To put it plainly, I did not have a good Catholic school experience. In fact, it was quite awful. And while most of the negativity I faced had less to do with Catholicism and more to do with bullying and terrible classmates, there were still some religious aspects that stunted my growth as a person, an intellectual, and halted me from being my authentic self.

There were quite a few problematic beliefs that were preached upon me, other then the typical “if you don’t go to church you’re going to hell” spiel. As fun as it was to hear that almost every day for seven years, there were other aspects and experiences that were much more significant. For instance, my school’s version of sex education was telling us to wait until marriage and then having some random woman vividly describe her magical, passionate wedding night, which was really fucking weird and completely unnecessary.

Along with that, a priest from our parish paid a visit to my fifth grade religion class to lecture us about how female victims of rape can only become pregnant if they secretly liked it. This was especially infuriating considering how false it was and is on every possible scientific level. I was only ten at the time, but I was still pretty certain that what he had just told us was completely made up. According to this guy, Father James, women’s bodies have a way of determining whether or not they liked getting raped, which would then result in pregnancy (if they liked it) or not. Hopefully, any mildly sensible person will realize how messed up, false, and disgusting that is. However, I’m not going to comment any further on this topic because if I actually have to tell you what’s wrong or upsetting about this claim, then, I apologize, but you are basically doomed as a human being.

In addition to the constant praying and ridiculously long skirts, it wouldn’t be Catholic school if we had not been warned about the dangers of homosexuality. Another priest from our diocese stopped by my seventh grade class to inform us that it was okay to be gay as long as we didn’t act on it, led celibate lives, and dedicated ourselves to the church. As a closeted queer kid at the time, this was very discouraging. Although I had heard this same rhetoric on many other previous occasions, this particular moment stood out to me the most because it specifically featured the hot-button and very controversial word “homosexual”, a word (and completely valid sexual orientation) one had to whisper and look both ways before saying.

As a parting gift, I also think it’s important to note that a nun once told a group of seven-year-olds, of which I was apart of, that there are people in Sri Lanka who put their babies in the middle of the street (to get run over) if they are unable to take care of them. I could barely understand multiplication at the time, yet this woman was trying to have a discussion about infanticide? How wild.

So there’s my experience. I do not claim in any way to speak for all catholic school kids and I am certainly not trying to trash the church (not in this article), but I am definitely criticizing the particular school I attended, so take that as you will.