I was baptized a Catholic when I was about a month old. I went on to “receive” my First Holy Communion (at age 7, wearing a red mini-dress and fishnet stockings), after which I declared myself an atheist, and that was that. I was pulled from weekly religion classes and didn’t darken a church doorway again for decades.

Fast-forward nearly 30 years. I was born again on a deserted beach in South Australia. Knowing next to nothing about Christianity, I figured I was still somehow a Catholic, so I started attending Catholic mass every day (twice on Sundays) and was “confirmed” (a Catholic rite of passage) a few years later. I even considered becoming a nun.

Then one day while I was sitting all alone in a church after mass, God opened my eyes to the truth about Catholicism (that it’s not Christianity), and within a minute I was out the door. That was 16 years ago and haven’t been back since.

Here’s what God showed me that day: I was not in his house; this was not God’s house: it was a pagan (demon) temple, and the statues of “saints” that people were bowing down to and praying to and lighting candles to were idols, and the worst idol of all was the massive crucifix hanging over the altar.

CRUCIFIXATION

Catholics are taught to “venerate” the crucifix. They are taught to bow down to it, kiss it, touch it, and to have at least one in their homes. Ideally, they should also wear one around their necks at all times.

But what is a crucifix? It is an artist’s depiction of a nearly naked Jesus in his death throes. He is splayed across two crossed pieces of wood, his hands and feet impaled by crude nails and his skull crushed and bleeding under a makeshift “crown” of thorns. He is in complete and utter agony. It is by far the worst moment of his life.

And yet this is the moment that the Catholic powers-that-be have chosen as the symbol to represent the Catholic Church.

That right there is all you need to know about Catholicism.

CATHOLICS ARE OK

I have nothing against most Catholics. I identified as one for three and a half years. Catholics became my friends, as did priests and deacons. I became so involved in the life of the last church I attended and was there so often, I was given a key so I could come and go as I pleased. I felt at home in the building. I was taught that God lived in a box at the side of the altar, and I believed it. I was taught to pray to angels, and I believed it. I was taught that the pope was “infallible” when he made certain communiques, and I believed it. I believed everything I was told because that’s what good Catholics do, and I wanted more than anything else to be a good Catholic. Catholicism (I had been taught) is the One True Church, so that’s the church I wanted to belong to…

…until one day I had grown enough as a Christian to want to do God’s will more than  than anything else, and I asked God to take out of my life anything that was keeping me from doing it. That’s when he showed me the truth about Catholicism.

CLICK

A few months after leaving Catholicism, I called the Archdiocese of Toronto and asked to be excommunicated. The secretary who answered the phone (God love her) was very polite to me and explained that excommunication is bestowed, not requested. I suggested that the church could make a lot of money if it offered excommunication on demand. There was silence on the other end of the line which I interpreted as disagreement with my suggestion, and then the nice Catholic lady hung up on me.

SMASH ‘EM DOWN

Crucifixes need to come down. There needs to be a revival of iconoclasm. I believe crucifixes are already in the process of coming down, so we born-agains don’t need to do it; God himself is doing it. Every time a church is demolished because there are too few parishioners to support it or another government building is “secularized” and all symbols of faith are removed, the inner iconoclast in me smiles.

JUST IMAGINE

Catholics are taught that the crucifix represents God’s love for us. Imagine if your child was in a car crash and had burned to death. Imagine if someone at the scene of the accident took a picture of your child just before he died, capturing your baby’s final seconds when he was writhing in agony in the midst of the flames. Now imagine that you take that picture, blow it up to life-size, and plaster it across your living room wall. Perhaps you also have a miniature made of it, which you wear around your neck. Or maybe you go all out and get a life-size statue made of the car wreck, complete with roaring flames, and mount it on your front lawn. If anyone asks, you tell them it represents your love for your dead child.

Now imagine not being involuntarily locked up in a lunatic asylum for doing this. And yet Catholicism has been parading the mangled and tortured body of Jesus for hundreds of years and teaching its adherents to do the same.

PRIDE

It is insanity. It is delusion. It is spiritual blindness born of a deep-seated pride in the ritual and pomp of Catholicism that affects every Catholic to a greater or lesser extent. Catholics are not taught to think; they are taught to obey. They are taught that obedience to the Pope is tantamount to obedience to God. To question papal authority is to question God, and how foolish would you be to doubt or question the Almighty God?

NO IDOLS EVER

I do not know the date of my spiritual rebirth. I could look it up on a calendar, but God advises me not to. I remember all the dates of other events of much lesser significance, but I do not know the date of the most important day of my life. God told me that he doesn’t want me to make an idol of that date. God doesn’t want us to make any idol of ANYTHING, least of all an artist’s depiction of Jesus in his death throes. This is one of his Commandments – not to make graven images and not to bow down before them, not to build idols and bow down before them.

It’s like Catholicism purposely does the opposite of everything God tells his people not to do.

SATAN’S TRIUMPH

The crucifix is not the symbol of God’s love for us; it is a depiction of the fleeting moment of Satan’s triumph. This is what is so clearly relayed by that detestable idol that is the centrepiece of every remaining Catholic Church. There is no “God’s love” in that idol; not a whit. There is only mockery and humiliation of the greatest human who ever lived. There is only Satan gloating at the memory of how he forced God’s hand to agree to let Jesus be crucified. Every crucifix that is erected and displayed is another spit and slap in Jesus’ face.

COME TUMBLIN’ DOWN

But ALL crucifixes will come down one day – all of them – just like the walls of Jericho and all the stones in the first and second temples came tumbling down. The Whore of Babylon who rides the beast will be more and more hated until she is completely obliterated, along with her detestable symbol of Satan’s momentary triumph.

That day cannot come soon enough. Hopefully I’ll be excommunicated before the Catholic Church closes up shop for good. That’s one papal communique I’d gladly blow up and plaster across my living room wall.