The post stood out immediately: I can relate, and so can K. Granted, I hadn’t been attending Mass as long as the gentleman in question, but I could see myself in the post:

“I am very lost & confused as to where all of this came from,” she admits, and I find myself wondering how this came about. Perhaps the husband had been on this long road of deconversion for years and simply kept it to himself because he didn’t want his wife to worry. Perhaps as the issues piled up in his head he was in some sort of denial. Perhaps he dropped hints, unsure how to begin the conversation outright, and she just didn’t pick up on them because they were so incongruous with everything she knew about him or because he, inexperienced with dropping such hints, was unable to do so in a sufficiently clear way. (That’s the double problem with dropping hints.) Whatever the case, from her perspective, it’s coming out of nowhere.

In responding to this, some people shared that they can relate. But at least a couple had me wondering if effective communication was actually taking place. One response declared that her son had become “a socialist.”

Perhaps he does not align with a socialist political position, but knowing conservatives of the 2020s, it could simply be that he’s now aligned himself with the Democratic party and the mother, true to Fox News talking points, simply labels him a socialist.

To that response, someone commiserated that “it’s absolutely awful what this world is doing today,” to which the original commenter replied that “it is getting scary.” She suggests it’s “this world,” which is American Christian-ese “the Satan-influenced, Satan-worshiping society we live in,” which in turn is simply the non-Christian segment of the population. And it’s getting “scary” because more and more people are realizing that they don’t need Christianity in their lives: church attendance is plummeting, especially among those under 40. These two ladies see the issue in terms of society as a whole, but they fail to understand the underlying causes, attributing it most likely to Satan’s growing influence.

Some, however, did see that it wasn’t simply a question of Satan’s supposed influence but also a question of the hypocrisy and judgmental nature of contemporary American Christianity:

This comment reveals what I see as one of the primary causes of declining church attendance: the church is continually creating situations that amount to self-inflicted wounds.

Fundamentalist Christians insist that the Genesis account is accurate and that evolutionary theory is a Satanic lie. Then their children learn about the mountain of evidence supporting evolution and they’re forced to choose between the faith of their parents or, as they see it, reality.

Fundamentalist Christians insist that homosexuality has no place in a Christian worldview. Then their children meet queer people and realize, “Hey, they’re not the devils they’re made out to be,” and another church teaching falls to the side.

Fundamentalist Christians remove from their fellowship individuals who choose not to live according to fundamentalist interpretations of sexual morality, and their children find out their soccer coach has been fired, despite parents’ and players’ begging, mid-season because she got pregnant out of wedlock. Then the players are crushed, and a handful of them start thinking, “If this is how Christians behave, I don’t think I need that in my life.”

These are just a handful of the ways modern Christianity is sabotaging itself. Perhaps something like this went on with these commenters’ children.

Others tried to fix the problem.

What happens when prayer doesn’t work, though? What happens when these people are still not returning to church? These poor folks then have a second layer of doubt: why isn’t God helping my child save herself? What am I doing wrong that is preventing this prayer from being answered?

As an aside, the metaphor of prayer as “storming heaven” is always a little strange for me. “Storming” is always used in the sense of an assault — storming the beaches of Normandy. Soldiers storm a position because it’s held by the enemy. In this case, “storming heaven” has connotations of viewing God as an enemy. I’m certain this is not what they intend, but I’m equally certain they’ve never really thought about the metaphor. It just sounds like strong, intense praying — praying really hard.

Some people just passively-aggressively blamed the believers: it’s your fault. You’re not trying hard enough. You’re not holy enough.

This could not possibly be helpful. Such a response only increases the sense of overwhelming guilt these people must feel. As with the “storming heaven” metaphor, this commenter probably didn’t even think this comment out.

Finally, there was the Catholic sense of magical thinking on full display:

The Catholic reliance on relics and holy objects fascinates me. What would this scapular actually do? How would it affect things? And since this husband would be unaware that it’s there, would that amount to God acting against this guy’s will, thus negating the cherished notion of free will, a staple among Christians for explaining how evil exists on earth given the existence of an all-knowing, all-powerful, completely-benevolent god?

I can’t really blame them for their thinking, though: there are certain lines a Christian cannot cross, and “he might have had perfectly good reasons for leaving Christianity, and he might have done so in good faith” is one of them. In such a case, if he found a reason to leave, perhaps I could as well — and that’s unthinkable.

No matter the reason he’d give, though, it wouldn’t be good enough for them.