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 [originally published July 29, 2009]

My boyfriend was raised Mormon. I was raised Catholic. Although by now we’ve both left our respective religions (ten years ago in my case and almost as many in his) the weird traces of both religions still mingle in most of our conversations, creating a miasma of outdated ideologies as subtle as incense but as insistent as a missionary knocking on the door. (Ha! I couldn’t help it!)

Because I sometimes have the mentality of a schoolyard bully, and because R. continually frustrates me by refusing to agree with at least 90% of what I say, these religious “conversations” usually turn into religious “arguments.” And not even like deep theological discussions, like trying to imagine life before God or a rock so heavy God can’t lift it or whatever, but more like (no kidding) whose religion was better?

These arguments usually only end when I’ve had enough spiked hot chocolate to fall off the couch, or else I clock R. over the head with a cartoon frying pan. You know: all the things the magazines tell you to do. Healthy adult relationships between adults who are healthy.

To be honest, I love that he used to be Mormon. Our childhoods were pretty different, of course (he went to school, for instance, while I was raised as a homeschooler in the middle of the woods; his religious upbringing was pretty standard for Mormonism, while mine was off-the-wall fruit-loop demon-possession stuff, too weird even for other Catholics). But both of us were really, really into religion. I mean, I, at least, was a total holier-than-thou prig: total Stephen King nightmare material. Gallant ofGoofus and Gallant, only being fed a steady diet of methanphetamines. And R. scarcely sounds better.

During Lent, I would get down on my knees on the parque floorboards and pray a full rosary every day. R. used to rate the girls in his middle school, not just on looks and personality, but on piety. I didn’t like it when girls wore pants; R. didn’t drink coffee until he was out of his teens.

I used to know kids just like R. We had “homeschool meetings” and we all used to fight in an awkward, flirtatious way about issues of morality. As far as I can tell, many of these kids have stayed Catholic. I reckon they’re mostly married now. They’re devout (is what I imagine) and their wives and husbands are devout and they have devout children who wear button-up shirts and are named after cozy Old Testament figures. Sometimes when I feel anxious about adulthood, when I move all alone to a new city for school that confuses me, or when I go to a party where everyone seems old and exhausted, I wonder what my life would have been like if I’d stayed Catholic. My face would be paler but healthier and more sincere without make-up; my husband and I would pray grace over homecooked meals. I’d hear about shows like True Blood very vaguely, in pamphlets intended to shock good Christians with the corruption teeming outside: but I’d never watch television at all. I’d read Dr. Seuss and Doris Day. I’d know how to mend clothes.

But really, I guess when it comes down to it, I sort of prefer being a naive vacuous disbeliever, gorging my head with trashy daydreams and avoiding responsibilities, riding around my high-horse in judgment of organized religion. And I really, really, really feel very strongly about proving that Catholicism is better than Mormonism. And by “better” I mean “more likely to catch the attention of Bill Maher during a hilarious documentary about zany religious folk.”

All this is an awkwardly over-confessional way to make one simple point: yesterday, at the library, I was browsing the non-fiction section. The Catholic books mostly consisted of adorable childhood memoirs and cheery motivational tomes by former nuns.

The Mormon section consisted of The Book of Mormon, two books by women who’d escaped crazy polygamous communities, and a book about a weird cultish murder in the Utah foothills.

I am so jealous.

I will never hear the end of this.

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