I fought for two more years to hold on, thinking that having the syllogisms from my catechism straight in my head would help me stand firm. But it was useless. By then I was a father, and did not want to raise my children in a church where sentimentality and self-satisfaction were the point of the Christian life. It wasn’t safe to raise my children in this church, I thought – not because they would be at risk of predators, but because the entire ethos of the American church, like the ethos of the decadent post-Christian society in which it lives, is not that we should die to ourselves so that we can live in Christ, as the new testament demands, but that we should learn to love ourselves more.

Flannery O’Connor, one of my Catholic heroes, famously said, “Push back against the age as hard as it pushes against you. What people don’t realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross.” American Catholicism was not pushing back against the hostile age at all. Rather, it had become a pushover. God is love was not a proclamation that liberated us captives from our sin and despair, but rather a bromide and a platitude that allowed us to believe that, and to behave as if, our lust, greed, malice and so forth – sins that I struggled with every day — weren’t to be despised and cast out, but rather shellacked by a river of treacle.

I finally broke. Losing my Catholic faith was the most painful thing that ever happened to me. Today, as much as I admire Pope Francis and understand the enthusiasm among Catholics for him, his interview makes me realize that the good, if incomplete, work that John Paul II and Benedict XVI did to restore the Church after the violence of the revolution stands to be undone. Though I agree with nearly everything the pope said last week in his interview, and cheer inwardly when he chastises rigorist knotheads who would deny the healing medicine of the Church to anyone, I fear his merciful words will be received not as love, but license. The “spirit of Pope Francis” will replace the “spirit of Vatican II” as the rationalization people will use to ignore the difficult teachings of the faith. If so, this pope will turn out to be like his predecessor John XXIII: a dear man, but a tragic figure.