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I wouldn’t take that question as needling Mrs. Don-o and I’m happy to answer it.

I’m assuming you mean the Catholic church. If my assumption is wrong please let me know. No, I was never a member of the Catholic church so that’s not what I left or what I was referring to.

I became a christian in a small independent baptist church. Years later we moved to Florida where I found another similar church for us to join. We were very active and I even served a term as a deacon and attended a seminary and received my Master’s degree. Then the preaching subtley started changing to focus more and more on don’t do this or don’t do that instead of preaching jesus christ crucified. It became more and more apparent to me that the pastor was using the faith of the attendees against them and becoming more and more controlling.

One night I went and talked to him about what I was seeing and what my thoughts were. Of course he disagreed with my take and tried to manipulate me by telling me I must have some hidden sin I was trying to run from or some such. I told him I had heard enough and that the previous Sunday was the last time my family and I would be there.

I spent months looking for a new church home but they were all the same. I even tried different denominations to no avail. What I found is that there is a severe lack of love in modern american churches. I may not know a lot of things and I may have forgotten a lot of things but one thing I’ll never forget is that Jesus preached love and freedom to sinners. He reserved his most harsh speech to those who tried to use religion for their own purposes.

That is why I gave up organized religion. And years later my conscience is still clear.