I’m not misspeaking when say that I’m leaving Catholicism, rather than saying I’ve already left it. Though I was confirmed in the Episcopal Church two years ago and joined my local congregation a year before that, this whole thing remains ongoing. I’m still leaving Catholicism.
It’s been a movement from one thing to another; it’s a pilgrimage on a route that’s ever-changing yet ever life-giving; it’s a transformation that has affected the very depths of my being.
This has all been a verb rather than a noun, an ongoing action rather than a definitive state of being. While I’ve come a long way in the last three years, I still oftentimes look back to see what I’ve left, or more accurately, what I’m still leaving.
Being Catholic was something fundamental to my identity from the moment I was born beginning with my name, chosen by my mom who was inspired by John the Baptist and John the Evangelist. For her, the witness of these two scriptural figures were signs of hope for my future, whether predestining my character or keeping fingers crossed that I’d at least stay out of trouble.
Before my first birthday, I was already baptized—in the same cathedral-parish where my mom and dad were married four years prior in my hometown of Osamiz City. The three of us, at different points in our lives, were marked by the church under the same statue of Mary, the Immaculate Conception, while towered behind the altar, dwarfing even the nearly six-foot frame of my dad.
From then on, the Filipino Catholicity that marked the entirety of my childhood and adolescence was characterized by ritual and space—action and location. Even when we moved to the United States, first to central Kentucky and then to the East Bay in California, we always managed to find and settle in communities of Filipino-Catholics whose lives were likewise grounded in that same duality of ritual and space.
Nearing the dawn of the new year during Advent, we would anticipate the hanging of parols around the sanctuary which would bring light to the early morning darkness of Simbang Gabi mass. The drama of Holy Week was intensified by the chanting of the choir in Tagalog and images of Hesus Nazareno—the Black Nazarene. Everything beyond and in between was marked by statues and novenas, votive candles and chaplets, rosaries and confessionals.
This entanglement of Catholic piety and Filipino culture is not foreign to countless other Filipinos and Filipino-Americans who grew up believing that to be Filipino was to be a Catholic. As fallacious as this is, it was nonetheless the reality to those of us who were too young to know better, let alone do anything about it.
But with age comes an increase in consciousness, of awareness, of curiosity, of questions, of doubt. With age, I came to realize that I could do something about this, whether taking it on myself or casting it to the wayside.
First Communion and everything that came with it—First Confession held in the “Cry Room” intended for parents and their babies, a lackluster field trip to the sacristy where the deacon extolled the splendor of his vestments, and a children’s rosary gathering where nearly everyone fidgeted with the prayer beads they were given—came and went without much fanfare.
The ritual and space that once made such an indelible mark on my psyche began to waver and lose its luster. I was cognizant of what I was doing, but that didn’t really translate into knowing why.
Credit for surfacing my faith after a brief period of agnosticism in late-elementary and early-middle school falls to Robert Barron—then a priest and now bishop whose YouTube videos commentating on culture, spanning films like Gran Torino to music such the discography of Bob Dylan through a distinctly Catholic lens shifted my understanding of the faith from ritual and space to include reason—the life of the mind.
I grew to recognize that faith wasn’t merely about feeling, but thinking as well, embracing the mind just as much as we do the heart and seeing God in both.
Through Barron’s videos and the work he did through his ministry Word on Fire, I grew in zeal as I began to read works by early church figures such as Origen and Augustine, medieval scholars like Erasmus and Aquinas, and figures from the last century including Ratzinger, von Balthasar, Wojtyla, and Rahner.
However, with this increase in intellectualism came with exposure to other Catholic outlets that were far more focused on proselytizing than preaching. These apologists would give life and limb in defense of the faith—in their minds, the One True Faith—from which there should be no dissent or disagreement. Existing in a space where there were equally as many people who wanted to close the Church’s doors as those who wished to open them caused a great deal of spiritual vertigo. However, that vertigo would only intensify with time to the point where it could no longer be ignored.
Some believe that intense study of the Catholic Church’s teachings and history can do nothing else but compel a person to cross the Tiber and embrace Rome in all its splendor and truth. I am evidence that that is not at all the case, all for my own reasons.
Awareness begat discontent and criticism rather than submission and agreement. Opposition to the ordination of women as deacons and priests was inconsistent with the scriptural witnesses of Mary Magdalene and Priscilla, denunciation of queer identity was inconsistent with proper historical and scriptural understandings particularly statements by Paul and the narrative of Sodom and Gomorrah, and the primacy of Peter—the basis for the papacy—seemed to be a misconstrual of Jesus’ commission and a bastardization of ecclesiology.
