Chimamanda offers more reasons she had to dump the Catholic Church

Nigerian author, Chimamanda Adichie, has again spoken on her reasons for leaving the Roman Catholic Church and separating herself from Catholicism, a faith she was born into.

The author of ‘Half of a Yellow Sun’ made the revelation in a piece titled ‘Dreaming as a single family which was published in the latest edition of the L’osservatore Romano weekly bulletin on Friday.

The writer had a few months ago, during an interview, said she left the Catholic Church because it now focuses too much on the wrong things.
In the latest interview, she said, “I was raised Catholic, on the campus of the University of Nigeria, we attended a love-filled church run by the Spiritan congregation,” she began.

Continuing, the author of ‘We should all be Feminists’ wrote:

“As a teenager, I wore my Catholic identity like a favorite dress, joyfully and reverently. I was a self-styled Catholic apologist, arguing passionately with the Protestant children in defense of such subjects as the Blessed Virgin Mary, tradition, and transubstantiation.

“Years later, something changed. My pious passion withered. I remember my first moment of recoil from the church, when a gentle and devout couple was banned from communion because their daughter had married an Anglican.

Read also: Nigerian Catholic churches focus too much on the wrong things –Chimamanda Adichie

“It felt to me not only uncharitable, but unnecessarily so, as did other subsequent incidents, such as poor people who were refused burials because they owed money to the church.

“This happened in my ancestral hometown, in a provincial parish far from the university campus where I grew up. But after the Spiritans left, an uncharitable chill also descended on my university church.

“On Sundays, women of all ages were often harassed, men barring their entry into the church unless they wrapped themselves in shawls to hide their shoulders and arms (which apparently would cause men in the church to sin)

“Entire homilies were dedicated to the wiles and evils of women. How unsettling to sit through Mass feeling as though one, simply by being born female, had become inherently guilty of a crime.

“My alienation deepened; I had become a person in a place that my spirit had outgrown. Even if I still attended Mass from time to time, it brought me no meaning, and I have since come to believe that meaning is what makes life worthwhile.”

Join the conversation

Opinions

Support Ripples Nigeria, hold up solutions journalism

Balanced, fearless journalism driven by data comes at huge financial costs.

As a media platform, we hold leadership accountable and will not trade the right to press freedom and free speech for a piece of cake.

If you like what we do, and are ready to uphold solutions journalism, kindly donate to the Ripples Nigeria cause.

Your support would help to ensure that citizens and institutions continue to have free access to credible and reliable information for societal development.

Donate Now