Molly: I Didn't Come All This Way for a Persecution Complex

24 May, 2025

In "Ecstasy," my favorite essay from Jia Tolentino's collectoin Trick Mirror (well, maybe tied with "Pure Heroine"), Tolentino writes about her evangelical upbringing at a megachurch in Houston, Texas. "Evangelicals aren't like Calvinists," she writes. "You aren't chosen, or elected - God will forgive you, but you have to work." I did attend a Calvinist church for my formative years, but parts of Tolentino's experience are familiar.

At chapel, we were sometimes shown religious agitprop videos, the worst of which featured a handsome, dark-haired man bidding his young son farewell in a futuristic white chamber, and then, as violins swelled in the background, walking down an endless hall to be executed - martyred for his Christian faith.

Bush era South Carolina is a far cry from chilly, 16th century Geneva. It's hard to completely lose that evangelical twang even if you're modeling your congregation after one of history's harshest iterations of Christianity. It's not just that my church was competing for membership with Southern Baptists and non-denominational warehouses with electric guitars. We all lived under the banner of the hysterical, corny patriotism and xenophobia of the early 2000s. We had a guest speaker do a very special sermon "debunking" anything positive or ecumenical we might have heard about Islam. "Persecution" was invoked often, to talk about real Christians being punished or killed in Africa or Southeast Asia, sure, but mostly about ourselves. We were persecuted for being "in the world but not of the world," for resisting pop culture and trends and behavior that could be filed under the versatile label of "worldly." Persecution was having to look at Hollister ads. Persecution was your ill-timed and socially inadept "witnessing" being rejected or mocked. But persecution was also an abstract loyalty test.

The early 2000s, after all, were not that distant from the late 90s. We didn't know that She Said Yes: The Unlikely Martyrdom of Cassie Bernall was tragically, painfully human in its parental grief, based on false stories and assumptions. We believed that a pretty blonde girl who looked like so many cool teens at youth group was killed for saying she believed in God. Adults asked, and we asked ourselves, would you say yes at gunpoint? I remember multiple sermons involving our pastor - a genteel former attorney who used to be (and this was evidence of his testimony¹) friendly with Bill Clinton! - saying that if someone with a gun came into the sanctuary now, he would keep preaching.

Would you believe that nothing bad ever happened to me because of this religious upbringing from anyone other than myself or people within that church? ¯|(ツ)/¯

Catholicism is primarily about scents, oils, mouth sounds, etc. Whereas Protestantism is about getting planks of wood to meet at perfect 90 degree angles

— Brooks Otterlake (@i_zzzzzz) September 1, 2019

Today I am making my way through a long process that will, by the grace of God, lead to me being accepted into the Catholic Church. I could write, on this blog that <10 people know about, the history of how I left church, how the seeds of my not buying any of its particular brand were there all along, of my courting atheists if not athesim itself, and my eventual slow softening towards a spiritual life again. 1 of those <10 people and my parents know that I've had mentionitis for Catholicism for over a decade. It's not my fault that it's popular now. It is also an unfortunate coincidence that this popularity is happening when the most internationally high profile Catholic converts have Calvinist aura. It's because of them that one of the worst tweets ever gets pulled out so often:

The papal election has kicked off another surge of lazy, anti-convert sentiment. The most smirking avatar'd, elder millennial people online love to post that screenshot or parrot the sentiment. It's mostly lapsed cradle Catholics or rubbernecking atheists, but sometimes you see it from practicing Catholics, too:

I, and I think most converts (who are mostly probably not prolific posters), are one of those "secret third things." I am not becoming Catholic in any way that aligns with political factions that are much younger than the religion. Warping it to be a convservative bludgeon is shameful, but the idea of converting to a religion to "push it where it should be" is staggering in its hubris. Approaching conversion with humility will probably result in harmony with the progressive values of mutual aid and universal human dignity, but it is first and foremost about personal faith. I think I'm not alone in deferring to G.K. Chesterton at this juncture.

The difficulty of explaining “why I am a Catholic” is that there are ten thousand reasons all amounting to one reason: that Catholicism is true. I could fill all my space with separate sentences each beginning with the words, “It is the only thing that…” As, for instance, (1) It is the only thing that really prevents a sin from being a secret. (2) It is the only thing in which the superior cannot be superior; in the sense of supercilious. (3) It is the only thing that frees a man from the degrading slavery of being a child of his age. (4) It is the only thing that talks as if it were the truth; as if it were a real messenger refusing to tamper with a real message. (5) It is the only type of Christianity that really contains every type of man; even the respectable man. (6) It is the only large attempt to change the world from the inside; working through wills and not laws; and so on.

A disclosure though the <10 people reading this already know: of course I am drawn to the aesthetics! If you got through an art history degree without some love for Catholicism you were checked out. When I started going to mass, I was embarrassed at how difficult it was in colder months to put together an outfit that didn't involve a tartan skirt. I like the scents and the sounds and the macabre and always have. Would beauty being the breadcrumb dropped on the ground leading to true faith be such a bad thing? People of all denominations say "the Lord works in mysterious ways" but only the high churches seem to really be ok to, in the words of The Lefovers season 2 and 3 opening song, "let the mystery be."

Many of these anti-convert discourses include how those not raised in the Church will always be imposters because they don't experience Catholic Guilt. Maybe not, but I have experienced protestant shame, a endless loop of wondering whether you're really saved and no confidence in the answer of your own echo. When railing against "papists" or "Rome" my church leaders would speak of how much better it is to have no intercessor but Christ. "A direct line to God." And of course Christ is the ultimate incercessor, but I never saw that argument as an upside. It was lonely and it would be years before I could tap into mental silence enough to actually feel something in the silence (Shusaku Endo is one of my Catholic role models). Confession, as well as a whole legion of intercessing saints, seemed comforting. Guilt is not an unproductive emotion. In the words of Mr. Eristics himself:

Most guilt differs from its intense presentations. In particular, the guilt felt after doing something wrong (characterized by remorse) is a very strong form of the emotion. Day-to-day guilt is characterized by contribution, not atonement.

Guilt drives people to be part of society. It's the foundation for all civilization’s institutions.

The atonement in the sacrament of confession is appealing to me, because guilt has a light at the end of the tunnel that shame does not. It can be abused, and many great Catholic saints and thinkers have cautioned against the false spiritual gift of obsessive scrupulosity. Catholic guilt in the sense of a internal imperative to participate, though - how beautiful! Why would anyone begrudge an outsider their admiration for the community building and tangible good works that Catholicism has always emphasized and excelled at? I can't wait to have some Catholic guilt!

As for not understanding the culture many are born into, I think Catholicism is like New York City. It collapses without both the natives and the transplants. It's universal. It is a home for people who feel they have no home. I am trying my very best not to whine and feel persecuted because it's not a healthy headspace to be in. It is spiritually dehydrating, and I spent years watching people shrink and harden with it. I didn't take conversations about how you needed to live in New York 5, 10, a lifetime years to be a real New Yorker and I'm not going to take this to heart either.