Leaving The Church And Finding The Word Of Nerd

I recently read a statistic that claims 80 percent of millennial Catholics leave the church by the age of 23. I’m not sure exactly when I officially became one of them, but it was somewhere in that 16-21 age range. By the time I was legally an adult, I had already spent 15 years wearing a uniform to school everyday, saying prayers before almost every class, and getting my daily dose of Catholic guilt with every meal. I attended the same predominantly-Black Catholic grammar school on Chicago’s Southside as my mother, aunt, and half a dozen cousins. And, like almost all of them, I chose to stay in that system for four more years and attended a “co-institutional” Catholic high school. I was even confirmed, which is comparable to a Catholic version of a bar mitzvah. [quote_right]When I graduated from high school, I was already well-trained in the art of religious autopilot.[/quote_right]When I graduated from high school, I was already well-trained in the art of religious autopilot. Checking off the different steps of the service we’d need to get through before everyone filed out had become second nature. Then I was able to attend a public university where I wasn’t being woken up every Sunday morning with the groans that come with forcing a kid to go to 8 o’clock mass. I finally had a choice. And, after a few forced attempts at going to church with friends – including the horror of visiting a “traditional” Catholic church – I decided to leave altogether.

I now identify as agnosti…