With the loss of my mother some of the cousins on that side have reached out, which was a positive thing…but then…

I’ve had to explain why I left the church. My mother, whose opinion of me was the one that mattered, had accepted my decision and respected my right to make it, for which I was grateful.

My father’s less devout, so none of it bothered him. When asked, I told the relatives I was no longer religious and hoped that would close the subject.

I should’ve known better. I received a text from my cousin this morning about a site called [i]catholicscomehome.org[/i].
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dancingtongue · 80-89, M

As a fellow recovering Catholic I can appreciate your situation. Fortunately I come from a family where (1) like your parents, my mother backed off once I was adult and made my decision, and my father wasn't really practicing and (2) a cousin who was the essence of devout. Overly so, imho, but also well aware that most of her family had left the Church. My mother and her older sister were the only two to remain Catholic. Of their siblings, her father had switched to Episcopalian when he divorced her mother; another brother became a Mormon; another brother a Christian Scientist; the remaining two sisters were somewhere in the agnostic/atheist spectrum. They had all learned to accept each other's choices and this cousin never tried to recruit any of us back; we learned to tolerate the fact that any extended time with her was going to be filled with constant references to her Church activities and framed by the Catholic radio station which was pretty much her sole source of perspective.

Then I married a Sicilian where ostentatious lip service to the Church is a given. But that is another story.