Why religion stopped working for me

Organized religion stopped working for me quite a while back and yet up until the pandemic struck I was still attending Catholic Mass every Sunday. It had become lifelong habit so why stop even if I had reservations about dome of the orthodoxy. There was still something soothing about attending especially within the confines of a beautiful 19th century basilica.

The essential Christian message of love of neighbor and charity is certainly relevant and yet much of the rest ended up being wrapping paper which for me distracted from the essential core. Plus the position on LGBTQ people was very much less than stellar. It amounted to one of barely tolerance as opposed to embracing on an equal footing.

Churches have hierarchy within them in with that comes conflict and difference of opinion. It used to be less marked that there were such things as left and right wing Catholics but in fact there were. Some on the right adopted more intolerant stances which mirrored political positions of the parties they supported. As a free thinker it was not working for me any longer to simply attend a service out of respect for precedent.

I don't know what lies well beyond our limitations as human beings but I prefer to reflect on that outside of a box that increasingly did not provide me with the sustenance I needed but instead increasingly pointed towards our petty failings.