Arthur C. Brooks returned to Catholicism without feeling it at first. His advice: just go to Mass, sit in the back, treat it as practice. He calls this metacognition, training your brain to manage emotions rather than follow them. His 34-year marriage survived the same way, through commitment and practice, not feeling.
I was raised Catholic and I want to come back, but I don't know how to do it because I don't feel it. Go back to Mass and sit in the back. Just do that thing. Go on a Wednesday. It's a different kind of experience than what you remember because it's not the obligation, it's the invitation. That whole concept. What you're doing is you're showing yourself that you can practice notwithstanding any of your feelings. You're freeing yourself from your limbic system. That's called metacognition. That's managing your feelings so they don't manage you. If it were all about feelings, I wouldn't have been married 34 years. I would have been married 34 days.
