I was raised Catholic. My parents were very devout. We lived across the street from our church. I did house and yardwork for the nuns at the convent and I was an alter boy for 6 years. We had 5 masses, 8AM, 9:30AM, 11AM, 12:30PM and 5PM. If any other alter boy called off or didn't show, the pastor would call me and my parents would make me do it. Sometimes, I'd serve every mass, so that would be my whole Sunday.

I was into it, though. I wanted to be a priest. My parents were so proud everytime I said I was determined to be the first American pope. Somewhere in my teens, I started to have doubts. I was really into science and I saw some inconsistencies in biblical stories and reality.

Around then my older brother became a little rebellious. He still went to church, but he refused to dress up for it. He wore a Harley Davidson T-shirt to church one Sunday and it causes a minor stir among the parishioners. The pastor stopped my brother on the way out and told him to dress more appropriately next time or don't come. My brother never went back. I remember thinking, "would Jesus really care that my brother didn't wear a button down shirt with a collar?"

I got a job working with an old lady at a candy shop. One day she came in upset. She told me that her son-in-law had passed away. As he lay dying, the old woman spotted our pastor in the hallway in the hospital. She asked him to come quickly to read the dying man his last rites. The pastor was irritated and told her to schedule an appointment the next day. Her son-in-law died that night. The woman told be she would never go to that church again.

A few weeks later, as we discussed evolution in biology class, I was curious how the church stood on it. I called the bishop of our diocese that night, that lived in the rectory across the street. I asked him how the church stood on evolution. He said that is a big question and he wouldn't answer it in a few words and had no time for it. (I didn't learn till decades later that the church DOES, accept Darwin's evolution.) Back then, though, my doubts from years of unanswered prayers had me at a tipping point, and when the bishop acted like a jerk to me and wouldn't answer my question, inside my faith was gone.

I continued to go to church out of a sense of obligation and so I wouldn't hurt my parents. One Sunday, when I was 23, I was offered sex by my then girlfriend, and I chose the sex over church. I never went back to church.