Theological disagreements came with social and ethical disagreements—the Church’s aforementioned stances on women’s ordination and queerness were joined alongside its opposition to abortion, historical complicity in colonization and genocide, the clerical sex abuse crisis encompassing crime and cover-up, and financial corruption within and beyond the Vatican—that sowed sadness and dissent in me.
Hypocrisy, lies, and bigotry led me to desire more for myself—someone who still desired God and a community of faith yet refused to remain in a tradition that seemed increasingly inhospitable and hostile to me as a queer person of color.
I’d come out as bisexual to my friends in middle school yet remained closeted to my mom for years until I broke it to her one day, afraid that her Catholicity would bring with it prejudice but surprised at her gracious affirmation of my identity. I’d only wished the Church would have extended that same hospitality to me, an extended hand that welcomed me into its fold without asking me to deny my identity and practice celibacy.
This, coupled with the desire to become a priest that has stayed with me ever since I was a child, led me to realize that I needed a way out—a way to someplace different, someplace new yet the same simultaneously.
By the end of high school, I had already begun to significantly distance myself from Catholicism, hesitantly attending mass within a tradition that condemned the queer relationship I was in, let alone my queer identity. I’d cleaned out my bookshelves of works that were far too militant and closed-minded and replaced them with works authored by a truly diverse array of voices. I knew I needed to leave, for my sake, but didn’t know where that was, until I remembered the handful of books I bought on my Kindle a couple years ago out of curiosity and the parish a couple blocks from my middle school whose grassy lawn was punctuated by a towering wood cross.
The Episcopal Church was birthed from the Anglican tradition, which prides itself on being the Via Media—the Middle Way, embracing the spectrum of Christian theology and practice that has traditionally been binarily defined between Catholic and Protestant. Its theology and practice is one of both/and rather than either/or, an immense sigh of relief for someone who felt suffocated in the constraining walls of Catholicism.
Not only did it see itself as a Christian stew—being made up of an expansive mix of views and practices—but as a mere branch in the broader tree of Christianity. It understood itself to be catholic with a lowercase C, returning the word to its original Greek meaning: universal. Universal in the sense that God is bigger than any singular community or institution, than any strict litany of precisely articulated points, than any set of well-rubriced rituals, than any single figurehead or mode of governance.
Through its grounded in the Three-Legged Stool of scripture, tradition, and reason, the Episcopal and Anglican traditions lend themselves to an approach to faith that looks back with delight and forward with hope—ordaining all people to the priesthood, affirming and marrying queer people, seeking to enact social justice, condemning bigotry in all its forms, calling all to the altar without prerequisite, and empowering lay people to work aside clergy in the governance and service of our faith communities.
I am beyond blessed to have been embraced by the Episcopal branch of the Jesus movement. I can now pursue my dream of becoming a priest in Christ’s church, entering further into this year as an aspirant in the discernment processes. I can now look in hope and joy to marrying my loving partner in a tradition that embraces and affirms our queerness in all its beauty. I can now truly, fearfully, and wonderfully be myself without reservation or compromise.
Each time I create a throne with my hands to receive the consecrated bread, gently turn the moderately-worn pages of my copy of the Book of Common Prayer, and patiently traverse through the labyrinth in Grace Cathedral, I remember where I’ve been, where I am, and where I’m going.
In walking away from something we not only leave that thing behind but move to something new—however clear or unknown it may be. Yet that movement alone is in itself transformative, and the weight of it should not be lost on me.
With any leaving, I still hold on to some things. As baggage, I still bear some guilt for having left the religion of my family and for a vast majority of my fellow Filipinos. I lament not having what I suppose is the strength to have stayed in Catholicism and fought for all those things I believe the Church lacked. But as for what I have kept with me, I remain ever-more devoted to the Blessed Mother whose witness to a liberating love in her fiat inspires me daily, a firm believer in the Real Presence of Christ in the eucharist in which we become what we receive, and an ardent proponent that faith and reason are cooperators in the life of faith rather than hostile opponents.
I leave Catholicism not with resentment but with disappointment and sadness. I leave both with baggage I’ve been burdened to carry and gifts I keep close to my heart. I enter into this new space of faith where God’s presence has become evermore clear and profound. I come with an appreciation that God has given me the ability to exercise my will, and I hope I have used it with thoughtfulness and love.
Leaving Catholicism was and is a decision that uprooted much of what I was taught and lived for my entire life up until three years ago. It is a decision that I, not in the least bit, regret making. It was a decision I made in full consciousness, driven by a steady fear yet a reasonable hope.
There is much that I’ve left unsaid here that I’ll likely share in future posts—and for those of you who have gone on this same pilgrimage of Catholicism, I would love to hear your stories. But if there’s one more thing I want to say right now, it is this: thanks be to God.
John Lee Wagas 
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