The Dirty D Word

A Catholic’s Guide to Deconstruction

Photo by Andrew Neel on Unsplash

The first time I remember hearing the word deconstruction was in 2021, when Audrey Assad announced that she was no longer Catholic. At the time, I was a seminarian, living in a rectory with a couple of priests, who both said what a shame it was that this young singer had “lost her faith.” Her music had been a major influence on me since the beginning of my conversion and a source of consolation for me in dark moments. I was sad to hear that she no longer considered herself Catholic, but even then, I didn’t quite share the older priests’ conviction that she had lost her faith. I remember sitting with her words that evening:

“Curiosity and presence and gratitude are my prayer life. In pain and bliss and everything in between. Whatever or whoever God is, I am still in love.”

To me, that just didn’t sound like the anguished cry of a soul in a crisis of faith. It didn’t have the ring of nihilism or despair. It sounded like the voice of someone who had been through a dark night of the soul and come out the other side with a faith that was “changed, not ended” (to borrow a haunting phrase from the Mass for the Dead). That process, I learned, was called deconstruction.

Fast forward four years. At some point during my deep dive into homosexuality and Church teaching, I found myself at a crossroads in my soul. I had come to a place where I realized I no longer believed what the Church had taught me about myself: that my deepest desires were a sign of an incurable disorder, and the only way to be happy (and please God) was a life of repression and denial. I realized, too, that I could no longer go back, even if the path ahead cost me my vocation, my faith, and the life I had spent years building. It was then that I came to a quiet but undeniable realization: I think I’m deconstructing, too.

So I started following the breadcrumb trails of others who had walked this path before me. I found fellow Catholics and Christians who had gone through the journey and lived to tell the tale. And slowly, I began to piece together a mental map of the terrain ahead.