Sacred Lies: When Heaven Turns to Ashes in a Child’s Mind

How religious teachings on life, death, heaven, and hell almost led me to tragedy

Araci Matos
Araci’s life

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When children die, without original sin, they are immediately welcomed into the arms of Jesus and will live in heaven for all eternity. Adults, however, touched by sin, risk falling into the flames of hell, where they will remain until the end of time, said one of my childhood catechists.

What seemed like a trivial phrase to everyone else certainly wasn’t for me, especially not for my mind — that strange and faithful companion, sometimes too literal, other times imaginative, figurative.

In rare moments of clarity, it was capable of grasping an evident and factual logic behind every letter placed in front of the other, forming words and giving them symbols and meanings dangerously interpreted in different ways.

That must have been the case that sunny Saturday afternoon when the bored and disengaged children rushed out of the old decaying parish house, long since inhabited only by spiders.

They ran, and as soon as they passed through the old wooden door, cracked by time, their minds focused solely on the ball rolling sinfully at the boys’ feet across the churchyard. Or perhaps the girls, forbidden from that…

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Araci Matos
Araci’s life

Trying to be the Portuguese Annie Ernaux or Elena Ferrante