This week’s visit by Pope Benedict XVI has sparked a number of debates about the Catholic Church, especially around the child sex abuse scandal. Earlier this year I made one of the most difficult decisions of my life, I decided to ditch my Catholic faith.

Unlike the typical stories you associate with Catholic school education, mine were all very happy. For us, school was an environment that not only provided academic instruction but a sense of responsibility for our community. We raised money for good causes by going on sponsored walks and numerous fetes, discos and dress down days (albeit all for religious based charities). Our sixth formers volunteered to take sick people to Lourdes, we organised our own masses, wrote our own prayers and music. Pope John Paul II ‘The Pope for Youth’ knew that as congregation numbers were tumbling, the Church needed to engage with young people. Brighton & Arundel diocese were particularly proactive during the 1980s and 1990s.

Despite this, after 6th form I rarely found a comfortable environment for worship. My university's Christian Society scared me. On my first meeting they prayed against a visiting novelty hypnotist. This was a bit extreme, I had never been told to pray against anything so specific. This lead me to drift away from organised worship. I didn’t attend mass as often as I had done in the past, however, I observed my faith, celebrating Christian feast days, praying when I could. Despite being desperately unfashionable, I always defended my Catholic education.

After I had my daughter, I was forced to make a few choices about faith. My husband believes in the gospel according to science god Richard Dawkins. The dilemma of not wanting turn my husband into hypocrite by making promises he didn’t truly believe inside a house of God, meant we didn’t get married in a church or have Little L baptised. In fact, to welcome her into the world, we designed our own ceremony based on a number of spiritual rituals. With the persistent saga of child sex abuse cases against Catholic priests plus the allegations of a cover up by the Church, I was haemorrhaging belief and spiritually lost. More shockingly, there have been allegations and cases bought to trial in my own diocese, allegedly mishandled by the very bishop that confirmed me (see this BBC Radio 4 report). Could I really bring my daughter up in such a hypocritical environment?

Catholic schools in some areas have such good reputations, parents even get their kids baptised to get them through the system (don’t get me started on that one). I don’t want to gamble with my child’s academic future but I also want her to have a completely open mind and respect her parents for being true to their hearts. She should choose God or Dawkins on her terms.

Despite my former beliefs that a religious based education gives children a better moral compass, her generation should be the ones to evolve past organised religion. Maybe her generation will re-invent community and individual spiritualism? I can only have faith.