Received 8.27.2001

Many people who find themselves at odds with their faith have the comfortable option of slowly distancing themselves from their childhood religion. I think this becomes much more difficult in the more ritualized and demanding religions such as Catholicism. You may be familiar with the Catholic ritual of Confirmation, where a "conscious adult" of about 13 chooses to become a full member of the Church. While this seems like an intelligent and fair option, as a Catholic I've found the opposite to be true. People become members of the religion at infancy through Baptism, and Confirmation is in practice merely another required ritual. On the expectations of my relatives and family, I recently became a confirmed Catholic. As a closet Atheist, I can't help but feel guilty at having initiated myself forever into a religion I never really had a choice about.

Refusing to be confirmed could be hurtful to my family and relatives and probably end up labeling me as a rebellious and ungrateful little kid- and I've never known anyone to pass up being confirmed. Still, I feel bad that I now indirectly support this religion by becoming another statistic- a counted member of the Catholic Church. Perhaps other people have not mentioned their Atheism because they knew this fact about me. I just thought this was an important subject to raise about "closet Atheism" and I wondered what advice you have.

My Reply:

Since people are typically baptized as infants with no awareness of what they are committing to, the idea of having adults confirm their devotion to God seems like a good one.  Unfortunately the Catholic Church has picked too young of an age for this ritual to serve the purpose it was intended for.  The decision to be confirmed should be made independently, outside the influence of family, teachers and priests.  At what age can this be done?  Perhaps at twenty or maybe even older.

If you had not already been confirmed I would have suggested you tell your parents or priest that since you take the meaning of the confirmation ceremony seriously, you want to wait until you are ready; that you need time to think through your doubts so you won't feel like a hypocrite.

It seems like there are a vast number of atheists who were formerly Catholic.  I don't have the statistics to know whether this group represents a higher percentage of the atheist population compared to the percentage practicing Catholics make up of the overall religious population, so this is completely subjective.  But, I wonder if the ritualized approach you mention forces Catholics to think more critically about their faith than members of other religions.  Confirmation, while done at too young an age for the participants to truly decline, may still lead some of them to deal with their doubts rather than just mindlessly following their parents to church every Sunday to spend an hour daydreaming.  I wouldn't be surprised if some of your peers who were confirmed with you are wondering if they might be atheists.  They may be wrestling with the initial fear of living in a world without God and choosing not to believe what every person they respect has told them is true.

Thanks for writing.

Reply from another reader.  Received 1.3.2002

Dear Closet Atheist: I just read the email from the young atheist being a confirmed Catholic against his better judgment. He stated that he had no knowledge of young person passing on confirmation. I did and it was a very hard thing for a young girl to do. Still, I am immensely proud of my integrity at that tender age in sticking with my convictions.

I was raised in a protestant church in which 13 year olds are confirmed after one year of weekly confirmation classes. During this year, I grappled hard with the faith of my parents and realized that I just couldn't buy into the God thing. I expressed this to my mother as well as my desire to quit the confirmation classes. She informed me that I needed to be educated about religion in order to reject it and made me continue. I guess 13 years of weekly church and Sunday School, youth fellowship, vacation bible school, church camp, and youth choir had not provided me enough information on religion, fair enough. 

The day of confirmation arrived and I simply refused to enter the sanctuary. My mother cried, the minister had a long talk with me, the other kids in the confirmation class treated me like a circus freak. I'm sure the entire congregation knew of my refusal to be confirmed. One of the girls in my class pleaded me to just go through with it since I had made it that far. There was a stony silence in our house for several weeks after that and I was still required to attend church for the next several years. Needless to say, I brought a lot of negative attention to myself that I could have avoided by going through the motions. However, if I had it to do over, I would still refuse confirmation. That was over 25 years ago and I've never had one glimmer of religious belief in all that time.