particularuniversal

Honestly, this might sound shallow, but financial and vocational security. Having great health insurance, not paying rent, free food and booze, and always guaranteed a job. When I decided to leave, the few non-religious friends I had at the time were like, “What are you doing? This is an amazing deal!”

It was, but it came with a price

Edit: a word

Wasn’t really one single reason, there were a bunch. Political, cultural, personal, intellectual. But a major breaking point was that at the time I was studying philosophy (with permission from the order), and I was studying Kant, Hegel, Marx, Neitzsche. Really hard to maintain it if you take any of those guys seriously.

Also learning about Church history (and I’m not talking about the crusades, like even the past couple hundred years)

Vow of obedience. And chastity. (Jesuit poverty doesn’t really count.) And living your whole life representing an institution you’re not sure at the end of the day is really defensible. Your life really isn’t your own. And, like, you get reminded of that in so many words on a regular basis

I’m a server and actively looking for jobs in publishing. You know anybody?

Most guys seemed pretty genuine. Some guys (though in the Jesuits, not all that many, but you’d find this a lot more in other sectors of Catholicism) were so rigid and austere in their faith that you were like, what are you hiding from? And there were a couple who, on rare moments or when we’d been drinking heavily, were open about their doubts. I admired them

Edit: a couple words