Summary

The author reflects on their personal journey from a Roman Catholic upbringing to embracing their transgender identity, critiquing religious zealotry and advocating for a more inclusive and loving spirituality.

Abstract

The author, who grew up Roman Catholic in 1960s New York City, shares their disillusionment with the Church due to its failures and return to extreme zealotry. They recount their own struggle with gender identity, having been conditioned by their community to suppress their transgender identity until a personal revelation at age 60. The piece underscores the author's rejection of organized religion's dogmatic inequalities and their embrace of a more personal, accepting form of spirituality centered on the principle of loving one's neighbor. The author expresses pity for zealots, whose hearts they believe are closed off by righteous anger, and they choose to align with a more open and humorous interpretation of divine acceptance, as symbolized by the "Wrong Religion" gate at the Pearly Gates.

Opinions

The Church's failures, including child abuse scandals, fiscal mismanagement, and a return to extreme zealotry, have led to a loss of believers.
Organized religions often preach equality but practice a hierarchy of worthiness, which the author finds both arrogant and ignorant.
The author's personal experience with gender dysphoria and the repressive teachings of the Catholic Church have been profoundly damaging.
Zealotry is not unique to religious institutions; it can be found within the LGBTQ community as well, where it manifests as a lack of compassion and understanding.
The author feels sorry for zealots, perceiving their small-heartedness as a source of their anger and intolerance.
The author's spirituality is now centered on love and acceptance, free from the constraints of organized religion.
Writing serves as a therapeutic outlet for the author, helping them process their transition and aiming to reduce the loneliness felt by other transgender individuals.
The author's writings also seek to foster understanding and acceptance of transgender people by cisgender individuals, emphasizing that trans people desire to be treated as normal people.

My God Feels Sorry for Religious Zealots

A return to a zealotry bordering on the Spanish Inquisition

“Zealot”: a person who is fanatical and uncompromising in pursuit of their religious, political, or other ideals.

“Religious Zealot”: is person who has ruined religion by using it for his own personal gain and to make him seem like (s)he’s better than non-religious people. — Urban Dictionary

I grew up Roman Catholic New York City in the 1960s. The Church has changed little in the intervening years other than losing thousands of believers to claims of child abuse, fiscal mismanagement, a gross misunderstanding of the spiritual needs of its communities and, in some cases, a return to a zealotry bordering on the Spanish Inquisition.

If you can’t get their loyalty through leadership, beat them into submission or brutally drive them away. Oh and by the way, don’t forget to drop your money envelope in the church box on the way out.

Hmmmm, I don’t think that this was ever God’s plan.

Every organized religion, whether Catholic, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, or Protestant all seem to subscribe to an Animal Farm-like dogma of: “We are all equal in the eyes of God, but some are more equal than others.”

How sadly arrogant and immensely ignorant it all is.

A friend once told me a joke about God and St. Peter standing side by side at the Pearly Gates of Heaven. There were two entries, one said, “The Right Religion” and the other said, “The Wrong Religion.” The line for the Right Religion had a line of souls that stretched into the un-seeable distance. The Wrong Religion had no line at all. God turned to St. Peter and said with a sigh, “They never get the joke.”

I lived my adult life simply ignoring the Church.

I didn’t want to be a hypocrite. I attended weddings and funerals but stayed in my neutral corner and kept my beliefs to myself. I felt that religious beliefs are private and personal. If God is so complex as to be beyond human reason, I didn’t have the arrogance to believe my perception of God was the right one.

That all worked for me until at age 60 I realized that I was actually a member of the LGBTQ community. I finally understood that I was transgender. The Catholic world I grew up in pretty much governed my community and had successfully conspired to convince me at an early age that my sense of gender was a sin — that no one would accept me as I was born. In order to survive and be accepted I had to suppress and hide who I was. It started from the time I learned there were only two genders at age 5 until that ignorance and repression finally blew up, nearly killing me at age 60.

My religion and my community had brainwashed me so thoroughly.

Zealotry exists everywhere, even in the LGBTQ community. The zealots attack with vicious vigor and an absolute abandonment of compassion, understanding and love. Their righteous anger is all they want and all they want to know.

I feel sorry for them.

A LGBTQ friend once told me: “You should feel sorry for them because their hearts are so small.”

I agree.

I have come too far to allow my heart to become small like theirs. I refuse to hate. I feel pity.

My spirituality is more free form right now. It is centered on the concept of simply love thy neighbor. Everything else follows from that.

I choose to enter the gate that says, “Wrong Religion” and share a laugh with my God and St. Peter.

I now get the joke.

Emma Holiday

Writers note: If you have read any of my writings on Medium you will have noticed a definite theme: the incredible pain of gender dysphoria and all the difficult aspects of just being transgender.

My writing has three specific goals:

1. Writing is my therapy. I have a very limited outlet for my thoughts so I write to find a way to process the most profound experience in my life. I need to understand and I need to accept myself to move forward.

2. Being transgender, for me, is a very lonely existence and if I can share some of the things that I feel and think as I go through the process of transitioning with others who are transgender and, in some way, lessen their pain and sense of loneliness, then all of this public exposure of my personal thoughts is not a waste.

3. I write to help cisgender people understand that all trans people want is to be simply understood, accepted and treated as a normal person. We are.

Thank you for reading my work.

Please also read:

The Transgender Pain

The Pain

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