely procreation and the unification of a married couple (see Humanae vitae and Pius XII's 1951 Address to Midwives). At least on paper, the Church's opposition to homosexuality stems from this philosophical commitment to teleological sexual ethics.

However, I can see no such reason to oppose people of the same sex kissing. The mouth has no end that is frustrated by kissing, and showing love through the lips is not an inherently sexual act. People kiss to make their intangible affection tangible, among other reasons, something that homosexual couples are just as capable of doing as heterosexual couples. I don't see anything consistently sinful about it, at least from a natural law point of view. If, however, we are to condemn gay romance as not necessarily sinful but rather a near occasion of sin, should we also condemn tasty food as a near occasion of gluttony and driving as a near occasion for sins against the fifth commandment? Both are good things that make people far more likely to engage in sinful behaviour (overeating and injuring themselves or another with a vehicle, respectively).

Maybe I'm missing something, but does the Catholic prohibition on chaste queer romance basically boil down to ensconced homophobia?

Why do you have to agree with everything the Church teaches when the Church has been wrong?

For example, the Church has changed its stance on burning heretics (Joan of Arc is a good example), slavery, usury, among other things. If the Church wasn't wrong and it was just a matter of conforming with the times, then why did Pope John Paull II apologize for two of these? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_apologies_made_by_Pope_John_Paul_II What's stopping the Church from changing more things in the future? If the Church were to change its position on birth control (a rule that comes from the Old Testament (a book we don't follow anymore) be fruitful and multiply), LGBT marriage (again, also from a book we don't follow), or even mandatory Sunday Mass, would you not feel even a little betrayed or spiteful after how many years you've followed their rules?

What about your conscience? The Catholic Church tells you that you must always follow your conscience. What about when your conscience tells you to go against one of the Church's rules? For example, if your doctor tells you that pregnancy is dangerous for you and it may lead to death and suggests a hysterectomy, your conscience might agree with them. After all, God tells you to be prudent and to take care of your health. However, the Catholic Church teaches that you cannot have a hysterectomy to prevent a potentially dangerous pregnancy ( https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-vatican-says-maybe-to-hysterectomies#:\~:text=In%20this%20case%2C%20according%20to,intervene%20to%20save%20the%20pregnancy. ). Instead, you can use NFP (which has a high rate of failure, especially during the first year) and abortion is permitted in case of certain death to the mother. If you acted according to her conscience and disobeyed the Catholic Church by getting a hysterectomy, you would still be required to make a confession before receiving communion, even though you obeyed the Church in following your conscience. Doesn't this sound a little off?

Why do ex catholic atheist love to use moral arguments against CC when you can't substantiate a objective morality? You can feel like something is bad but you can't say IT IS BAD(as a truth) so its just meaningless.

How to stop worry about the possibility of the catholic church being true?

Catholic apologists’ arguments unlike protestants’ arguments, catholic church’s connection to history unlike protestantism, it being more consistent than protestantism, etc.

I’m saying “unlike protestantism” a lot because most of the ex-christians criticize christianity over protestantism’s arguments and not catholicism’s. Catholic church was a source of pain for me in my last days of christianity; I'm an ex-protestant. It just popped up in my mind for some time, so I wanted to ask about it.

Thanks folks.

I am an excatholic, I am trying to deconstruct moral system I used to believe in, and I've come across an opinion in several catholic spaces that obedience is supposed to be one of the highest virtues. I am trying to give them some benefit of the doubt, but I still find it revolting that obedience should be a virtue, let alone one of the highest.

I am not emotionally impartial in this, because, while I was catholic, a lot of priests convinced me that I can't trust myself, that I can't trust my conscience, that I can only rely on teaching of the catholic church. And it really messed with my head. I now feel like I was gaslighted and it had negative effects on my mental health.

I am trying to discern what morals have merit, since I don't want to just act on my emotions and what feels good. But obedience being a virtue just feels like a control tactic. Am I wrong?

In my opinion, the only situation, when obedience could be considered a virtue, is with children obeying their parents. (But only if parents are not abusive) Because children don't have quite developed morals and critical thinking and can't take care of themself. But in all other situations it feels wrong. I don't know how to put into words why, though.

I don't know. Am I wrong in this?

I'm currently Catholic and trying to become an ex-Catholic, I've just been facing so many appeals to love and caring from Catholic friends and one priest I know who both treat me really sweetly and claim God's love is best above anything else while also hounding me not to transition (I'm trans). So I'm hoping someone can help me understand--if you left Catholicism, what is your definition of love now? And do you still believe in "love your enemies"? I want to keep believing in things like restorative justice and anti-death penalty but I don't know how to think about it now.

Can someone explain how Catholics make sense of this sacrament. So god will only forgive your mortal sin if you practice this sacrament which is going into a room with another sinner telling him your sins then he decides what your penance should be to be forgiven by god and then he absolves you.